Town Council - Regular Meeting

Looks like Jared's here and I'm here. Jared's here. First thing is the approval of the minutes. I want to stop. I have a motion to approve the minutes. Second. I've got a motion and a second to approve the minutes. All in favor say aye.

It's like more esoteric than ever. Shiny's coming here explaining to me what this money is. I know you said that. I think it's around through the county. Like, he calls over to the county and makes, you know, better software, keeps track of it.

And there's stuff going around on Facebook yesterday about somebody in the corner who's, like, looking at somebody's car. Shane, you know about that? I've seen that. I share that with YouTube. I've got a lot of people share it. I make motion to accept the motion for. Second. I make motion to second to accept the motion for. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All right. Yes.

Okay, before my coming is to make sure you are aware as of the end of July. James is no longer an executive director. Hopefully, I think an email was sent to you Karen about that. An article appeared in the comments saying we're in search of a new director. So. We're in the process of trying to. Backfill with some type of temporary director, like, again, before. So, like, in James, keep everything going. So our intent is to try to maintain stuff. The best we can do exactly correct.

Do you have any say about who gets hired for that position?

Me. Typically, not what ends up happening is what's happened last the executive committee, which is the. President vice president secretary and treasurer of the organization, they do all the pre speech screening and then they come with us. With a recommendation, I said, no, but yes, I really do. So, ultimately, they review that with the board and then the board.

Okay, just keep on the record. I just, I was not happy with the background of James Wells that they chose. And so, as you guys represent us here, you, you correct me if I'm wrong. But we don't want a Democrat activist from Indianapolis to be in our city, correct?

I understand, but you have to be careful with employment there. You can't discriminate. And by black, I mean because of political parties and some of that other stuff.

Well, I just want you to know, because you represent us. That's right. Okay, so that's what we want.

Right. But we as an organization, we're a lot of students. happy with James' performance.

But listen, listen. You are our representative. You're not part of them. You're part of us. You're representing us to them. That's what I want you to understand. That's what we want. I don't care what they want. That's what we want.

Understood. I just have to make sure that whatever we're talking about is not contrary to public law.

you know i we can't we can't break any laws that's bottom line okay i don't think that there's any laws being broken in this we we're representing a certain consistency here yeah and that's what we want our adc to represent too we don't want whoever's in charge that has it feels like there there's a agenda with some of the people that control that and they have their own ideas I just want to make sure that you are representing our interest.

Now, obviously, I'm just 1 of 12 votes. 12 votes. Now, there are 2 other members who have appointed. You need to also convey to them your, your feelings. Now, in the meantime. we get the thumb before the board before we talk about the wastewater system and trying to get you know loans for students and development and whatnot in the short term i would really really like some feedback is how serious are you at this point in time of pursuing upgrading the wastewater system so you can have More houses or whatever, because. As I see the situation. In the near future, the next decade. We're not going to get a manufacturing company. We are not, you know, the best we're going to do is get some retail. I personally believe the thrust should be is what can we do to attract off-site workers to our area. People that would enjoy country living. They have high-paying jobs because most of those off-site jobs pay fairly good, but they're not going to come if they don't have houses. You're not going to get them there. And the other things I've said through a couple seminars is what you're doing and you're talking about the budget and whatnot, The state controls your levy. It doesn't make any difference what happens there. The levy is froze by the state. All that happens is a little play of the game of what is my current tax rate. It goes up, goes down for a bit. The kind of workaround is because that area which we identified before is a rural tent area. What we can do is potentially, and we have these several hobs done, is that if we get housing out there, there is an increase in the value. That increase goes into the TIF margin, and if it's so worded that we could possibly give money back to your board, which does not fall under the tax levy, so that you can do more things with more money. So that's the alternative. I know I've looked at an article about TIFs, and I know they're going to be pushing for housing and whatnot, but my current belief is Burlington's best path forward is somehow, what can we do to attract remote workers? But to do that, you know, we have to have projects. We've got a school, my name's Carol there, and we have some, you know, local stuff that we are looking for the people that truly want rural. And that's kind of the train that's getting away from the bay. But they do want some of the amenities. We have a park out there. We have some things in their traffic.

Is this your own opinion? That's my own opinion. It has nothing to do with the EDC.

