City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to August 3rd, 2026, meeting of the Carmel City Council here at the Council Chambers and City Hall. First item on the meeting to order at 6.05 PM, agenda approval. So moved. Second. Our invocation this evening. be led by J.R. Sandati of, well, he can introduce where he's from. I don't want to disrespect you by trying to say it.

Namaste. My name is Jitender Sundari. I go by JR Sundari. I am a Hindu community member here in Carmel. Carmel has been home for almost 25 years. So I'll do a quick invocation today. Let us take a moment to be still together. Wherever you find your source of strength, be it in God, in prayer, or in conscience, or in quiet reflection, I invite you to turn towards it now. There is a phrase from the Hindu tradition that I have carried with me all through my life. Vasudeva Kutumbakam, that means the whole world is one family. It is a simple thought, but a demanding one. It asks us to see the person across the table, across the aisle, across our city as part of our own human family. That is in many ways the work of this council, not only through the grand gestures, but through the patient and often unseen care for our shared homes, our roads, our parks, our neighborhoods, our public safety, and the wellbeing of people we may never personally meet. So this evening, I ask for a few simple blessings on behalf of everyone gathered here. May those entrusted with leadership find wisdom when the answer is not clear. May they find patience when the voices rise. May they listen as carefully as a person with whom they disagree as to the person with whom they agree. And may every decision made in this chamber today in the end towards the wellbeing of all who we call as Carmel as a home. Let me close with the ancient Hindu prayer. May all be happy. Sarve Santu Niramaya. May all be healthy and free from illness. Sarve Bhadrani Vashyantu. May all see what is good and auspicious. Makas Chet Dukha Bhagavet. May no one suffer. Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Hi. Peace within us, peace among us, peace throughout the world.

Namaste.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Next up, would Deputy Mayor Marley lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please?

I pledge allegiance to the flag

Thank you, Marlene. Recognition of city employees and outstanding citizens. They all are. Recognition of persons who wish to address the council. We have two. First up will be, and both are aware of the rules, first up will be Mr. Barker.

All set? Good evening, everyone. Aaron Barker, 7 Lincoln Court. We've lived at our Concord Village home since 2017 and have witnessed flooding around our backyard beehive drain in the years since. We've attended community meetings focused on flooding, including the most recent hosted by the mayor and Jeff Worrell, where our concerns were dismissed and blame placed largely on the residents and their landscaping choices. We were disappointed with the slideshows, contextual inaccuracies, and the expensive and intrusive water retention options with the Lexington Boulevard redesign. It occurred to me that I've never actually watched the flooding to see how it develops. I don't think anyone has. I was home on July 17th during a significant rain and began watching. I shot the video sent to you all. In that video, surface turbulence seen in the drain has caused water being forced up and out of the drain, not into it. The drain is overpowered by the flow from Concord Court before groundwater flows in. Residential landscaping is clearly not retaining any water and has little to no effect on the flooding of adjacent yards. Brad Pease and I exchanged emails, and you're all copied, where I posed possible causes and he responded with quick answers. He sent the site drawings of the stormwater system when I asked for them. On those 1971 drawings, the overall system view shows the Beehive drain with a 12-inch pipe feeding in from Concord and a 15 taking water to Lincoln. The actual pipe to Lincoln is only 12 inches. On a detailed drawing, it shows the same pipe labeled as 12, not 15, a discrepancy, explaining why the pipes were installed that way. Brad believes the 15-inch callout is a mistake, but with the flooding, it would seem the 15-inch could be correct. I made quick estimations of pipe capacities of a 15 versus 12-inch, and he answered detailing how a 15-inch could flow up to 81% more than a 12-inch pipe. He essentially said it was a good idea, worth checking, but the system would need to be studied to see if that's the fix or if it just moves flooding downstream, and I understand that. After last Monday's torrential rainstorm, I arrived home soon after it stopped and went out back to check on things and was surprised but pleased to see the city amounted two cameras to the drain cover looking east and west along the easement. monitor the overflowing drain. I suggest additional filming from the perspective like the footage I shot to capture the overall, the overflow start to finish. And I hope this leads to a more practical solution, cost only thousands of dollars as opposed to the retention options that may cost as much as a million plus. In the future, let's be sure the proper research is carried out so the information presented is not flawed through ignorance or omission. And I thank you for investing in the cause of the flooding, and I look forward to continued effort to identifying the best solution for this issue. And then on an unrelated note, I'd like to thank Dr. Joshi for being at the Hoosier Hospitality Rally on Saturday. It was appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Barker. Jack? Mr. Jack Feldman.

Hello, council. I am the aforementioned Mr. Jack Feldman, and I'm here to talk to you about 14A. This is the micromobility ordinance. I unfortunately was not able to join you for the last council meeting nor the land use meeting. However, I do have some concerns, some comments. A lot of it will be gone over in land use in two days, hopefully. But my main thing, seeing that last meeting, I believe the rules were suspended and this was voted on that day. My main concern is the use of bicycle lanes on Monon Boulevard in between, I believe it was amended in this ordinance to be between City Center Drive and West Main Street. It seems like there are some areas of the Monon, particularly in between one of the first things and Main Street and in between I believe it's Walnut and City Center Drive where it is a shared space and under this ordinance I believe that that is not a bicycle lane and it I believe in the ordinance says that operators must dismount and walk their bicycles and this being a shared space it seems to be a point of concern where you can receive a $250 fine for riding your bicycle through this shared space, which is ostensibly the only place on the Monad to ride it. If we can go over the rest in land use, but that is my main concern is the shared space where there is no dedicated bike lane, which is included in the scope of this ordinance. I would love to see that narrowed a little bit. Thank you, council.

Thank you, Jack. Council and mayoral comments and observations.

Good evening, city councilors. My name is Marlee Omer. I completed fifth grade at Prairie Trace Elementary School, and I will share tonight's deputy mayor report. I'm excited to share some of the upcoming events happening in Carmel. First, we have our community shredding and electronics recycling day. This is a great chance for families to safely shred old papers, recycle electronics, and drop off unused medicines. The Salvation Army will also be there collecting gently used items so they can be reused instead of thrown away. This event takes place on Saturday, August 8th from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Creekside Middle School. Next, the Carmel Fire Department and Carmel Police Department will host Public Safety Day on Saturday, August 15th from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 11611 North Meridian Street. This free event is fun for the whole family. You can explore emergency vehicles, meet first responders, and learn about safety in our community. Another special event is Dia de la Familia on Sunday, August 16th from 2 to 6 p.m. at Carter Green. This celebration highlights Hispanic and Latino culture with music, dancing, food, art, and activities for all ages. Finally, we want to wish everyone good luck with school starting next week. We hope you have a great start to the year and are excited about all the new things you will learn and the friends you will make.

Marlee, where are you going to school starting next week?

Clay Middle School.

She's this close to being a sixth grader. So you did a great job tonight. Thank you very much for joining us. Appreciate it.

