City Council - Regular Meeting

On, see how it's red?

Good evening, everyone.

We will call to order the Monday, June 1st meeting of the Carmel City Council here at City Hall at 6.04 p.m. First item on the agenda is the approval. Second. Thank you. Invocation will be done this evening by Pastor Nathan Quiberu, St. Mark's United Methodist Church. Pastor?

All right, thank you. Let us take a moment of reflection and prayer as we begin this evening's meeting. God of us all, we gather tonight with a shared commitment to the city of Carmel and all who call it home. May we be guided by wisdom, integrity, and a spirit of collaboration in the decisions made in this chamber. Let our decisions be marked by mutual respect and let our focus remain steadfast on promoting the safety, prosperity, and wellbeing of our entire community. May God, may we work together To build a future that honors our growth while preserving the vibrant spirit of our city. We thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight.

Amen.

And now if our deputy mayor would please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Up next, we have one of our favorite things to do, the swearing in of new Carmel Police Department officers, Chief Drake Sterling, please.

Thank you very much. Yes, another exciting day. We get to swear in two new officers tonight. So I will tell you a little bit about them, and then if they don't mind coming up front, the mayor will swear you in. The first one is Wesley Wubina. Wesley comes to us from the Whittier Police Department in Whittier, California, where he worked as an officer for seven years. He earned his bachelor's degree in business administration from California State University. The second one is Nick Smith. Nick comes to us from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. He has over 15 years of experience and studied criminal justice at IUPUI while serving as a cadet officer. Those are our two new officers tonight.

Hello.

Okay, raise your hand. Repeat after me. I state your name.

I, Wesley Wilkman.

Do solemnly swear.

Do solemnly swear.

That I will support the Constitution of the United States.

That I will support the Constitution of the United States. And the Constitution of the state of Indiana.

And the Constitution of the state of Indiana. And that I will faithfully and impartially.

And I will faithfully and impartially.

Discharge my duties. Discharge my duties. As a police officer of the city of Carmel, Indiana. As a police officer of the city of Carmel, Indiana.

They can get in the photo, too. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Chief. Next on the agenda is 2026 National Academic World Quest Champions from Carmel High School. And at this time, I believe Dr. Anita Joshi has some words.

So it is really exciting this evening to welcome yet another group of champions from Carmel High School this evening. These four amazing students faced off against 33 other teams in two days and 10 rounds of intense questions on global topics, including, get this, nuclear policy, current affairs, global commodities, and even the FIFA World Cup. So the wide mastery of their knowledge earned them the national title for Carmel. And that also included two round trip tickets to Istanbul on Turkish Airways. And I just want to say our family recently visited Turkey and you are in for a treat. We wanted to take a moment to invite these four scholar champions up to be recognized. I'm going to invite them one by one. Please welcome Grayson Miller. We want Mayor Fincombe to present you. We're going to invite Ryan Sharp. Next is Rafa Tajver. And last but definitely not least is Lei Ying Yang.

Now, if it's possible, we're going to group with the whole council, which is coming here in the middle. We all fit in there?

Thank you again.

Congratulations.

Good work.

Good work. So I'm obviously not surprised. More champions from Carmel. But how was this part of an organization? Was it independently you saw this competition and just decided to enter? Can someone speak to that?

Thank you, counselors. Recognizing four outstanding Carmel High School students who have demonstrated tenacity and perseverance to prepare and win the state and national academic world quest competitions helps tell the story of the Indiana Council on World Affairs. For more than 70 years, the council has presented educational programs on current matters of global significance. Among these, for 22 years, Academic World Quest has sent a team of four students and their teacher to Washington, D.C. for the national competition. This year, Carmel, as an eight-time winner in the state competition, won the national academic competition as well as the logo design, which will be used this year across the country. Indiana University has been a state sponsor for six years. and this year has become a national sponsor. For this, gratitude is extended to Dr. John Chachere, Interim Provost, Executive Vice Chancellor, Indiana University Bloomington, and Carissa Garlitz, Director of Strategic Enrollment and Student Services, Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, Indiana University Bloomington. Dr. Farris, As principal of Carmel High School, thank you for your inspired, hardworking social studies teachers who foster an educational environment that encourages in-school and extracurricular success. With this national win as a quality of education factor, the US News and World Report's ranking Carmel as the best place to live in the US is further reinforced and brings favorable national visibility to Carmel as well as the state of Indiana. On behalf of the Council on World Affairs, Carmel City Council, Mayor Fincombe, and Carmel Clay Schools, we appreciate your support and encouragement. Thank you. Now I'd like to introduce the teacher. Dominic Camara who traveled to Washington DC with the students and she'll share this experience of the students competing with students from all over the country. Oh, yes, I'm I've been a volunteer actually I was in Junior Council and World Affairs in Dayton so this has been a interest throughout my career and And then I'm on the board of the Indiana Council on World Affairs, and this year was elected president, and happy to do so. Thank you.

Good evening, board members. My name is Dominique Kamara. I am a social studies teacher at Carmel High School, and I just wanted to take a brief moment to celebrate this amazing group of students. They have truly, I think it's already quite clear, they've worked very hard to bring another accolade to the city of Carmel and put us not only on the state, you know, on the national stage, even on the world stage at this point. I'm just going to tell you a little bit more, though. Clearly, you know, that they've learned a lot about everything from international policies, as you mentioned, nuclear policy, everything from Australian foreign affairs and even the complex politics that surround the coffee industry, of all things, and 10 rounds of questions, totaling over 100 questions. But what you might not know about this group of students is how independently driven they are. They are incredibly focused on their goals and a lot of what they put into this title actually came from their own efforts. They organized themselves independently. They scheduled their meetings. They made sure that they had the knowledge base. They also made their own study sessions. They developed their team strategy. This was at the height of their high school career. They're all seniors. They just graduated. They're all going on to university next year. In the midst of all of their AP finals and ending their high school, they were focused on this tournament, which is really incredible. And then one last thing that I'll mention, in true Carmel spirit, is just to recognize their competitive nature. Even while we were in Washington, D.C., they were able to develop a strategy to convince a lot of their competition that they were not, in fact, as bright as what you would have thought. They somehow convinced Hawaii's team that they didn't even know the alphabet, let alone things about international politics so you know everybody's jaw was on the floor when they took that world title so really great job guys I tried to convince them during our trip to do a nighttime tour of the national monuments and they had to remind me no Mrs. Kamara we have finals coming up we're not doing that we're gonna we will be studying you'll be focused so I hope that they will be able to finally take their much-deserved break as they travel to Istanbul to just celebrate and relax and get a chance to breathe. So really, congratulations, guys. I'm very proud of you. And truly, you make our city proud. So thank you all.

I'm so sorry to bring you back, but can you say your name one more time?

Yes, you got it. It's Dominique. Dominique Camara.

Well, Ms. Mara, the exceptional... winnings of these students is incredible, but you are so important too. And there is, and Dr. Farris, I wouldn't be where I am today without my social studies teacher that took me under his wing and helped me out, who the mayor presented an award to earlier in the year. He was on our very first city council, and he was the department head of Carmel High School for 42 years. So the impact you have, not just on these four individuals, but everybody that goes through your classroom is so important and so understated, and I thank you for what you do.

Thank you, that means so much to me.

Recognition of persons to address the council, and we only have one. Jack, welcome back, it's been a while. You know the drill.

Hi, guys. I have a lot today. I'm Jack Feldman. I'm a Carmel resident. And I think I have four things today. So starting with 12c, these are the amendments for the LPRs, the automated parking enforcement. I'm certainly very excited to see automated enforcement coming to Carmel. Um, I hope that certainly the automated enforcement can also extend to people stopped in crosswalks or people stopped in active lane of travel, uh, such as happens in Carmel. Um, because that seems to be a problem in our city. And I, I don't know if the contractor, I don't know if you've selected one. Um, I don't know if their equipment can detect that if it's just like parking spaces staying there for too long, but I would love to see that included moving on. 14B, this is new fines for right-of-way violations. We've worked on this a lot in land use, and by we, I mean you guys. It was very exciting to see this finally get included. I know I am legal. Sometimes their stuff isn't kept updated, but this is really very important, and I like to see more ticketing of people blocking our multi-use paths, more language for accessibility, including accessible routes for detours, more fines for pavement cuts. That's very exciting. Moving on to 14C. So this is for vehicle noise. I'm certainly very excited about this. Ticketing people who have, you know, are revving their engines. Oh, I'm out of time. Sorry. Ticketing people who are revving their engines at intersections or who have removed a muffler is certainly very important. Those are public nuisances in our city, and I'm certainly excited to see those being ticketed more. My last thing, I think, is this bike lane that we have out here on Range Line. It's a very lovely two-way bike lane. We removed our planters on that bike lane, I think, in March, maybe April. and they're still off despite the bike lane being open. You know, there are children that ride out there, and I guess I take somewhat of an issue with the fact that those planters were removed so soon before work was started. You know, it seems like it would have been worth keeping them out there, even if, you know, some residents consider them an eyesore. I believe that they are a safety device. You know, I think they cost, like, thousands of dollars each and they're 450 pounds each if a car hits that and there's a biker you know that biker will be protected and i i think it would have been worth keeping them out there i know a lot of them didn't sell but you know that's i guess something to fix next time which there won't be a next time thanks guys jack thank you as always

Okay, council and mayoral comments, other relations. Mayor Fincombe, deputy mayor.

Good evening, city councilors. My name is Soham Narla. I just completed fifth grade at West Clay Elementary School, and I will share tonight's deputy mayor report. First, we have some amazing news to celebrate. U.S. News and World Report has named Carmel the number one best place to live in the United States for 2026 to 2027. This is a huge honor and shows how strong and welcoming our community is. The people who live and work here make Carmel special, so congratulations to us all. Carmel was also recognized by the League of American Bicyclists with the Silver Bicycle Friendly Business designation. This means our city is being honored for making biking safer and more enjoyable. The Carmel Small Business Network is having their next meeting on June 16. This is an opportunity for local business owners to meet other business owners and learn about resources the city offers to support your business. Nicole Pence Becker will be the guest speaker at the next meeting. She runs two successful small businesses and will share her story. Finally, on behalf of the city of Carmel, we want to congratulate all Carmel students on completing another great school year. You worked hard. learned new skills, and achieved many impressive goals. Your efforts in and out of the classroom show how responsible, creative, and caring you are in your schools and community. To the class of 2026, your hard work has brought you to this important moment, and we wish you the very best as you move on to your next chapter. Your future is bright, and we're excited to see what you accomplish next.

Excellent job. Thank you. Councilor Ayers, I'm sure you have something to say.

We have another state champion.

We do.

The lacrosse team. So congratulations to, sorry, the boys lacrosse team, one state. So congratulations to them too. Another great thing for our schools and our city.

They did. They finished 2A in number one and took it all the way through the championship, beating Hamilton Southeastern. Councilor Green.

Just a quick question and then a comment for either the mayor or the president. Normally around this time of year, May, June, we get some type of financial final report from the Chris Kendall market.

They're on the agenda for June 15th.

Oh, it's on the agenda for June 15th? Thank you. Now, related to that, some of you know I have coffee and breakfast once a week with a group of men about my age, probably a little bit older, pillars both formally and informally of the community. And towards the end of April, one of them asked, what was the status of the Chris Kendall Martin investigation?

And I had no idea.