The EDC would push it. I could push it at the EDC. Again, that's what economic development is. What do we do? I personally would like to see the EDC start to concentrate on what we can do to bring remote site workers to the county. And in particular, I think it benefits communities such as Burlington more than it would Delta County.

When you say remote site workers, do you mean like people that work at Kokomo?

No, I mean like people, oh, I work for, let's say, Amazon, but I sit in my house and I work on my computer all day. We've got the broadband internet coming around, so they have a high-speed internet. We have parks, we have other things, and they make good money. That's what a remote site worker is. Somebody who works from their house, but doesn't matter where they're from. Right, they're working for a company that's based in New Jersey, let's say. They don't have to be onsite. So since they're working from this location, their income tax, all that falls under our jurisdiction.

Sure. I'm in favor of us having more houses.

The first step is, you know, we have this tip area out here. I know there's like for lots plotted along Cutler Road there, we need to understand, do we really have a limitation on the present lagoon system? Yes and no. And we need professional engineering to tell us that. If it is, what options do we have? professional help. Now, we were in the process, and there are several programs that have made grant money available and matching fund money available to communities under 5,000, communities that are under 2,500. We qualify for both. So it isn't like out of your budget or whatever, 100% of the funds have to come.

That's all good and well. I really do want to hammer down on this thing about change, though, because I think as far as I'm concerned, how much longer do we have on the contract with CDC?

I think this is...

I think it comes up...

That was a huge breach of trust. Because this county, his views and stuff that he worked in does not reflect this county at all. And so I've met with multiple people about this just to see what happened with that, why they made that choice. And I was never given a clear answer about that. It just came down to, well, nobody will do it. That's what everybody said. Nobody else will do it. I found that hard to believe.

With their, it came down to, there were three, three applicants that were in a final milestone. James and two others. Looking at their resumes and whatnot, his resume was a more diverse background than the other two.

So like what, I don't understand why does that matter at all? Like that he's not, we don't have a diverse background.

No, no, no. I mean, diverse there. He had been in housing. He'd been in other type things. Not because he geographically been different. He'd been with Indianapolis with the housing. He was on the mayor's board for whatever in there. So he had a larger background. diversification of factors compared to the other two. Now we can only pick from what people with a problem. And if you know of anyone that you believe would be a good candidate, I know in the column article, there was a phone number. If not, you can send the application over to Shannon.

What I want you to take back from them is that if that happens again, we will terminate our contract with the ABC. If they do something like that and think that's no big deal, that they did that, we'll terminate it because we don't want to support the type of idea or the type of direction that that will lead. It doesn't conform with the values of this county. It doesn't conform with the values of this town. Just they need to understand that. I don't know who's making decisions up there.

But, well, I ended up with the board and you have 3 votes on the board. So, and the 2 other individuals, you point.

So, we're not a big, we don't have a lot of money, but. No, but that's why I'm like, support that.

I don't want that money going to.

Something that I feel like it's working against the interest of the constituency.

Right. One of the areas that I should say, another area that we've talked about, I'm pushing for this remote workers for the 2027. It was not in one of our main goals for this year. But, you know, the one of the big pushes is Broadway kids. Let's face it, Carroll County is very agricultural. You know, and it was said, oh, well, we really want to push agriculture, you know, bring an economic development through agriculture. Well, agriculture, it's a huge thing. It's all the way from, like, Indiana Packers there. It's cold storage. It's petrochemicals for the farmers. It's food processors. There's a lot of irons in the fire for agriculture. What are we concentrating on? What do we want? What is the strong point for Carroll County that we can attract somebody in the agriculture community?

Yeah, no, I like that. I think that's good. It's great when we get somebody in the

I went up to a seminar up at Fair Oaks. So Fair Oaks, you know, that big milk processing. They were focusing on agriculture. Well, they didn't. And that's lessons learned from them. I'll bring you back. Is that, oh, it was general. Well, they started looking at milk. Well, what's happening is the milk was being, you know, from the farm, they had like four tankers a day going out somewhere else to be processed. Why? Why can't we get a processor in county, in America, in county to enjoy the added revenue? So they learned, okay, They figured out what they needed to do to test-train on these products. We need to do the same here. I know we have a lot of fog production, and Deanna Packers is a great supporter of the county, but there's gotta be some other stuff we need to start investigating.