Comments, observations? OK, well, I have a couple, a few. Public Safety Day on the 15th is an awesome time. Thank you, Marley, for bringing that up. I encourage everybody to go to the 116 Meridian Street address. You actually enter off of Pennsylvania, but you really can't miss it. It's a huge, huge event, lots of fun. I really encourage everybody to get out there, and you can't help but learn something while having a good time. I wanted to bring to the public's attention something Carmel Utilities is doing, has done, and is refining. With the migration of their new portal, if you've gone online, there were some changes in the last couple months. The monitoring, which was done by the previous council back in 2021, they upgraded to wireless meters. They have really progressed in the data they collect. Unfortunately, I woke up Wednesday evening, found several inches of water in my basement. But by 10 AM the next morning, I had a letter from Carmel Utilities on my door asking if I had a problem because my water usage was high. To give an example, I average 5,727 gallons a month. 19,000, which means 13,272 gallons are in my basement. But while it didn't work out in a timely manner for me, it was awesome that our Carmel Utilities Department extends that service. And in speaking with the director and what their ultimate goal is, is a rollout of notifications to help residents, consumers of Carmel Utilities have some peace of mind. So if you're on vacation and all of a sudden your water spikes, you'll get an alert to your phone. Lane has some speaking time later. Maybe you could give an estimated timeline on that. But I just think that's a wonderful thing that Carmel goes above and beyond to do. And that really is, I believe, what Carmel's all about, going the extra mile. So big kudos to our Carmel utilities. Budget schedule was announced today in finance. I'm just going to give one date, and that is that the draft... The budget will be sent to the council and posted online on September 8th. And finally, appointments. So as you know, the mayor and the council make appointments to various boards and commissions. Last year, we rolled out a new method to try to make it be as inclusive of the entire community as possible. And there was a link you could go to and fill out what could see what was available for the following year and you could apply for vacant positions that were coming up. That portal will reopen tomorrow at 10 a.m. So at 10 a.m. tomorrow, the appointment portal for 2027 will open. One caveat is we have a vacancy on our BZA currently. We will make a selection on that within two weeks. So if you have an interest in filling the vacant spot on BZA, you need to get your application in as soon as possible. Those are all the announcements I have.

Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for promoting the portal, too. I'm glad it's still kind of going there. I just wanted to talk about something I witnessed the other day that kind of ties into the Micromobility Ordinance. Me and my daughter were at a playground on the east side, and we saw some kids with some unsafe behavior on their e-bikes. And it kind of surprised me that these kids were about to enter third grade. So they're that young, and we're just riding on the e-bikes in a very unsafe fashion. And as I was just watching it, I was thinking, one of these kids is going to get hurt. And sure enough, they did while we were watching it. And as I talked to one of the moms there who actually is an ER nurse, they're telling us that, and I'm sure you can probably report this, that they're seeing a lot of injuries of young people. in the local hospitals because of the e-bikes. So I know that what we're going to do is probably going to be fair and not overkill. But if people ask why are we doing this, this is why. We want to keep the children in Carmel safe.

Thank you, Adam. I saw a young man pushing his bike on Main Street over the weekend. And I pulled over and I asked if everything was OK. And he goes, yeah, I'm out of battery. I go, well, it has pedals.

He goes, eh, it's heavy.

If there's no further comments, we'll move on. Consent agenda. Approval of minutes from July 20, 2026, regular meeting.

Move to approve.

Second. Claims. Payroll in the amount of $4,529,425.26 and CFD bonus payroll $143,645.10. And general claims in the amount of $4,423,385.00. Move for approval. Next up, committee reports. Councillor Taylor.

Thank you, President Snyder. Today, the Finance Committee met to review the two ordinances related to the sewer and water bonds, ordinances D-2834-26 and ordinance D-2835-26. In-depth presentations, some of which you'll also receive this evening, the Finance Committee reviewed those two ordinances and presented Both were motioned and passed unanimously to be brought to the full council with a positive recommendation. We also had a presentation from Zach on the budget timeline from the finance department.

Thank you. Councillor Taylor, is there anything you want to go into about the budget timeline? Councillor Joseph.

So we met after the last council meeting on Wednesday and continued our discussion on the use of public areas of City Hall. We are working on addressing both the public's needs and the needs of the city staff and are working on an effective update of this proposed ordinance, so hope to have that back to council soon. We also had a great discussion with police and provided insights regarding identification and vehicles, e-bikes and e-moto vehicles, and suggested they suggested some helpful ways to amend our ordinance. And so we are looking to continue to work on that. We also look forward to our next meeting, which is on Wednesday, August 5th at Carmel library at five 30. And as a point of information, just to let people know, since we've been having those meetings regularly on the Wednesdays after council, we are making an adjustment from August 19th to accommodate council green. who has recently joined our committee because he is unavailable on Wednesdays. We will move our meetings to Thursdays, and then we will also change the time to 6.30 to accommodate my schedule of pediatric patients in my office on Thursdays. So in the interest of a fully functioning committee, we're going to amend that time, but I want the public to be aware of that because I know people have gotten used to coming at that other time. So thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Joshi. Other reports? Mr. Henry Mazetsky, Carmel, Rita Belmick.

Good evening, City Council. Henry Misteski, Carmel's Development Director. I'll just quickly fly through the activities of previous month. City Center continues to get built out. Industrious is in there. Last week, I took a potential headquarters into that industrial space on a tour, so it's nice to see everything lease up. This is the latest shot of Monon Square North going up. You can see the kind of turret element there at the corner of... Walnut and Range Line. There's going to be a restaurant there. It's going to be great. So it's nice to see everything going up. We were also just today, I was at 11, which is an 11-unit condo project, looking at their facades and approving them. So lots of great work going on there. Nice to see the Magnolia units go up. They'll be working on their final two. All the retail should now be in the MUSE, which is great.

I don't think you could click any faster.

I want to get to this picture. It's nice to see the facade going up on the icon on main project. If you've driven by there, you'll soon see some very pretty masonry along the front. And it's nice to see that project take shape. The hole has been dug for the basement underneath the... What's going to be this project, the Third Street Avenue residences, Third Avenue residences. Those are for sale condos, so it's nice to see that happening with the portrait now in the backdrop. And lots of great work happening in Ardalan Plaza. It's really nice to see the facade there take shape. And progress continues on north end phase two. You can see that when you're on US 31 and you look to your right when you're driving north. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions that the council may have.

Hello, I got a request and a question. First off, on some of the tax dollar numbers on there, are they reflective of the changes in some of the state law there?

No, they represent what was shown to council at the time that the projects were done.

Do they need updating at some point? Not Dr. Rush, at some point.

Yeah, whatever the council would like, I'm happy to do. I mean, there's some benefit to the historical information because Otherwise, we'll be changing the slides and the benefit of them every single time.

You can note what we approved and maybe what it is now, if you could. I'd love to see what maybe we'll be generating for these projects. And especially with a new referendum, if that changes any numbers there, too. So just a request. I would say when you have a slow minute, but you never have a slow minute. Question, though. I was at the newest playground, which is very popular, and parents were asking about the fenced-off space just to the north of it, kind of between the area there. I answered their question. I think I might have hopefully answered it correctly. I said, what's going in there? They all thought it was a splash pad. I said it was probably a connector road.

No, that... Area in the middle is going to be a shade.

Just immediately north of the playground is going to be a shade structure.

Shade structure.

So I defer to my friends in engineering, but if Brad was here, my best impression of him is September, October, those things should arrive, but everything takes a while to ship, and that's going to be a shade structure that will be installed when it's ready.

Am I wrong to say that I know there's nothing decided for the southern half of the Monon Square Shopping Center, but when there was some discussions there, was there going to be a connector road at some point for that? for deliveries or pickups if there was any kind of restaurant retail there?

I think the answer is when I was... Last time I visited that playground, there is this part where the boulevard curves around, and there's this gray area where you're not supposed to park, and it was essentially a parking lot for like 15 vehicles, but that's where the delivery vehicles are supposed to stop only when they're supposed to, and it's not supposed to be a parking lot. So I think that's the area. That's not supposed to be a parking lot that might currently be serving as a parking lot. I think we'll all just, as that area opens up and people get used to it, it'll get figured out, I think.

