County Council - Regular Meeting

Call the Crown County Board of Commissioner meeting to order.

In addition to the agenda or changes, I'll have one change. It's just the order. A motion on the personnel policy manual I'll put after the contract with Clark Deets and before the old business. Any other changes, guys?

No, I'm good. I think you probably ought to tell Mr. Melvin where he's going to fall this evening.

He's been blessed with standing countless meetings the entire duration, so I wouldn't mind doing that. Make Sanders first up. Okay. All right. We can change that. For everything or just that? Let's just do just that. And if he chooses to stay, then that's all we'll do.

Okay. Before we do that, let's do the claims. You have ten minutes. Okay.

So I went through and reviewed claims in the minutes. Minutes were fine. There's a slight mistake to the magnitude of two cents. So we're going to go ahead and make a motion to approve the claims in the minutes and the claims are contingent upon that change being made when Doug processes the docket.

That's fine. I just got to say, I just can't believe how much work we actually put into looking at this stuff. It looks like we just rubber stamped this. That's not the case. We've been looking at this for a couple days. So I'll second the motion. Okay. Roll.

Ron, how do you vote?

Yes.

Tim, how do you vote? Yes. Kevin, how do you vote?

Yes. Okay. Sandra, you're on.

So Mr. Melvin was nice enough to say that he would like to donate money to pave the road which he lives on. So we went through the process. We sent out five letters to contractors in the area, and we got four bids back.

Quotes.

Quotes. I know, it's a bad word.

It's in statute.

I have been telling myself that all day, and I knew I would mess it up.

Yeah, it's okay.

If that's my only mess up, I'm golden.

There we go.

So we went through the process and looked at all of the quotes that came back, We've received quotes from JL Harden, Mike Smith Paving, Milestone Contractors, and EMB Paving. With that, we have chosen to go with JL Harden Paving. They were the lowest and most reasonable bid that met our standards. The quote came in at $61,000.

How much money did that save you? About $8,000. It saved me?

Well, I mean, the cost over the road.

Oh, I believe it might have helped you with that too.

I'm not sure.

Who can explain this better than me?

of me so again we don't we basically didn't even worry about the we didn't worry about the what the proposal was that you shared with us at that point we followed the process with regards to the state when we got the additional votes so yeah from my understanding well i think the difference is harden is actually providing us a little bit better road surface that's correct he went with a nine and a half mil um surface as opposed to an 11 and it's just more durable will hold up not scratch not wear quite as bad okay so

If I hear what you're saying, obviously I just had a guy come out because I know that you had asked about pricing before. So I wanted to try to get comfortable with what pricing would be. So I don't know. Smith Paving was who I got the quote from. I know he was going to adjust his quote. Yeah, which he did. Oh, okay.

So with that, I think Teresa clarified what happens next. I mean, actually, I think at this point we have to go through and make a she has to make a recommendation she's made a recommendation of the cc proceed forward with jl harden correct that is correct okay so i will make a motion that we proceed with the proposal contention upon the donation from the from mr melvin for 61 000 with jail harden in contingent on the contract and continuing on the contract which shouldn't take us that long to do because we have a template for that correct good motions have been demanding can you define the length how long will that take as long as the jail harden which they've signed our template in the past we just simply take their proposal they have their attach it as a scope of work they sign it and we move on so it should be a day or so okay okay okay i'll say a motion second roll tim how do you vote yes kevin how do you vote yes

Ron, how do you vote?

Yes.

So I think the thing in that is... Okay, so how that's going to work is you just make a check out to Brown County government and give it to the auditor's office.

And she'll give you a receipt.

And she'll give you a receipt. Okay. And I will give you a new one.

Okay, thank you. Thank you for your patience. Thank you. It's a new process for us, so we're always learning. Thank you.

Okay. okay that's all I want to speak.

What's the difference between court and a bed?

Because it defines the, for me, it defines the levels at which you have to go and seek whether it has to be actually engineered and has to have an actual bid package, call out the specific specifications, provides more details, more engineering aspects of all that, and then it also has to end up being sealed, which means it actually has to be opened in public. Thank you. Not as far as dealing it with regards to the court.

I didn't even know there was a difference. Thank you.

okay first on the agenda amendment for the brown county zoning ordinance this is the first reading this is ordinance 2026-09-16-000 the purpose of this ordinance is to amend various provisions of the brown county zoning zoning ordinance in order to comply with recent amendments to the indiana planning and zoning enabling statutes kayla you here yep you want to Is that brief on this one?

Sure. You started reading, so I thought I got out of it.

I hope I didn't steal all your words. You did.

Do you want me to just go the date of certification?

Yeah, explain your process, how it got here, and why the change.

Okay, so the Area Plan Commission had a meeting on August 25th of this year. to consider various amendments to the Brown County Zoning Ordinance. And the whole reason for this is to comply with recent amendments to the Indiana Planning and Zoning Enabling Statutes. So basically what the state did, state legislation, House Enrolled Act 1001 and 1210, basically the state gave us recommendations for the things that we need to add or amend in our zoning ordinance. So there's a provision for mixed-use residential, shooting ranges, both indoor and outdoor, a will serve letter, sporting goods stores. And it even tells us how to update the use table for each of those, so what zoning districts they're allowed in, basically. so the area plan question voted four to zero with three members absent to send a favor favorable recommendation to the commissioners for adoption okay you get done can i ask a couple more questions sure i looked at the table did you have any more to add on your i can answer questions okay um back here on

Anyway, it goes back here to reconstruction, re-prepare, repair, restore, resume, the use of non-conforming building that has been damaged by fire, collapse, explosion, act of nature, war. This went in in like July 1 in 1996. It says, however, the reconstruction, repair, or restoration must be completed not more than one year after the date of the damage to the building are the settlement of the property damage claim. If the reconstruction, repair, or registration is not completed in one year, the continuation of the nonconforming use terminates. I wish they'd put numbers on these pages. Looks like that would be... Under section four? Yeah, four shooting ranges. okay the question i had was it looks like it loses its zoning if it's not we had a conversation i don't know it might have been years ago and i was saying something then about zoning and business property if the business closes and one year goes by i was asking you if it lost its zoning and at that time i don't think you remembered anything about that well obviously there's one here that loses it And if that's state statute, then that's state statute. I was just wondering if that would apply to any other businesses that are not. Because I remember years ago that the drag strip in Bean Blossom, if it didn't at least have a show or something every year, that it supposedly lost its zoning.

But I don't think you said you've ever really heard anything Well, that is this so that's a special exception. So that's an allowed use by special exception like for the drag strip non-conforming use a pre-existing non-conforming would be if Kayla had a junkyard at her house for the last 52 years and then I move and that so my non-conforming zoning is I'm still in an R whatever, but I would lose the ability to continue the non-conforming use. So I would revert back to my, I would say my original zoning. My zoning would never change.

Yeah. I've seen something else here a while back that zoning like that is typically for the person that is there, that once they leave,

or a non-informing use i i don't know if my words are correct but it seems like there's an issue with that because it don't carry over necessarily anyway we'll get into that so if something is properly zoned yeah then it does carry over okay so right now we're working on two um pre-existing uses that are either trying to trying to sell or expand their businesses so brownies restaurant is one They're not properly zoned. They've been in operation for however many years. Brownies? Brownies. I used to eat up there when I was a kid, one of those Rollins. Yeah. It's been a restaurant for as long as anybody in here can remember, I'm certain of that. And another one is the Needmore Grocery Store. Really? They are not zoned properly for their convenience store, grocery store, bait shop. so that didn't get granted won't be grandfather there will be grandfather so we're working we're hoping that they will go ahead and rezone with the current owners yeah just so there's never a question in the future because i would not want any of any of the long-standing businesses here to sell and then not be able to continue on doing what they've always been doing with no issues okay

I just kind of remembered that. Thank you for the education, though. I knew there was some issues.

So the question that he has there with that, it specifically speaks to a building being non-conforming. That doesn't necessarily mean... So I'm going to provide an example scenario here. Let's say that there is a shooting range and there are multiple buildings, and they're all in conformance with regards to the requirements, except this one particular building is not. When I read that, I understood it to be is if there's damage to it and they choose not to do the repair, they simply lose the right as a nonconformist use of that building. I did not interpret that as a right of loss of zoning.

Or if they, yeah. These, I believe, are for nonconforming uses.

Of the entire property? Because when it was read, when you just read it, it said building.

That's a great question for a judge. Yeah, that's who ultimately would answer that question if there was ever. Okay.

Okay. Any other questions? No, I don't think so. Okay, anything more to add?

I don't think so. You're not going to read the whole ordinance, right?

No, no, no. All we've got to do is read. I already did that. You read the ordinance number and the title and that.

Okay.

The first reading and then we'll have a second reading at our next meeting.

And again, so everybody in the audience knows the behaviors that we typically post those on our website. Yep. If they have adequate time to read through them and access them.

If anybody in the audience wants really fun reading material, I will send them this ordinance. Just let me know.

And all the associated links, right?

Exactly, yes.

Yeah, it's good reading there. Yeah.

Hey, thank you.

So I need to be back here October 7th at 2 o'clock?

Yep.

Okay, thanks. For the second reading.

Well, you guys can vote twice if you're new now. That's the first time. That's correct.

I'd rather... Do you want to wait? I'd rather have it. Our habit has been and our procedure has been is we'll do a first reading and we'll do a second. Okay. That way, there's plenty of opportunity for the public to go through the information if they choose to do so.

Okay, the next item is the ordinance adopting the 2027 holiday schedule. Holiday meeting schedule.

No, this is a table moment. And we were told that we just had to do a reading. It's not necessary for us to take a vote on that. And before you jump to the next one, we need to talk about the holiday and the meeting schedules. That's item number two. That's where I was headed. No, I got you.

I'm sorry. The ordinance number 2026-09-16-001, an ordinance adopting the 2027 holiday schedule for Brown County government employees. We have 14 holidays in a non-election year. In a election year, two additional holidays are primary, voting day, and general voting in November. So this is the list of our holiday schedules. Since it's linked to money, it requires an ordinance for us to pass. So I'll entertain a motion.

And again, it's an ordinance.

Ordinance. Ah, that's right. We'll table it. Okay, we'll pass it next. Okay, that works. The next one, we vote on this one. We can do that now. That's the meeting schedule in the salmon room. Same thing, first and third Wednesday of the month. And I think this was routed. So I'll need a motion on this one.

Basically, I reviewed that. I didn't see any issue with the meeting schedule. Okay. We ironed out the nuances of that last year, so I'll make a motion that we approve the meeting schedule. Okay, that's fine. Thanks for the word, Julie. Roll.

Okay, Kevin, Patrick, how do you vote? Yes. John Sanders?

Yes. Yes. Okay, we'll move now to the contract for Clark-Dietz, the bid package.

So I wanted to present to you guys this contract to work with us to move forward in applying for our CCMG call that's due at the end of the month. And this will be for paving for 2027.

I asked this question yesterday. You have that money in the account. It's not going to mess you up anywhere else?

No. We've already figured out where we're taking the money from.

I just want to make the point in this is that this is a very aggressive timeline for them to get those packages together. They kind of fell on us because we weren't able to get the Mount Liberty Bridge under the CCMG grant. That was the original plan.

That was the original. And this was the backup plan. So we're going with the previous superintendent's backup plan if we couldn't do the Mount Liberty Bridge.

Okay. When is this still going to be done? In 27? Is that what this cuts?

this will be paving for 27. hey but when's the bridge on mount liberty scheduled it's looking more like 28. so they move in again so i thought yeah okay so we gotta go and firm that up because i thought we were talking about a may june engineering design and but they're going through okay so now i remember the conversation yeah Yes. We're going after CCMG in 28 and 27 to start that bridge. Correct. And that, again, is going to be at the end of September, which means it's October. So that means they'll be anywhere from a month to a month and a half making a decision on CCMG. So there's no way construction starts before the end of the year. No. Okay. All right. I completely forgot about that.