Yeah, I think that's all great. It's just like, we just need to work together. But that trust has to be there, like that there's not some other interests that are trying to do what they're going to do in our county. And that's what it feels like to me right now and a lot of other people that I've talked with. And so we just need to, it's not just our EDC, it's like the state EDC and other things too. We just need to make sure that we're working towards goals that our people want to be achieved.

And I mean like...

the greater mass of our people, not one or two rich people.

Generically, housing is one of the biggest issues with the state. And recently, it's one of the big issues because the lack of housing drives up housing costs. If you have more available, the contractors have to become more competitive. you have to speak to the cost of new housing recently.

So your original question is how serious are we on upgrading the sewer system? Yeah. We don't have a code or anything.

No, no. See, first step is we have to have an engineering study to know what we have Is it acceptable we put in a dozen, you know, dozen new homes or what? We have to understand that. And that's the first step. And that's the one we were talking about getting grant money, matching funds or whatever to do those type of engineering studies. That's your first step. You know, without that, you're not going to get to the next step because the state's not going to give you or anybody else is going to give you money if you don't have a plan.

How much does something like that cost?

I was told that the engineering study, like 30K, how much we can get from, because there's, you know, like I said, there's various state programs that will help you fund grants and matching funds.

Help us fund the engineering study?

Yeah, engineering fund. engineering study. And then once you get there, then it goes to the next. You know, Flora just got out of the 20 year ban. And they had, you know, they got quite a bit of funding from the state to be able to do that. Now they're at the end of that pipeline because they're expanding their sewer system. But it all had to start with the engineering study. What do we need to do?

Is there somebody over floor like who would be know about that whole process where they have to grant and everything?

The EDC worked with all that, all them to do that. So the expertise are somewhere on the board of the EDC. Okay.

All right, well, it's something we can look at and talk about in the future. We spend a lot of time on this. I do think that it would be good for us at some point to upgrade the sewer system so we can get some more housing.

Yeah, and it's going to be a matter of timing. I know right now you're going to be in the throes of budget and all that, so your focus is going to be there. So maybe once that gets passed, And hopefully we have at least a temporary economic director appointed. We can start, sit down and have some serious talks about what funding is available from what organizations. How do we want to go forward?

And just again, it will depend on who you guys hire, whether we have that conversation or not. Because if it is another person like that, that has that value system, I'm not sitting down to talk with those people. So just let them know that. I know it's not up to you, but I just think maybe last time it wasn't communicated. You know, maybe we didn't want something like that. And just wanted to be clear.

Okay. All right.

Thanks, Steve. Okay. The copier. Yeah. So I brought him.

A few quotes, Cardinal and then Beckley's. The Cardinal ones are a little bit older quotes, but I tried to ask some questions and they never contacted me back. We've worked with Beckley's for years and they're great people to work with. So I was asking because the copier, the printer's copier we have now is from 2015. So when it has a problem, they're having a hard time getting parts for it. And so this would be to replace the current unit with a trade-in discount. Total cost would be $3,000. It's black and white, but only rarely do we need to print color or something. I just highlight if we need to do that. And then this also should have a fax and scanner capabilities as well.

So that would cost $3,000 up front. We'd own the copy?

That would be us owning. Non-leasing. And then we would have a maintenance contract, which we have now. But the cost would be $0.01 per copy. I think right now we're paying about $0.09 a copy.

When it says full coverage, does that mean so we pay $0.01 per copy and then they just come fix it whenever it breaks?

Right. What we have now is if we need new toner or if there's a problem, unless it's something extenuating and then I let you know. But the whole time we've had it, we've had this contract and they've done things that we've needed to do it.

Okay. Do you feel good about it?

I do. Like I said, we've used that since I came here and they have been wonderful to work with. And so my request is to get the new Unit, but then also get the, the contract, the maintenance like we have now.

I make a motion that we get the card for this copy. So, motion second to get a copy of your office. They are. Okay. Ordinance codification.

Did you get a chance to look over anything?

I was looking at it, but it looked like $1,500.

Well, this is a shawl. We've needed to do this for years. It's a shawl on the wall. I don't know if you guys know that wall.

It's a shawl, so we have to do it, is that what you're saying?