Thank you. To Councillor Austin's point, I think having accurate information for the public, so if there's something that has changed or is changing, I think that what it was, what we agreed to, or whomever agreed to, versus how it may have been modified by new legislation or other external factors would be helpful. If it's not, it would be perhaps not even helpful, but prudent just to make sure we're showing accurate information.

Understood.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Mr. Michael Klitzing, Carmel Clay Parks Department.

Good evening, President Snyder, members of the council. Thank you for this opportunity to provide my latest quarterly report, third quarter, hard to believe. Anyway, to sort of piggyback on the questions related to the new playground area along Monon Boulevard.

Brad sent me an image.

Perfect, because that image is going to be going up on the fence. Brad and I have been working closely on making sure the public knows what's coming, and I think users of that space will really enjoy the extra shade as they're watching their kiddos play on the playground. So we're excited about that.

May I have a request for a water fountain for that playground?

I'll talk to Brad. So it's hard to believe, you know, here it is just the very beginning of August, but from many standpoints, summer is almost over. We've actually concluded the summer camp season, and with the Carmel Clay Schools beginning not next week, but the following week, our water park season will be going to postseason and on Labor Day closing. So I wanted to provide some updates as far as some key performance indicators through the end of July. For our summer camps, we had our highest enrollments ever, 9,216, which is significantly more than the last two years, which were also previous highs. Part of the reason for the significant increase this year is, one, we had an extra week of summer based on how the school calendar was for Carmel Clay Schools. So that significantly helped. Second, thanks to our collaboration with Carmel Clay Schools, we had one additional year school location to be able to host more camps. So between an additional week of school plus an additional facility to serve more families, we certainly were able to serve more kids through the summer camps this year. This week, all of our extended school enrichment camp is going through training as we prepare for the new school season and looking forward to serving the families of Carmel Clay Schools again for what will be our 20th anniversary season for extended school enrichment. 21st season of the program. For our water park, again, we will be continuing regular operations through this weekend. Next weekend, the following weekend it is, we'll go to weekends only through Labor Day as Carmel Clay schools go back. As of the 31st, we had 103,617 visitors to the water park, which is a slight increase from both 2024 and 2025. I'm actually very pleased with those numbers. Of course, an increase means more people served as well as more revenue coming into the operations. I'm also especially pleased because this has not been the most ideal water park season as far as weather goes. Last weekend, not so much. But the good thing is when we've had nice days, people have definitely come out to enjoy the water park. In 2025, we had 115,927 visitors to the water park. If we continue to have weekends like this last one, we won't make that number, but I suspect we'll come relatively close to it. Also, whenever we go into water park season, especially about this time, I usually get some commentary from a few members as well as some residents about, you know, why don't we make the water park a resident-only facility? And, you know, I've had offline conversations as to some of the justifications as to why it's important for us to have non-residents. But, you know, being an economics major, I like sort of putting numbers behind it. So using 2025 as an example, last year we generated just over $7.9 million of revenue for the Monon Community Center, which covered all of its operating expenses. If you look at our primary funding sources, day passes represented a little under $1.5 million of the revenue. Memberships, which could be annual or monthly or seasonal memberships, represented almost $3.9 million, and everything else was about $2.6 million. Now, if you look at day passes and memberships and dissect it a little bit differently, residents represented $3.2 million of our revenue. Non-residents represented a little over 3.1 million, or 39% of our total revenue. I cannot emphasize enough that our residents help ensure that we can have affordable rates for memberships and day passes for the Monon Community Center. But to do a little bit of an exercise just to see what it would take to replace that $3.1 million You know, I made a couple assumptions. One, there would either be no change in the number of residents, or sometimes I've heard the argument that, you know, if we have less non-residents coming, we'll have more residents. So I assumed a 20% growth in our residents' day passes and memberships. And looking at our current rates that are available to residents, what would it take to replace 39% of our revenues? $3.1 million. And what it means in real numbers, based on those assumptions, is that we would have to at least double the rates. It would be 100% to 140% rate increase to be able to cover the $3.1 million. And I would argue that an adult the average adult in Carmel is not willing to spend between $408 and $576 more annualized for a membership, or that the average household in Carmel is not willing to spend between $1,300 and $1,800 more to maintain their annual membership. Again, 100% to 140% increase in our rates, which I just don't think is a sustainable number. So we certainly can explore what it would take for the water park and the community center to be a resident-only facility. But the reality is, you know, it's not just those membership and day pass rates, but that everything else also has a factor that is revenue generated by our friends that reside outside of the jurisdiction of Carmel. And, for example, our concessions, about $278,000 worth our revenue, Well, if we have significantly fewer folks coming, the concessions revenue is going to go down. We had about $154,000 in cabana rentals at the water park last summer. Again, if we have fewer people coming in, there's a chance that that revenue goes down. And our programs, all the recreation programs, not looking even at the aquatics numbers, $824,000 in program revenue. We have a little bit higher participation rate from our residents in those programs. But because we have members that come from outside of city limits, many of those people actually work in the city of Carmel, we could anticipate our revenue for recreation programs and certainly swim lessons to go down as well. So we're not looking at replacing 3.1 million in 2025 numbers. We're looking at placing probably $4 to $5 million And what does that realistically mean? That means we probably would have to look at a different model as to how we fund the community center. You know, I always like pointing these numbers out. Last year, when you take our operating revenues and divide it by our operating expenses, our cost recovery rate was 74%. The national average for park systems across the country is 27%. We do an inverse of the national average. And of course, the Monon Community Center, extended school enrichment, and summer camps were above 100% cost recovery. So they were covering all their operating expenses. Now, why is the national average so much lower? Most community centers, most summer camp programs, most before and after school programs run by park systems are not expected to cover their operating expenses. meaning that there's a tax subsidy to cover those expenses. So when I say if we as a community were to decide that it needs to be residents only, we would have to really take a serious look about the community's willingness to subsidize those operations. That's not my decision to make. That's people that are higher than me's decision to make. But I would argue in a time frame where We're looking at how do we finance just the basic services of municipal government. This is probably not the time frame to do it. And the best way to ensure that our residents are able to have the services that we provide at the Monon Community Center at no tax subsidy is to continue to operate under the model that we have today. It's certainly been successful from a financial standpoint. I would argue that we're able to provide more programs and services under our current financial model than if we were a tax-subsidized operation. Now to some exciting projects. We are really excited to be able to continue the expansion of the Japanese garden. We're receiving $750,000 from the city of Carmel to be able to do our next phase, which will be starting this fall, actually around October. We're bringing HK, the designer of the renovated Japanese garden, to basically create, expand the garden into the area between the existing Japanese garden in the north pond and the southern, currently stormwater retention pond. It's going to include more landscaping similar to what you see in the Japanese garden. It's going to include a waterfall. The sketch is actually from HK. The waterfall is CHAT GDP's... interpretation of HK's waterfall, but to make it a little bit more visible for everyone to see. But we're really excited to be able to see that project come on board this October. Hopefully it'll be completed this fall. It'll definitely be completed by next spring. Additionally, thanks to those funding, and this is completely generated by AI, so these are not the plans, but these are to help illustrate what is coming. is that we will be creating a loop trail around the southern pond, obviously working to clean it up so it's a little bit more attractive than what it is today. Some prairie, some landscaping opportunities in there. We are currently working with a landscape architect to come up with the real plans, but I wanted to show that, hey, we're going to have a trail and it's going to look prettier. So this is not what it's going to look like, but this is just to say, hey, it's going to look a lot better than it is today. We're also really excited about the partnerships that we develop and relationships we develop with other governmental units within the community. Last month, I was able to go to the school board and they unanimously approved a management agreement and easement agreement with Carmel Clay Parks and Recreation for us to take over Odom Woods, which is 10 acres immediately west of Carmel Middle School and north of Grand Boulevard. It's a wooded area. It is named after Dr. Marvin Odom, who was the first curriculum director for Carmel Clay Schools. It's a special place. And what's also even more special is that the new Veterans Greenway, which will be connecting the new Veterans Park to Grand Boulevard and beyond, ultimately, and to the north, hopefully, to the American Legion. you know, we needed their assistance to make that happen. It also will serve as an effective extension of Veterans Park, which is a 1.6-acre new park that we're in the process of finishing the designs for and developing. So we're super grateful to Karma Clay Schools for doing that. We're happy to take over the stewardship of it. Karma Clay Schools retains ownership of the property, but we assume management responsibilities for it. and we'll be able to make it even more accessible for the public as the schools continue to use it for school groups. We're also excited that projects are finally moving forward in Founders Park. I had originally anticipated this beginning this summer, but based on some shipping delays for the new floating boardwalk, we weren't able to do it sooner, but they are actually in the process of getting the floating boardwalk installed now. I would anticipate by the end of this month, September at the latest, we'll have that new boardwalk open. Basically, this photo here, the pond is illustrated in the darker areas in the left bottom corner. This floating boardwalk goes through it, so you'll be able to actually get out on the water, fish from it, walk across it. It connects part of the trail networks within Founders Park and will just make this area even more accessible and enjoyable for the public. I'll give an illustration of what that floating boardwalk looks like. Basically, this is a representation from a more mountainous area, so if there is no mountain in the background, sorry. But it will be really beautiful, and I think that the public will enjoy it. And then just to prove that it's happening, this was taken the end of last week with them starting to put the floating components out there. Right now they're just staging it out on the water and then they'll be connecting them as well as the connections to the existing trail network. So that'll be opening within the next 30 to 60 days. So we're super excited about that. Jumping to Central Park, one of the questions that I've received several times is, wow, the safety surfacing at Westermeyer Commons looks a little sketchy. Well, it does, and it's been very frustrating for my staff as well. A couple years ago, we did a renovation of the safety surfacing. The actual safety surfacing itself, the surface below, the fancy layer, the veneer, is structurally sound. But we had a new veneer put on it a couple years ago, because the original playground surface had met end-of-life based on the over 400,000 people annually that used that playground. Well, unfortunately, the manufacturer, when they installed it, did not get the adhesion levels for basically the glue right, and it has been shedding ever since. And we have been working with them to ensure that it is repaired at no cost to the taxpayers. That work will begin next week after the kids are in school. We knew it would be next to impossible to close our busiest playground and keep them out. We'd have footprints in the middle of the new safety surfacing. We know that from experience because we had footprints in the original safety surfacing before it was ever opened. So this way we have a better chance of getting it done. That warranty work, again, begins the week of August 11th, should take a week to complete. The playground will be closed during that time frame, but we're excited to have that repair under warranty, no cost to the taxpayers completed. Another project that's happening, likely starting later this month, will be the replacement of the Central Park Lagoon Boardwalk. That entire wood structure is being replaced. Again, it is at end of life. We were hopeful that we might be able to start it before the summer, but when we realized the new framework wouldn't arrive until the middle of summer, we decided to defer it until the kids are back in school. So again, that work will be happening. It will require probably about a 30-day closure as they pull out the existing structure and put in the new structure. It will look substantially similar to how it is today, but it will be structurally sound and last another 20-some years or beyond. So we're super excited about that. And finally, if you've gone to the Monon Community Center, the entrances to the buildings as well as some of the areas around the water park, you'll see a lot of pavers. And those pavers, believe it or not, the Monon Community Center and the water park are 20 years old next year. And those pavers show 20 years of heavy usage and are buckling in some areas. So we will be replacing that this fall. We will keep access to the community center open, but there may be some juggling that people have to do to be able to get in the facility. We'll keep everyone organized and informed as to how to gain access. But we'll be replacing the papers with concrete, which will give us a much longer lifespan. Also, we'll be much more friendlier as we do treatments during the winter to keep the walkways safe for our visitors. So that work will be happening this this fall before we get to the busy winter season. And then last but not least, we're super excited that the White River Greenway, including this new overlook, is now open for the public to enjoy. There's still a little bit of work that needs to be done. We're waiting for the masonry tops for the seat wall and the sign at the trail. had to be completed. And there's some punch list items that need to be done. But this beautiful new trail and overlook is open and already getting a lot of usage. So if you haven't had a chance to check it out, I encourage you to do so. We will have a formal dedication or ribbon cutting for this. But we want those finishing touches to be completed. So we'll keep you posted when that happens. With that, if you have to address any questions, the council has.