I didn't know what to tell him. I think the last time it was mentioned in the city council was in October. So I told him I'd look into it and I'd get back to him. And I went back and I reviewed some of the old council meetings, May 7th, 2025, when we voted unanimously, you know, to investigate the Chris Kendall market. It was 8-0, Council Taylor wasn't there. And, you know, listening to the, you know, the recording, you know, watching the council meeting, which I encourage everybody to do. Afterwards, I had lots of questions. I had lots of issues. I didn't think we should be investigating, but I voted for the investigation because I thought it was important, along with the rest of my city councilors. And even after that immediate vote, I was asked by the city councilor sitting right next to me. She said she was surprised I voted for the investigation and wanted to know why. And a couple days later, I got a phone call from a reporter we all know asking, She was curious why, because it sounded like I was against the investigation. And I told them both, and I felt strongly that it was the testimony from my fellow counselors about how important public trust and just making sure everything's transparent was really important. And regardless if I felt the investigation wasn't necessary, In the end, there are people in the community who are worried. The public trust was being questioned. And I thought it was incredibly important to be transparent. And I encourage everybody to watch that May 7, 2025 city council meeting. About 60 days later, July 7, 2025, we voted overwhelmingly to hire the Denton law firm to investigate both the executive branch and the legislative branch on July 7, 2025. And again, public trust. Everything being completely transparent was really important to the council. That was July 7th, 2025. I met with two Denton attorneys on July 21st for over two hours and went through everything with them as far as I knew. The month of August went by, September went by, and then October 20th, 2025, about 90 days after I met with the Denton attorneys for over two hours, Hadn't heard anything. And that was the first and last time the Chris Kindlemark investigation ever came up in a council meeting, October 20th, 2025. And I encourage everybody to listen to May 7th, listen to July 7th as to why we were investigating, how important it was for the public trust and transparency. And then October 20th, 2025 was the first and last time it was ever even brought up during the city council meeting. And when I brought that up... And a really long meeting, and if anybody wants to watch that meeting, you can fast forward about two-thirds of the way through. That was the budget hearing. And when we got to the city's operating budget during the city council's discussion of that, there were questions about the city's legal budget and about the role of the city attorney to refresh everybody's recollection. And I brought up the Chris Kennel Market investigation and kind of what was going on with the legal fees, what was going on. And again, the record speaks for itself. There's not to exceed in the contract what does. And all the claims are public, so I should be checking the claims. So I took that to heart. That was October 20th, 2025. November went by, December went by, January, February, March, April. And then in April, towards the end of April, I was asked by You know, people who bleed blue and gold, you know, who've lived here their whole lives, asked me what was going on, and I had no idea. So I went back and I checked the claims for April, March, and February. I couldn't find anything. So in full transparency, I called the city clerk and President Snyder to ask kind of what was going on. And they were completely on it, you know, to their credit. They were all over it. They said a few months earlier the attorneys from Denton sent an invoice blowing right through them not to exceed $125,000. So then I asked, all right, that's great, but what is going on if we're not paying attorneys? Normally attorneys don't do a lot if they're not getting paid. And Counselor Snyder, to his credit, was pushing them to get a final report, and I was told the final report is going to be coming soon. So to those individuals, to anybody else in the public who has questions about the status of the Chris Kenna Market investigation, the report will be coming. I don't know if there's going to be a slight delay. I know the mayor's office received a very large public records request and just sent four 5,000 documents to be reviewed by the attorneys, which I think in part due diligence will review all four 5,000 documents before issuing a final report. But I just wanted to assure everybody the Chris Kennemark investigation report is coming. And, you know, within the next month or so. And I'm looking forward to getting that behind us.

Thank you. Thank you for bringing that up, all of this up. One thing I just want to clarify, blew through the not to exceed that was rectified. So they did not, they have not spent any money more than what was agreed upon. And not being an attorney, I don't know what to say or not to say. But in one of the meetings, we did unanimously select somebody to manage this. And I think transparency, to your point, has been the primary factor of all of this. And part of that has been not interfering. I did get some pressure from fellow counselors towards the end of last year, beginning of this year, to what is going on. I waited as not to interfere. Finally, I did ask the person that's been running point on this. They've, to my knowledge, have had conversations. I don't want to put this individual on the spot. If they'd like to speak, we all nominated one person to speak for us on this. If you want to speak tonight, great, but don't feel like you have to because part of this whole process was also not interfering with the process, but up to you.

Happy to give an update. We have made a request back to the city based on all the information and the discussions that have happened. Thank you, Tony, for sharing more information tonight about relationships and things that are occurring at the city. Those are new things that are important to hear and get into the record. But there are there should be a report coming out in the near future. I think they have all the information they need to start compiling and pulling together what that looks like. And to echo the sentiment, this was something that the city undertook because of information that came through through the Affiliate Review Committee, which was something that was spun up to get information about how things were handled in the transition. So the premise of doing that right, the premise of bringing in a third party that is exceptionally skilled at doing things like this and taking it out of our potentially highly political hands, as these things tend to happen in this public space, was what we did. So the idea of ensuring that they have the room, the expertise, the knowledge, the access to information, The feedback from us all as counselors, the feedback that has continued to come in, including conversations that I have had with, I think, each and every one of you, including Counselor Green throughout that timeline that he shared to give updates as they came through, has been occurring. So if you do have questions, please feel free to forward them. If you have information, please continue to forward that as well. And we will get a response and an answer back from the third party independent law firm that we hired to do this. When you negotiate a contract with attorneys and you put a not to exceed and you let them know what that means, they understand it and they do continue to do the work, specifically if they're following their ethical determinations and needs that they have to follow. So the work is continuing. We should be close. It all depends on that final response of documents and where we are with that and what they have gleaned from the conversations and discussions they've had. So again, happy to give updates at any point in time. trying to keep it objective and out of the realm of the political landscape to the best of my ability.

Thank you, Councillor Locke, and thank you, Councillor Green, for bringing it up. They are important questions. They're lingering, and I think it's been a long time. I do want to reiterate that former President Austin made the commitment not to speak to Denton's unless it was billing-related, and I know he held that up. I have spoken to Denton's one time this calendar year that was about the invoicing and asked for a general update. They gave me very brief. So I've upheld, I know Councillor Austin and I upheld our commitment to stay out of it. But to your point, sounds like Councillor Locke's on it and hopefully will bring it to a conclusion however it needs to come. without politicizing it. So I understand where your group's coming from. I think we've all heard it. I think now we're so deep into it, we would love it to be over, frankly. But we made a commitment, and we also said Council of Lockwood, run point.

Thanks for bringing this up. I wanted to bring this up because it was kind of related, but I want to make sure none of this is hopefully coming off as negative or this or that. But we've got an ordinance that's on its 23rd reading that's kind of related to this, the nonprofit organizations. When the report comes up, could we decide whether we're going to do something with this or not? At least, I understand maybe the report will reflect it, but at least when we get the report, we can decide, do we want to do something here? And if so, let's do it. If not, let's just remove it from the agenda.

You know, the mayor asked me about that, and I just wanted to break a record. Let's get to 50.

No, but that's it. I think there was one that was more than that. There was one last term that was like, God, it was like two years.

So. Don't challenge me, I will get there. But to your point, I do think that, yes, the impetus for this ordinance that remains in committee indefinitely did have to do with just the makeup of some of our non-for-profits, not just Chris Gundelmar, but just making sure that institutions receiving public funds had some legislative oversight or just oversight in general, I believe was, as I recall, 23 readings ago. Oh, I'm not being critical. I'm just saying, gently, maybe that would be a good time. You're not the only one bringing it up. Frankly, I'm tired of skipping over it. And same thing with B, and I think B, under old business, is something that we need to have a conversation about as well, and whether or not maybe this does get brought up BEEN TALKED ABOUT. I DO FEEL STRONGLY THIS IS THE PEOPLE'S BUILDING BUT THERE ARE ALSO PRACTICAL AND LOGISTICAL CONSIDERATIONS TO BE MADE.

NEW SPEAKER THANK YOU, PRESIDENT SNYDER. I DID WANT TO MENTION THE MAYOR'S ADVISORY COMMISSION ON SENIOR LIVING HAD OUR MEETING ON MAY 27. WE HAVE COMMISSIONER HERE, NOMI PARADISE, THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING. The commission received the results of the community assessment that's part of the AARP age-friendly community designation process. Thank you to the mayor for creating this commission and Dr. Bustani and his professional research team at the IU School of Medicine. They conducted a thorough assessment that otherwise would have cost a lot of money to conduct. The next steps is the committee, the commission will be working with the mayor and the mayor's team on developing the action plan. We will then file our application with AARP, finalize our application with AARP and expect the designation of an age-friendly community. That is all.

Thank you, Councillor Taylor.

Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to also update the community that the Mayor's Advisory Commission on Housing met on May 29th. And we had the UDO scan performed by Optikos, which was part of the delivery service that they are providing for the city. And it was very exciting. I would encourage you to go and watch the video to learn a little bit more about it. We have our final piece of the puzzle that is going to be done on June 11th. We will meet again. at 9 a.m. here in City Council Chambers, where they will present site selections, and these are all hypothetical. Again, I will say, if you see your address or an address you own with something on it, it's not happening. It's just a placeholder, basically. So I would encourage everybody to come or listen to the meeting, watch it live. And again, June 11th, 9 a.m. here in City Council Chambers. Next steps for us are to hopefully put some recommendations forward after digesting all the information and bringing it to city council.

Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Menard. Anybody else? You're about to. So leading the way, it was announced today that Westfield now has announced their advisory on military affairs. So they can continue to be behind us, but it's a very great thing. I'm glad we were way ahead of them. But they did also, and I was hoping we could too, they're really blasting this function that's coming up that Tony will be speaking at. Since I don't have the details right in front of me, can you bring that up and maybe we can do something about it?

It's an event on June 26 at the VFW, where a number of individuals will be former military, will be giving their stories. you know, through kind of an educational light, I think Mayor Willis will be one of them.

And I'm reading here that his PowerPoint presentation is quite impressive, so please don't let us down.

Councilor Green, forgive me, it's about veterans' mental health issues primarily is this event. Or is that just an element of it?

This is just stories through kind of an educational perspective, how technology's changed, different types of stories from veterans, nothing related to mental health.

And that's Friday the 26th? Because there is another event on the 27th. This is what I was asking. Veterans Mental Health event at 3 o'clock at the BFW.

No, this is two to four on Friday.

Two in the same week, all to honor our veterans. So that's why I just wanted to clarify. We're talking about the same event, if it was different. So thank you for that.

Excellent. Thank you, Mayor, for creating the commission. And I do hope that other communities follow suit. It's very important, as you recognized. Anything else? Yes, sir.

I just wanted to make a quick statement. There's a lot of stuff happening. We live in a very complex world. And even the exchange you just saw a little is something from the past that's ongoing. It's part of the administration of government. It's really, really important. But I wanted to say, just in the general spirit of June and where we are as people, that the nuclear community of Carmel is each and every single one of you, no matter what. And you're seen and you're heard, and we're so proud, and we're so proud that you're here. We are grateful to celebrate where you're from, your culture, your lifestyle, everything. And I say that because in times when life gets hard or things feel weird, Know that there are people out there, even if they sit on a dais and talk into a microphone and get real consequential on the minutia of government, that we're here, we care, and we will always fight to ensure that love wins.

Thank you, Councillor Locke. I'm going to do this under comments, Jessica, because I want to clear this up before we get to it. But I did receive an email just now from our CFO saying that a notice had been posted. And I thought about an appropriation. And I thought that you said earlier that it was too late. I just want to make sure we're clear. To change, to put something new out. It means we'll be ready to go in the 15th. And you're good with that. Just wanna make sure before we got there and in the agenda. Okay, moving on. Consent agenda, approval of minutes. May 18th, 2026, regular meeting. Move for approval. Thank you. Claims. General claims in the amount of $5,529,826.84. And purchase car, $39,222.35. Retirement, $136,972.44. Move for approval of claims. Second. Meryl Vitos, there are none. Committee reports. Dr. Joshi, land use and special studies.