Projects? Projects on that grant?

So on this, as far as the total for the number there?

You're wanting to know which roads? We are looking at Upper Salt Creek, Gold Point, Green, and Short Chute, and Haystown area. And the short piece of Mount Zion up there. Okay, thank you.

That it, Senator?

Yes, that's it.

So the only other thing that happened about this when we had the conversation with Clark Deets is I know that this is falling under an already existing service agreement that we have with them? That's correct. As far as this? so i think we just need to make sure that we start to pull in and say when we go through the process of renewing that right because it's at one it's a year to year correct so we just need to start that process like i said it's an aggressive timeline so i will make a motion that we approve and sign this contract for park beach for the the bid packages. This is a scenario where this will be a bid package situation. In that process, to go forward with issuing this and getting the work started on that very aggressive schedule. Deadline, I think, the 29th of September.

That is correct.

That's my motion. I got up to speed on this yesterday. I think we need to go ahead and move forward. Time is of the essence, so I will second it. Okay. Roll.

Ron, how do you vote?

Yes. Tim? Yes. Kevin? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Next item is the Personnel Policy Manual. How that will work is we'll start off with comments, opening comments by the board. Then we'll open it up to the public. We've got three minutes to state your comments. Then we'll bring it back to the board. Be civil, if you would. This is kind of an emotional area for a lot of folks. So just be civil about it. State your opinions. We'll bring it back up to the board for discussion and roll up and a vote one way or the other. Let me open it up with a little background. The paper today had a pretty good article on the discussion that the council held their titles unpaid lunch plan draws push back from county employees so pretty good pretty good article that provides some some some information on that one let me give you a little background um we jump started as commissioners we jump started the personnel advisory committee uh in january 2025 that consists of a commissioner uh theresa is our administrative specialist it consists of three councilmen uh gary hewitt uh Darren Berg, Judy Switpatel, includes the auditor, and Kim Blamen, who's our HR and payroll specialist, and includes now, and includes our HR consultant, Christy McCann. Also, in addition to that, we started meeting monthly, and then we went to two months. We started adding a department head meeting on the third Monday. That gave us even more input. The department head meetings were pretty interesting. Again, I've been attending these county meetings for about 10 years. And so I've heard the progression, the issues, the concerns for quite a while at different meetings. And it's always interesting. The personnel policy is always linked to cost. And I always remember all the different benefits and things were added. And you always ask, well, how much is that going to cost? And nobody really looked at it. So there's a direction between the personnel policy and cost, which is our focus. On the department head meetings, one of the first ones was kind of eye-opening, is we had issues with the personnel policy handbook, which one was current. Obvious statements, good input, that it was vague. It was interpreted differently by different departments. That created some issues, created significant issues between what we considered exempt employees and non-exempt employees that led to an audit. that led to a payout of a significant amount of money when it came to comp time and re-looking at some of the overtime things. And not only that, the disconnects in the personnel manual, that has impacts elsewhere. And when we saw that, after several months, it led us to hire an HR consultant that did an analysis on that policy manual. And she did a very thorough job, Christine McCann, a very thorough job doing a risk assessment on a personnel policy. And I tell you, with all the federal and state regulations, when it comes to the different aspects of personnel, it's extremely complicated. And it's important to follow guidance, and it's important to follow that we have the guidance to explain what the guidance is, how we're going to enforce it, and how we're going to monitor it. So she did a pretty good assessment of what the risks were, broke down the risk by high, medium, low kind of thing. That led to changes in the personnel policy manual. And then... When it came to that, the next part is how do we implement some of these policies? And then it went to the fact that we have a manual system. Time cards are often written in pencil or paper, input by different people, rolling up different costs, different how labor's charged, different things. Trying to get any kind of roll-up in information was extremely difficult to get. That led us to looking at, Chris, you did a survey for us on the personnel, human resource, and payroll systems. I think we did kind of a survey, maybe had three or four national vendors on an automated system that will automate all this for us. And the key there is, man, when you're doing all this stuff manual and different people are touching different things at different times, all kinds of areas where you can make mistakes. And the efficiency of that is pretty appalling. There's a lot of time just spent fact-figuring information. Same way with benefits. When you coordinate benefits, if you don't have the right timeline, the right sequence on how that's processed, it opens you up to all kinds of problems. So did you get the personnel on the benefits on time? Did you take them off once they terminated? And then when you terminated, did you have the process in place to identify IT so they could do that part? So when you look at that whole process, the end-to-end when it comes to personnel management, it's pretty complicated. It's backed by state and federal laws and different agencies within those groups. So it's pretty important that you do a pretty good job when you're managing your personnel. So the Paycom thing, we wanted to get that in before open season. That gave us a November 1 date, which kind of backs us up. And so when we came up with the first draft of the personnel manual, we shared that about a month ago. We immediately got feedback, not only then, but we got feedback in emails, quite a bit of emails. We had a last meeting on Monday. It was explained again, the emails, the voice, the person in the match with the emails expressed their concerns, opinions, options, recommendations. And so all The past month we reviewed those emails. People came to the office, talked to different people, gave even more feedback. So we reviewed it, discussed it. We had several meetings at the PAC to go over different issues so we understood what the challenges were. So that's, and then again Monday we had a meeting. Again, the paper did a pretty good job on explaining one aspect of it. Again, I talked to the policy correlates to cost. And so we looked at that. When you look at the progression, it's how did we get here? It's always been in this county, it's gee whiz, we don't, and true, we're a small county, we don't have the payroll that the larger counties have. And so yeah, we don't have the tax base the other counties have. So when you compare salaries to the larger counties, sure, it's going to be less. And so the strategy then is always, well, let's tweak our system to add different perks and different benefits to try to make up for that. And I recall the council back in 2017, I believe it was, Keith Baker commissioned the IU School of, what, Kelley School of Business to do a salary study. And what he did is he compared it against the smaller counties. And so we were comparable with the smaller counties, but then when it came to benefits, we were superior to the other counties on that one. The feedback with that was, well, gee whiz, we don't compete with the smaller counties. We compete for people with the larger counties, so you've got to do something on paying them. That became pretty darn interesting. So when it came to pay systems, we have a system in place that has like 35 pay grades. It's unique. It's individually tailored. And so a clerk in this department and a clerk in that department could be a little different. And so we have a little different classification based on you know, whatever the specifications or the requirements were for that particular job. And then we added stipends. We said, well, you know, this person does even more, and then you had a variety of different stipends. So you had 35 pay grades, which is interesting because from a federal system where I come from, we have like 12. And we had classifications, and we had market surveys of the Congress mandated by statute to compare what our salaries were with the private sector. And it was always lower, and Congress always ignored it. And we drove on. And that was a kind of standard process. So what we did here, kudos to the council, after all these years, you know, I'm sitting here looking at that, you have 35 paperies, how can you manage that? How can you think that it's fair? It wasn't. One department would do something, and then the other department said, well, they're doing it, we want it, and it kind of cascades. So it's kind of chaotic, but kind of unique to Bryan County, so pretty interesting. But Not the best way really to handle that kind of thing. And of course, the more complexity you have in your salaries, the more negative impacts it may have on your personnel policy manual and your administration of that. So kudos to the council. Last year, 2025, I think they started salary studying to go, let's change it. Let's get back to standard. Let's classify some of these, and that way we can do market surveys. And what was nice on the salary stuff is they can compare it to other counties. The big ones and the small ones come up with an average and then identify what that is, what the delta is between an average and then what they can afford. And I think the delta on that one's around 400,000 to bring everybody up to this first tier, I guess, or the first phase of of bringing everybody up to maybe higher standards compared to the average from other counties. So kudos on them. And they're still working through that. You don't change this overnight. It's complicated. It's, you know, and it changed a lot of things. And so that's a good thing. And so when it came to us, our policies on the personnel policy has to follow what the council's doing. So it's kind of a sync. And so we went through and identified different changes. We looked at, last year, we looked at the health savings account, which was $1,000. Well, the health savings account came back when we had a previous health insurance system that was inadequate and expensive. So we said, okay, let's throw in $1,000 to supplement that particular system. But we changed from that health insurance system to a new health insurance system. It manages risk a little better, but it's expensive. When you look at health insurance, we're not the only ones that look at that. It's expensive. And so when you look at, gee whiz, I want more pay, well, you look at what's our budget and then where do we spend in our money? What's the cost of benefits? And I don't know how many meetings I've attended at the council where they challenged the How do we manage these costs? One, how do we identify what the costs are and then how do we manage them and then how do we bring people up? What's a sweet spot for the Brown County? And it's a challenge, but it requires a lot of work and a lot of digging in and a lot of looking at your numbers. And so when you look at that, wow, not only did we have the $1,000 and then we kept it, question that last year, and the feedback we got was, hey, we still need it. It's valuable in these particular things. Okay. Another legacy benefit that came forward that's very popular is the health clinic. The county pays $14,700 a month on the health clinic. You divide that by the number of people, that's $1,500 per employee that the county pays for a clinic, and a lot of folks like the clinic. Then the problem with the clinic is, right now the policy is that we're just supplying the clinic to people who are in our health insurance plan. Well, and then you think, well, wait, I'm not in your health insurance plan. Why can't you pay for my $65 a month, I guess is what the private sector cost is for that. Why can't you pay that? Well, okay, different question. It sounds simple, done it. It's a lot less expensive to pay somebody to do the clinic than pay, I think on average, on average we're paying $21,000 per employee for health insurance. And I don't know how many folks are on Medicare, but I pay over $5,000. And what we pay, what we contribute to the county is $21,000. That's an average. It ranges from $15,000 to close to $47,000 per employee, depending on the plan you get. So you look at that, and it's kind of eye-opening. But we manage it. We budget for it. And we're getting ahead of the game. But it's an expensive benefit, but it competes with higher salaries as well. You've got X amount of money. So that's kind of where we're at on that particular thing. So you've got the clinic. Wow, let me just read off some of the other. And again, you said what's cost have to do with personnel? Well it's policy and cost. And so when you look at, one, we had the unique pay system. We changed it. We had kind of and not so great health insurance thing. We changed that. We kept some of the legacy perks and benefits along with that. Others, we have 35 days a year of leave for a new employee that's been here a year. We have up to 16 paid holidays, up to 48 hours of personal leave annually. We have vacation ranging from 40 to 200 hours annually. We have sick leave with unlimited accumulation. That's four hours a month for 48 hours. We have the, I mentioned the 1,000 HSA contribution. The county paid health insurance, this is another one. We pay 89 to 97% of the premium. That's unprecedented in county government. And also, when you look at our health benefit, compared to others in our class, we're one of the top tier health insurance providers in our market, in our region. And that's provided by survey from our health providers, surveying what other counties are doing. So when you match us to other counties, we're right up there with the best of them. So we put our investment in health insurance, not necessarily in salaries and other perks. And so that's a plus. But 89% to 97%, that doesn't include the $1,500 per employee that we pay for the clinic. So that would put us even more over 100% on a lot of these things if you add them all up. Wow, and I think I covered the big part. And the other thing is, is the county absorbs the costs and increases in health insurance benefits this year. So no one's gonna see a change in their health insurance benefits. So when you look at all this and you put it all together, and then I'll turn it over to Kevin. When you look at it all together, my point is, is you gotta look at the personnel and costs. And so we own the personnel and the policy, the council owns the cost. If they want to adjust things, they can, and we'll adjust them annually accordingly. That's how it kind of works. That's why we have a personal advisory committee to sync it. And the value of the personal advisory committee, before we had that, the council would make a change, not tell anybody. The commissioners would make a change, not tell anybody. Maybe that would make it to an ordinance, maybe it wouldn't. The auditor didn't know until after the fact. And so that was the model. And it's pretty chaotic and created a lot of confusion, a lot of costs, a lot of risk. And I think we're helping to reduce that quite a bit. So that's my background on how we got to the personnel policy manual. And it's a manual. It's not a handbook. The handbook was 125 pages. It's one of those things a new employee comes in and says, did you read the handbook? And you sign a little form and you go, yeah, we did that. But yet, really, did they? And so what we did on the manual, it's a lot more detailed. It's 150 pages. We have policies in there that we never had before to plug some of the holes. to keep our head above water on some of these issues. And I tell you, when you have personnel issues, it is expensive. And we've had a few cases, and it gets expensive reconciling different things. And so we're hoping to prevent that. So we have a 150-page manual. And also, we're developing a handbook for the employees. So the employees have a simple handbook that everybody can read, at least understand their benefits. to them and then the managers will have a manual. And oh, stay tuned, not only do you have the manual, but it doesn't stop there. Then we have, we'll roll out with the training plan. We'll have the first ever training plan on what the manual is and of course additional training will be like supervisor training, management training, training and education on what policies are from the personnel, the different agencies, from the feds that look at this stuff and the state that looks at this stuff. And so we'll have an ongoing training program for our managers and personnel to help optimize, make it more efficient, a little more effective, prevent conflicts and unnecessary costs. So with that, Kevin, I'll get your comments from up here. I'll let Kevin go first.