It's a shawl. The one code I got was taking every last ordinance the town has and then formulating it. And you can see on that second code, it was like $10,000. So American Legal Publishing works with AIM to help the smaller municipalities because they know that's an astronomical cost for us. And so it incorporates state code and then it says like up to 30 pages to add like specific ordinance is the town. So I'm not a hundred percent. I'm estimating high end 3,000. I'm not a hundred percent on that.

3,000 for this.

Yes.

What's this? Is this something else?

Yeah. That's the second quote I got. And that was from last year. It's for the same thing. Yes. And that was $10,000. Yeah. And so, um, And this would be, so it would not be online. A lot of cities and towns have this online, but that costs more money. This would actually be paper copies we have here in the office. But it's, in my mind, it's fulfilling the requirements of the law that is, you know. And then it talks about, where's this at? It says underneath this, because we understand... Let's see. There could be an approximate $250 charge per year for updated copies.

Is Justin on the phone right now?

Justin, are you there? Hello? I'm here.

Justin, do you know anything about this? Like, when do we have to have this done by?

Should have been done already. Oh. Okay. If you want to, I mean, if you want to think about it, we can come back to it. I mean, but I just, I wanted to, I emailed some information, but it is a shadow on the wall. And I thought if we could do it out of history's budget.

How do they, like, so we're supposed to do this a long time ago, and they have no idea we haven't done it.

But when I was at the conference, I was talking, you know, they have vendor booths, and I was talking to some people and spoke to this gentleman and got this information.

So what it's saying is that it wants us to pay to put our own ordinances into a database so everyone can look at them. Is that right?

Yes, it's organizing it in a certain way, and you have Indiana Basic Code included in it.

So the law says that we have to pay to put our audiences into the database that everybody can look at. They didn't provide any funding for that?

There are many laws, just like the live streaming law. We have to pay to get things to implement so we could follow the law. It's pretty common, just like for next year. I don't like that at all. For our website, we have to be able to have PDFs that are handicap accessible, so that's going to be a cost.

We have to have PDFs that are handicap accessible? What does that look like? Like in Braille or something?

That means if somebody has a disability and they're on the website, they can have the PDF read to them. So we have PDFs of our minutes online. And so if somebody has a disability, the website has to be kind of kept accessible for the ADA law.

So we're going to go in and do that next year. Online PDF, that sort of thing.

This does not have to go on this clarification. There's no requirement for it to go online.

Right, but I'm or are you saying just for minutes and stuff for next year?

Just the PDF where I'm just saying this remark was that, you know, well, they. They have this law that we have to pay in order to comply with the law. I was just giving another example of something else that is in that same scenario.

It's just like if they pass the law that says we have to give health insurance to everybody in this town, but then they don't give us any money to pay for it. It's just like the same thing, except it's way less money. These are for the exact same thing though, right?

Correct.

Okay, so we don't want to do that one. I'm sure it's

And like I said, if you want to take it and look at it and review it for next month, that's fine. There's no decision that has to be made tonight on it. Do you want to process it and think about it?

I'll make a motion on the table until next month. Second.

Okay.

All in favor say aye.

Discussion of changes in law and policy forever worked. Is there a page for that, or is that just going to be a talk?

I just want to, I did send an email out. It's not. Did you have, I'm sorry, my other.

This one right here? That has volunteer fire department to talk?

Yeah, so there's two different things here, and I tried to print my email out so I could reference it. And then Justin's on the phone. The 1st, 1, if I can go the 1st, 1, before we go to the fire around, if I could go to the 1st, 1. So, state board of accounts has an update to their compliance manual and this was emailed to you guys. So you shouldn't have it. It says the town must have a policy in place covering all employees paid with public funds. Regardless of status or salary status. The policy must identify the process by which employees report their hours, including the form used and where time records will be stored. And this is where I have an asterisk. An individual knowledgeable of hours worked must approve the records. This was on Tuesday, no, no, I think it's just today. Let's see if it's available.

Okay, does that be here? Or does that be like heaven?

So here's the thing. Right now I make up Excel sheets. And everybody fills out an Excel sheet for their time worked. So for at the park, you know, Mike Mann's the superintendent. The guys that work for him, he signs their time sheets. That's not an issue. The issue comes in for your department heads. Because you've got Shane as a department head, you've got Mike Mann as a department head, and you've got Steve Stout as a department head. Who approves their time sheets? Because it's supposed to be somebody knowledgeable of when they are working.