Yes, so land use met last on Wednesday the 20th, and we discussed at length the ordinance that you're about to hear later in this meeting, Ordinance D-282626, looking at right-of-way disturbances permitting maintenance, restoration requirements, and penalties. So we will discuss that later, but that was passed Back to council with a positive recommendation. And sorry, our next meeting is on Wednesday at 5.30 at the Carmel Library.

Can you restate the ordinance real quick? Sorry.

I believe it has now been put up as ordinance D2826-26. And Sergey, you can correct me if I'm wrong on that, but I believe that is the correct number of the ordinance.

Okay, I just want to clarify, this has been worked on for a very long time, but I believe it's new business tonight. Thank you. Which will be important when we get there. Okay, before I go to finance, one thing I want to say is because it looks like some of this really heavy stuff sometimes gets decided, Up here, there are hours and hours and hours and lots of complications thrown in the mix at the various committee meetings. Mostly my fault, I really complicated Chairman Taylor's committee and finance with a whole slew of stuff, and it's gonna get a little tricky tonight, but I have full faith that Councilor Taylor's gonna be able to underline this. and explain it very coherently. So as we move through both his report and then through some of the ordinances, bear with us and if there are questions or something's not clear, please just raise your hand and Councilor Taylor can unwind it further because there are some nuances here. Councilor Taylor.

Thank you, President Snyder. The Finance Committee met on May 20th and June 1st, today at 4.30 p.m. Item C, D, G, H, I, J. I'm not saying the whole alphabet, I promise. We're returned from the Finance Committee unanimously with a positive recommendation to the full City Council. Item E and Item F. So first we will address Item F. This is to, as stated on the agenda, Ordinance D-2824-26, says amends Article IV, Section 2-128, Criminal City Code to establish a non-reverting city assets and repair maintenance fund. There was a lot of discussion about creating a fund specifically for and managing insurance proceeds and creating a fund for long term capital asset funding and maintenance. There was a lot of discussion related to this item at the council meeting this evening, also some recommendations from President Snyder on verbiage. That ordinance was amended to include that language, also presented by Zach Jackson, City of Carmel CFO. And the committee also amended language and then also amended a change to the name of the fund to Public Infrastructure Insurance Recovery Fund. Item F did pass. Finance Committee unanimously as amended with a positive recommendation to the city council. Item K is a resolution 5-18-26-05. It's to actually transfer monies from the general fund related to the insurance claim on the 106th Street Bridge. to the newly named Fund 927, the Public Infrastructure Insurance Recovery Fund. Since the name of the fund was changed and to maintain full transparency, Item E, Ordinance D-2823-26, which is the appropriation ordinance which requires a 14 day public notice. That item is being held because we decided that, and speaking with legal, that though this met proper notice, the name's being changed. And for full transparency and ensure the public's aware of what we're talking about, that appropriation ordinance will be re-noticed and was noticed today. So it'll be on our June, our next council meeting agenda. The goal of the committee is to, one, once we finalize, the city finalizes its assessment and capital asset maintenance and repairs, that a capital asset maintenance repairs fund that will be established so as projected repairs are needed to be made each year, that fund will be funded and tracked. This is a best practice that's been adopted from the way that we operate at Carmel Clay Parks. Many of us talked for many years about that we have to be able to fund these long-term capital asset maintenance and repairs. Then to also address the issue to where staff can take advantage of using insurance funds because we will have to fund items that are that are damaged or repaired to where there would be an insurance claim many times well before we ever receive the insurance funding. So that's the reason for the rename. And then there'll be another fund that's being created that will come on your agenda at the next meeting that addresses the long-term capital asset repairs and maintenance. The next meeting for the Finance Committee will be on June 19th at 5.30 p.m. Sorry, June 9th at 5.30 p.m. Councilor Taylor, can I confirm one thing?

You said that the item E will be on the next agenda. Jessica, correct me if I'm wrong, we might have a problem with the lead time for publication. Is that true?

This is an item that is actually publicly noticed on Gateway through the DLGF. So 14 days, if that's updated today, then we're good. We're good. OK. It's not in the current. I just wanted to confirm that. Thank you. Yep.

Yep. Zach sent an email while we were at the dais today. His staff member was able to notice it today.

Same question I had. You just presented it more eloquently. Thank you. I know that's a lot. There's a lot to digest here, but it all spun out of a really good place. It was one idea, and Councilor Taylor and I heard the same thing but went in different directions and then finally realized like, no, this is wonderful. Let's not try to mash two good ideas into something that isn't as effective. So that's why there's a lot of moving pieces within this. Thank you for the reports. Other reports, the only thing on the docket for this evening was CRC. Mr. Mistekski is having an emergency procedure, so we wish him the best of luck. There'll be no CRC presentation this evening. Old business, as discussed, the 23rd and 13th, A and B, are still in committee. C, second reading of Ordinance D-2820-26, Ordinance of the Common Council of the City of Carmel, Indiana, amending Chapter 3, Article 2, Section... 3-58 and Chapter 8, Article 5, Section 8-45 of the Carmel City Code, sponsors Menard, Taylor, and Worrell, does return from the Finance Committee. Counselor Taylor.

This returns. There was a lot of discussion, and Sergeant Hasey is here to answer any questions as well. We reviewed the ordinance, the reasons, the new schedule. I guess it would be infraction schedule. Schedule. cost and this was passed unanimously with a positive recommendation returning from Finance Committee.

Thank you. I would like to hear from Mr. Hastings, but Sergey can you also explain because we we went round and round about violations and then you briefed us on something I had never heard of about how violations went through something. I just would like to understand The difference between the two. Yeah.

So this, and I don't have a citation in front of me. I don't remember the top of my head from a state code. So this particular type of violation is administered by OVB. So... What is that? That is what you... Yeah, it's a violation bureau that we created. So a city clerk is essentially a body that administers it. And as of right now, the city clerk does not have ability to designate administration of violations to any other party but the city clerk. So that's what this ordinance does as well, so that we can have administration by designees, essentially. In this case, it will be police department with whatever software we decide to purchase. I think there's a... A contract pending in front of VPW, pending resolution here. So that's what this ordinance essentially does.

I also, Sergey, I forgot to mention that during our committee meeting, there was a discussion around handicap parking. When we reviewed the handicap parking fines, we felt that they were extremely low. And there was a few items added that's in your packet highlighted in green. to change the sections, in particular line 67, section 3 item, it's like 3 here, a vehicle that is unlawfully parked in a properly marked handicapped parking space in violation of city code H-50 of the city code shall be issued a ticket subject to a $150 fine for the first violation and a fine subject to the general penalties provided for violations of provisions of Article 5 of this chapter for each subsequent violation in the calendar year. So I forgot to mention that this ordinance was returned from the Finance Committee without one particular amendment.

So let's move to amend, and then Mr. Hastings can speak on behalf of the Police Department.

If somebody would entertain that motion. I'll make a motion to amend as previously stated. Motion is amended.

Sir. Thanks for having me. My name is Sergeant Hasey with the Carmel Police Department. I'm the sergeant over our traffic unit. I've been the one that's been heading up this initiative for quite some time. We just asked for your vote on this tonight to continue moving things forward with our enforcement. objective we've listened to the community for a long time about some of the things that we've been lacking on as far as our abilities to enforce three-hour parking and other time parking spots as well as like it was brought up earlier have just more dedicated eyes to looking for those types of parking violations someone who can dedicate their time to keeping things turning over in our downtown area around the high school is where we're going to start this initiative and then we're really excited to be able to use this this equipment and software to do that efficiently and effectively and We've researched this for a long time, and we think that this is the best option for us moving forward. And I welcome any questions you might have for me and appreciate your support.

This is for my fellow committee members on finance. I thought in the ordinance we had said that it was a notice to appear which would have moved for the handicap parking. Did I misunderstand that? that we are moving the parking for handicap violations. Did I miss that? Yeah, moving it up out of, from, oh.

Well, we changed the fine to $150, but also then.

Moving a notice to appear.

Yeah, there was a notice to appear. I didn't see that language. But that's, Sergey, could you, I wish Benjamin was here because he's the one who worked on it with us. I believe that's probably where it says provided for violations of provisions of Article 5 of this chapter.

I just wanted to be sure.

There's a possibility that it was kicked out of OVB. So OVB of a low-level offenses is a fines for violations of city ordinances. So they go through the Bureau first, and then if individuals or entities decide not to comply with the fine, then it might escalate to the court proceedings. Perhaps the idea there was to increase the fine so it goes directly to a court proceedings as a different type of violation. Because perhaps that was the intent. Because otherwise, it still will be within the OAB.

Tony, I thought that Jeff, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought we had said there was notice to appear And it would go directly to the courts. Did I miss that?

I could not attend that meeting, so it's Greek to me. Oh, that's right.

I'm sorry.

Rich and Tony. That is the discussion, but we also discussed it. That still is the case, but we set the first-time violation at 150. All right.

And if the first violation is at 150, you're still within the OVB, within that... great parameters. So you should be fine.

So on the, and I'm kind of speaking from emails I've received on the topic, because there's a lot of, there's concern about data storage and that kind of thing. One of the biggest questions is, is this exclusive for CPD? Any data collected, any License plate read, is it exclusive to CPD? And what are the controls to keep CPD from sharing it with other entities?

Yes, it is going to be kept for CPD use. The second part of your question, I do not have the answer for. I'm not 100%. Benjamin spoke about this a little bit last time. He's a little more versed in the legality of how that stuff is kept. But the data will be for our use.

And I assume, and I don't mean this in a bad way, but somebody is selling other sorts of demographic data that's not related to what you're collecting.

So what we're collecting is just the license plate number, and then it's going to be used to basically start a timer within the system. Your license plate will also be your permit. So let's say you live around the high school. You've got a resident. You're a resident around the high school. You can register your vehicle. It will come to us. The CPD will verify by your registration that you do actually have that vehicle registered to you at that address. So now your license plate becomes your permit. So we will use that for our internal databases just for... keeping of where the vehicle was scanned for the timer purposes. So this company will build out the software for us. So the spots will be GPS coordinated. So whenever we scan a plate, the software will know based on those coordinates, say this is one hour spot, two hour spot, three hour spot, 15 minute spot, and it'll start a timer. So we just continually just scan to just If we scan that plate again in the same spot, then we'll know that the violation has been met. Plus, having these part-time parking enforcement officers in the area, we'll also be able to dive a little deeper into some of the other stopping standing parking issues that we've got. People pulling onto the multi-use path or whatever the case may be, to make a quick delivery. Those types of lifestyle situations that interfere with the daily public, that's something that we're looking to address as well by having dedicated resources downtown to look at parking on a more regular basis.

So prior to this, we've done a lot of work on multi-use path and fractions and I think they're pretty heavy. How does one differentiate? Do we just go with the stronger penalty or can they Double team them? Like, what's the...

So, those types of violations for the multi-use path, we wouldn't really use this tool for that. Because that's just, if we see it and it's on the path, we take enforcement action immediately. This is something that we have to be able to pinpoint efficiently. We just, we can't do it right now without sitting an officer behind a car for three hours. So... As once we can get the however you guys decide to go forward with the permitting system with the multi-use path violations and the fines, I know there's been a lot of discussions amongst you guys about that. That's something that just officers on roving district patrol will keep an eye out for as well. So this is going to be more targeted towards those business owners and the residents in downtown area that really need that turnover of the three-hour spots to be able to effectively run their businesses and get people to come in and out and spend their money and enjoy what we've got to offer here in Carmel.

