Town Council - Regular Meeting

good okay i will uh open this meeting uh today's brockton town council meeting for june 9 2026. those present uh is jared gultz and myself kevin hammond uh our attorney just dollars here by phone and karen dinger town clerk is present as well we will open the meeting first will be approval of minutes Make a motion to approve the minutes. I have a motion by Jared Goltz. I will second that motion. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carried. Next will be payment of bills.

There's only one difference.

I thought it used to be $5. About $7.50 to get up to a price on this. I'll make a motion to approve the payment of funds. So we have a motion by Jared Goals to pay sewage in town. I will second that motion. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion to carry. Next would be town marshal's report. I make a motion to accept the program and have March go forward. Second. I make a motion to hear it seconded. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

Um, Steve. As you know, we've got the streets paved. We've got that project all done and they come under measure quite a bit. And some of them, because I kind of prepped the area for them, cut the dirt off the sides of the road and trimmed the trees. And our original bid was $124,000. That's four.

It's at the top for everything. Yeah. $124,000.

And they got it down to $383,000, $449,000. That's a lot cheaper. Well, we just end up giving that money back to the state. You can write it in the checks, Bobby. You can just write it in the checks. Isn't that how that works, though? We have to give it back to the state? Yeah.

Yeah, after we pay central paving, and the city has to do some reports, and then they'll send us the bill for what we have to send back.

So we need to make a motion to pay this.

If you don't mind, that way it's on the books that it's gotten through.

I'll make a motion that we pay some for the work that was done. Second. Motion, Jerry's seconded. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. That was a big step. I'm glad that's done. I'm glad you guys got through that. Yeah.

Everything went real smooth. That's one of the longest super tubes. Didn't run into any issues. But then some patching wasn't even attached. Like they put in, like I said, on there, perforated sugar put in almost 21 tons in the patch. So they dug down quite a bit. You heard that soft spot over there. Yeah, I'm glad it works. I'm glad they did it.

It still came under budget, so.

Yeah. You know, my other thing, what's the next step on the shape of the property? So I think I have a question for Justin. I don't know if you can hear me or not. Okay. Justin, we got a question for you. Yeah, on the Shagley property, their time is up, I think, on the, what did we say, Karen, 14th?

Well, I have it right over there.

Did you hear Steve's question?

I think it was, if you went by the notice, the first notice, it would be June 10th, tomorrow. If you went by the date it was hand-delivered, it would have been around June 6th.

Okay. I just want to know our next step, what I need to do. Did you hear that, Justin?

So basically he's asking when to clean that place up? Well, the time that we gave him to clean it up, the 60 days or whatever is up, either the 6th or the 10th, depending on what day it went by. But we just want to know what our next step is now since he's not, he kind of started and then stopped and hasn't done anything.

And then the nail, the certified letter came back to us. It was never picked up. So then the only proof of delivery, well, really the only is Shane delivering it... To the caretakers, right? To somebody that was at the house.

So, who do we have service on?

Who do we know? It was just some lady at the house. We don't know.

We don't know for sure, right? I thought it was the caretaker of him, but I'm not positive. What do you mean by caretaker? He had, he had guardianship, they had guardianship over him at one time, but as far as I know he's over age now, so I don't know if they still have guardianship over him because of medical and all that, I don't know. That might be a shame question.

Okay. So this kid's over 18 now, right? Yes. And we think he owns the property? Yes. Okay. Now, have we checked that? Have we checked who the owner is for sure?

I believe Shane did, yes. I believe Shane did through there and through Deacon. Okay.

Um, but we haven't got service on him.

No, does not sound like it. Okay. So we need to try to get service on him would be our next step, I would assume.

Well, are we in a position to do anything about this anyways?

You guys want to spend the money and clean the place up? We'd have to hire him out. Yeah, we'd have to hire this one out. Right. So...

So, I mean, if you guys are, I mean, I think the service is probably good enough, but on somebody that's there on the property, usually that's sufficient to serve to an individual on the property.

It was served at a different residence where he's staying in Delphi. Nobody is staying at those houses down there.

Well, do we have a notice ticked to the door or anything? No. We left anything at the property, at the property?

No. No. We have a certified letter and a hand delivery.

All right. Any improvement of service?

I don't think, you know, it didn't sound like it. I think he just handed it to him and said, here's your notice.

Okay. And I think somebody got it because it was like that next weekend. It was their work. Did our notice, did that notice say 60 days on it?

Yes. We gave him 60 days to clean it up?

Right.

All right, because we were using a 10-day notice, a 10-day abatement notice. Is my understanding back in a long time ago?

I believe so, yes. Back in Jill's term.

Steve wanted to give him more time.

I understand. Well, here's what I'd say. I'd say I wonder if we could give him a 10-day notice, see if we could get better service, see if we could get him served. Um, they also have a gift to serve himself. Um, definitely get something on the door of the place. So, okay. So, definitely need to leave something there at the premises for sure.