Thank you, Mr. President. Michael, great report. I'll start out by saying I was on the Parks Board when the Monon Community Center was dreamed about, and so you've just reminded me of how fast time flies. It's been 20 years, so it's amazing. I did warn you that I was going to bring this up at a public meeting, and I will tell you before I start, things are much better, but I did notice two weeks ago on the Monon consistently over several days at least, maybe more than that, there were vendors soliciting on the Monon Trail. And they were actually, I was so caught off guard by it, I stopped and kind of paid attention. And they were actually, and I got sucked into it, they were saying, hey, you know, come on over. And first I thought it was a Carmel employee because their shirts were so similar. I've now since received some comments from residents who experience the same thing. So I want to raise this right now, because I want the public to know that that's not allowed. But that's as far as I'll go, so I don't misspeak. Will you tell me what the policy is, if there should ever be anyone soliciting on the Monon? They were very organized with tables and signage and several people. And then what should someone do if they do see something they think is out of the ordinary? Councilor Worrell, thank you so much for that question.

Soliciting on the Monon Greenway or within any of our parks or greenways is prohibited under city ordinance and park rules. To be able to do any solicitation within the parks, you have to have a permit that is issued through Carmel Clay Parks and Recreation. And quite frankly, we do not issue permits for that type of solicitation, even for some really great causes, because we want the public to come to the parks to enjoy them, to go on the greenways to enjoy them, and not feel obligated to do something that they may or may not want to do. So we simply don't issue those type of permits. and they are prohibited under city ordinance. So if you find someone that is soliciting on the Monon or within one of our parks, we encourage the visitor to contact the Carmel non-emergency number, and either one of our park resource officers, which is a full Carmel police officer, or someone else on patrol can come and take care of the situation. We don't want, you know, a counselor or a member of the public to have to have that discussion. We'll use our trained professionals in the police department to help educate the offenders and ensure that it's an enjoyable environment for people using those amenities.

And I think you also mentioned to me that your employees will probably first try and

Absolutely, and we're constantly always trying to train our employees if they see that to make sure that they're also educating the folks that may be setting up improperly along the trail. Of course, our maintenance team is very focused on keeping everything clean and emptying the trash and stuff, so sometimes they have a little bit of tunnel vision. But by and large, they do try to notice that. But if anyone sees that type of activity along the greenways or within the parks, please don't hesitate to contact the non-emergency number. And working with the police department, we'll get it taken care of.

Hey, Michael. Am I correct that the Founders Park Pond, do you participate in the DNR fish stocking program at that pond?

That pond is not currently in the DNR program for fish stocking. I do know, actually I saw someone today when I stopped by, fishing in there, and there are fish in there, but it's not officially stocked by DNR. We have reached out to them, and we'd like to add that to the program once we actually have a good way for the public to access it.

Yeah, because prior to bringing the water down, it was always a good fishing spot. Thanks, Michael.