One of the things that, go ahead, Councilor Taylor.

Just real quick, the item that creates this, sends this directly to the jurisdiction of the court is line 59, excluding tickets under 8-50 that shall be under the jurisdiction of the Carmel City Court.

Thank you. Matt, just, sorry, sorry.

Councilor Taylor. Fine.

Councilor Snyder. I did receive a couple of emails about that specific question, and Chief Sterling responded to it. I'm happy to share his information or share it with you offline, publicly.

If it's relevant to the public.

It's relevant.

But those questions were more regarding to the flock camera system we're already using, so it was a separate issue than the LVRs, which uses similar technology. I think the core of a lot of the questions are is that in order to get the timing in place for the bond refunding, we had to hold a committee meeting the same evening that land use was also meeting. So let's, Zach, I think it would be, Sergeant Acy, I think it'd be helpful if you start from the beginning just to rehash Where did this derive from, derived from the parking study, how you guys went about it, generally the system that you're going to use, and the features and benefits of it, which is driving why this ordinance needs to allow the clerk to designate other people for this matter.

And to add to this, one of the great positives, How do you see this unrolling in a larger way? And one of the things that, well, a lot of us have sat in people's living rooms that live in the urban core and the whole neighborhood parking permit and how that might expand, how they apply, what are the boundaries, that kind of thing. And then also the cost recovery, because that was one of the biggest questions was there was a number thrown out that was, well, outrageously higher than anything the city's ever collected before. And I just want to help reconcile that a little bit.

Sure. So this started at the bare bones level when We were listening to you guys reaching out to us from your constituents with concerns about people overstaying in the time parking areas downtown in front of our businesses, in front of some of the multi-use areas in downtown, and then also some of the areas around the high school where it's difficult for one or two officers to enforce a 500 or 600 car problem on pickups and drop-offs. We got that ordinance passed. We do go out there. We do do enforcement. It's difficult to do it on the scale that we need to be able to do that. So we started looking at what types of options were out there. And then working with engineering, once we finally got the parking study back, it was actually the recommendation of the parking study to look at an LPR enforcement type system. which is the direction we were leaning anyway. We looked at some other AI-based things and just the way that our downtown is built with the tree canopies and things like that, the existing infrastructure of the fiber and the power downtown. We worked with some of the IT folks and it wasn't a feasible option to add more to the pre-existing structures, so we had to look at some other alternatives. We found this license plate reader system. It's essentially the industry standard. It's used just about everywhere where parking enforcement is taking place. So I know Indiana University on their campus, they use LPR, they also use some of the other techniques that I discussed, but this is an efficient way to do it. So we started looking at some options versus us running it in-house or contracting it out. So we looked at kind of like the Denison parking model, like what a Noblesville would use. They completely have outsourced the entire operation. That's not what was going to fit for us. We want to be able to use this as an educational tool as well as be able to offset our costs by generating whatever the ticket revenue would be. I know there was some discussion about increasing our fines because I've been here 17 years, and the fine's been $25 since I've been here. I think it's time that we start looking at increasing that, and this would be the perfect time to do it. So I know there were some discussions about that as well. But essentially what this is going to do is we've been holding interviews. We had a lot of interest, over 105 applicants for two part-time parking enforcement officers. So we're looking at trying to get them up to 28 hours per week each. And then I'm going to sit down with them and work out scheduling based on availability. Obviously, our important times, Monday through Saturday, whenever businesses are thriving. Wrong. 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., 9 p.m. are what we're going to be trying to stagger those hours to get as much coverage as we can with the two part-time folks. We have a vehicle identified that's already in our fleet that we're going to repurpose for... this opportunity. So the cameras will mount to the exterior of the vehicle. It will be marked like our current community service officers. It's got their community service officer patch on the side. And then it'll say something to the tune of parking enforcement. We haven't dove that far into the details yet, but it's going to be a hybrid Ford Explorer that we've already got in our fleets, low miles, in good shape. That's going to be a shared vehicle between the two part-time parking enforcement officers. The goal here is to not have them working at the same time so we can maximize coverage. We also are getting part of the suite of the equipment that we're looking at is three handheld LPR units as well. So it's a nice day. My model is going to be I encourage them to go out, walk, communicate with our business owners, talk to them. What are they hearing? What are they seeing? What are the problem areas? be involved in the community from the parking enforcement standpoint and education. So what we're looking at trying to do with this is to change behavior. Like I said, we want to encourage people to come and spend time downtown. It's hard to do when it's hard to find a parking space right in front of your favorite restaurant because somebody's parked there all day. So this is going to give us the opportunity to do that. The handheld units will talk to the car units. So if, for instance, we've got a slow day and an officer wants to go and walk the George District is what we call it. It's our downtown area that we have dedicated resources down there. They can take a handheld unit and scan a license plate. Those will still talk to each other. The in-car system and the handheld system all runs the same software. It runs off of an Android tablet. And then once either in the car or in the vehicle, everything's done electronically. So if a violation is observed, the enforcement officer will get a notification on the computer. Hey, this vehicle's been here for four hours. This is a three-hour targeted spot. You can take enforcement action. And there's going to be officer discretion on what that looks like. If they feel like a warning's necessitated, Great, if they feel like a ticket's needed, they can print off a ticket right there, leave that copy on the vehicle's windshield. Then where this specific portion comes into play, this account, the main reason why we looked at this system is the software side of it. They handle, they passport the company that we're asking for approval to make an authorized account. Passport handles all of the payment processing on their end, so it minimizes the manpower involvement from the police department end. It streamlines this process. tremendously. So essentially what will happen is when someone gets a ticket, they can scan a QR code that will take them to Passport's website. They can pay Passport. Passport gets the money. And then we've decided on a monthly basis to get payment remitted from Passport minus whatever fees that we would owe them. So they would take the fees that we owe them, and it's going to vary by month depending on what the violation load looks like. But they would take their fees out of whatever generated revenue comes in and then would remit the difference to us if it's in the positive or if we still have to pay for using their services. If we didn't have a bunch of tickets that month, then we would have to work out paying the difference on whatever the service costs would be. If somebody wishes to, so they can admit the violation or they can choose to deny the violation. If that's the case, we will, on the police department, and we will then, and Benjamin explained this pretty well at the finance committee, but essentially... We will then trigger that into our e-ticket system that all of the police officers use that goes into the court system. So this is, right now, it's an administrative fine, the way that it's set up with Passport. The administrative fine would then go to Passport, and then they would give us the money back. Once they choose to have it adjudicated, if they want to go see the judge and have their day in court, which is fine, we're going to generate that ticket into Passport. e-ticket, which is then going to generate it into the court system. Then that will give them a court date, but it will also incur court costs because those are set by the state. So we will have notification on, and we're going to work together on what the packet is going to look like, the trifold that we're going to put with the ticket on all the information on where they can pay, how they can pay, what they can do if they don't want to pay, what their options are. And then from that point, it will generate it into the court system. and then it will give them a court date and then they can go to court just like they would on any other speeding ticket or whatever the case would be and have that adjudicated in front of the judge. So that's kind of the 30,000 foot view of what this looks like and how we got to this point.

So I have a question. So I support parking enforcement, absolutely. But I just have a question. So I park in a spot that's a three hour spot. I don't park more than three hours. I don't commit a parking violation. My license plate is being scanned. Where is that data going? I didn't commit.

It stays within passport system. So it's not like it goes to a cloud or anything. It keeps the information within the software to be checked against all the currently scanned plates.

And how long is that data? I do not know. So there's data of where I go. and where I've been, even if I didn't commit a parking violation, could someone access that for other police resources? You're doing an investigation, you wanna know where somebody is at some time, is that accessible?

My understanding is within the police department, we can use that information like we would with the flock information, but this is different than the flock information because the flock information can be shared amongst all the other all the other agencies that participate in FLOC. But my understanding is that this is held within our system and our account, and it's checked against each other every time the plates are ran based on the location.

Okay, so it can be... would be used for more than just parking enforcement.

Yeah, so if, yeah, if we were scanning plates and our detectives needed to, like, hey, was this car, it happened to be scanned in Carmel last night by parking enforcement.

There's a bar fight between two people and someone says, I wasn't at that bar, you can say, well, you, we can see that you were there because of the parking spot.

Yeah, because you were parked in the parking, yes, yes. And it takes a picture of the license plate as well, or it takes a picture of the car from, the cameras are going to be mounted Usually they're on the top corners of the vehicle and then maybe one down on the front just to get multiple different angles to be able to accurately scan the plate. But all of this has to be double-checked by a human before the ticket is written. So whenever the violation comes up, our parking enforcement officer is going to look at the first scan, the second scan, verify the plate's correct, and verify that it is the same vehicle, it's in the same spot, the coordinates match, before enforcement action is taken.

and this data can only be accessed by Carmel Police officers?

It's my understanding that yes, this data will be held within our Carmel Police Department account with Passport. That's my understanding. I forgot to answer your question about permitting. So for merchant parking, for instance, let's say you're Delhi downtown, you've got six employees and you want to be able to have them park in the merchant parking spots. Now you would have a representative from your company would come to the police department, have to bring all the registrations, documentation that this person works for you and that this is the vehicle that you want, and then we give you a little hang tag. The way that this would work is you would identify an agent from your company. You would get an account on Passport that we would be the overseeing body of that. So your deli, you go online, you have all of the plates of the vehicles that you want registered. That comes to us. You can upload a photo of the registration. We verify that that is the registration for that car. And then now we approve the plates as registered. merchants that are approved to be parking in relation to your company, and now your license plate is your permit. So whenever the cars or the handhelds are going around scanning plates, if your vehicle is scanned in one of those merchant parking areas and you are an authorized merchant parker based on the requirements that you've met and been authorized, then you're exempt from those time limits in those certain spots, like are set up now for merchant parking. Same thing goes with residential parking. So the resident will be able to create an account on Passport to upload their photos of their registration and their vehicles. So then we at the records department or at the police department, we confirm that, yes, this is your vehicle. Yes, it belongs to you and it's registered to you and it's gonna be at your house. Your license plate then becomes your permit for residential parking. Same thing goes with visitor parking. So if you've got visitors that come to your house and you need three parking permits, you can submit that information. Then you could get the authorized visitor permits for the designated time per ordinance. I can't remember exactly what it is, but it would be designated for that certain time limit based on when you get the vehicle and put it into the guest software.

So is this open to public records request?

I do not know. Benjamin would be the good one to answer that. I'm not sure.

Say somebody, I don't even live in this area, but I'm saying, hey, who's been at so-and-so's house? Could I get a public records request to find out who's been parking at those things?

So if this database will be maintained by the city, then it will be subject to public documents requests. Absolutely. It doesn't mean that these documents will be produced. There are several exceptions, quite a few exceptions actually, for personal information for what can be released. So that would be reviewed by our office. We have a designated attorney that does all of those requests. So, but again, if it is maintained by the city, or the city has control over it, it will be subject to...

So someone could request, I want everywhere that so-and-so has been.

It would be denied for two blocks.

I hope so.

So again, there has to be a very specific request. A person already would have to have quite a bit of information to narrow it down for us to even respond to it. So it has to be... Reasonably particular, that's a standard.