And then have Shane have somebody sign for it? Try to get him specifically? I did.

That would be great. And I would shorten it to the 10-day notice this time. Say we already served you the 60 years of 10.

And then move forward if you guys want to find somebody to clean the place up.

I think that's the next step, basically.

I just think it's going to be really hard to get service directly to him. That's where it was handed to him.

Yeah, that's where he lives is the house it was served.

The certified male went to that house too and it was unclaimed?

Yes, correct.

Okay. Well, you know, when you try again... Once again, I think that's good enough service, honestly. Usually if you leave it, if it shows copy service left in a door, it's usually good enough service for all civil process.

So even if Shane, if we have reason to believe that he lives in that residence, why do we think he lives there?

He does not live at the properties in question. He lives...

They were given guardianship over him, I think, through the court for a while. And he just continued to stay there. But we still think he lives there? Yes.

Okay. I would just try to get in. I think we have good enough service.

He has money at the residence that we do get to live at. Let's take it, you know. He's actually even reacted to that, right? So we think that he actually reacted to our letter. I mean, he didn't do much.

So I feel comfortable with that. I would just hit it with another notice, a 10-day notice, just to be extra cautious. Definitely leave the notice, take it to the door of the property in Burlington, and cert them again. I do not have to do my cert by mail. I just cert them in.

in person if she no answers the door this time you just tape it leave it whatever on the door that he you know that they use and don't like property um and then i think we're covered as far as service first this is a matter of you know once again and that gets into cleaning the property go ahead and clean the property up and incurring the bill and then putting, cleaning the property up like we would on the sewer leak. Okay. That's basically the process that's in our ordinance. You good? Yeah, I'll put that on the door right there. So, yeah, it just ain't a matter of waiting out there for 10 days.

Okay. Yep, that's good. I think that covers what we need to do and then we'll go from there.

That's all I got.

I wasn't sure. That's why I was asking. So we will go to the Barley County Community Club.

Hi.

I'm Samantha Arriaga and Jimmy is my brother.

Sorry.

It's not So I'm the vice president now. So we would like to see if you all were interested in making a donation for the fireworks for the Fourth of July. It's my understanding that's kind of been happening the last few years. And we have... kind of an expanded program for this year. We're going to try a few new things. We're going to have some vendor spots open and obviously the concession stand like usual, but we're going to try out having like some vendor stuff and like the games guy and bounce house and stuff out in the park to try and get people down there, you know, in the early evening, like around six. So they have something to do before the fireworks start.

How much did we do last year? Last year it was $1,500, and then it was out of the economic development fund, and there's $68,000 in there. That's about it.

That stuff he's setting up, is it real tall? There's a lot of people set around that area, and there's lots of fireworks.

I'm not sure. As far as the bouncy guy, I think they've reached out to him. I don't think he's locked it yet.

We'll make a motion that we donate $2,000 to the Burlington Community Club for the 4th of July fireworks. Second. Second by Jerry. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Do you need me to say anything? No, no. Just carry me with you. Okay.

Or I'll have to call you. I think he knows the money, so. Right. All right, awesome. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. I'm going slow. I'm trying to go slow. I'm stalling. Okay, next up, Carol Kennedy, EDC.

Before James gets up, I'm just going to do a little flashback for you. I don't think you were at the meeting in April when James reported that... The state is putting a pressure on you for housing. The day after the Carroll County Parliament, it came out following Wednesday. And here is the official press release from the governor saying, housing, yay Rob, yay Rob. Okay, so James, we made the commitment and James is going to report back. I've heard for years, the reason we can't get more houses is because of the sanitary wastewater problem. So James is going to report back to you. opportunities you can have to get some funding or not because they're going to start badgering you if they haven't already. They haven't but it's coming. It's coming. They said so. So James?

Thank you Keith and to also add on top of that back in Since 2006, 2025, the state legislature did its reform of property taxes and how that is calculated, how that's impacting in tax levies rates. So when those reforms actually start hitting on top of these new requirements from the state on housing, it's going to put At least from my understanding, from talking to folks down there in Indianapolis who study yeah i've done a lot more studying on the implications of what those tax reforms mean it means that even though property owners are getting tax breaks and different credits and all that it's going to leave a number of municipalities towns and cities and then the predicament of having to pay more the same level of services that you're providing for your community. So that makes the case even more important for if there's going to be any growth that you want or see, at least housing is your best opportunity to control that. And I'm going to have to report back as part of that. opportunities as far as funding for water infrastructure and particularly wastewater and so a list of opportunities with different agencies such as the United States Department of Agriculture, the EPA, and then a section on their, as far as state resources, that can provide an opportunity to either cover or reduce the cost of funding either pre-development or studying what the engineering behind wastewater treatment or potentially paying for the cost for constructing wastewater sewer. Going back to, I'm trying to think of the property where there's a TIF, housing TIF.