So Michael, of course, thank you so much. You always do an amazing presentation and the park system is something that I think all of us as Carmel residents and in the surrounding communities are extremely excited about and proud of. And I want to thank you for bringing up the economics of how the parks work and that economic responsibility is often achieved by including more rather than excluding. And I think it's that concept of, you know, abundance and lack that we always talk about in environmental stewardship that is really important to that discussion. So thank you for bringing that up. And I appreciate it.

All right, Michael. On the Monon, because everybody knows I've been the advocate of residential users. But You guys are the masters, better than anyone else, at gathering information. And I think one question to ask is, why not? Why aren't residents? I think it's easy to say in Carmel, well, you've got pools in your backyards or a country club. But you mentioned a $400 increase. But I know there's three people in this room that are members of the parks that still pay more than $400 to go to a different pool. And so I'm not sure that argument holds with everybody. So I'll say again, I think it's worth looking at other ways. But to your point, you're probably the most trusted director in all of Carmel as far as doing what you say you're going to do and it pans out. Really, nobody should have any reason to doubt why you do things other than personal opinion on why it's that way. Summer camps. I I say it every year. It's the greatest thing ever. Most people, their municipal summer camp is the last resort. I mean, it's usually the least best option. Here, it's the absolute best option. When you show the number of the increase, I was going to ask you, had there been a decrease tonight, please remind me the lady's name that runs it.

Oh, Jennifer Brown is our...

It deserves a tremendous amount of credit because the drop-off, the pickup, everything has been so streamlined. It just keeps getting better every year, and I think it's just phenomenal. So thank you, and I hope you never stop doing that service for the community. This is not so much a question for you, but engineering and others, but can we get a GIS layer a layer on our GIS map that shows what Parks manages. Because I think that would help everyone, because it's very patchworked in areas of what you're responsible for versus what the city's responsible for. And if we could click a little layer, that would, I think, be helpful. And then just a little tongue-in-cheek about, well, not really. I'm serious, but I'm going to say tongue-in-cheek, so I'm not insulting. Founders Park, you receive a water bill at Founders. And I assume you have a stormwater fee in there, even though you're holding a whole bunch of water and discharged directly to the river.

We had some very interesting water earlier this year.

It seems like you're doing an expensive favor and improving on that favor and then are getting billed for it. Maybe that's just a statement. But Michael, as always, thank you very much.

Thank you, Councillor Snyder. And we certainly are incredibly proud of our summer camp series extended school enrichment team. They truly care about the children and families and guardians that they serve throughout the community. And we are incredibly proud of the work that they do in taking care and an exceptional way, all of the participants in our camps.

Thank you, sir.

Mr. President. Oh, I'm sorry. With the debate about residents versus non-residents, have there ever been discussion? I'm sure you can list the benefits that residents already get that are different than non-residents of having earlier hours or special days or events. I'm sure you've played with some of that in the past. Can you kind of detail some of the benefits that residents get versus non-residents there?

So we do provide discounts to residents for day passes for memberships to the Monon Community Center. We have had some events that are targeted for members specifically, which tends to disproportionately advantage residents. community members. We did, and of course it was a completely different time, but in the midst of COVID, we had first a restriction only to Carmel residents, and then we allowed Carmel residents to come in first. And while, again, it was a very different time, what we found is that there just weren't enough Carmel residents proportionate to non-residents to operate in a normal mode when we went just resident only. We are continually looking at funding options. We recognize that it's a busy place. I mean, we had over 700 visitors to the Monon Community Center alone last year. So we're always looking at what's the appropriate balance, finding the right pricing strategies, ensuring that we are encouraging... families to be able to use the services, those type of things. But it is a very finely tuned Swiss watch in many ways. And if you disrupt too many things with regard to it, it can throw the entire thing out of whack. And that's something that we're always cautious to guard against. But we also are always looking at ways to provide the most enjoyable experience for families for, of course, our residents and for everyone that visits the community center. Thank you.

Eric Mel.

Thank you all, as always. No flashy presentation for you guys tonight. Just a quick update for you. As I probably mentioned before, there's 43 standards that the Carmel Climate Action Plan kind of initiated. And of those, our committee has selected typically about eight to nine of them is what we're usually focused in on as our kind of priorities. So over the past about two years, we've been working on kind of the same ones. And so we've kind of really taken a look at those. really focused in on what we can do, what we can help each of the departments do. Some of the different department leads that are on the committee have really taken that kind of lead in their specific areas, specifically like Tara with utilities, really helping with the composting initiatives. So there's a couple of them that, after this last meeting that we just met last week, that we're actually gonna start taking off of our priority list because we've actually made some pretty good progress on. Again, one being that composting initiative. We were really looking at it as a whole of what the city could do and what kind of big roadblocks there were. And she's really done a really, really good job at finding a solution. It may not be the exact solution that was listed in the plan, but we at least have a solution that we were able to roll out with working with Earth Mama and having a discount program for Como residents to be able to subscribe to that program to have some in-home composting options. So we're starting to kind of roll some of those off a little bit. We also talked to Zach Jackson, came to one of our meetings recently to the sustainability committee meeting and talked to us about a couple things that the finance department's doing on looking at the assets and facilities throughout the city, but also the fleet management policy that they're trying to draft and roll out. And as a part of our committee, one of our initiatives was to try to make sure that the city had within their fleet policy something that addresses using EVs and hydrogen and other kind of sustainable vehicles. So that kind of language is going to be rolled into the fleet policy. So we're looking at kind of, again, kind of retiring some of those as we're kind of starting to mark them a little bit more complete and substitute some new priorities onto our list so that we can start looking forward. One of which that we are going to add to our priority list is a zero waste event policy. So that's going to take us some time and some research. But again, that's what our job is, is to continue working as all the professionals on the committee to kind of talk to the right people. But the goal is to then when we have city events and host events, that hopefully we can get them to a point where they are zero waste and have everything recyclable and whatnot. So that's kind of the general update. Happy to answer any questions you guys have.

Eric, first of all, I love which committee is doing, I love. It's kind of refocus. I mean, environmental stewardship has really transformed from what was a very broad committee to really focus on Carmel and how can we take care of Carmel as a byproduct, helping the broader outreach. I think that's been fantastic. One thing I want to point out, and this is not your fault because you came straight from work, and if you want to explain it or Ryan can, but It's not a product of Carmel Clay Parks. We've got a lot of commissions and committees and a lot of them within city government. But this one's one of the more, I don't want to say more, more codified ones because it was created by an ordinance. So by virtue of that, it was created by law and you function within the parameters of that law. I think you do a fantastic job, but I just didn't want to give the impression that it's a parks-led thing. It's a city-led thing created by a city council before us, and it's been honed into what I think is something that is less talk and more action, and I very much appreciate your leadership and the whole committee.

Yeah, no problem. Yeah, I just happen to be a parks employee. I'm the parks, you know, person put on by the parks board. But I think it's also helpful too that since you guys expand the committee, we have another, a new liaison from the library and their kind of assistance with us and then also the street department. So it's really nice having people who are actually in control of some of the change that can happen within the departments to be able to be at those meetings and answer those questions and tell what each of our departments are doing. It's super, super awful. But I think even after the last meeting, we were making some really good progress on a couple initiatives that I'm excited that we're actually seeing some things that we've been working for for the past two years really starting to take shape.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Old business. A, 27th reading of ordinance D, 2772-25 remains in finance.