I think one discussion we had at finance committee which is very, very important and the reason why you and your team have recommended keeping this in house versus hiring a denison or a third party provider to do the ticketing is because the goal of this is not to create a windfall of parking violation revenue. The goal of this is to change behaviors, so as the study pointed out, that we have proper churn on our on-street parking and to change behavior to alleviate some of the parking problems we have. And then also to create efficiencies right now for those who want a residential permit, if we pass an ordinance that requires only residential permit parking on a street. Those people now, they have to come, which they didn't even know how to do it, many of them, when we've passed this, they have to come to the Carmel PD public records, submit all this stuff in person, wait a period of time, then get a permit issued to them. Now this is so much easier for our residences and our businesses and our central core to be able to get their permit, apply for it online, get it in place and not have to worry about a little sticker or tag they have in their car or not, their license plate is in. And we did have some questions about flock and privacy. And you can't enter into the city of Carmel really, I don't believe, without your license plate being read by a flock camera. And that's a standard practice. It's used all over. These LPRs are used all over central Indiana, by Denison and by others. It's just we want to do it the Carmel way versus the Denison or other way that's driven, that money is the motivating factor. Our motivating factor is changing behaviors, not creating a stream of revenue.

Yes, thank you for clarifying that.

And I'm sorry, I would have had people at finance ask this question, but I didn't think about it until tonight. The first edit to 358, which is the violations bureau, and this might be a legal question, but is a broad expansion of the ability to designate for all of the purposes of that bureau to third parties. And I guess I would love to kind of dig in and ensure I understand when we say appointed agents and designees and or designees. It's a broad category. It could be really anything. And based on the conversation tonight, it sounds like we've got a contractor set up that's going to go both sides. One is the enforcement side with the technology for collection of the LPR. The second is the financial side, where they're collecting the payments and remittance of payments, which is, to me, the clerk side. So wondering, as we look at the contract and thinking about it, and I sent Benjamin and Sam just a request. I would love to kind of look at that language as we get it perfected and can share it. Is this a dual contract where the clerk who with that statutory authority which is derived by state law then put into our code manages and owns this or is this something that's being transferred to the police and then follow up to that again because it's a broad expansion for all the purposes of that violations bureau? Is it Should we narrow it to the purposes of just this parking enforcement at this point in time, or are we comfortable with the impact it will have on clerk operations for all the other violations that fit under that scope?

Yeah, I think it's up to you at this point whether or not to expand it beyond the purposes of this particular ordinance. But you're right. The designee would be the police officer who will be enforcing it and potentially a passport who will be administering the payment and processing side. I will make sure to review the contract that's pending in front of BPW to make sure that we align with the clerk. As you indicated, Councilor Locke, it is not due until Wednesday if this body passes this ordinance or next time if you decide to table it or send it to committee. But generally speaking, that amendment was designed for this ordinance. But you're right, it will expand it for other purposes as well. So it is an open-ended designation by the clerk to enforce ordinance violations, to designate a third party, essentially.

Sir? Again, I'm not offering up opinions. I'm just repeating some questions. And the thing about this and why there's so much deliberation committee in here is it really kind of dictates the path we're going to go. Is it going to be this very efficient way that some people think is a slam dunk? And then there are other people that think this is just a lot of technology. Is there any, like the flock system that is there, you can't get past it, you go through it coming into Carmel. But now we're talking about the potential To counselor Austin's point of really building a case against somebody before they've done something wrong And that's why I'm gonna really need to know how long data is stored because Otherwise somebody could do something and all of a sudden you've got a pre-built case of every spot They've ever been and that to me is guilty before proven innocent and then when reading these plates, does anything else trigger? If you've got a warrant, does it trigger it? Nothing. So people that have a suspended license, I mean, I'm not condoning this, I'm just trying to understand the scope of, it's purely parking.

Correct.

So, yeah, I can jump in on that real quick. Yes, so these part-time parking enforcement officers are not going to be police officers. They're not going to have the ability to run a driver's license, a license plate. This is not going to go through IDACs or NCIC. This is purely taking a picture of a license plate, storing that license plate as a picture, as a number, and then checking it against the other license plates that have come in to see if there's a match in that same location. This is not anything like... This is this is purely a think about it like a photograph service. I mean, that's essentially what it is. These these officers are not going to be they're not going to be running. I say officers. I use the term loosely. They're technically going to categorize them as community or community service officer twos. I think so.

We're going to how we're going to. do that.

But they're not going to have any police power. They're not going to be special police officers like our current full-time community service officers. They are strictly going to be enforcing it based on the photograph that they have seen, the plate where it was scanned. Like I said, this does not trigger any warrant hits, suspended license hits. This does not run anything in the back end aside from what the license plate number is and checking it against our own current scans of recent... recent play scans for Strictly enforcement of parking.

Well, I think it's good. We're revamping the difference between flock and and the yes for me I still want to know how long the church understood.

Yeah, and I I'm gonna follow I just have to follow up to that So before you move on sergeant hasty So to Matt's point basically when it reads the license plate does it come does the license plate come up and say this is John Smith at 2020. Okay. So basically I just want to be clear that that all it is is a picture compared to a picture in a time frame. Correct. So there's no identifying information other than when the ticket is actually then, if it's a violation, then what happens? That's the question.

So if it's a violation, part of what we're paying passport for is they will do the back-end driver's license lookup of just the license plate, and it will come back to the registered owner. So the ticket will be issued to the registered owner of the vehicle. Now, there's going to be situations where your kid was driving the car, and Whenever we get these tickets and then they're going to go to, they're going to come over across the street and they're going to review all the tickets if somebody wants to deny it or whatever that appeals process looks like. They'll have ultimate authority on, hey, you know what? Yeah, it wasn't this person. And we can make that decision on our end, which is to counsel Taylor's point. something that we're interested in doing to be able to have our hands on this, to do it the Carmel way, not the predatory parking, trying to just generate revenue. We're trying to do this with our citizens in mind and our business owners in mind to try to efficiently turn over those spots. We're not trying to be predatory about this. We're just trying to answer their calls for help on how we can efficiently do this.

If I can follow up on another question about data. Just to give you a little bit of the background, we have updated our data protection cybersecurity addendum a couple years ago at this point. We work closely with IT department, and in fact, we're still meeting every other week on Thursdays with IT department to make sure that we are staying in state of the art when it comes down to cybersecurity and data protection. And including in that addendum, there are some severe limitations on how the data is collected from the city is being used by our vendors. So there's limitations on commercial use of that data. There's limitations on how you can store it, what's considered an identifiable information, personal identifiable information, how that's to be stored, how it's to be shared, et cetera. So it's quite a comprehensive list of things and in fact it's increased our contract by about 25% just incorporating the data protections, cybersecurity protections and our service agreements.

So I just have two questions. One is currently, what is the permitting structure for our residents and our businesses? Do they pay for permits? How does that work? They're all just generated and given?

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Yes, all of our permitting is free. They just have to come to the police department, to our records window, provide their registration. We verify that the plate on the vehicle or the vehicle that they're wanting to register is actually registered to them and their address. And then we issue them their permit right there. So it's going to eliminate some of that cost as well of having those made every year whenever we can just utilize your license plate instead of having to make different colors of hang tags and stickers and things like that.

Sure. So there may be some efficiencies in that system as well. Correct.

Yes.

The second piece of this is I recognize that we're not trying to punish residents, that the intent of this is to try to change behavior. However, there is a cost to doing this, which is your two part-time officers, handheld devices, the vehicle that you're going to be using, the software itself, and the monthly fees that you have to somehow recover. So I'm just trying to have an understanding just as a fiduciary responsibility to just understand what are those costs going to look like and how are we going to ensure that we can change behavior and absorb those costs effectively and still not inconvenience our citizenry.

Sure. We really don't know how big the scope of this problem is because we've not had the ability to ever enforce it. So we're not going to know what we're getting into with this until we get into it. We've listened to our residents and we know that it's a problem. They've been telling us for years that this is a problem. So we're not going to know until we get into it. This is a three-year contract right out of the gate. So once we get into year two and a half or whenever we start looking that we need to see, hey, is this working? Is this not working? We can address that. And if we see that this is a benefit going forward, we can have those conversations. We could reevaluate at that point. But this is just kind of the ground zero to get us started somewhere to get the ball rolling on this.

Mr. President. So I've been kind of sitting here listening and thinking back to the years of trouble that we have had with parking in our downtown as the downtown becomes more popular. So I don't know that we will not inconvenience our citizens, because it is, while maybe not intentional, there is a proclivity to seek convenience which may inconvenience somebody else. The parking lot near Indy coffee roasters or the neighborhoods around the high school or the parking spaces in front of the dry cleaner And restaurant pickups. So I am not fearful of inconveniencing residents. I actually want to try and make it better for everyone in our core. Because I do see that there is a lot of strife going on with parking and just I think there are inconsiderate parkers as well. So I want to thank you for all the work that you've put into this. I want to thank you for doing your research. I guess I just want to ask both you, Sergeant Hasty and Sergei, in your professional position, you as police enforcement and our legal department, are you both comfortable with the way the data is being managed? Are you comfortable with this tool Do you see any downside? Do you see any danger? Is there something that worries you? And I'm asking that question because I wanna know if the good outweighs any possible bad, which is the only reason to do this in my opinion. So could you just answer that question? Is there anything that worries you? or that you see as a possible problem for this program in the future regarding data?

Regarding the data, I am not concerned. The flock data that we're gathering every day that we're all traveling throughout the state, it's more comprehensive than remotely close to what this is going to be capable of. I'm not concerned. at all with what we're going to be collecting and the data that we're going to be collecting for this. I'm not concerned whatsoever. The only concern that I have, and it's kind of the goal of this, is if we come back in three years, we're like, we're not writing any more parking tickets. So we've changed the behavior. So now what does that look like going forward? We can take a step back and say, hey, Is this something that we need to continue to invest in, or is this something we can downsize? And we've got the problem under control with some spot enforcement. We can look at what that looks like going forward. But, I mean, that's kind of what our goal is. But, I mean, I could see this becoming effective and us not having nearly as many parking issues as we've got because we changed the behavior. So I do not have any concerns.

To answer your question, I do. But let me just reinforce something that Sergeant Hasty said as well. We collect an enormous amount of data. As a city and as every department, et cetera, I'm always concerned about data protection, data security, how it's used, how it's stored, how it's returned to us, how it's destroyed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I would be the most concerned about data that's collected for our HR department, for example. There's a lot of personal information there that's stored very securely. We review those provisions incredibly carefully. And these provisions as well. As far as my concern goes for this specific ordinance and the corresponding contract, it's the least concern. Because the type of data that's being collected and the amount of data that's being collected is incredibly low relative to other contracts, agencies we're dealing with, et cetera. So do I have a concern? I always have a concern about how data is stored. Can we eliminate the risk to zero about the data breach on a particular agency or particular third party or particular contractor or vendor? No, we cannot. It's just the truth of it. But as far as where my concern is, it's the least concern. Because again, the type of data and what is being collected.

All right, sounds like managed risk. Thank you. All right, thank you.

So I think you're right, and I hope that in three years we're coming back, and I want to, I don't know where he went, but one of the comments Jack made, Jack's still here, I want to support him, was, you know, is there the ability in the next, in three years, let's say it's not parking, I mean, are there add-ons, are there things, the sound ordinance, are there, perhaps there'll be technology where they don't have to be vehicle mounted, but that can pick up other items, the noise, the other things that might be better collected through an automated process. I think that's what Jack was trying to get to as far as pedestrian safety. Do you see that being a future... Yeah, I...