So I think the thing that's complicated about this is that this is the most intensive that's happened in many years, and there's been chaotic. Ordinance changes, yes, but I need to get closer. I think that one's not working. Let's change this one. need to look at that Jim's broken so I understand that when we looked at this in our first introduction and having a staff meeting on this was it was chaos from that and we knew that there had to be something done and that's why we took the steps that we took the thing that's surprising to me is there is a lot of effort and stuff put forth with this but I It seems that the thing that's kind of hurt or hint the point that's a rough spot here with the employees in the county and others in the county is that we're looking at taking away or removing an unpaid lunch. And that unpaid lunch right now is, or excuse me, removing a paid lunch, going to an unpaid lunch, or going to an unpaid lunch plus working through those hours. So in doing that, that means that we're meeting what the council's salary ordinance calls it. 40 hours it's a 40 hour work week that's what we're working through in the policy we have so the existing policy is that they it's it's basically working 35 hours plus five hours a week we paid lunch and that is then counted towards worked hours and as we go through this and me looking at that and looking at trying to put numbers together is what that looks like it's staggering to me that we're that we are giving as many hours in a paid lunch that we are with some of the vacation that we do in the county and that means that that paid lunch is not productive time because it's time that's not necessarily spent in the office some of it is some of it isn't and there's other issues with regards to not just the paid lunch itself but it's also issues with regards to productivity in the sense of If we look at the hours spent and the total hours that are earned on an employee that's got 15 years in, there's the days that have access to work, their exercise and vacation maximum, or the leave days, their time, personal holidays, and all that stuff. It doesn't leave a lot of days to be worked. There's supposed to be 260 days in the year that we're working 40 hours a week, and if you look at exercising and saying we have to have leave spent you have to have personal time spent there are six days that are included in that it's as few as 675 days out of 260 days that have worked so that's a lot and what we're seeing and what has come forth from that is is that there is hours being comped or paid in overtime when we don't have that many hours worked in the timeframe that we have for the 40-hour week. It can be as high as 194 days for someone who's new to the county. So when I took a look at this and I made this statement in our meeting and when that, it just didn't sit right with me that the taxpayer is paying for a 40-hour week and we're not getting the time spent in activities related to task in hand. And the thing that kind of supports that is the amount of comp time and the amount of overtime. Now, it's not so much overtime in this situation because a lot of those jobs, like the highway department is one of those, where they're working a 40 hour week and they're getting a half an hour unpaid lunch. Whereas now, what's happening in the other administrative areas is it's 35 hours in the office and they're getting a paid lunch. My biggest contention, and we'll hear from the audience here in public as to what the part of that is, but I'm struggling with keeping a paid lunch. And that's where I'm at. Is that it?

Yep.

Now, Kevin, to touch on that, Kevin and I sat down and we started looking at that and breaking down the hours. And, you know, wow, you're looking at, we took the 228 hours, if you take away the leave days of PTO vacation holidays, standalone 228 hours times 113 employees is 25,000 hours divided by 2000, which is a number of hours in a year, it's like 12 work years of probably work years of potential productivity or loss productivity, and put a dollar sign to an average $20 per hour, it's over $500,000. So that's just not a free thing for an hour. And you think, well, Yeah, but the benefits better than the don't think about the cost. Well, we do think about the cost. I kind of explained to you where we're at on the health insurance. It's not going down, I think, what was it, 14, 16%? Teresa, looking for an increase? 11. 11%? Okay, it kind of varies. So when you put all these things together and you look at costs, you start looking at, okay, what's the optimum, what's the sweet spot? So, you know, we do the policy. The council needs to look at this and say, okay, what do you want to do? It's their decision. you have the meetings there they want to change it change it to whatever they go forth and do it but we're doing our part they can change what they want we'll adjust the personnel policy and that's the way it works the irritating thing that i saw in our current policy and the current way this thing reads is let me read it to you it's like a regular work day begins at 8 a.m to 4 p.m monday through friday unless scheduled differently A normal work weeks will consist of five eight-hour work days, 40 hours per week, including a 60-minute paid meal period each work day, which shall be considered and counted as hours worked. What a lousy paragraph that is, or a lousy sentence. So you're saying that lunch is hours worked. Well, it's not hours worked. And so when we look at what we're doing, we're saying, hey, it's 40 hours, you get paid for 40 hours. That's what the policy is. If that wants to be changed by the council, there are more than... more empowered to do that. So that rolls my comment up. Thank you.

Ron, your comment? I actually read all that and it's got me about half cross-eyed. It was a lot to absorb. But the one thing that, and Stephanie, you up there? No, it's James. James. Ron Sanders. Ron Sanders. Going through this, I guess I have nobody to blame but myself, so I guess I'm pointing the finger at myself. In this, there's a couple statements that are contrary or contradictory or whatever. What word do I want to use? Contradictory. Okay. Well, this has been an issue multiple times, and it states in here, insurance benefits, and you don't have to answer this at the moment unless you think you got an answer, but Insurance benefits will begin on the first day of the month following a 60-day grace period for eligible employees, including elected officials, department heads. Then there's two other places that contradict that back further in the manual. That is at like 4.9 in the introductory period. You come over here to 4.9. It's 4.9. 16 okay well let's go with this 4.16 employee benefits it says insurance benefits for elected officials will start the first day of their term and then it comes back here in 4.28 i believe it is And it says, insurance benefits for elected officials will start the first day of their term. Benefits for all other employees will start after a six-day grace period has passed. That's kind of confusing. And when I talked to the State Board of Accounts, they had confirmed that it reads both ways in this. And also, it reads that way in the new one also. Should that be fixed or do you have any take on it or?

Or what I'll have to take a look at it and I appreciate you reading it. I will absolutely look into it and make sure Stephanie knows if it is contradictory, then it probably something you guys should have, you know, change when you adopt a new policy, but I'll have to double check that's I'll take the blame for I.

Late late to the party. There was a lot of other things that I've seen in there. There's a lot of people here that want to speak. I'm not going to hold them up. I'd like to hear their opinion on what they think about it.

Okay, Christy, are you on the line? Christy McCann?

She was.

She's here, but she may get out.

Yes, yes, I can.

Did you did you catch Ron's comments, Christy?

Yes, I did.

Okay.

I documented it.

Easy enough to clarify.

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you. Yes. Yes. To review that. I will.

Do you do you know or do you need time to answer it whether which it is?

Okay. Matt uh I don't want to

Julia, the auditor seems to think she got the answer.

Well, basically what it tells you is elected officials' insurance starts right away and employees have to wait 60 days before theirs kicks in.

I believe that's how you explained it to me when I first started. That's how it is. Thanks, Julie.

Anything else? Not at the moment. All right. We'll open it up for comments. Come to the podium. State your name. Targets generally about three minutes. Any comments from the audience on this particular issue?

I have a few statements I'd like to say.

Section 5.2.1, lunch and rest breaks. The policy states Brown County recognizes that employees need time during the work day to step away, rest, eat, return to work with focus.

If I cannot come in at 730 or work until 430, that would require me to work through my lunch to keep 40 hours per week. Well, you, the commissioners are then jeopardizing my wellbeing and ability to focus when I have to work through my lunch to keep 40 hours a week with only two 15 minute breaks in an eight hour day. If I have to work 37.5 hours weekly because I cannot come in early or stay late, the county will be keeping part of my salary that was budgeted back in 2025. These changes are happening with only two months left to the end of 2026, so you should be dividing my salary by 37.5 hours so I do not lose my pay. If you do not divide my salary by 37.5 hours, you are basically keeping my money that was budgeted for my position and approved back in 2025, only to keep it and put it back in county general. I call that stealing. Keep in mind that if I work 37.5 hours per week, If I take a day off, I will only have to use 7.5 hours of sick time, personal or vacation. Your policy already states that a full-time employee receives four hours each month for sick and personal time. Also on my anniversary date, I would receive 200 vacation hours. You have not done your due diligence creating this new policy and are in a rush to push it through without looking for the repercussions. And this is a separate statement. When an employee sends two separate emails raising legitimate concerns and received no response from any of the 10 individuals, three commissioners, and seven council members. This goes well beyond poor communication. It demonstrates a blatant disregard for the basic expectation of professional communication. It is difficult to understand how 10 individuals can receive repeated communications regarding an employee's concerns and collectively choose not to acknowledge or address those concerns. At a minimal, a professional response or acknowledgement should have been provided by all that were addressed in these emails. Ignoring these concerns does not resolve them. The silence should not be treated as an acceptable response. This level of inaction is unprofessional, dismissive, and reflects very poorly on commissioners and council for addressing employees' concerns. Speaking for myself and many others, you're ignoring all the concerns on how these changes to the new personnel policy will negatively affect the morale of all county employees. You think this will create more working hours When you have disgruntled employees, the effect can backfire on you. Thank you.

Gentlemen, Sherry Mitchell. Can we have a dialogue? What's your goal here when you reduce lunches? Is it to cut your payroll?

It's not to cut the payroll. We can get more hours.

Okay, so we're staying at the same amount of money for their jobs. So can't we just change the business hours for the county from 8 to 5, give them an hour lunch, and they still get their 40 hours? Because she is right. You can't just yank 5 hours of payout from underneath these people. I mean at $20 an hour, that's $100 a week. And as we all know, gas is not getting any cheaper. So if it's not your goal to cut your payroll, then I don't see why you just don't change your business hours from 8 to 5, which I'm sure that the taxpayers would love because the people that drive out of county, which bring in $750 million a year, they would probably like a little more access to their government. And as you know, I walked those 10 years with Tim, most of them, and we have been complaining about this since day one. We never liked it. We never thought it was good for the taxpayers to have those five hours a week where we don't get service, but yet we pay for it. But I think you can come to a meeting of the minds by just changing your hours from eight to five. Thank you, gentlemen.

I'd like to chime in real quick. Do you have a question? I didn't get to address Diane. I apologize.

That's okay. I mean, I just, I think it's very disrespectful that out of 10 people, not one person could respond. I come, I received it.

I come by the other day to try and talk to you. Somebody was at the desk and I waved and went on. That's, that's on me.