B, yes, go on. Since we used this item on the agenda last time to talk about the... Oh, yes. We'd love to give an update based on kind of the feedback. After our meeting, last time I sent notice to our council that's doing the review at Denton's, that we had imposed or moved the motion to have the august 20th deadline um included our council on that just so that they would see that that went through they responded and said we have received that and understand um and then were tasked with giving us feedback back if they thought that there was any reason to extend it further They gave a short email, which I forwarded to everybody today, requesting the additional three weeks to take it to September 10th to give them time to work on the final report and then do any follow-up as they get that set to get it into a final draft form. So I sent that forward, happy to read it into the record if you want to go that route, or I'm happy to discuss if there's more. But I would recommend that we take their feedback and extend it to that, as I would have last time as well. But based on their kind of objective review of where they stand and what they think the report should be at the end, they did ask if we could extend that to September. Do you want to put that into a motion?

I mean, I'm inclined to stick with the original deadline If we ask for a few weeks, I guess it's not the end of the world, but I don't see a reason why after 14 months we couldn't stick to the original deadline. But I'm going to add this, and this is something I do feel strongly about, that once the report is delivered, and whether that's in August or September, I think that item A needs to go to the Finance Committee immediately to decide whether we're moving forward on this or not. I think this has been on our agenda long enough, and I think that once the report is given for the Chris Kendall Market investigation, that there's really no other information needed to decide about item A. It's been on the agenda long enough.

So my concerns about this is they ran out of money in December. Um, everything, last item, last possible item was supplied to them, um, prior to June. Um, we're now in August. Um, I mean the IEDC investigation over a massive statewide agency only took six months. The JFK report of the JFK assassination only took 10 months. Um, This has been excessive, and I'm concerned that since they weren't able to bill any more hours, even though there was a lump sum contract with them, that they haven't dedicated the time and staff to this to complete it. By sticking to them to the deadline, I did read the email, they state that it, you know, to be, so they didn't have to dedicate additional time and staff to this to complete their commitment to complete this for the price of $125,000. That they would have to reorganize staff to do that. Well, then they should do that. They should have done that previously There's no reason why this report hasn't been completed by now They need to step it up and complete the report by August 20th is my opinion So I'm gonna read the email just so you have it says dear Ryan we appreciate the need for a deadline to complete this project and

And we have been working diligently towards completing a report by the August 20th deadline set by the council. However, we would benefit from an extension of a few weeks to have flexibility for any follow-on action steps that may be necessary once we have the report in near final form and to balance our prior personal and other professional commitments. We acknowledge that our engagement agreement contains a not-to-exceed cap on our fees and assure you that an extension does not change that. For these reasons, we respectfully request an extension to September 10th. Thank you in advance for your patience and continued trust in this process. Regards, the council. I read it because we're interacting with human beings. This is a side quest for everybody involved, me specifically. You all specifically, as we've got a million other things to do, which is why we hired third party. We also hired the third party, as I talked about last time, because we were incapable as a body of putting ourselves in a position to do this ourselves. All of us had something related to this that mattered. It turns out, except for me, on the end, when we set up the original committee, it had to be Teresa, Shannon, and myself, because those of you that had been on council before have relationships that mattered to this process. Others of you had family members and others that were related to other affiliate entities that had not performed their functions. So I share that as we look at what we're trying to do here, trying to get to the end of something that we started with the right output. The people that we hired that we trusted to do this said that they need a couple more weeks to finalize the report. That being said, we can submit whatever comes back. We can have a half done report. We can decide on whatever metric we want to, how to manage this investigation, because it is our investigation. And if this is turning into something that needs to be turned over so that we can talk about it, that seems right. To use other reports in other venues, million dollar reports, that started as one thing and became something else related to whatever we do in our day jobs, doesn't feel appropriate, first and foremost. But it puts us in a position where we're playing a subjective game with something we tried to set up to be objective. So while I hear you, and I appreciate it, and we can decide as a body to do whatever we want to do today, there are nine of us to vote. I tend to err on the side of trusting the people we put into positions to do things, no matter what that is, whether it be an investigation by a third party firm that is doing other things, that received a contract probably too well negotiated to keep the cost down over time. But here we are. So, yes, we can make a decision based on however we feel like we have to, based on whatever determination is driving our agenda or a mission or a vision. I was set up and tasked with managing this to the end. I know it's been uncomfortable. I said it last time, it has not been fun for me in any capacity. It's actually... of all the things we've done, probably put me in a position to have the least amount of effort, energy, and love for my city. Part of sacrifice and part of taking an office is doing things when they're hard or when they might come back and put people that care about us or will help us do things that matter to us, whether they be personal or political or governmental in a position where we have to say hard things. That being said, I don't know what this is going to look like when it comes back. I think we owe it to the people that have been a part of this so far, including the executive branch administration, to let the people put the final product in the final form before they send it back. And if they say it's three weeks that they need after 14 months, after a lawsuit, after a an appeal after taking six months to get to a point where they scheduled the process of getting all nine of us in front of them to ask what direction to go, I think it makes reasonable sense to grant that. And I would advocate, as the person you put in charge to do that, to manage this, that we give them those weeks because I think it's worthwhile enough for the output for them that they asked for it specifically. They could have not asked for that they worked up until today to see if it was something they needed to ask for or not, and they requested it. So I tend to take people at face value, give people that we put in hard positions themselves that grace and afford them the ability to finish this outright so that we don't sit with a deeper, darker cloud of judgment and decision-making that may or may not have been for the benefit of the people of Carmel, Indiana. Is that enough? I make a motion to extend the date to September 10th.

So I have a question about the motion, and maybe I should have asked this last time. Defining what done means for the investigation, does that mean that the report is handed to counsel in a finalized form, or does that mean they've completed it? And in so, like, When would a presentation take place? I'm looking at the calendar here.

Obviously, we're not having a meeting probably on- There'll be no presentation for a while after the report is finalized. It will go to the council's legal counsel, who will share it with the city's legal counsel, who will make sure there's no sensitive information, redact what they feel needs to be redacted that could harm individuals.

then it'll come to us. I support all that, but how long are we, because once we've got the report, I wouldn't want it to be three months later when we can discuss it.

So by process, we could call a meeting of the committee to report it to the committee. That wouldn't be a public meeting, though, would it? I am uncertain what that looks like. It would be something we would navigate with counsel when we get there. I will likely fully advocate for the release of this in whatever form it is. To the public, I think that is necessary. But I do think the way that it was set up on the front end, the committee had to meet to receive the report, to discuss what it looked like, to get that feedback in open session because that's how those committees are formed.

No, I understand. I just wanted to say, like, the report needs to be done on this date, and then, well, it's done, but we're still formatting it, but it hasn't gone to council yet. We haven't met about it yet, and then six months go by.

Yeah, so the motion made at this time, last time, that's why I picked this time, because if we're following process, that process worked, is to turn over the report in its full form. to our council on the date of the time. So we will receive the full report in its final form on September 10th, if the motion that I just made carries, or August 20th, if it does not.

So full finalized report is what it means, and then any discussion would be later determined by? By the council. Yes. Yes.

Mr. President. Yeah, I have a question. The motions can be made to delay the investigation. I'd like to wait. We just got this email today, you know, from Denton. I have questions from the Denton. You know, I'd like to ask the attorneys on kind of, you know, if we extend it, then what? Kind of like, you know, what's the product going to be? What resources are they going to commit, you know, to finishing this? So I'd ask that we delay until the next council meeting to kind of see where they are and kind of give some of us some time to talk to those Denton attorneys. Since we just got the question today, you know, because I do have questions. I mean, there seems to be, when you look at the invoices, a four- or five-month delay in any work being done. That doesn't mean they weren't doing work. I can't see it. And then the last minute public record requests on April 29th sent to the mayor's office. And then within 30 days, they turned around and sent 6,000 documents. So it's that to delay to go through those 6,000 documents. And then I go back to July 7th when we voted to investigate the council. July 21st, I offered all my emails, text messages, everything. There hasn't been a single record request looking at the council at all. You know, so is that going to be part of the delay, or are we just completely focused on the mayor?