I kind of immerse myself into this. This is pretty much my sphere. This is what I do. I get emails weekly from people trying to show us their cool new products. And this technology is rapidly evolving. There's some really neat stuff out there. Very new and I'm not sure how it would fit in yet. But from even from the parking study that we did, the best thing that we can do right now is this form of enforcement. And that was what are we paid the parking study to tell us. And that that's what that's what we've seen is going to be the most efficient route for us here in Carmel going forward right now. But you're right. I mean, this this this technology is is growing and there's always going to be a need for it. But one of the nice things about Carmel is we don't have paid parking. So we've got to and I'm a fan of that. I want to encourage people to come here, but we've got to make sure we encourage them to move on as well when it's time to do so. So I think this is this is this is going to solve that problem for us, at least in the short term, to be able to to start turning those spots over. And in the future, I'm excited to see what what's going to be available. And hopefully we can stay on the on the leading edge of it going forward, because that's obviously what we pride ourselves on. So there's some neat stuff out there. I'm constantly going to conferences and talking to leaders in the industry on what's up and coming. So I'm excited for what the future is going to be on this.

Thank you. And if you could, assuming this gets through tonight, if you could. Prior to the execution by BPW, just. satisfaction, how long data is stored by passport. And then after the decisions made on this, Councillor Taylor, if you would take up fees in your committee, because to your point, a $25 ticket, I'll pay that for premium parking. I'll pay a lot more than that. So it really needs to reflect the community and

Yeah, and just on that point, I elaborated on this in the other committee, but to bring you guys up to speed, I looked at some of the comparable cities to Carmel as far as population and demographics and everything that we're usually compared with as far as the best places to live. So I reached out to a lot of their different municipalities and their agencies on how much their parking fines and fees and structures are. We are incredibly low. I mean, less than half of the six places that I looked at, our fines were less than half of what all of theirs were. So I think now's a good time to look at addressing that, but just to give a little confidence there that we do need to step up to the plate on this, and now's a good time to... And would you be willing to attend the committee meeting to...

Absolutely. ...present what your thoughts are? Yeah, absolutely. Happy to. Are there any more comments?

We have to vote on the amendment because it was amended out of financing. Did we already? I think we did that. We did that. I move for the approval of amended ordinance D-28-20-26. Second. Okay.

And did you get your contract question, the designation of power question answered succinctly?

Sure.

Congratulations, Sergeant. Good luck with the new endeavor. Second reading of Ordinance D-2822-26, an ordinance of the Common Council of the City of Carmel, Indiana, authorizing the issuance of general obligation refunding bonds for the purpose of providing funds to refund certain outstanding general obligation bonds of the city and to pay incidental expenses in connection therewith. Sponsors Taylor and myself. This has returned. Councilor Taylor.

Thank you. Thank you. So a lot of these items are related due to the bond refunding, so we're going to turn it over to Zach Jackson, City CFO, to address any questions and have further discussion. None of these ordinances or resolutions were amended in committee, so they are as presented.

Thank you, Mr. President. Zach Jackson, CFO and Controller for the City of Carmel. As Councillor Taylor mentioned, there are technically five here for you tonight, kind of all part of this same packet. You have one ordinance that authorizes the issuance of the GO bonds up to $12 million, and then four resolutions authorizing issuance of different bonds. I have several folks here with me tonight if we want to get in the weeds on some of the questions here. But essentially what we have is an opportunity to refinance, I think we're talking $157 million of debt at lower interest rates. The idea is that if we're able to strike kind of while the, before interest rates potentially go up again, We'll be looking at up to $12.3 million of savings. What we've done is try to target, as much as that makes sense, towards fiscal years 27 and 28, really with the idea of lowering our operating costs. We won't have to pay as much for this debt in those two years to kind of help us get through what the state has pushed onto us in terms of SEA I. Outside of those general fund savings that I was mentioning of maybe up to $4 million a year, we're also refinancing our stormwater bonds from 2016 and 2020. That's expected to save about half a million a year. So far, this kind of bundle has been through the Redevelopment Authority, the Redevelopment Commission, Board of Public Works, as they are the board of directors for the stormwater department, And then we're back here tonight on second reading for these. Counselor Taylor, you did mention...

There was one amendment. There was one amendment, yeah. Could you explain that one line in Item G, Resolution 5-18-26-01?

Yeah, if I can, I want to invite Brad to come up to assist with that one.

Good evening. Brad Bingham, Barnes and Thornburg. We're bond counsel to the city on this refunding. As Zach mentioned, it's resolution, it's G in the agenda, 05-18-26-01. There was one sentence, and I forget which section that was in, but it was the last sentence, and I think it was section two, that the original resolution said that upon the issuance of the refunding bonds, the pledge of lit to that particular lease would terminate We want to get rid of that language because we do want to keep the pledge of lit in place to that particular financing so long as the existing lit is around under current law through July of 2028.

Do you want to go ahead and make that amendment? Do you want to wait till we get to that item? Oh, I'm sorry. It's on G.

If I can add one more comment. Councilor Locke, at the last meeting, you had mentioned being prepared to talk about what are our trade-offs here in this situation. And I would see, too, the first one I mentioned is a little facetious. We're trading the ability to refinance at a higher interest rate later on. As we look at the economic trends, We now have a window to refinance that hasn't existed in the last 10 years. In the near future, we think that rates are going to go up probably later this year. Not exactly sure how long they stay up. What we're losing would be the ability to refinance later if rates do go below what they are now in the next 10 years. Another way to answer that question would be, I think when we've done refinancing or refunding in the past, It's usually been what more can we build or do with this freed up dollars, and that's not our intent here. Our intent is to lower our operating cost, if you will. We won't have to pay as much for this debt over the remaining 10 years compared to what we're on track to right now.

Thank you, Zach, for that presentation. I've been noticing some chatter on social media and I've been getting emails from constituents that talk about us kicking this can down the road and paying off the debt. And I had a really nice conversation with Heidi Baker. And I think it's worth just a couple minutes of, or you or Heidi, whomever would like to talk about it, really just hone in that we are not kicking the can down the road here.

To that point, If we don't refinance the debt, when is it paid off? If we do refinance the debt, when's it paid off?

I think that's... Yeah, that... Yeah, this... We are largely refinancing 2016 bonds that will mature in 2036. We're not changing the maturity dates of those at all. We'll still pay those off on the same timeframe. It just won't be as expensive along the way. The 2020 stormwater bonds do reach maturity before, a little bit earlier, I believe, and we're not extending those as well, but I don't remember off the top of my head.

Yeah, those mature January 1 of 2033, and those will remain maturing in January 1 of 2033. Though we are going out to the market with one bond issue, if there are pieces that mature before 2036, then they will continue to mature at those periods of time. We are not extending the maturity date on any of the existing bonds. And one of the comments with this scoop and toss or kick the can down the road. That is typically discussed when you are moving principal towards the end of the bond issue. We are not doing that in this case. We are paying principal and interest throughout the life of the bond issue. Every single year there is savings on the bond issue of, let me pull it up real quick. So in the 27 and 28, as Zach mentioned, there's four or five million being saved and then thereafter it's about 1.3 million every single year that is being saved in interest costs. So we are not pushing principal back. We are merely releasing some of those debt service reserve funds. We have a bond premium that's allowing the par amount of the bond issue to be reduced. Those mechanics are allowing us to have more savings up front instead of spreading that savings across the whole bond issue. But there is interest savings every single year, 1.3 million.

So when we look at this, let's make an assumption that the cost of doing business in the city, 143 for general fund, 144 million dollars. And let's say the cost of running the city again next year is 144 million dollars. But now we're less year one, four million dollars that depending on the mayor and the council could use to help seat fund, the long-term asset management fund or other things. Is that a logical way to look at it? It's freeing up capital?

It is freeing up capital that is sitting in accounts right now. There's over $3.9 million that are sitting in two debt service reserve funds for the two stormwater bonds that we are refunding. Those are both going to be released and used to help pay down this bond issue, which is allowing the city to realize those savings when they are.

To clarify, Zach, obviously we're not in the budget process yet for next year. We don't know what that's going to look like. The premise of that argument, that this is freeing up money, that we have to pay the debt, it frees it up because we're saving it. Has there been discussion about the savings, or is this an attempt to make up lost revenue based on SEA 1 as a whole to get back closer to where we were with the original revenue forecast from three years ago, whatever it was. And I ask that because I think it's fundamental to the premise of why we are refunding now, because we are losing the opportunity if rates fall and things are dire, or we've got very cool, exceptional projects in the future that we wanted to put money into to refinance. It frees up revenue in a different way. And without a broader discussion of need, other than just saying that the finances changed and we are set up now to have less money, We have struggled, I think, to cut or to discuss cutting or to find ways to minimize expenses for things that may or may not be worthwhile in a time of potential austerity due to state funding requirements. So when we talk about $4 million next year, $5 million the next year, I would love to know just your take on whether or not that is purely trying to make up revenue by minimizing expenses for bonds to pay for the things that are there in a way that we continue. And is this the right time? Or are there other discussions we should be having because as rates change or things move, there may be a better time in the future to refund these bonds. We can only do it one time, right? That's the way that the mechanism is set up. So are we trading now presently for the moonshot of attempting to make up revenue that is now lost into potentially perpetuity without knowing what it's going to look like next year as a matter of course? Or is this we're freeing it up to put money into our reserve account to ensure that we can make sure we get through the next couple years of weird financing a better way?

Yeah, I'm going to let Heidi answer the, if not now, kind of what we think. The bond market side of things, yes. Yeah, do you want to do that one first and I'll answer the other one?

Sure, yeah, as far as the bond market goes, obviously no one has a crystal ball, right? We don't know where we're headed. Well, we don't know what the future is going to entail, I should say. Where we are headed, we know this year and what our pricing director is telling us based on all the market trends, all of the economic data that's coming out is, The municipal market follows the Fed futures rate very closely, and that right now is projected to go up into the end of this year and into the beginning of next year. So we do know interest rates are going up. So, I mean, we do have a sweet spot in time to get into the market now, if that is a desire of your council. So we know interest rates are going to go up. Obviously, there's only 10 years left on this bond issue, so, you know, how... much of a bet do you want to make that they're going to come down more than what they are right now in the next 10 years? I mean, that's up to somebody that's willing to bet. You know, it's just, there is an opportunity right now to save the city millions, so. And then if you want to.

So if we refinance this now and it closes in, what, 90 days?

July.

July?

Yep.

So is there a Wouldn't there be some savings realized this year then? How does that?

Is there a proration? It's probably based on the next payment that would be due after.

Yeah, and I can share my screen. I know the handout that I handed out last time, page two of that, it shows you the annual savings each year. And so for the January 15th of 27 payment, we are anticipating about $373,000. Interest savings on that payment and then you'll realize the majority of the other the next two Payments after that will be 2.5 million each and then about 2 million The net present value savings also is being created by the debt interest reserve funds paying down the principal since and these bonds were only callable until now so this was our first opportunity to do something that is correct and when we go out to refund this bond issue and because it only has a 10-year term, there will be no opportunities to call the bonds after this point in time. So I do want to be transparent on that. But again, what is the market going to do in the next 10 years? Kind of hard to tell, but we do know what's going up. And we've heard from FOMC that they might bump it two times between now and the end of this year even.

Can you present the Net present value savings calculation.

Yeah. And actually. I can just plug this in if you want me to.

The other important item I think is to discuss is the tax incremental financing back bonds. The, if you pull up that series.

So this is the net present value savings in the bottom right hand corner. You can see right now is about 12.3 million. Our goal is to be between 8 and 12, depending upon where we are at in the market. So that's what we're shooting for right now. What I would say is that how we advise our clients that there needs to be at least 3% savings on a deal to even consider doing it. So you guys are definitely well above that in this particular transaction.