I apologize. I know how hard you work in November. I know how hard you work before the end of the year. This money has been budgeted last year for our salaries. You shouldn't be saying now all of a sudden we're going to change the hours. This was budgeted for last year for the hours that we were told we were supposed to work. And now two months to the end of the year, you're telling us if you can't work the extra half hour, you don't get paid for it. That money was my money. That is budgeted for first deputy. And now if I can't work the 40 hours, you get to keep my money. and put it in county general next year. That is stealing.

I know how stressful your job is. I've spent time in the assessor's office, and I think you guys more than earn every penny that you work for.

And to address something with you, Sherry, also, the public is never not waited on. There is always, okay, no, well, the way you stated it, it made it sound like there was something not there. Let's just bring that back. it up to the board we don't want the conversations and another statement in my email I did stay with the fact that if I can't work or decide not to work to my lunch somebody better be sitting at my office so my office will be closed for a half hour and then the public won't be waited on I know and that's not fair to the public I know in the past you've had a second job so you gotta I work two jobs yeah I can afford it I get it

Commissioners set building hours late before. The commissioner set the building hours. The department had set the schedules for the workforce. So if you look at state law, general practice is two 15-minute breaks. Lunch is not a mandate in the state. That's something counties do. So to stay, if you want a non-paid lunch, that's 30 minutes later, 30 minutes earlier, or choose not to take a lunch and your pay stays the same.

But you're saying it's for our well-being. by not being able to take my lunch and only having two 15-minute breaks during the day. I don't even take my breaks. I sit at my desk, I take my lunch. That is all I take. I don't take breaks. I sit at my desk until 12.30, I take my lunch, I come back at 1.30, and I work till 4.

Hello, my name is Bill Lawyer. I'm in the Brown County IT, Technical and Technology Services Department. I am a full-time employee here.

I took a poll of... Stop you right there. Let me make a statement. Before you begin to present any results of a poll you conducted, the Board of Commissioners, County Council, Human Resources, Personal Advisory Committee, and County Leadership do not request, authorize, review, or administer the poll. The poll was not distributed to all employees through an official accounting process, nor have the results been verified. Accordingly, any information presented from the poll will be received as part of the individual's public comment and should not be characterized as an official accounting survey.

Yeah, no, I'll agree with you there. Yeah, no, no, that's perfectly fine. months uh okay i have the results of the poll uh but i think we may have an idea why the uniformed individuals are behind me so should i get pat down or am i okay to approach with these i think you can approach please keep your comments and your statement though i just wanted to make sure everybody felt safe and if we can put some time back on his no i'm okay all right so I did take an informal not sanctioned poll of the exempt employees that's going to be your department heads or elected officials I got 13 responses sorry I will clarify I didn't include the commissioners and council in that because that seems silly I got 13 responses seven elected six department heads none of them none of them support the policy section regarding the lunch break for your new proposed policy when asked if it will affect their ability to retain their current staff seven of them said yes or said maybe the same managers they believe that they have been told by seven employees within the county directly that this will cause them to look for jobs elsewhere and the General average consensus between the department heads and elected officials is that this will make it somewhat harder to hire new employees by losing a perk. I took the same non-sanctioned poll of the non-exempt employees who are directly affected by this policy change. And one of them out of the 31 respondents did agree that it was a good change. I will say that person did tell me that's only because they already work eight hours a day. And so it doesn't, it technically affects them, but theoretically does not affect them. And so 30 of 31 people said they don't support the change. And in case you're curious, 13 people said this will make them look for another job. 29 of the 31 people said that this will affect how they normally spend their lunch break. There's some other information on there. You can review that if you please. Here's what I'll say. Guys, I think that if you've got that many people frustrated with one section of a 150-page document, And the people are asking for you to just take a little time to rethink it, review it, work with the employees to retool it so a compromise can be made. That's all they're asking for. If you're just saying, nah, don't care, that seems silly to coordinate it.

I want to start out by saying that I will 100% say Sherry Mitchell and I don't always agree. When Sherry Mitchell is on our side about something, you know there's something going on. Okay, here we go. I'm Mary Smith, and I'm the current county recorder, and I'm a dedicated county employee for almost 25 years. I've been an elected official since 2013. I also hold a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Indiana University. I feel it's important that I clarify my identity for the record tonight and to emphasize my commitment to serving the county and to enlighten you of my education level. Throughout my tenure, I have witnessed numerous council and commissioner boards strive to leave their mark on county history ideally with the intention of benefiting the taxpayers they serve however i have observed numerous instances over the years where members of these boards have advanced personal agendas rather than prioritizing the interests of the taxpayers the county employees and the tourists of this town that are the life force of our economy and our community i'm here tonight to speak one more time against certain aspects of the proposed personnel policy that's being pushed through by the commissioners this evening. A personal advisory committee was created, which you discussed earlier, and that includes three members of council, one commissioner and other employees, as well as some of the people you mentioned. Um, to my knowledge, the PAC committee meetings have never been open to the public. No agendas have ever been posted and the discussions and decisions influencing This county personnel policy have occurred behind closed doors and input from the department heads was solicited only in August after the policy was created, suggesting that our concerns are not genuinely valued. I'm not here to debate the details of the policy with the board. I rather want to convey the strong collective feelings of all the Brown County elected officials, department heads and employees against these changes. In my experience as a county employee, and an elected official, I have never felt as passionately about an issue as I do. Nor do I recall a time when department heads and elected officials have so unified in opposition of a policy change. We are all aware of the effect this will have on the somewhat already low employee morale. This unity highlights the need for the Board of Commissioners to reflect on whether passing this policy is truly in the best interest of the dedicated individuals who work tirelessly to sustain Brown County government. because without them, there wouldn't be Brown County government. I respectfully urge you to delay the passing of this policy to allow for further discussion and compromise. There are options out there that can satisfy both sides, and I implore you to consider granting additional time for constructive dialogue. Thank you.

Is this an ordinance or a policy? Policy. Why is it coming before us? So it's not an ordinance. Why is it coming before us, a policy? I mean, you don't bring all your policies before us. Why this one? Right? I mean, you pass policies in your office. I mean, why is this one coming to the public? Just out of curiosity.

Well, the personnel policy manual is a... That is an ordinance. Personal policy manual. Okay.

It has been passed as an ordinance in the past. It has been passed as a policy in the past. And at this point in time, the direction that we were given is that it needs to be publicly passed by our attorneys.

So the manual will become an ordinance then? I'm just trying to understand, gentlemen.

It is a policy in and of itself for every one of that. Aspects of it, we've been informed, require some degree of an ordinance that needs to go forth with that.

Okay.

thank you sure you're framed as an amendment to the ordinance and so any changes that we make will be made in a formal amendment we'll have amendments coming out on this one to show the changes okay i just wanted to understand thank you both very much others okay are we are we limited to only speaking one time

Like, if I totally flub this up, can I come back up and finish my sentence?

I call that an alibi.

Because I'm like, I'm hot and I'm frustrated. Passion's good. I will go sit down if I get too heated. Okay. My name's Kayla Robertson. I'm the director of planning and zoning. I've been here for nine and a half years. Most of my adult life. I love this place. I want to retire from here one day. Not. you know, next year or as soon as I'm vested. I'd like to remain here and be a lifelong, I'm a lifelong member of Brown County. I want to be a lifelong member of Brown County government. I enjoy helping the taxpayers. It brings me so much joy and pride, and I'm so proud of my staff and of the other people who are working downstairs. You know, to get a building permit, you've got to go through sometimes three or four other offices before you get to us. People come in who either live in town or are building in town or in the county. People who usually work in Marion County. And people come in and they're like, you guys are great. The ladies downstairs, they were super helpful. The guys downstairs, they were super helpful and happy. And I really think that burning us out on our jobs, because it's hard, even with our vacation times, to not deal with burnout sometimes. I work a lot over already. And Like I said, I want to stay here. But when people come in that door and say, we love when we get a building project in Brown County. This is our favorite place to work. You know why? The ladies in the assessor's office are great. They gave us our property card. They told us to have a great day. They were smiling. And I think that happy, helpful, and healthy employees is going to benefit the tax base more than saving a couple bucks. and us losing some of our happy, healthy employees. I think it's extremely important and I want to continue having that pride. I don't want anyone to ever come and say, you know, man, that person over there, they just act like they hate their job. Well, you know, we just got some money taken out of our wallets, but yeah, we're happy to be here. Like I want us to all continue to be happy and healthy and helpful because You take a poll of the people who come in, sanctioned or unsanctioned, I don't really care. You take a poll of the people who come into this building and leave here happy. Sometimes when I have to give them terrible news, sometimes when I have to tell them, you're not zoned for the business that your grandpa started. Let's find a way to go through and fix this. You know, sometimes we have to give people really bad news. Do you want to, if you get bad news from a doctor, do you want him to have, to have been able to eat? and take a drink of water that day and relax for a moment? Or do you want him to have worked his 16-hour shift and had to go to the bathroom for eight hours? I know being a medical doctor is different. We are helping people, and we want to continue to do that. We're not here because of the pay. We shouldn't have government employees working two jobs or more. That's insane to me. And I just, I want to continue being proud of where I work. I will always be proud of where I live. I want to continue saying with a smile on my face at IGA, yeah, I'm a Brown County government employee and I love my job. I love working for the taxpayers. I don't want to just love my county. I want to love working for my county too. I don't know if I'm even close to three minutes, but.

Just went over, so good for you.

Okay.

I reserve my right to come back. Good job, Caleb. Good job, Caleb.

Hi, my name is Michelle Kreitzer. I have a small business owner in Nashville, Indiana, here at Costal Soul. I'm from Nashville, and I've had my restaurant for over 30 years. I'm asking you guys to reconsider the business side of this for all the restaurants in Nashville. I'm asking you to consider not eliminating our lunch for everyone because I don't know that this is your only solution. The challenge isn't only going to affect the county employees. It will have a direct impact on small businesses throughout Nashville. Many of the county employees frequent my restaurant and have for several years. When you take away this element from all these small business restaurants, you're not only affecting the morale of the county workers, you're also affecting financial outcomes of the small business in this town. I just would like you to consider different options if your mind hasn't already been made up. I just think it's affecting the whole county. My business employs people, we support our community, we pay our taxes. I just think maybe some of that needs to be taken into consideration before you guys pull the trigger on this. Maybe step back. The only reason I heard about this was some customers had mentioned it to me at the restaurant. I know it would dramatically affect my lunch business just because I have so many county office workers that come to my restaurant. Um so just like you maybe to think of the financial impact you'll have on businesses in town as well as maybe the morale of the great county workers you have at work for you.

Thank you. Thanks.

Anybody else? Um single employee young person here in such county and there seems to be some confusion a lot of people have discussed having 37.5 hours of pay and I'm a little confused with that how are we how did how did 40 hours a week go away they gave them a half hour lunch no because that's that's I think the confusion and that's where I don't understand because When the discussions all started, it was eight hours a day and then 15. So you would be here eight and a half hours a day, not in the building eight hours a day. So I'd like some clarification on that because I can't take a hit like that either. So can we clarify that?

So you're expecting the working hours to be from 8 to 4.30?

my understanding was when you guys brought this up that you said we were going to work physically 40 hours a week and that you were adding a 30 minute unpaid lunch so you could come in at 7 30 till 4 or 8 to 4 30. that's that's 40 hours i don't really care for working more hours for the same amount of pay but i get it so now everybody that's come up here and talked has said 37.5 hours with the 30 minute unpaid to equate to 40 hours. So I'm very confused.

The expectation that it was offered is that it's a choice that you choose not to work from after 8 to 4 or take a lunch. So the point that Tim made at the very beginning of this was it's left to the individual department heads to go and schedule whether it's a 30 minute before or a 30 minutes after in order to accomplish it.

So there is no cut in pay. We are still getting our What our salary ordinance said at the end of the year, I'm still going to have that on my W-2. Yes.