Who do you?

Well, however, I don't know when Mike's working, when Mike's not working.

So you're saying that you don't feel comfortable saying he did work better?

Right. Shane is here sometimes before I'm here, so I don't know exactly when he came in.

Does this make him come in here and clock in or something?

No, then we would have to get a timekeeping system if we did that, which would cost money.

Okay.

So I'm just letting you know.

It's a law law, right? It's a shadow.

This is a shadow per state board of accounts. It's not an Indiana law, but they're going to audit us according to the policy that you guys pass. Or you guys, yeah.

Okay, you just make a spreadsheet and they just come in and sign in and sign up or something like that? I mean, it could be as simple as that, right? What about an app on their phone?

Or yeah, something like that. We have to pay for that. I mean, that's an additional expense. But I guess at least... You know, this was that last month's meeting, the conference I went to, and I wanted to bring this to your attention. that you guys are going to have to have something in writing, probably a resolution, that will have to be drafted, and you guys will sign, and then the next time State Board of Accounts comes in to audit, they're going to audit to that policy.

Can we just put it on the agenda for next meeting to talk about that in particular?

That's fine. I wanted to bring it up to you. And then the second one is for Justin here. There is a law, and that's why I gave that to you, and I highlighted it. If you look on the third page, it's under 36.8.12-5, it says a unit served by a volunteer fire department shall pay directly to each active and participating member of the department clothing allowance and possible automobile allowance. So Justin, did you get my stuff I sent you today? I did. Okay, and then one of the questions was that we do not have a contract directly with the fire department. We have a contract with the township trustee So the town pays the township trustee $7,000 a year to help with fire protection services. So our contract, the town's contract is not directly with the fire department. I don't know if that makes a difference with this law. So that's what I was asking Justin.

I don't think so. I think that it's the trustee now, township trustee will have to

make those payments pursuant to the law, and we continue to pay our part. Yeah, that's my interpretation of it.

Okay. Thanks, Justin.

I'm going to regress just slightly on your approval process. Just a thought. You have, I think, three department heads that you talked about. Who would approve their work?

Oh, approve their timesheets.

How knowledgeable If so, then you could have that department head approves a different one. It just will take the three.

I don't think they're ever together. I've never seen them together.

No, it says knowledgeable. Not that they're physically together. It just says knowledgeable. Yeah. Now, see, that could be you're out of that relationship. That they are knowledgeable of the work that they can do. Not that they physically watch them every minute. Just, it says knowledgeable.

I think I appreciate that. I think that Karen is knowledgeable about what they're doing in a certain degree, but not comfortable enough to say that they actually are doing what they, right?

Well, it's just more like the hours worked. It's, you know, hey, I worked, you know, four hours today, or I worked seven hours today, or That's and when I talked to State Board of Accounts because I asked them that question at the conference and What I got back was no it needs to be somebody who knows that they worked the hours that they were knowledgeable Not necessarily there with them It's just like an honor like system thing.

Yeah, it's an out there So I'm just saying that may be an out there because department heads should understand what other department heads do

Just a thought. Okay. Payroll notes. Make a motion to approve the payroll. Second. Motion second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, a budget discussion.

Based on what I can tell, I believe our revenues will, for the most part, stay pretty steady to what they have been this year. in the budget program right now, but they've changed. It's a new, they've updated it. So I'm learning how that looks, trying to understand how they're formatting things now.

You went up on insurance?

I just got the insurance bill yesterday. So I'm still working on that.

She went way down on repairs. We didn't spend anything.

For Motor Vehicle Highway Fund?

Yeah, for the Motor Vehicle Highway. I'm sorry, I was just looking for Richard Harlan.

Right. So my concern is the Motor Vehicle Highway Fund is... We budgeted a lot for this year and... I think we need to back it off, at least for a year, and kind of regroup and see where we're at. As far as like doing any repairs and stuff. I had it originally budgeted at 50. I think we need to back it off.

Okay. You don't need to do that much repairs?

Well, I don't know how Steve feels. The only thing that I think might need to be done is that Colbert is a blame. But I don't know how much that would cost. Steve doesn't seem to think it would cost that much, and I think we could use the cumulative capital development fund for that, because you can use that for cohorts.