And these savings are net of cost? issuance costs. So the savings are after cost. Correct. And then the 2016A bonds, which are, those are the ones backed by TIF. Can we go to that specific page?

Yes. So that is in a different document. Do you want just the savings? Yeah, just... Or do you want to see, like, the revenue compared to debt? Yes, that one. That one?

Yep.

I know we showed it in finance.

Let me get there really quick. There's... So these bonds, the allocation area expires before the bonds retired. And so thanks to previous council and administration, they established a revenue deposit agreement and fund for which would fund the last few years of payments. This helps us, they did the TIF analysis early on and showed that even with the declining A.V. in the U.S. 31 corridor, that the revenue deposit agreement has substantial funds available to pay those remaining two years of payments.

Yeah, the shortfall that it covers are these two last years here. You can see the 2.8 and 4.4 million of shortfall.

And it's got 8 plus million in it now, I believe.

The special reserve has 8.8. Well, after making all of these payments, it has 8.8, so... But the current balance on the special reserve, well, as of the beginning of this calendar year was $7.1 million. So after this year's payments, it's going to be $8.8 million. So it would be fully funded enough to cover those payments right now.

Right now. So the key here, too, is that you're reducing this debt service payment. for these bonds, which then even makes the balance that we have in the special reserve account even more secure.

The special reserve is funded by fixed payments right now that can be amended throughout time as needed by the council. But yes, it is fully sufficient now to cover the two shortfall years.

So that makes that gap even bigger. To the good.

I just wanted to ask one quick question for whoever wants to answer it, but one quick question on the, so you mentioned that the net present value was going to be about 7.83% is what you said here on the savings. Correct. And that was after cost. Can you just, for my purposes, what is an estimated cost, if you were to put that forward, of actually doing this refinance, just for people to understand? Oh, the cost of insurance?

Yeah. Yes, so... There are several fees, as you can imagine, in doing a bond issue. One of the fees is the underwriter, so the underwriter's role and responsibility is to take this deal and go find purchasers for it. Their fee is a fixed percentage of the par amount of the bond issue, so it's .425% of the par amount, which is about $600,000. And then there's a line item for allowance of cost of issuance for another $600,000. It covers our fee, council fee, local council fee, underwriter council fee, rating agency, which we're going to the rating agency this Friday to have a call with them. So all the preparation for that. There are attestation reports that are required as a part of this. So parity reports, lease efficiency reports, escrow verification reports. That is something that our office takes care of. That's all included in that other fee. So it's about, what was that, 1.2? Yeah. Yeah.

Any other questions regarding this? Because what I'd like to do, if everybody's amenable, is roll through these. I assume if somebody has an objection to one, they probably have an objection to all, or vice versa. If we could go through, with the exception of the one amendment that needs to be made, and just knock out these votes. But if anybody has any further comments or concerns, please.

I just wanted to ask one more question, because I was looking at the the gaps, obviously, between going out to the market for, you're saying, max of 12 million total for the first ordinance that we're looking at. But the outstanding principal is obviously less than that currently, correct? So there's a gap in between that and about 800,000 plus, 810, something like that, if you do the math. So that gap, that's what we're going to be kind of looking at as, the differences between what you're going to get when you go out to market and also the fee structure. So that's going to, because we're going to, you're going to go out for 12, right? But we only need X. So how does that, just for my understanding, sorry.

So the numbers that are in the legal documents that you are approving are maximum par amount of the bond issue. Those are very high numbers compared to where we're going to actually go out. We make them high just so you don't have to come back through the legal process if for some reason the premium comes in less than what we're anticipating. We want to make sure that we're covered and able to do that bond issue. So the $12 million max par amount is related solely to the GO bond issue portion of the deal. And I don't know if Brad wants to say anything. So what we are actually planning to issue for that particular piece of it all um is about let's see the power amount is about 10 10.16 million and you are approving 12. so there there's a gap there but we won't issue the 12 million we're going to come in less than that you'll come in when you need to come in to cover the costs and allow for that yes there's yeah interest rates bond premium all of those are moving parts that those will be finalized on the day of pricing which we're uh shooting for june 22nd with the july 16th closing

All of these are rounded up a little bit for that same purpose. The par amounts, yes, correct.

The next resolution, the reason I ask that is because this rounding seems less, but then when you're talking about the 10, it may be that it's a different, again, a different structured bond, but that maximum authorized amount seems a lot higher than what we're going in, so why the big

Difference if you could explain that to me great question so like the stormwater bond issues Those have those debt service reserve funds and prior bond funds that are being released when we set the maximum paramount We just assume those aren't there for some reason which we know they are there so again We just set the maximum like quite a bit higher than What we're going to actually issue just to make sure if something would happen that we are covered and you don't have to go back through the legal process and We know the funds are there, though. Yes.

Councillor Schneider, can I answer the question? I never got back to Councillor Locke's initial question there earlier. This is an attempt to lower our operating costs in response to declining revenues forced onto us by the state, whether property tax changes, changes to our food and beverage tax, how we can use that, changes to our building permit revenues go. I mean, we will see less revenue for next calendar year in the general fund than we had this year. So yeah, I'm looking at every nook and cranny I can to lower our operating costs, and this being a big opportunity.

Are we going to talk about any of the ones specifically, or do you want to go through these? The only other question I had was, there was a line that I caught in there on the... Oh, I can't remember which one it was now. I'm so sorry. The... No one's on the spot. No, it's okay. I was... It said for... I think it was for the stormwater bonds to alleviate or were alleviating restrictive covenants from 2016 to 2020. What are those restrictive covenants that were alleviating? What does that mean? Is that that surety? What does that mean? Sorry?

Jump in here. Brad Bingham, Barnes & Thornburg. Thank you.

I'm going to look at those. Which one was it?

It's item J, I believe. J, yes. The reason for that is... Under Indiana law, when you do a refunding, there's sort of two reasons why you're allowed to do the refunding. One is for economic savings, so you're reducing your interest costs. The other is to alleviate a restrictive covenant. And so in this instance, as Heidi mentioned, we are refunding the 2016 and 2020 stormwater bonds, each of which has a fully funded debt service reserve fund. as part of this restructuring, we're going to get rid of debt service reserve funds. So it's sort of a restrictive covenant in the sense that you have to have a year's worth of debt or money or cash set aside for any sort of revenue shortfall. We don't need that any longer because you're healthy in that sense. And so sort of standard language we put in there, but again, in case anyone would ever question it, you can just point to the statute and say this is the reason upon which we're doing this refunding.

And then it says that they're paid out of the available revenue. So is this debt restructuring then going to change increases in stormwater fees for Carmel residents? That was my only, I mean, and again, I'm not a bonds person, so I'm asking this as a citizen because I just want to understand.

Great question. And maybe just to step back to explain the 2016 stormwater bonds versus 2020. The 2016 stormwater bonds were expected to be paid from stormwater revenues, and have been. But the only source of security that was pledged was a special benefits tax on the stormwater district. In 2020, it was sort of just the opposite. The only thing pledged were the actual revenues of the stormwater district. There was no property tax backup. To kind of clean up the lien pledge, we said that it's kind of silly to do it that way. Let's just do it like we did in 2016. The expected source repayment is stormwater revenue. The only thing pledged, though, is the special benefits tax. But there's no implicit rate increase as a result of this.

I just wanted to make sure we made that clear.

Yep. The other one with the restricted covenant was... Have the surety?

Yeah, both of the TIF bond issues that we are refunding have debt service sureties on them. Again, those are different than a debt service reserve fund. The reserve fund is cash that was set aside at the closing of the bond issue that are sitting in a bank account. A debt service reserve surety that will be released, that is an insurance policy that acts like a debt service reserve fund. So on large transactions, you often see sureties. If for some reason the TIF was to come in short, the surety would be pulled on and not use the property tax backup. So those both will be released as a part of this.

So in layman's terms, we don't have to take out private mortgage insurance anymore. No more PMI. No more PMI for the city of Carmel. Thank you.

Okay. We're going to take a five-minute recess. When we come back, we'll vote on all of these. I want Councillor Austin to be able to vote on these. I've got to go. To be frank, but it'll be a true five minutes. No longer. All right? We get out. All right. We are re-adjourning at 8.20. Any further questions regarding to the bond refinance? Hearing none, we are going to start with D, second reading of Ordinance D2822-26.

Move for approval of Ordinance D-26. 282226.

Ordinance E being held. Ordinance F being held. Ordinance G, Councillor Taylor.

Actually on item F, we did send it back with an amendment. Oh, I'm so sorry. This is to establish a non-reverting fund. We made a couple amendments to that. One is we incorporated the language into the ordinance based on your email and conversations with Zach. And we also amended the ordinance to change the name to the Public Infrastructure Insurance Recovery Fund. which will be fund number 927. So I move to amend Ordinance D-2824-26 with the amended language Zach presented into Finance Committee today, and then also with the name change of the fund to the Infrastructure Insurance Recovery Fund.

Aye.

That was my fault, and I apologize.

Zach, I do need you to put that on the screen so we can put it into the record. Yeah.

I'll second that.

This is what Councilor Taylor was talking about way back in council comments. One idea I got split into two. And this is one of the two to keep the city transparent and efficient and solvent on unanticipated things moving forward that require insurance casualty claims. So the original language is up there. I don't know what color. That is, the amendments are, but the different color. Thank you.

Yeah, so the red is as I originally drafted this a few weeks ago. The green is the new language proposed by Councilor Snider. The amendment that we talked about a minute ago was changing where it says here the non-reverting city assets repairs and maintenance fund. I believe to the public infrastructure insurance recovery fund was the edit. But essentially this, it was rather open ended before. This now clarifies that all insurance proceeds and so forth will be deposited in the fund. It talks about the expenses, allowable expenses would be where there's been damage to a public infrastructure and the city is in the process of filing an insurance claim for that. And essentially the last section here on the page F talks about if the costs for that repair should be greater than what insurance reimburses, then we would need to come back and ask for the additional money to spend in that situation. In some instances, you may not want to put it back exactly the same way it was. You may want to make it better whenever you repair, or there might be a deductible involved. You're not getting reimbursed for the deductibles, things like that. And then lastly, on the other page, is just a very thorough definition for what is included in public infrastructure assets.

We're in a very unique situation where, due to Zach and staff and the mayor, we were able to achieve our budget goals while still taking a substantial amount of money from the street department to cover a substantial loss we had to a city asset over a million dollars. But that put a lot of constraints on that department and this isn't a unique thing. Normally they're not a million dollar items, but you're always trying to find how do you upfront pay for something. So now we are in a situation where we have gotten this insurance check and the mayor and finance and the council think that a prudent way to help keep us from having this issue in the future is to create this fund that will receive insurance claims. But since we have the seed money to effectively open the new fund with $1,074,842, it protects us from having to take from other departments. It also protects us against insurance denials, accidents where someone doesn't have insurance, We don't, various departments don't take the financial brunt because of the negligence of others. We're seeding this with insurance and it'll be used to front load insurance claims so that we can make repairs quickly and efficiently. It gives the administration the ability to act faster than they could otherwise and without having to move a bunch of money around that can get muddled. Did I say anything incorrect?