Because, again, our department will go through the exercises saying, can you accommodate working at 730 or can you accommodate working at 430?

Can I? Just my opinion. Again, I reserved my right. So right now we are physically working. Most of us are working a lot closer to 40 hours anyway. Right now we are physically working 35 hours per week. Correct. We have five hours of paid lunch breaks. Correct. We are now going to be working five hours that we were already being paid for if we work through our lunch. So if we work from 8 to 4 every day and do not take a lunch break, that is 40 hours that we are working.

Correct.

Okay.

So if you take lunch, so like... So like for me, because my pay or my time cards all got shifted at the beginning of the year because of this whole crazy. So I come in at 8, I leave at 4, I don't take lunch anymore. Very rarely do I do that. So that's my 8 hours. So now they're presenting that I will work, if I come in at 8 and I decide to take lunch, I have to work until 4.30 that day. So where is this 37.5% coming in. That's where I'm confused because nobody's in those are all staying in something different.

So that was that was a an option. So we went and begged County Council as I mean there were several of us in here that went and begged County Council to help us help the commissioners basically to make this decision. So if we take and I'm not a numbers person. I'm a words person. So if I mess up the numbers, we'll call you. Yeah, whatever We are going to work five additional hours per week to get that 40 hours per week that we're getting paid for. So my pay is still 40 hours a week. Unless you take a lunch. If you take a half an hour lunch.

I have to stay to 4.30. I work eight and a half hours a day.

And if you can't stay to 4.30 because you've got another job or you've got, you know, my kids get out of school at 2.50.

I don't know. I mean, is that where flex time is going to come in?

I don't know.

And then the other part of this, too, is, you know, people who are here. on meeting nights who are non-exempt employees. So you and Danielle and whomever, if you have a non-exempt employee or whoever, they're going to have to work that 8 to 4 to even get, they're not going to get a break on meeting days at all. Yeah, me too. And I get flex time. I don't get comp time. You're not paying me any extra to be here. Those people are not going to want to go to those meetings.

So like Diane Davern, she got up and talked a little bit ago, and she said she's going to be, you know, 37.5 hours, but she's an exempt employee. So Diane can't be your first deputy. No. No, I'm not. She's an appointed. No, I'm not. First deputies are excluded. You're not her first deputy? Yes. You're excluded, not exempt.

You're excluded, not exempt is what I'm hearing from back here.

She is the only person. First deputy that is not. Exactly.

But she is not. So she has to take a 30-minute lunch if this passes.

If I cannot come in early and cannot stay late, I do work two jobs, that means I cannot take a lunch in order to keep my 40 hours. So if I cannot work those 40 hours by working through my lunch, which I think is completely ridiculous to ask of any employee... That would mean I would be down to 37 1⁄2 hours for the week because half hour each day. So that's 2 1⁄2 hours off my 40 hours that I would either have worked or my lunch.

So you wouldn't work 8 1⁄2 hours every day like I would have to? Correct.

Well, nobody works 8 1⁄2 hours a day.

If you're taking your lunch... We will if this passes. That's what we were saying. So that's what I'm saying.

If you take the salaries and divide it by... The 37 and a half hours, everyone's pay will stay the same and they take a half hour of unpaid lunch because the salaries would remain the same that were budgeted last year. So for two months out of the end of the year, I could lose two and a half hours out of my paycheck because I cannot come in early or stay late. That's where the 37 and a half hours comes in.

Diane, you brought up a very good aspect. about the money already being appropriate.

That's a pretty good aspect. And it was advertised that way and everything. So now for two months out of the year, if you change this policy, you're screwed with everyone's pay that cannot work. You have people that have children that have to get to school, pick them up. Now they have to pay extra for early drop-off to have them stay later at schools. You know, some of these employees are getting older and retiring. I am one of them at the end of the year. I'm fighting for this for future employees, maybe not myself, but what you're trying to do is wrong. It's stealing out of the pockets of something that was already budgeted last year. That should not happen.

That's a pretty big aspect of it. Anybody else?

She reserved her right.

Let's make sure we clarify that the building hours are 8 to 4. So if you're expecting employees to come in before or after those building hours, a lot of our jobs focus on the public and helping them. So when they can't come in the building,

So I go back to the question I asked you earlier, Mary. Oh, I know. So there's no activities in the office that you're working in where you need to take and you're behind or doing anything from the perspective of catch-up.

Because we get our work done during our hours. Because we're efficient.

We are efficient.

We are efficient. That's exactly right. I have worked here so long, and I have dedicated my life to making sure wherever I was, we were efficient. Andy Bond and I were a team. AJ and Amy and I were a team.

Anyone else?

Hello. I'm Vivian Wolf, and I'm just a taxpayer. And we've spent over an hour talking about this. Can you not make the workday 8 to 5? You have that authority, right?

They have to have authority.

Doesn't that kind of seem simple?

But the comments and the feedback that we've gotten is that they're not willing to go to the 430 hours.

I mean, I realize my age is different than a lot of people, but most every job was they expected an hour for lunch. That was normal. And they didn't expect to get paid. That was normal. And they worked eight hours. That was normal. And I don't know what happened, and I don't know how they got here, but this kind of sounds ridiculous. So just saying as a taxpayer, I never expected anybody to pay for my lunch. And I don't know how we afford a bonus package or whatever you call it nowadays that costs $22,000 a person. Health insurance, that's the county per person. And then there's other things and days off and all of that. Two weeks used to be normal. And all the other days you had to figure out. So I don't know where we got to this, but this is a long discussion. As a taxpayer, I don't know what to say. I don't think you've done your job. That's it. Thank you.

I guess I got a question. Okay. The change is... The 40 hours work, 40 hours of pay, nobody's losing to pay. It's 40 hours, you get 40 hours. The lunch is optional. People want to take a lunch and stay, come in 30 minutes early, 30 minutes late, they can do that. If they want to do an hour, and that's approved by their department head, I guess they can do that. It would be an unpaid lunch. So you get paid for 40 hours, the lunch period is unpaid, and it's optional. They don't have to choose to take a lunch period.

I think you're splitting hairs, Tim. I think you've made it more complicated. If you said to these people that are willing to work here, hey, come in at 8, leave at 5, you've got an hour for lunch, and you made it simple, I don't know. I guess I'm saying this is really, everybody's got an opinion. Everybody's got something to say.

Well, are you saying then the 80 hours would be paid and the extra hour would be unpaid and unpaid lunch?

What extra hour? Well, you said 8 to 5. If you're here from 8 to 5, And that's nine hours. You have an hour for lunch and your lunch is not paid.

Okay. Well, they could do that. They have the option to do that. Department heads have the option to do that.

I thought everybody's talking eight to four. And you're talking in half an hour?

It's two different things. All we can control is billing hours for the public. When does the billing half be open? That's the only thing the commissioners control. The department heads control everything else. If they want to go 8 to 5, they can choose to do that. If employees want to work that unpaid hour or take an unpaid lunch, they can do that.

You're talking about an unpaid hour and you're tacking it on the end of the day. I'm saying it's lunchtime.

okay so then if that's their option then what are they all talking about uh they want the unpaid one hour unpaid lunch or they want to pay lunch they want eight hours and seven hours they work seven hours to pay for that one hour they get a paid lunch for the hour to make up the 40 hours that's what the current process is that's we're changing to what you suggest i have a clarification are you all expecting me as a taxpayer to buy your lunch

No, but it would be awesome if you did.

Okay.

Let's bring it back up. Just one more. Good to see you, Viv. Because this is a clarification. At our department head meetings, we discussed where you said if council wanted to change our hours to 35 hours a week, worked with an unpaid hour lunch, that was council's decision, not commissioner's, correct? Yes.

Council handles the money. If they want to. Okay, I know.

I know they do.

No, that's not what was said. What was said is they set the work week. If they establish the work week, it would be 35 hours. Right. And it's left to the commissioners to establish what the policy is for that 35 hours.

Okay.

So the policy would be in that situation is the building would be open from 8 to 4, right?

Correct.

And then you'd have an unpaid lunch. Correct.

We're all great with that.

That's all wonderful, but that requires a change in the salary ordinance. And the salary ordinance right now is written for a 40-hour work week.

There are so many back and forth over the years with this. They can change it.

And that's why we're asking for some more time to discuss with council.

And we're still going to do it even if you pass it. We're still going to discuss with council so that they can get the ball rolling if they agree to change our work week to 35 hours. Anything new?

Kayla, anything new?

Yeah, during our department head meeting, We were told that, so this whole thing has to be done basically tonight or at the next meeting to get it ready for the Paycom system for payroll. Right? So we were told and we asked several different ways and we were told the same thing each time. This is easily changeable. This policy could be changed in conjunction with what the council decides for next year. So you do not have to change the game in the eighth inning. You do not have to change the rules of the game when the game for the year is already done. Let's work with the other coaches to change the game at the same time so everybody knows the rules. Whether that's going to a 37 and a half hour week or going to a 40 hour week. I mean, let's change the game when it's appropriate to change the game. At this point, you can pass everything except for that change and you You were told even by Ms. Christie, I believe is her name, this is easily changeable and then can adapt to Paycom. So that's what we're asking you. Wait on this one thing that still does what you need it to do and that doesn't leave all of us scrambling for the last two months of the year. That's what we're at. Just wait on this one thing so we can talk about it more and so we can get council involved so we can compromise.

That's what it's about.

This is not new to the council. They had three members present throughout.

But this is new to literally everyone who was not behind those closed-door meetings.

It's not new to the council members on the PIP Advisory Committee, and it's not new to the other members of the county council. It wasn't new to them.

They didn't know anything about it.

We didn't do this in a vacuum.

I don't agree with that.

okay that's all i was asking for you guys have said you can wait i'm just asking that you do wait you can still meet your paycom deadlines you guys have said that to us multiple times so that's that's what i'm asking thank you anybody else you're not going to like this hi benita how are you 10 seconds come back up here i swear 10 seconds

I was watching the council meeting at the beginning of the month, I think it was the third, and Scott Rudd along with Joe Kemp and somebody else, maybe Hewitt, and from what I understood from that meeting is that your pact with the council has never met. Ever. Like, ever. That's not true. That's what they said in the meeting.

I don't know who's they, but that's not true.

There's Scott Rudd, Kemp, and I think it was Hewitt.

No, it wasn't Hewitt. It was somebody else. I can't remember who it was, though. But they did say that, right?

Patrick Neely.

They've never been there. Sorry. They've never been there.

That's not true. Benita Fox, just wanted to know if you guys have followed the open door policy in regards to all of your meetings. Any that were, was any of them posted? Any work sessions that you had? Did you have to Post any of that, I mean, I haven't looked at the open door law for a while, but I know there's processes that has to be done.

Sure. We've looked at the open meeting laws. We consulted with our attorneys. Administrative meetings aren't open to the public.

So anything regarding the modification of the personnel policy would not require you to conduct that in an open meeting. Pardon me? Any type of discussion. regarding modifications so it falls under the administrative part.

I'm sorry.

Pardon?

So let me clarify. So we took, when we had our staff meeting, and that issue was raised with Ms. Smith, or by Ms. Smith, We've asked Barnes and Thorndrup to go back and confirm that. So it is being looked at. And if it's found to be an error from change or whether it's that, it'll change.

I have code that states otherwise that you are obligated to have those PAC meetings open.

This is the first within the last couple weeks that we were even aware of it you know and so I understand that there's things that you guys might be able to discuss outside having a quorum some kind of work session or administrative whatever that may be but I think that I feel like for myself I was kind of blindsided by it and you know, not seeing it on any agenda. I mean, I think you guys discussed it at the last meeting, and you guys basically had to do clerical, make clerical corrections, but then put it on the agenda for today. Was it ever on the agenda prior to that?