Yeah, so we have all been able to call them at any point in time to ask any of these questions. I've relayed many of the things you just shared to them over the course of time. Part of it is that, so there have been two requests that have come through from them to the city administration throughout this. The first was an initial request for the documents related to it that were easy and like here's the procedural and then the one on April 29th was fully formed after the discussions in the first initial processes with all the people where they did interviews. Then that request to your point was on April 29th. They received in response to that request some format of documents, I think it was PDF, I have not seen it, I don't know the exact number, you may have, I have not, of somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 pages of documents and one single PDF in response. So they have spent the majority of the last two months working through all of those to see what they are, if they're responsive, working through taking notes as they went, writing the output of the memo, which is the report on the back end as they were going through all of those. But it takes a lot of time to go through documents in that format. I would welcome all of you to share. That's why we set it up the way we did. That's why we waited to have a request until everybody had had the opportunity to talk to the council that is doing this report. While this ball has been in my court, it has also been in yours. Every time you have shared, I have shared. Whether or not you have shared on the back end, I don't know. Part of the issue here is that the idea of a secondary review of anybody else would be after they got through the first run of the specific requests of the city, which would be after the point we were at now. So in some capacity, looking historically at this, delays outside of the control. Again, it was a not to exceed contract set on the front end based on the review of other investigations that were occurring and a very strong armed negotiated not to exceed because of the cost it would take if it was more. I again would advocate for the premise that we asked for feedback from the people in the position of authority to do this and they asked for three more weeks. You could have asked in the last month. You could have asked since June 1st when you brought up two days after the last request or whatever it was, May 1st, where we were. You could have asked then. You didn't. You keep continuously asking on this dais. In a way...

I got the email today.

That's right.

You know, not like two weeks ago. We could have talked about it, but just poof, get the email to all of us today.

As soon as I received it, I sent it on. And I think part of that was they were working to see if they could get it done, and they could not. Now, we are 17 days before. We do have another meeting on August 19th. You are free to call them and ask them any questions you want. Again... The pressure that you're putting on this thing, I think, has already worked. August 20th date, put them in a position where they understand. They apologize to me, which is by proxy an apology to all of us for the delay that it's taken. And not just us here, but everybody that's been a part of this for 15 months. I don't know that I think the way that we've gone about this over the last month is appropriate or nice or kind or conscientious to the way that we are treating our city. If they're asking for three weeks, I think it makes reasonable sense to either approve that motion or not. To be honest with you at this point, I don't care what you decide. I don't. I can advocate what I think is right. I can do that forever. I will do it forever. no matter what the issue, and you can do whatever you think is right by whatever metric you are deeming that appropriate to your conscience.

All right, we have a motion. I'm seconding the motion. If you don't want to extend it, vote it down.

Wait a minute, Mr. President. I mean, not everyone has had a chance to ask their questions. Well, I've been watching Councilor Joshi down there is trying to get a word in.

No, it's fine. Thank you. I appreciate that. And thank you for your patience, President Snyder. I do think that it makes sense to me when a process has been put in place to follow the process. We put some pressure on them to ask for a deadline. I understood why some people felt that that was necessary. And lo and behold, you've gotten them to say, yes, we need to get this done. But getting it done... isn't the entire goal. It's getting it done right. You can do something or you can do it incorrectly. And you can get some half done report and you can have it unfilled and people will take it, dissect it, misinterpret it, do what they will with it. And I don't think that's what our intention as a group and a body that worked together when we first came together on this, was to do this in collaboration with one another in a kind and just and compassionate way. Three weeks. is hardly an extension after the amount of time we've given them, and I do think it is reasonable to go ahead and push that forward, and I certainly think it's an appropriate ask because of the amount of data and information that has been made clear to us that was sent to them, not within only a three-month period. I think it's very reasonable.

Thank you, Dr. Joshi. And I apologize. Normally, I know I screw procedure up quite a bit, but normally it's a motion, a second, and then discussion. So we need to get the second in. Go ahead.

Thank you. So a couple of things. I'm listening to what everybody's saying on the dais. And I have to be honest, I didn't realize that, you know, Brian, I'm speaking to you directly. And you and I talked about this a little bit. I didn't realize I could pick up the phone and call Denton's myself. I thought that we were outside of that scope. So for me not calling them and asking them questions, I thought I was doing the right thing. So having talked to you, I understand what you're saying. And I understand that everybody thinks that if we push them along to this deadline, that we're not going to get something that's right or just or fair. I don't believe that. I believe if somebody is given a deadline, they're going to do the work. I don't necessarily disagree that three weeks is a big time gap between the two, and I told you I was open to that discussion, but I vehemently disagree that, not vehemently disagree, I shouldn't say that, I disagree that the pressure that we put on them is going to give us anything less than what we paid them to do. I don't think that, I don't know, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but as attorneys, the last thing they're gonna do is give us something that they think is half-baked, or they're hiding something, or something's missing, or whatever. I don't see that. And so I'm talking to you, Ryan, personally. This is me being just and fair and kind. And I'm not opposed to it, but I really want to see us get through this process. I want to see us get through it, and I want to see it done as soon as possible. And I don't disagree with what Tony said about maybe waiting until the 19th. We can table this and see how much, how closer they are to that date, if they're close to doing it. I'm open to that too. But if I could call Dens myself, I'd like to call them tomorrow and have a lot of questions for them. I didn't know that we could do that. So that's on me. I should have talked to you about that. So in all fairness and honesty, I don't think it's right to say that just because we forced a deadline on them that they're not gonna give us something that's good and right and that they're rushing and that they're doing this. Because from January to April, That's the question that I have. What were you doing between January and April, waiting for that tranche of information that they asked for from January to April? What were they doing in that time frame? No, I know, but from January to April, what were they doing from the last interview that we had? So that's just my feelings. I'm telling you this. You're right. You and I talked about it off the dais. But

I just had one more quick comment. One thing that I don't think was missing from that email is them saying that they couldn't make the deadline we had set, that they just request that it would be easier on them for their staff and personal lives to have an extension to September 10th. I agree with Shannon that they're not going to under their standards as practicing law, they're not going to provide a report that's not accurate or complete with a deadline that we've already set. So I agree with you, Shannon. One thing that was, again, was missing from that email of them saying that they couldn't meet the deadline, they're just requesting some additional time for their own staffing purposes.

Mr. President?

So I wanted to understand, Councillor Green, so by tabling it, in essence, isn't that increasing the time? Or you're saying you would have time to look at it, but the motion and what we passed last meeting would still, it would be due on the 20th? Is that what you were thinking?

Yeah, I'd like to delay the vote. Your mic's not on. I'd like to delay the vote and wait until, I think it's the August 17th council meeting. Or 19th?

So if we voted to say we're sticking with the deadline, they'd have three days.

So they've got to be prepared. Yeah. You know, so I'd rather keep the deadline as is. And if they come back on August 17th and say, no, we need, we're so close, we need two, three weeks, then reevaluate whether we extend it at that point in time. Something. And then also, I mean, it would give me time and probably, it sounds like a couple other counselors, the opportunity to call Denton's, you know, the law firm and ask some questions.

Yeah. So, thank you. I just wanted to understand that before I made my comments. Oh, did I cut in front of you? I'm sorry.