Not at all. I'll just add, there's technically three agenda items relative to this here tonight. The first one, we skipped over E, which was the appropriation. We have re-publicly noticed that, if that's the right way to say it. We've done that again just to use the new fund name to be as transparent as possible there. So we've posted that again today. That will meet the 14-day requirement to be on council's NEXT MEETING AGENDA, E IS THE, PARDON ME, F IS THE CREATION OF THE FUND, AND THEN LATER ON IS THE TRANSFER OUT OF THE GENERAL FUND, SORRY, K IS THE TRANSFER OF CASH, THE RESOLUTION TO TRANSFER IT FROM THE GENERAL FUND TO THE NEW FUND.

ANY QUESTIONS ON THIS? SO WE ARE ON, WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. to amend with the language presented on the screen.

It was.

OK. That was K. That was F. That was F, AF. G, Councillor Taylor. Resolution CC-05-18-26-01, Councillor Taylor.

On item F, I was going to make a motion for approval. Oh, I'm sorry. Item F, ordinance. I move for approval as amended the ordinance D-2824-26. Second. Thank you. Now we're on G.

Resolution CC-05-18-26-01. Councillor Taylor.

Thank you. This is part of the bond refunding, so create the new series 2026A. I move for approval of Resolution CC-05-18-26-01. Oh, I'm sorry. Item G, we have to make a motion to amend. I apologize. I move to amend resolution CC051826-01, striking the following sentence from line 125 in the ordinance. Upon the issuance of the 2026A bond, the council hereby repeals the pledge of local income tax revenue to secure the lease as set forth in ordinance D-2283-16. And to approve, G. I move for approval for the amended ordinance, Resolution CC-05-18-26-01. H, Resolution CC-05-18-26-02.

Move for approval. Aye. Resolution CC-05-18-26-03. Move for approval. Aye. Resolution CC-05-18-26-03. 18-26-04. Move for approval. K will be held. K will be held. Public hearings, there are none. New business. A, sorry, first reading of ordinance Z-707-26. This is an ordinance of the Common Council of the City of Carmel establishing fees related to zoning and development applications and violations in the Unified Development Ordinance for the City's Engineering Department and amending the UDO fees to comply with HEA 1001. Sponsor is Councilor Ayers. Move to introduce. Second. I... This is... filing fees. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

This ordinance amends the filing fees in Article 1, Section 1.29 of the Unified Development Ordinance.

Good evening. Sergey Grichuk in the Office of Corporation Counsel. There's one note on this ordinance. This is a UDO amendment, which means it's a zoning ordinance text amendment. There has to be a public hearing on this portion. We were not able to notice it in time. It is scheduled for the next meeting. But we can introduce and send it to committee to start discussing. But we just have to comply with this. By the way, this is our code rule. This is not a state law. We did amend that rule regarding rezones, so MAP amendments. I do not recall why we didn't include text amendments. do recommend that we amend it going forward. Perhaps to consider in land use of finance committee or both. But regardless, this is, as Councillor Ayers indicated, this is an amendment of Article 1, Section 129, Unified Development Ordinance, which is filing fees. It accomplishes two things. Number one, it complies with requirements of HEA 1001. It's specifically The way the fees that can be increased has changed under state code. Now we cannot change it yearly as it is now in our UDL. Now it has to be changed every five years based on CPI. And under certain circumstances, it can be amended or increased in the intermittent period if the fees go up or other expenses go up so much that it creates kind of an extraordinary amendment, if you will. So this is number one. That amendment is in the first portion of the ordinance in section two. So it just literally complies with the state code. The language is taken directly from the state code. So the second portion of the ordinance starting in section four is introduces engineering fees for development fees. That also, Director Pease is here. He'll be able to go through the fees that are being introduced.

You've moved on to another ordinance, though, correct? Are you still in?

I'm still in this, yes. OK. So these fees are related to development fees. So they include such things as development plan reviews, plat reviews, minor plat reviews, major plat reviews, vacations, major project PUDs, use variances, special exceptions, et cetera. Historically, the city of Carmel has not charged those fees. Most of our neighbors do charge those fees for years now. You know full well that we have had significant budgetary constraints over the last couple of years. And that discussion started actually a couple of years ago as well. And Director Pease can give you a little bit more of a background. But we fought in discussions with the engineering department, with the UFTS department, with the administration. We thought it is time to introduce some of those fees. We believe that they're fairly conservative compared to our neighbors, and especially considering the fact that we have never charged them before. And I will leave it to the director of peace to actually go through the fees that are being introduced.

So this has been introduced, all right? And then presumably the next ordinance is going to be introduced, which is seven pages of edits. This has been discussed and talked through in the second ordinance.

Yeah, second one, yeah.

Has been discussed and talked through land use for a while. However, and the reason I asked the clarifying question at the beginning, it has been asked that it is still a first reading. So it is the first time the full council is seeing all this. So this will go back to committee one more time for a final review, both of these. So I just wanted to bring that to your attention before you speak ad nauseum. There will be one more opportunity to do this and we'll vote on it the next time. And that was It was brought to my attention and I respect the request because it has not been openly discussed in a council meeting. We did the discussion prior to an ordinance being presented.

And one more comment I forgot to mention. It did pass plan commission since it's a UDO amendment. It received unanimous favorable recommendation with a note, no amendments, but with a note that plan commission believed that the fees being introduced might be a little too low, with encouragement to revisit it in the council level to perhaps increase it further. It's just a note from my office.

So that conversation can be had back in committee. Please. Now you can look at the clock and decide how long you would like to speak.

I'll just say that this is not a direct, just to reiterate a point that Sergey kind of subtly made, this was not a direct reflection on SCA1, so we've not had fees. We talked about this a couple years, three years ago, as far as incentivizing good plans that's coming to our department, so we're not designing stuff for people or subsidizing, overly subsidizing the developer. So happy to talk about that more in whatever committee this goes to.

Do we have questions this evening for our city engineer, Mr. Brad Pease? This will go to... Sir? Well, I didn't mean that. This will go to land use because it is tangentially tied to the other fees that you're going to speak about in the moment. First reading of Ordinance D-2826-26, an ordinance of the Common Council of the City... of Carmel, Indiana, amending Chapter 8, Article 65, Section 8-65 of the Carmel City Code. Sponsors, excuse me, sponsors, heirs, Joshi, Manar, and myself. This is an ordinance amending excavation and right-of-way disturbance permits, maintenance and restoration requirements, as well as amending penalties for violations. So this has been looked at in the land use for a year. Really trying to promote pedestrian safety on our paths, where contractors just park. Also, much like the LDRs, change behavior in that regard, and then also penalty structure and requirements for restoration. So for development projects, whether they're impacting our asphalt, any public right-of-way that a development or construction activity may cause damage to, and a lot of the language outlines this, but restoration back to equal or better condition. Move to introduce. Go ahead.

That's it. You got it.

Thank you. This will go back to land use one more time for nostalgia and first reading of ordinance D2827-26 in ordinance of the Common Council of the City of Carmel, Indiana adding chapter 6 adding Chapter 6, Article 5, Section 6-85 to the Carmel City Code and amending Chapter 3, Article 2, Section 3-58. Sponsors, Menard, Taylor, Joshi, Worrell, Austin, the whole council.

Vehicle noise. Move to introduce.

Thank you, Rich. One day I'll remember that. Let's be honest, probably not.

All right. Good evening. Sergey Grichuk, Council. Again, this is the last item from legal department. This is ordinance number D-282726, and it introduces limitations on excessive noise caused by motor vehicles. So essentially, the scenario I think a lot of us has experienced, actually has experienced just two days ago, and startled me and got my heart racing. It's targeted to address excessive noise generated by vehicles through engine revving, changes to exhaust system or modified exhaust system, so think mufflers, and aggressive acceleration. So when a vehicle goes too far into gear, or too fast, rather, into gear, it generates a lot of noise with certain noises associated with that behavior. That ordinance specifically tries to regulate or rather discourage that behavior by making it an ordinance violation fine. So it would really go for OVB, similarly to the one that you considered earlier in the day. So it is a fairly small fine for a first offense, $100. The second and consequent offenses are $250. And again, this is I think it's been an issue for quite some time, especially in our core, midtown, range line, city center, et cetera. So this is what it does. I can go line by line if you like, but this is the kind of a summary of the ordinance. I would be happy to address questions you have.

I'm just going to just clarify real quick. On the, as we're going to get into this into committee, but for anyone that might be watching, so a lot of the glass packs and the things that I see that are out there, they're making this noise. They've been intentionally added for that purpose. So would someone have to remove those or would they just keep getting tickets?

How does this really work? So this ordinance is basically a disincentive to have them. So they're not going to be removed, but they will be ticketed every time we use them. Every time? Yeah. OK. And of course, we realize that this ordinance is not the easiest to enforce, of course. You have to be in the right place at the right time. And for that reason, it does not have a decibel reader, because decibel readers are really more It's a better enforcement mechanism for noise ordinances to sustain noise. Think your parties, your barking dog that's repeatedly barking. Obviously, if a person that was revving the engine going down Monon sees a police officer, probably that behavior will stop immediately. So that's why it isn't an OVB rather than going through city court. So the ordinance is designed to curb the behavior as much as we can. We understand that it's probably not going to end it entirely.

But it's good enough for the officer to have seen this. I couldn't understand what you said. He has to have the decibel meter or does not rely?

It's not tied to decibel meter.

It's tied to behavior, yeah.

And actually, it's an interesting fact. We just discussed the ordinance on identification of certain things. And Jack was here, actually, and he gave me a tip. to look at Newport Road Island. Apparently, we have a system that is similar to identifying the plate numbers, but it's specifically designed for noise, for noise violation, specifically for that. And apparently, it's been very successful, according to him. So maybe it's something to look into in the future. But technology is evolving incredibly fast. And perhaps the enforcement will be a little bit easier down the road. All right, thank you.

Is your comment going to committee? Is that the anticipation?

I would vote for this right now because I've sat at Muldoon's and it's extremely irritating. However, I think there's just so many questions and I think I don't feel right. So I'll probably say I want this. Perfect.

No problem. This will go to finance and rules. Thank you.

Thank you.

OK. Agenda add-on. Items none. Other business. Property abatements. Compliance statement with benefits. We've got four of them. There's no action here.

Say that again? It gets reviewed at the next finance committee meeting.

OK, perfect. So these will all go to finance to be reviewed. Alliance for Cooperative Energy Services, Power Marketing, Mid-Continent Independent System Operator, MISO, Schlage Lock Company, ZP Investments, LLC, and Zotac Partners. Counselor Taylor, in your meeting, if I can't make it, because I was mailed this packet, the certifications, the abatements were for Schlage Lock. which is now a legion. And I didn't see transfer language in this abatement. We're also on year 9 or 10, so it's hardly any abatement at all. But the question is, they estimated $23 million in salaries. They're at $108 million in salaries. And I'd have a hard time, is that all here local? or is that spread out over all of Allegiant's assets? Because now that it's Allegiant, a much larger company, are we reflecting them world internationally, or are we still staying true to why we did this in the first place nine years ago for the local business that was here? Those are my questions regarding this.

Quick note, President Schneider, so probably actually more for Councilor Taylor. We need to send it back to county by the end of the month. So that's a deadline. So it's one committee meeting, essentially.

Yeah. And I'm not challenging anything in here. I just don't understand.

And we did develop a tool that all the information gets plugged into. It's very helpful to address some of those questions. I'm assuming you have that tool. And yeah, we just, finances just needs to get that.

Thank you. So all those abatement reviews, I think they're called, will go to finance? We're required to do them manually. Excellent. Any announcements?

Just another quick announcement. Please attend our Mayor's Advisory Commission on Housing on June 11th, where we will do the final piece of Opticos' deliveries. So hope to see you there at 9 a.m. Thursday, June 11th. City Hall.

Thank you. Seeing none, we are adjourned at 848.