Yeah, we've talked about that before. You have a rural TIF, which is advantageous to a developer. And Brett, I've been talking to Brett Reinhart now, and he's... He's interested in trying to do some development there. heavily involved over in Coquemont with the Chrysler back. But that's going downhill, so now he's looking for new opportunities. So he is interested in working with you and doing what we can. Now, I believe the opportunities that James has documented there, and correct me if I'm wrong, those are really targeted at communities of 10,000 or less. And we qualify for that.

And included with that, some of them, I believe under state resources or there's another section in there, it's called the Indiana Environmental Infrastructure Working Group. I might have messed that acronym up, but it's somewhere listed in where they are a state organization. the intra-agency where they will work with taking the talent in, signing up, and figuring out what grants or loans or other resources will be best for the town of Burlington if this is something you want to pursue. We can also talk to CURPSI, the Kentucky Key Area Court and Regional Planning of helping with that so that way it's not on you to do it by yourself or we can work with CURPSI as well and land the EDC's weight behind assistance as well but Certainly, there is definitely funding and opportunities out there if this is the route we wanted to take to encourage housing development to take place. Anything that I missed?

Nothing to think of right now. Bottom line is you pay money to the EDC every year. We're here to help you. I'm trying to respond to what I heard is the looming factor. I see what the state's doing to you. And so we're here to help. So what we need from you is how do you want to proceed? First of all, do you want to proceed? And if so, how do you want to proceed?

Well, if it's affordable, yes.

Well, of course, that's number one. But they're going to badger you. And so if you read the article, they ask, well, what are the things keeping you? OK, well, we don't have any money. Come on, give us some money. He opens the door for you to tell the state what is keeping you from increasing housing. So you need to think about that. We need to be sure because all I've ever heard is it's alleged that wastewater is a limiting factor. We need some organization other than we folks to say, yep, that is and this is what it's going to take to get around it. Because if we don't get around that, we're never going to get anywhere. You know, having town water is totally impractical. Because the street you just put in, they'd be tearing it up. They'd put pipes underneath it. Well, the town would go crazy by the time we hook up fees and everything else. I totally agree.

But if you started completely different... Wherever we go, sewage and water out there.

Which may be the way to proceed. You know, in that fifth district, kind of have it set up as a separate utilities, I don't want to say network, but whatever.

No, technically it's whatever it would be.

Yeah. And, you know, it's up for... I see it's up to you, your folks, Lord here, to say, this is what we'd like to do. It's hard to do it on your own because you've never been through it. We have some connections. We're here to help you. Tell me what you need. So... mull it over have Karen get back with us and let us know how you want to proceed if you want to have a separate meeting other than the monthly meeting where you want to talk to these five some possible sources here talk to us about getting meetings set up getting personnel you guys would be interested if we had a special meeting yeah of course we're here to help you right

Okay. I appreciate it. It gives us something to think about.

Yeah. Like I said, we're here to help you as much as we can.

Yeah, I can send a digital copy linked to some of those websites where it can come from if you want to take a deeper dive and do some more looking for yourself.

Yeah. And also, last time I left a credit out of the team from a Purdue, about what advantages the ROTIF does for you as a community. So there's a lot of advantages for the developer. So that's a big enticement. And of course, when we say, well, OK, the ROTIF, well, what goes in to improvements you don't immediately get, but on the other hand, you don't get any less money than what the land setting empty is. So you don't lose money, it is future money and then hopefully with the expansion, more people, more whatever, you have the collateral benefits of expanding that housing mix. Plus the kids don't have to go away. They don't have to move away. I don't know. I really didn't expect a definitive answer to that. This is mostly informational. We'd make a commitment back in April to come back to you and either we can say in a couple months we'll come back or you can get Shannon and get a separate meeting set up that's focused just on that, however you want to work with it.

Do you guys have anything else for us?

There's a lot of cream in real quick. You did take that drink from the fire hose, right? Oh, you can keep that. That's what I brought in there. So that you can sit back and see exactly what the... public release it was and sent to the papers.

So moving on, the Duke Energy contract for the new street lights. This is the contract, right? We didn't really change the prices or anything.

No, they told me it's just a monthly fee. There's no cost for insulation. They're going to start charging us monthly. And he said he could put it on a living room transmission pole. It's at the corner of 3rd Street.

I'll make a motion to go ahead and have this added.

I will second that motion. All those in favor say aye. Aye.

Motion carries. 2026 payroll allowance docket. We make a motion we accept the allowance topic for May 2026. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Next is 2027 budget.

We have a lot of joy here.

Well, since all three of you are not here, I didn't know if you guys wanted to set up a meeting, but we can do that. Another time, maybe at some point, you and I could get together to start, but I think I said August 14th was my meeting with the local government finance. So, just trying to have figures sent by then, so that... I'm going to try it next Wednesday.

I can meet you at 3. We can do initial and then normally what we do is we try to have a meeting with everybody to go over. Thanks. What do they say? The meeting is adjourned. Is that a word for you? Mm-hmm. The meeting is adjourned. I make a motion to end this meeting. Second. All in favor stand by.