The policy itself. Yeah. Okay. So this is the first time that's been. Okay. I just think that employees are kind of feeling blindsided by it. It's been mentioned as an item that the commissioners have been working on. It's never been a topic that's been discussed.

So you're not required to maybe have a public meeting about what changes you are looking at to modify the personnel policy before you even get to that voting stage. That's what we've been informed. But you did not have to. Okay. Thank you. Wow.

Anybody else? It's coming back up here.

Yeah.

All right. Close it off for public comment.

Back to the board. Let me jump in real quick. I had a lot of concerns throughout it that it's Obviously, everybody's focusing on the hour lunch. I was focusing on the insurance for elected officials. I guess my question would go back to the attorneys. Stephanie or James, if one of you would like to tackle this, that's fine. If you don't, that's fine. But it appears that there's contradictory on that subject that should have been changed in the policy and also the question has come up that this money had been appropriated for these employees and do you feel that this should even be voted on tonight?

I mean, this is really just a policy question. This is not a legal thing. Between the council determining the budget and you guys determining policies, as far as I'm aware, there's no state requirement to do one way or the other.

Well, with the appropriated money and with the council,

i guess i'll wait to try and make a motion let the other commissioners talk i shared everything at the very beginning of this the question that's not being addressed for me is is that there is eight hours so again the language is ten points out is considered worked I have a problem with that policy. The policy that I have is that the county is paying for 40 hours worth of work. It should be 40 hours worth of work.

I agree.

So the issue is with regards to hours being turned. It's 8 to 4 is what the office hours have been, and that's why we offer the availability and flexibility of giving a half hour at lunch if you choose to take it. And then in going through that aspect, if you don't have to take it, you can work from 8 to 4 and you still have 40 hours a weekend. And that is something that is afforded to the elected officials as to what can be scheduled and what that schedule looks like. So that's where I stand. I'll just summarize.

We've been working on this for over a year. We've had the department head meetings. We've got their input. I had input in the manual. This is one issue that I guess is of concern to folks. 30 days ago, we provided that. We got feedback. We got the emails. We got one-on-one with different people and staff. We had a meeting on Monday, the same information provided in the emails. We're reinforced again. We debated the emails. We debated the issues. We discussed it. Discussed it among the PAC. Discussed it among the three members from the council that are on the PAC that we meet at least two times a month. So I don't know where the misinformation came from on that one. That's just a fact. And again, we did, we read it, we examined it, we looked back in history of where this thing came from. I think we first saw it pop up when, Kevin, 2020? 2010. Something like that, or 2021, it popped up all of a sudden from... from just a 40-hour week to, well, I had a one-hour paid lunch as a perk at the time because of the lower pay. It was before that. It was well before 2020. And the Democrat did a pretty good job covering the meetings and, again, the feedback you provided to the council. You provided to us on Monday, so we did all that. Our job as commissioners, Our job is to represent all the interests in the county, not just the employees. You're one stakeholder group. We represent the taxpayers. I think Vivian Wolfe mentioned that one. She's a taxpayer. We represent all the taxpayers. Employees are part of the stakeholder group. And personally, I'm like Kevin. I've never heard of a one-hour paid lunch. I mean, I've worked for 40 hours. I've consulted with Fortune 500 companies and small companies, nonprofit, profit. I've never heard of a one-hour paid lunch. 40 hours, you get paid for 40 hours. You stay over or under if you want to work lunch. And sometimes if you didn't want to take lunch, you worked eight hours and went home. That was your call. It depends on the organization. I've worked for a dozen different organizations throughout my career. The paid lunch just doesn't resonate. And so when we looked at this, we looked at, again, personnel policy links to cost. And we did a deep dive on all these costs. We went back, looked at the numbers, tried to put a cost to these different things, understand, I'd love to find the sweet spot of what it is for pay and what it is for benefits. and be respectful of tax dollars that we're spending on this particular issue. I mean, people have a voice. They don't want their taxes to be raised. I've heard that. It means we'll just raise the taxes and pay them more. Well, we can't do that. Nor would I think the taxpayers tolerate it without seeing due diligence. So when you talk due diligence, I think we've done that. I mean, this has been a year and a half project. And we kind of share it. But You know, when you give it to the folks, I got it. You're locked in. Nobody was going to change their minds. We've been to a lot of meetings like that. This is it by God and don't change it. So from us, we're policy. If the council wants to reconsider this and change it, they certainly can, and we'll adjust the policy accordingly. That's... And we can't wait. We've closed out public comments.

You're done, Taylor. Yeah, I've been... Nobody listens anymore.

I'll entertain a... I'll make a motion that we table it for two weeks. I would like to see it cleaned up. This has affected me personally for one in four years. I've been dealing with the IRS for issues because of what I talked about. I work with a lot of these peoples a lot longer than you guys have. A lot longer. I'd like to be fair to them. I'd like some more discussion. So I make a motion to table until the next meeting. This actually would be three weeks, I believe. Is there enough time in there to still get it passed? And that way it also gives the county council More time to input. So let's try and make something work where everybody's okay. I mean, I hate to leave this office and all fired up, people, employees. It's just not the way Brown County does business, if we can help it. My motion is to table it until the next meeting.

Second? Is there a second? Hearing no second, motions are carried.

At this point, like I said, the work's been done.

The issues that I'm talking about is 40 hours of work, 40 hours of pay.

So with what we've got, and the only thing I can sit there and say is I do have one final question, Christy. So there seemed to be a conflict that Mr. Sanders has identified in the section of that. How long would it take to get that fixed?

Regarding 4.16 and 4.28, I do not think that would take very long to get that revised. Correct.

Okay. And then I have a question that I have for the attorney. So James, if that goes through the exercise, if she's going to provide that revision and that revision is contingent upon our review, can a motion be made to where that change is contingent upon our review? Not within a public session. because we would sit here and say we'll move forward with that page. I mean, we do contingencies on several different things. That's my question. Is that a feasible use here at this point?

I don't think it would be any different.

Clarify, please.

What I'm saying is if you do contingencies in other settings, then I'm not sure this would be different.

The only thing would be is it would have to, the approval would have to end up happening and that would be a written or documented one by email if I'm not mistaken, correct?

Yes, I'm also not entirely sure if it's truly a contradiction if it's just two different types of employees starting at different times?

So I'm going to rely on Christy to tell me that because, again, I didn't catch all the details of that.

Well, Julie did. I think Julie explained it.

Well, I would like the legal opinion and Christy. It was actually 4.9% Then it went to 4.16, and then it went to 4.28. Two of them say they get insurance on day one. One says that they don't. This has been going on for years, and to come up with this policy and not have it fixed, I think that the auditor has determined that it should be day one. For elected officials.

Day one for elected officials. Okay.

Is that not the way it reads?

It contradicts it. In the beginning, at 4.9, it says insurance benefits will begin on the first day of the month following the 60-day grace period for eligible employees, including elected official department heads. And then there's two more places in here at 4.16 and 4.28. contradicts that and says that it's day one. It wasn't just me that was affected by it. I agree. We can correct that.

Yes, thank you, Ron, for pointing out 4.9 as well. 4.9, it just simply needs to spell out the elected officials where it kind of lumps it in with the employees of the 60-day grace period. So that needs to be clarified. But the other 4.16 and 4.28, they are reading correctly as Julie has stated as to how it is currently being done. So it was 4.9 that would need a simple... Correction. Very minor.

And the correction would be? Starts day one.

To match the language of 4.16 and 4.28 for the elected officials to start day one.

Okay. But, now, wouldn't they have to be registered prior to taking office? Or would it retro it back? You know, according to law, you have to have insurance.

You've got to have health insurance.

So to figure out, do the elected officials come in prior to taking office, or can they wait until they take office and then do it? Because it's going to take a while for the insurance, and there may be a lapse.

Even if there's a lack of insurance, they'll still recognize the date that was put on the insurance official start date for it. But as of 4-16, it's clear these states it will start the first day of their term. The day the insurance would technically begin.

Thank you. Thanks, Chrissy.

Oh, I'm not going to. I think you guys are already there.

I'll make a motion to approve and adopt the Brown County Personnel Policy as presented as a replacement to the existing policy and as the official personal policy of Brown County effective the first of November for administration of county personnel matters and county employees.

All right, old business. We've got two ordinances for the second reading.

I'll start with, let me start with the capital asset policy first.

I'm just going to move over here.

I want to go back to the public records request. We made one change since I got feedback. Sharon, your feedback is my fact. I got one change that we made to the ordinance for first reading. It was on paragraph two, second paragraph, section two. It stated that requests made directly to the commissioner's office regarding records from other departments will be forwarded to the respective departments for review and recommended action. The county's legal advisor will confirm the appropriateness of the information to be released. Change that. The county's legal advisor, when needed, will confirm the appropriateness of the information to be released. And when I said when needed, we get requests, a lot of them are routine. We've gotten a few that's kind of unusual, that we didn't know the ins and the outs from a legal standpoint. And so those kinds of things, as we get smarter, the routine things, we don't have to ask an attorney for. We've been there, done that. But the unique things, and believe me, we get unique things every now and then, then we send up for a review by attorney. So that's the one change made to the ordinance. So that's Brown County Ordinance Number 2026-0902-000, an ordinance establishing a public records request policy. Any public comments on that?

What paragraph was that again? Paragraph two?

It was two, section two, scope of second paragraph.

Thank you. Okay, I would like to, my name is Barbara Nix. I would like to read the following statement from Rich Stanley, who could not be here tonight due to another commitment. These are his words. I have a few concerns about this proposed ordinance. In section two of the proposed ordinance in the second paragraph, that says the county's legal advisor will confirm the appropriateness of the information to be released. One question I have is whether all requests for information from the county are now going to be reviewed by outside lawyers. If that is what this ordinance is intended to do, then we as a county are going to see our lawyer expenses continue to rise, which hurts all of us. In the sentence that I just quoted, appears to be potentially in conflict with the third paragraph in Section 2, which states that requests made directly to the department that are considered normal and routine requests will be managed by the respective department. So again, if a department gets a normal and routine request, are we now going to be paying lawyers to review those normal routine requests, which I think you've answered. Here's an example of what I mean. What if someone wants to know what the current balance is in various county funds? I think we all agree that that's just a normal routine request that everyone in the county has a right to know. Are we going to be paying lawyers to review requests like that? Because that would just be completely wasteful. It is also not clear to me what the reason for proposing this ordinance. I watched the last commissioner meeting where this ordinance was raised. was first raised, and I didn't see any explanation in that meeting from you as to why you're proposing this ordinance. What is the point of this ordinance and why are you proposing it? You shouldn't be passing ordinances without explaining to the public why a particular ordinance is needed, and I don't believe you've done that yet in this case. So as of right now, the reason for this ordinance appears to be a secret. It looks to me like the ordinance very well might be designed to stonewall the disclosure of information to the public, but I can't see that as good governance in any way. Our county government should be transparent and should err on the side of the open disclosure of information. Information should only be withheld from disclosure when the potential harm is clear. Withholding of information most certainly should not be used to hide mistakes, performance issues, or outright corruption. This is our county government, and the public has a right to know what their county government is doing. In addition to the potential cost issues, lack of any stated reason for this ordinance, and the potential for restricting the release of information that the public deserves, I am also concerned about how long it would take to release information under this ordinance. There is no time limit stated in the ordinance for how long it will take for information. I think it is safe to assume that information requests are going to take longer under this process. But that raises problems too because many times information requests are time sensitive. What the public wants is a government that is responsive and gets things done in a timely way. My concern is that you are constructing a wall that we, the public, are going to be left banging our heads against. You shouldn't be erecting a wall between the government and us. You should be tearing down the walls between the government and us. Thank you. That is very much Stanley. Now, for me, and I'm under orders to be civil. This proposal goes against everything a transparent government should be. All it does is raise questions. What are you hiding? What are you afraid of? And then I'm going to blow it and say, you don't poop gold. You're not special.