It looks like we have 99% of the money we ballot for last year left. It says that you only have to spend $1,000.

For where?

On that same line for repairs and maintenance and street.

$100,000 through 630 right because what we did is when we got the grant when we got the community crossings grant There's a sub fund of the Motor Vehicle Highway Fund. It's called the Motor Vehicle Highway Fund Restricted Fund Fund we use money from that To go to the grant so we did ended up not using anything from the main Motor Vehicle Highway Fund.

Can I ask you something? How long did you start doing this? No, I mean this job that you're doing. When you first came in, was it like super overwhelming?

I still get overwhelmed sometimes.

It's just like a lot of stuff.

There's so much that you have to know and learn and there's still things that I totally don't understand and I do the best I can do. But yeah.

Well, I think you did a good job. I would say that Colburn Where would you see that at?

Well, so this is just my thinking process, is that the cumulative capital development fund, that fund can be used for things like culverts. And I thought if we needed to, we could try to utilize money from that, possibly in addition to motor vehicle highway fund, if we needed to.

Because I just quoted a four-foot culvert that was 40-foot long, and it was almost $20,000 with trucking.

What does that mean, total cost?

Yeah, that's just the culvert with the trucking.

Yeah.

Like, total cost, like, brought to the job site.

Material.

That wasn't even tearing anything apart. It's just material. Like, just the material.

Well, what we can do is if you guys decide to do anything like that next year, if you wanted to pass it as is, if you needed to do additional appropriations, which that's a process that that could be done.

We have money bagged out too, right? To do something like that without budgeting it?

We have some in this year's budget. When they do the budget, they're looking at a year and a half out. So they're looking at the last half. of 26 and all of 27. Well, what they're doing is because we've budgeted some money, we've budgeted money and whatever leftover money is in 26, they're assuming we're going to spend it, even though we may not. So then when they do the budget, then it acts like, oh, well, you're going to spend every penny and you're going to spend every penny of what you're budgeting next year. So it kind of gets to be a little game you have to play when you're to make sure that you've got the money that you need available.

Do we need to talk about salaries and stuff to get in this? Because that's not going to be a real number unless we know exactly what it is.

That's another discussion, yes. So I went ahead, Shane had asked for that pay increase, and I went ahead and plugged those new numbers in to this paperwork, but I did not touch anybody else's. So I guess here's where I'm at. Friday is my meeting with the Department of Local Government Finance person. There's still time to tweak numbers. But September, the second week of September is our public hearing. And what you guys are wanting to do has to be advertised at least 10 calendar days. So I'm pretty sure it's August 28th that it has to be published, what we're wanting to do. So that's like, that's cut off time.

So Shane asked for 5%. Why don't we just do 5% across the board? Are you comfortable with that? Yeah, the funds are there. Do we have the funds for that?

I was going to suggest three at the most. At the most? That's what's going to be mine.

Again, this is budget. So you can say five. The state will come back and cut you, whatever. You may have, and that's not saying you're going to award five. It's just you're budgeting that.

I just want to see what CPI is this year.

I think we can do that, yes. The gist is, there's a, I don't know what I did. I said you're working. There's $105,000 of property taxes that have to be split between three funds. $105,000. That's not, I mean, for property taxes. Right now we're staying steady on that. Over $7,000 goes to the King Fire. That means you have to split the other two between General and the Motor Vehicle Highway. Now we have a lot of local income taxes right now because that's still in play. So I'm, you know, I'm just, I'm looking at all of that and, you know, how, you know, how best do you split between funds that need money with not a lot there?

What did we do last year? Was it five or?

I thought.

I think, didn't we do like more than five?

No, I thought you did three, but I didn't. I don't know if that was, I don't remember fully. I don't think it was five. For some reason, I just don't think it was five.

Can you look up on your phone here and see, kind of signal, see what the CPI inflation is for 2026?

It's 3.5%. They just had it in the news.

Is that right? Yeah. I thought it was. I don't want to do less than the CPI.

What is the current rate of inflation for this year versus August last year?

3.5% year over year through January 26th. Okay, so how about we do 4% then?

I mean, can we do 5%? In your budgeting, I think.

5% for budgeting.