Okay, you were nice until then. You did good.

Okay, the comments that were made and read in by Rich Stanley, that was appropriate perhaps on the first version when we said the issue is over one sentence that we changed. The county's legal advisor will confirm the abruptness of the information to be released. That was your bottleneck. That was the issue that was raised and reinforced in the statements that you made. We changed that. We said the county's legal advisor when needed. We make that call when needed, and when needed is we're questioning the legality of the information we're providing. That's a legal liability for us. You just can't release everything you think ought to be releasable. And some things are, but there are requirements, especially when you talk about the courthouse or the law enforcement center, there's unique requirements that you have to be aware of or you're your liability. So to address all those concerns, the change addresses those. Um, we'd have a policy basically that, that just basically captures what it is we do. Um, and nothing new. I mean, we routinely collect these different departments to do, but every now and then something unique comes up and this policy provides that guidance. So again, um, nothing, we're not hiding the thing we're saying when needed, uh, we'll check it. Otherwise it's business as usual. You won't notice a change when you, when you request for information. I challenge anyone to say, gee whiz, your warden has caused this to happen. It won't happen. Good luck on trying to find that it does. Now, I'm more than familiar with the public access council, Sharon, as you're well aware of. Ten years. I think I sent a record on the number I sent. I waited. I've spent as long as six months trying to get information out of this county government. More than familiar with it. More than familiar with the damn council. I understand what the process is. Generally about 30 days. They can be maliciously compliant and drive that out. But you just stick with it. And ultimately, if you have to, you hire an attorney and take action against the county. The county loses, and the county has to reimburse it if you go there. I never had to do that. I never had to do it. Just stuck with it and got the information I needed. Sometimes it took a little longer. We respond within, I think, the standards. Teresa, within 24 hours, we send an acknowledgment.

Yeah, I have to respond within 24 hours, regardless of whether it's... And we tell you where it's at, and we answer the things we can.

We answer it. The things under our control, we answer it.

I'm going to be careful about that. Because, again, it follows in the same things like the open door law follows those from a state standpoint. The request has to be acknowledged. And if I understand correctly, the email has to, if it comes by email, it's 24 hours. If it's written, it can be as many as 10 business days or 10 days, if I'm not mistaken, or something like that. It doesn't necessarily mean that the information is going to be provided. So I want to clarify that.

That's correct.

So at this point in time, with regards to the comment about the policy in and of itself and the change, when we noted that, I agree. But I also agree with Tim in that the issues that we've had in that, there's never been an ordinance nor a policy that addresses public access in this county. And when you ask why is this ordinance relevant, because it's never been one in place. There is one now, and that's why this administration's looked at doing that. It is basically briefed and followed along the same statutes with regards to Indiana open door law. And then given that, it just clarifies the responsibility of where the person requesting the information needs to seek that information from and who's responsible for it. So I don't necessarily see an issue with what's been presented or what that policy looks like.

I hate it.

And you're right Tim you and I fought for Public access for eight years and I still fight for it today And I would imagine that you and I do hold the record for public requests in this county The reason why we're here is because something I did so you're punishing everybody because I posted a video and out of the clerk's office. And I don't like that. I don't like that one bit. And I want to know if this policy were in place, would I have gotten that video to prove that the clerk did receive the lawsuit that I put in her hand? Yes, you would have. I would have? How long would it have taken?

when the issue was raised.

How fast did you get the information?

Two days.

The difference with that is Eric was extremely knowledgeable on the unique requirements of the court. Extremely knowledgeable. Spent hours going through that video to make sure it conformed to the law. It had to be approved by the judge. It was a new thing. We never got one in here. And thank God for Eric. He knew what he was doing. He had experience in Monroe County and that's what he did. And so we did everything right. If it happened again, you get the same stuff. But that raised the issue, whoa, what if Eric wasn't there? What would happen? Who would be the next guy? Would he know? Would he have the experience? Did he have the sophistication when it comes to court records on something like that to know what you can and can't do and how to apply that information time to time? And without an Eric,

In that particular instance, that would have been a question. If we'd not had that resource, it would have gone to an attorney to validate that there was no violations in that.

Do you have a question, Ron? I don't know. Go ahead. I don't know how to do this. Ask me anything, Ron. We've had lots of conversations. Just talk to me. I was questioning what brought this up. It was me. I thought I knew. It was me. It was me and you. Now, now, now, now.

Now, now, now, now. I thought that was the cause of all this. It is. In doing that, it makes it look like I may have done something wrong.

You did not.

Okay.

You did not.

And Eric confirmed that. And they just verified I did nothing wrong. That's correct. You did nothing wrong. That's correct. The only thing that I'll say about that video is I don't think from the camera that that you could prove that that was you filing.

Yeah, you can. She's sitting there stamping. She's stamping something. That's a different issue.

She's stamping something, but I don't know that you can visually tell what that was.

I have them all time stamped, Ron. Huh? I have them all time stamped. Okay.

Sherry, anything else on that?

Yeah, lots of stuff. I hate your form. I absolutely hate your form. I should be able to send it by an email. And if I have to come get a form and then I have to fill it out, then do I have to go to the library and fax it to you? Do I have to bring it to you in person? Hate, hate, hate. Can't stand it.

I concur with her on that. I would like to have a better form. Go for it. And then when we get the request and I acknowledge that request, I could send that form immediately to them or have them readily available. So I do agree with... What kind of change are you talking... I would have to. I didn't deep dive like Sherry is doing.

Alright, fair enough. We can change that.

What else? I also had a question about once that that was disproven that that was actually occurred, was there an investigation by any chance of the clerk of the act, the falsification made to the judge? It's outside. I'm just curious. That's outside our... Because it seems to me that instead of punishing the people who made a false statement to a judge are being let free, but the people who... Stop. Please don't interrupt me.

The topic is... I understand what the topic is. It's not your particular issue with the judge and the court and your... Please don't interrupt me. Don't you have a court action on this?

No. Hello.

Okay.

So instead of punishing the people who did wrong, you're coming after the people who exposed that wrongdoing, and you're making it very difficult. Kevin was in a meeting with me last night, and he saw me talk to the health board and say, hey, I want every report you just talked about in this meeting. And they went, boom. Now do I have to go to Teresa to get that? And then Teresa has to send it to the health department. And then in two weeks, I'll be able to get those reports. Or is the health department going to be able to do that? I called Doug the other day. I said, hey, I want to know what that fund balance is. That's why Rich said that. I said, hey, I want to know what the fund balance is in this account. And he went, boom. And I went, thank you very much. Click. Do I have to go to Teresa now?

Routine request?

Yeah.

So no changes?

But if everything is funneled through Teresa, Teresa is going to make those determinations on what it is. what do you call it, sensitive or not sensitive. Or it can be forwarding. That's how I read that ordinance is that everything I ask for, and I'm trying not to yell at you, everything that I ask for has to go through Teresa. And we've been doing that for some time anyway because your health department is not responding. I've had a request in there since July the 13th. I don't even know if you have a lawyer in that department anymore because she will not respond.

and i mean her seven days i could already sue you because she did not respond in those seven days 24 hours actually yeah so so to her point i mean maybe we do need to change some of the verbiage because there are several requests that would not have to funnel through our so if we do we need to clarify that i don't we'll go through it again i don't see any change on the way you've been processing it because i don't want to be the bottleneck and it is and you're not involved right so

And if you ask Doug a question, Doug will provide it. That's a routine request. This doesn't take every routine question and say, Senator Teresa, I don't see any change.

That's how I read that, honest to God. I'm not making this up, Tim.

That's how I read it.

That's not the intent of the ordinance. Again, so I read that going through there, and the point that was mentioned in Mr. Stanley's statement, it was an accurate statement, was that you can reach out to individual departments. That's what's happened. So how has it hindered your ability to get the information at this point?

This thing ain't passed. They're giving me stuff left and right when I ask for it. This ain't passed. And by the way, are you going to have orientation with your employees about this? Or are you just going to throw it in their lap? Because I really think that you should train them so that when I do call Doug and I said, hey, I want to know what this balance is in this account, Doug goes, like he is now. And most of the time, it's just for me. I don't share it or whatever. I want to know. Just like the request that I've asked out of the health department since July 13th, and I still have not seen it. um you're they're really treading on thin water over there but anyway um i hate this and and it is and i am probably the biggest requester of public information is that true yes i thought so so i feel like it's a personal attack fellas one intended that way it's how it feels we can take a take another look at it motion to table well i'm i'm i'm stuck on what needs to be changed

Since it's going to run through my position, I would like to re-look at it because I do think she's brought up some good points. And Anne, for my sake, I have a citizen who has requested some information that I told them where they could go to Gateway to get that publicly immediately if they didn't, because I couldn't provide that to them that fast. And they never got back with me and I kept checking with them and checking with them. So it looks like I haven't done my due diligence and, you know, that citizen wants the information. So I don't think there's anything in there that protects me either.

Okay. We'll look at it again if that's fine too. Motion to table it?

Yeah.

Okay. One second.

right next one then we have to take a vote on that yes okay good call karen roll to sam from the procedures how do you vote yes ron yes the table yes okay next one is the ordinance establishing capital asset policy again second reading it's brown county ordinance number 2026-09-02-002 An ordinance establishing a capital asset policy detailing the threshold at which an item is considered a capital asset. Any questions?

No. I mean, it's going to be another exercise of where the frequency, we talked about that. That was the only thing, and that was changed before we presented it the first time around. It's going to be a two-year plan to go through that process. But that work is already being put in place with various buildings and assets that we have in the county.

Is it done?

It's not done. Still works in process because we, and again, here's the reality of it. The capital asset list is never done.

Right. I get that.

But congratulations. We just moved a truck from the highway, or the health department, to the area planning commission today.

But congratulations on a finding for five years. You're wrapping it up. Bravo.

But I don't have any other comments other than that. I think it's more than sufficient. I think it's challenging enough for us. Again, and I'd also address you as an issue with the State Board of Accounts, where we're not going through and having a capital asset policy to be measured against. And that clearly defines what we need to accomplish.

Perfect.

Okay. So, is there a motion? Mr. Sanders' comment?

Okay.

I'll let you make a motion. I'll make a motion to proceed with passing the presented ordinance with regards to asset policies.

I think I will second that.

Ron Sanders, how do you vote?

Yes.

Sam Clark? Yes. Kevin Patrick?

Yes.

Bravo, gentlemen. Thank you.

Yes, and I know Julie is the one that's been knocking on our door every day for the last 19 months.

Way to go, Julie.

It's more than that. The next step is really reach out and start doing the inventory. And you've done 5,000 in the county. Thank you so much.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Okay, Teresa, we'll jump down to the county office department reports. I think you have quite a few things.

I do, unfortunately, in this late hour. Okay, so the first thing I want to say is that there are several jobs on the county website. I encourage everybody to go out and look. If you go to the county website, do a search under jobs. We currently have a core services field officer. a laborer in the highway department, a mechanic in the highway department, an assistant environmentalist, an environmentalist, a local health officer, and a Purdue Extension office manager. And I believe there's another office manager position that's gonna be added this week. So several opportunities for people to join the county, so keep that in mind. The next thing I'm gonna present is that we have a We have a maintenance foreman position that you guys have kicked around to talk to council about revamping your maintenance department with the county. And we do have the completed job description. And I'm requesting that we forward this to council so that they can give the rate of pay. And do you have a rate of pay that you're suggesting for this position that I can present to council to give to Julie to present to council?

So I think we've had some conversations with Dan on this. He's kind of the background on, you know, here's how these buildings come together, preventative maintenance and all that. He went through that. I went through it and looked at it. I don't have a problem with the details there. And the hope is that we can move towards getting someone that's going to be responsible for putting a plan together for maintenance and putting a plan together for asset management from the building standpoint to do that. Our discussion is that the council will look at that and say, wow, this is going to be a great opportunity for us to go and actually start being more strategic than tactical with the stuff that we're doing. And I think my comment would be is in that conversation with him, it was about $35 an hour was the kind of target, $33 to $35 an hour is what we were thinking. I don't think you can do that.

so okay so i will pass that to julie to and i put it on the agenda for the next meeting for that job description that just gives them yeah because there's some typos that we've covered so we'll get to that anything else yeah i have a few things actually still okay i'll hurry um i just want to let you know that we did pass our work comp audit and there were no findings and um everything stay the same so congratulations thank you very much we've worked with that i know it's a lot of work very tedious so thank you um also i would like your permission to um we have a hole in the roof on the log cabin jail and work with the um historical society now well the chinky's bad too we won't even go to that number I couldn't get anybody to give me quotes. I went to four different people. Nobody wanted to quote it out because of the historical values in the National Registry and all that good stuff. So we did finally have somebody come out. We have got their numbers. Wow. Really? So $48,000 just to replace that roof with cedar shake. Now Dan, when I talked to him about it today, he said that he has somebody he wants to talk to about... resin shakes on that instead the community center is now done with shingles so it didn't follow the preservation that it was supposed to so i'm asking if you guys had mentioned talking to that quality this is the perfect opportunity to take something like this to the cvc and ask them for innkeeper tax money So how do I do that?

You just basically need to get what Kevin Ault has to be put on his agenda, and then forward him the information. He'll share that with the various board members, and at this point in time, he'll take that into consideration. And my comment would be is you will be there. I normally attend that meeting, and I am more than willing to stand and say, This is the perfect application for in-keeper tax money. Okay.

The chinking, to get everything done, because we have the gentleman there from the Historical Society that takes care of that, and to get his wish list pink for the day, we would be spending $126,000 on the roof and the chinking.

So again, that would be the whole shebang.

That would be fixing logs that are bad.

So in essence, it's basically $77,000 for the log chinking. It's going through and moving the mold. We were there. We both went through this whole very detailed explanation. He is one of the only people in this area and along many states that does this kind of work. And we don't, and again, when you're dealing with historical preservation, you do not find a lot of people that provide this service.

Okay, so I'm going to forward this.

I would actually, at the exact same time, send all of it to Kevin Ault. Okay. Because, in my opinion, this is the perfect application of where we use innkeeper tax money.

Okay.

Because we sure don't have it in the general fund.

No, we do not. And And it needs to be done. I mean, we're just going to ruin that building. There is a hole in the roof right now. And winter's coming. The other thing that I would like permission to move forward with Julie and have some questions on is the offer of employment form. Christine McCann went through this form and she made some very good points that gets us up to date with law on this form and I gave it to you in your admin meeting to review so I'm asking for permission to change this form give it to the auditor's office and for the auditor to all of our forms I've noticed have wis at the bottom is owners which doesn't make a lot of sense to me because there are forms so we're not according to this statement we're not allowed to change this form without them so can you can i pass that on to julie to deal with steal it deal with oh yeah if there's any issues i mean we've paid for that

We paid for that service.

I know, but the way the, there's a legal statement down there that.

Yeah, that's a wonderful legal statement, and then it goes back to the comment that I.

You can't take it off, it's a.

Yes, oh absolutely, I'm sure it sets under the form as a protected thing, and it's probably.

Okay, and the last thing I have really quick, and I'll lead into.

So wait, don't jump from there, because I do have changes that I'd like to see made on that form before we go forward.

Will you send them to Julie? I will.

Okay. I can hand them to you right here. Okay.

And the last thing leading into the Highway Department is the BIDCO has started doing site checks with us. We did the Sheriff's Department, who had a very good review.

Site checks in the form of safety?

Work comp safety, yes. Work comp safety, okay. There was a few corrections with some first aid kits and minor things that they've worked on. And the Highway Department has had three site checks now. And this last one was exceptional. They got a glowing recommendation. They had no violations. She recommended to do rip rap training with Sandra. So I just wanted to let everybody know and congratulate you. And you got a great review. Thank you.

Great. That's fantastic. Is that it, Teresa? That's it. That's it. OK. Sandra, you're on.

I just have two questions for her. Okay. The first topic was asked, are you putting those in the Democrat?

Sometimes it is on the request of the department head or elected official how they want it done. Sometimes we do Democrat. Sometimes we just do LinkedIn. Sometimes we do Indeed. Sometimes we do all of the above. So it just depends on what they want.

It would be nice if we just put all of them in the Democrat. A, we would support the newspaper, which is a form of democracy in a small community. It's very, very, very expensive. I understand it's expensive, but you have money. And the second, I'm just saying, it would be nice if we could run them in the Democrat. That's it. You do what you want. Your second topic was about pay scale for your new hire. I don't think you get to do that. I think you have to submit the... a job description to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then they come back and tell you what the one of nine codes is.

But there's also something on the form of submissions that basically allows us to say we believe this would be the recommendation.

Okay, a recommendation, but nobody has to listen to that, right? Correct. Because they are not going to fall out of those nine things. They are sticking to that like glue, and I love that. Okay, thank you. That's it. Senator.

Thank you. So we covered most of my stuff earlier today. I just wanted to give our guys a shout out. They're out there in this heat working hard. We're cleaning bridges, mowing, you know, doing all the things.

You mean the mower's actually running now?

It is running now.

Anybody got a pool running on that as to when the next time it breaks?

Kevin, be nice.

I'm just saying. I'm willing to chip in on that one.

I also wanted to state that we repaired three culverts on Playlick Road, extending them to make the roads safer. It won't drop off. So now those roads are a little bit wider in some spots out there. So just doing some things to make things safer. Also just washing the bridges so that we can prolong the life of them and cleaning them the proper way. That's another thing we're doing. One more thing we're on. And then we've already prepped Richardson Road for anticipation of the painting.

So I want to say one thing. Actually, I'll say two things to that. The first thing to that is that I know, and again, this is another thing that you guys need to understand is what these departments are going through and doing in all of this. The highway department actually worked with an organization or worked with a prior company that provided us the understructuring beams on the Owl Creek Bridge at no cost to the county. And we provided the labor to reinstall that. That is through their hard work and that relationship that they got that to take place.

They actually sent over a worker, kind of a foreman to oversee the job and help the welding process and everything.

So the second bridge that's on Owl Creek was, and again, I didn't know that until Trent told me that there were two of them, that there was. And then I had someone basically say between them or somewhere along Owl Creek that there is a slight area or slide off with pavement sliding.

we are looking into that we've had some estimates on that and see that i don't even have to go and do these things they do exactly what they need to do ron uh is there a schedule we'll get you driving on grandma orange road i don't know it wasn't in the bid package is there any money for that $2,500, and so that won't go...

So, and we've got to be careful about that, Ron, because once you stripe a road, you have to always stripe the road.

And it has to be so wide, I'm not sure that qualifies.

That was always the argument, that they're not wide enough to stripe. Yep.

So... And, well, and again, that's the other thing, too, like, and I did not know this until we had a conversation with, I don't remember who, but...

once you do it you don't give it up and you just hurt her budget for striving i thought we had the a truck that did that okay are you volunteering can i use a paintbrush i get paid by the hour in comments yes yeah i did want to follow up because i think you mentioned and listen i am not an asphalt paver i have no clue what the difference is but It was mentioned about, hey, I think the price went lower, you're going to get a better road than maybe whoever submitted something. Originally, I had a quote for $57,000, but it was to do with three and a half inch number nine stone. But they upped it to get a better road, and that's where they come up with the binding and the second painting. I just want to make sure, is this a better road that you would be getting?

What's the difference? So in essence, the big difference between all of the quotes, the only difference, and that's why she chose what she did, is the compression factor to go through. So you're going to get a much smoother surface, whereas from what she explained to me, and you tell me, what was it?

Yeah, so the number 11 asphalt is prone to minor stuffing and is actually... more prone to steering marks when cars turn their wheels, things like that. It is also compresses and wears more under heavy equipment. I know there's not a lot of heavy equipment on that rope, but potentially. Just in case, yeah. Yeah, so the nine is a higher resistance to running, to cracking. It also handles the temperatures extremes that we have.

So you'd rather have the nine in one pavement. The reason the price went up is because it was going to be two pavements. It was going to be a binder then with a number 12 surface. But the original quote was $57,000 to do number nines. Then he sent me. That never went to you because by the time you got involved, supposedly this was going to be the better road and it went up $12,000. almost twelve thousand dollars to get a better road for the county but if it's going back to the original one then it's I mean ultimately the county's going to be responsible for that road so if you're comfortable with it we'll move ahead I'm not going to sit here and delay it even longer I've been here too long for that but I just wanted to clarify that and make sure because Supposedly, we were getting a better road, and that's the reason the price went up, and I was willing to pay more for the county to have a better road, but if you're saying no, we're comfortable and we'll go with that.

So, based on the review she's done, and I'm sure she's done her homework, that's where we're at. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you for the improvement to our assets. Hey, no problem.

We appreciate you.

Hey, I appreciate you bringing that up. Real quick, Tim, I just wanted to add that to our highway department as I travel back and forth here almost daily down Lake Creek Road where they've been mowing this week. The signage has been impeccable before and after within their work zone, so nobody can gripe about that. They do ride in the truck with the sign out, but you have to. Otherwise, these guys are going to be walking 10 miles a day in and out of the truck 20, 30,

The areas that they're mowing is mostly yards, so it's not as overgrown as some of the other areas. So they aren't setting up blocks.

They've been doing just great. And no complaints, no nothing. If you have to sit there for two minutes, let them do their job. So kudos to the highway. I know they normally hear the flack, but certainly not the case. Thank you. Okay.

Sandra, that's it for you? Sandra? That's it for me. Okay. Kevin, any update on the body? We're talking day to day.

So, yeah, that's a little disconcerting. So, part of the reason that we're going in and not going to have, my expectation was we were going to have a greater T maximum price yesterday. So what's happened and what's holding that up is the work that needs to be done with regards to the coring and all of that needs to be taken that place. And they have not been able to get the coring contractor there to do that work. So now the target for getting that price is the 30th of September. But I will say that we did get, and there is and it's gone through, a site prep drawing. They've already gone through all the elevations, the survey work, all the work that needs to be identified in the parking lot to accommodate the building. They have also gone through and they have gone back in a world wide and slight modification to the floor plan. But the floor plan looks like it's basically completed with the minor change to bathroom entrance and exit. As far as better accommodation for handicapped use. That's where we're at there.

Any additional comments from the public before we go to legal?

I just wanted to comment quickly. Vivian Wolf again. The old log jail was the commissioners gave the historical society who had the contract to take care of Pine Hill Village $25,000. About Maybe 10 years ago.

And they were very, very good stewards of that cash, yes.

Yeah. And PBH gave them between $16,000 and $19,000. And we helped with the bridge physical labor. And Jim Schultz Mini and truck and trailer was there as well. So it was a community project. And I didn't realize that it would deteriorate that fast, that quickly. But, yeah, I'm glad you're taking care of it. But I just wanted you all to know that it was a community effort. And the county did give money before. So there's the dog trot building and other structures there that we looked at at that time. But we concentrated on the bridge when we were asked to help.

meaning pvh okay thank you and we appreciate you for doing it okay anyone else how are you okay james legal any final comments another miracle okay great thank you james thanks james i'll entertain a motion yep motion to adjourn