I mean, I will, I will put it in there. And then, uh, when I meet with the deal, you can't do it. Well, really the way they'll let you do what they call a zero budget. If you spent every dollar you have. I'm not going to say you go below. they're they're but you know that's where i'm trying to watch things you know i'm trying to i mean you know that obviously the numbers and all that i mean what's your take on that i think we're okay right now but my concern is obviously in the future yeah well in the future well when they have to cut right when that time comes you know if we're going to have to make cuts and drastic cuts and where those drastic cuts are going to be and we can just come with to everybody and say look guys you know we

We did whatever we could while we could and now it's just we have to do, you know, but then it's Where you know, we're trying to care of people and that sort of thing, you know It's when that if that happens to it in a real negative and it's like well, we just gotta do it.

Yeah, just being right I mean just like, you know, just for what I can see here just because there's some of the stuff that I you know do When there's like an M work here on snow removal per se. So is that to clear all the town streets and Or is it just a budget number within?

Right. So some of these are padded numbers.

Okay.

So they're in case. So for instance, Steve Scott clears the streets. If for some reason he's not available or something happens and he can't do it, there's a little bit budgeted. So if we have to contract with somebody to help us one time. Gotcha. That's what that's there. It's there for padding. And there are several appropriations where we don't really use. The other thing I will say, I want to bring your attention to, is next year's an election year. I have zero idea how much an election will cost because we've not had an election since before I came to office. And I've asked the clerk, and she said, well, you have to go back to your last election.

What do you mean by for?

For municipal. So for next year, there will be a municipal election. Right. So if there are people running and there's more than the positions available that are running, we're going to have to hold an election. And for us to do it, we would have to contract with the county and ask the county. We can, not for next year, but we can work to put ourselves with the regular election schedules. If you guys wanted to move to do that, then there would never be an election cost because it would be conducted with the other elections. The legislature has talked about mandating that, but they have not done it.

There hasn't been an election since 2012.

Before that. 2011, when I came into office. I don't know if they held an election that year or not. Because nobody's run contested. If nobody runs contested, there's not been an election.

Well, I didn't go into the lending one thing to run just because I don't understand that other thing. That's what you're saying. I can't believe that that's real.

Well, they're just saying municipal election, not a national or state.

Oh, no, but nobody's ran for office. I'm the only one that ran for office in the last 20 years.

Well, I just mean, like, in other words, three council members and one court treasurer. So if you have four people running for council, you're going to have to have an election. If you have two people running for court treasurer, you're going to have to have an election.

Bottom line, your job is not highly desirable.

I guess, like, come in here. So who's up next year for all of this?

Well, I mean, how do we find out how much that is?

Well, I talked to Camden. Camden's had elections. It was less than 7,000, but I don't know. What number did I put in? Can you see it in here? I know it's in there. Oh, okay. I have 6,000. I have 7,000. I'm just aiming a little higher than what Camden said.

Surely, that's enough.

I hope so.

If you just do it on paper ballots, don't run the machine, probably.

Yeah, you've got to come in here.

It would be in here.

Yeah, it would be near the building.

But we would use their equipment. I mean, they would be overseeing the election. They did a whole thing on that, too, at the conference. In my opinion, we do not want to do it when you're conducting our own election. And the headache, that would be. It's better to pay the county to do it. So I just wanted to bring that to your attention. So I guess my question is then for Friday, you want me to change everybody's salaries to a 5%, correct? But then how do you want me to handle all the rest of this stuff? Just keep it as is?

The salary part, so Shane's salary went up.

Shane's already is included. So it's about $3,000. Yeah.

And that's the big score. So then the rest of them together would maybe be another $3,000?

It depends. I mean, you get paid part out of town, part out of the general fund and part out of the sewage. So the portion out of the general fund is what your 5% would go up.

Yeah, I think it's fine. It's just like a margin. It's just going to marginally increase the final number. just the salary, maybe?

Well, when I go up in salaries, that affects PERF. It affects your Medicare and FICA taxes. It affects that. Okay.

That's relatively close. Okay, so is that

Are you good with that? Never. Do we need to make a motion or anything for you or you're good?

No, I shouldn't even make a motion just as long as I don't have any sense that that's what you guys are wanting me to do.

Is there any other business? Make a motion to adjourn. Second. Motion second to adjourn. I'll never say that again.