Can I just ask one quick question? When did you email them asking about the deadline and they just emailed you back today at 237? in response to they needed additional time?

We sat here until 9 last meeting. And I emailed them before I left the chambers and then turned the lights off. I followed up twice since then to see how they were doing, to get feedback. I followed up again yesterday to say, hey, we're meeting. Do you have feedback? Had a call today with them. to talk about where they were on progress. They said they would send a follow-up email based on that call asking for an extension from there. I would say if we are not going to extend it based on their feedback, because lawyers are people too, lawyers will turn in not good work if under the gun because they have to, specifically if the deadline is to turn it in. I think it is absolutely contingent that All of you reach out and talk to them at this point. The idea that this has been handled inappropriately is her fault, first and foremost, specifically when nobody asked how it was going, what we were doing, didn't ask for updates. I don't appreciate it personally. I don't appreciate it as a colleague. We all have stake in this. We're all trying our very best at all times to put this city on the right path. The premise that we would take something that we spent 14 months on, 15 months on, part of that delay to bring the heat down and then escalate the heat instantaneously for whatever reason has occurred over the last month and a half is beyond comprehension to me because we've spent so much time on so many things to do them right. We've fought about weird stuff. We've hashed out things in hurtful, sad ways. We've apologized, we've come back around to do this right now for this thing that has become the entire structure of what we've been talking about for 15 months. Seems very, very arbitrary. And I tend to think of myself as a moderately rational person. I understand most sides of many things. I try to look at everything from every context I possibly can. I see behavior and decision making that baffles me on this. And I get it. You aren't here. I fully understand you probably might not have voted for it on the front end. Totally hear you. But we voted on it and we see things through. We don't end them at the end or tell people that are trying to help us do something that their feedback is wrong because we are just upset about it. It just doesn't seem appropriate to me. I'm using my time here because I don't know that I'm going to give another one of these speeches. I'm exhausted. I'm tired of all of this. I'm tired of the way that we are treating each other in our city. We live here. It's our home. There comes a point where we need to do what's right because it's right, not because it's easy or expedient or puts us in a position to be somewhere we want to be in the future. Bottom line, we do what's right. If we pick something up, we put it down better than we found it. And we move on from there. But this whole concept of forcing an issue that we've spent 15 months on seems so bizarrely arbitrary and so contrived. I apologize for saying that. I apologize that I have to say it. I don't know what else you want me to do. I can advocate for what I think is right. We can vote any way you want to. If you look at me and say, let's retract this and we vote on August 17th, we can do that. But you all got to call. You got to have the conversation. You got to stop hiding behind whatever it is you're hiding about. You could have all called the whole time.

I'm not done. Brian, I was not doubting you and your communication. I knew for sure you would not leave here until you had that email written and sent to them. It is unfortunate that it took two weeks for them to respond. And that was two weeks that they could have been working on it pretty actively

and could have had some information back.

So I'm absolutely not doubting anything that you've done.

Councilor Worrell was speaking.

Thank you.

All right.

So, Councilor Locke, first of all, let's just acknowledge there's a lot of frustration up here. I can tell you're frustrated. I'm frustrated. Councilor Taylor, a lot of frustration up here. So let's just not... judge each other that that's unwarranted or not fair. My goal, as I even reiterated last time at the last meeting, was that the whole reason to do this was to find out what happened. I saw division in our community. There were the people who thought everything was fine and the people that thought it shouldn't have happened. There were stakeholders on each side talking to all of us. who said, can this be done or it shouldn't be done? And my goal was to, and investigation is probably a little too strong of a word, but that's the word we have, to investigate what happened, accept it, and then get it out there and move on. Everybody move on. And as I stated last week, this has gone so long, that I'm now even more disappointed that you are chasing them this last two weeks. What you just described, that's shameful that they have ignored you, and we then, and this is a reflection of you, that they're doing to you. You are being forced to send us an email, and someone called me and said, did you see the email? I didn't even see the email. So whatever time that came in, So now I'm being forced for a vote that if I stick with the 20th, and that was the pressure we put on this organization who I don't know from Adam. When I met with them, I met with them once. I gave them a three-ring binder of every piece of paper I had, people that emailed me, people that had thoughts, anything, because I was reacting. It was all reaction to the circumstances that were created. Not by me, but by somebody else. I'm now being forced to choose between a report that comes out on August 20, I guess it is, or three weeks later. It's going to be so much better. I think that's stupid. It doesn't sound like a long time, but come on. If we paid them a hundred and some thousand dollars and they took this two weeks knowing what was coming, I feel like I have to vote to stick to the 20th now in order to get anything. And I wasn't prepared to do that when I sat down in this chair tonight. And the reason is because I thought, oh, three weeks, we want the answer. Things have changed. Things are not the way they were two years ago. I think there's a lot more collaboration. I think there's a lot more communication. I actually am encouraged by the way things are going. And I'm disappointed to hear that you're discouraged. I'm encouraged by the way things are going. So, unfortunately, and this whole investigating the council, I gave them everything I had. So, they've got stuff to investigate if they want to investigate the council. I'm not really sure what that's all about because anything that I did as a member of this council was a reaction to the circumstances that percolated into the media. So unfortunately, I'm going to vote that we stick to the 20th because I don't like the way they're treating you. And I apologize to you. And I did ask you on several occasions privately, where are we? What's going on? I didn't think I needed to spout it to the world.

It was between you and I. Yeah, Councilor, this isn't about you personally. I'm more frustrated. I'm not frustrated with you. I'm frustrated with Denton's. I went through every line of their billables and when they met and when they got the information. And though I didn't ask you, I did ask Council President multiple times. I was told, okay, they're going to have everything completed in February. It could be completed in June. And then they send this massive request that they could have sent on April 29th, which was turned around in less than 30 days by the due date to get the information back in. This is about them, not you. You know, you shouldn't have had to hound them from the last meetings in that last one in January to get to get them to produce work. Unfortunately, I'm jaded. When I work with a lot of attorneys, I truly believe that once they ran out of billable hours and they weren't dedicating staff to actually cash flow that they were going to receive, that this got put on the back burner by then. That's my perception of how this is handled. This isn't about your handling of it. This is about... the firm making this a priority and producing the work, it boggles my mind that it's taking this long. I can go over multiple other investigations that haven't taken this long. And to then finally request additional information on April 29th that they could have requested months ago, for now which they've had for over 60 days, I mean PDFs are searchable. Chat GPT it. I mean, you could pull out information using AI. There's so many ways. So I'm still stuck on the 20th. They need to do their work, what they're paid for, and deliver the quality product that they stand by as a large professional law firm and produce this report. That's where I'm at. This isn't about you. This is about them executing the work which we paid them for, and they still haven't done it yet.

First off, I hope they're not uploading sensitive documents into AI without some sort of scar brails in place. That would be a security breach. I see Sergey saying that right there. I should have said this last time. Part of it, there's a lot of saying if this report If we don't give them all the time they need, then everyone's going to question the final product and not believe it. And I understand that. But there's gonna be some people that no matter how much time we take, whatever side they're on the issue, unless the report says what they want it to say, they're probably not going to accept the final report. what i would like to point out is when they present their report or give it to us if there's something troubling in there nothing stops the council from making another motion and continuing to investigate if there's something that was troubling in there that needs to be investigated further so and that would of course require council action but we can do that if there is something in there that requires further investigation If they need more time because they haven't found anything, that to me is not a good reason to keep continuing this. After 14 months, if there was something to be found, it would have been found by now.

And Adam, by the way, the federal government and other agencies input stuff into Palantir on their own basis. That's what I'm talking about.

Okay.

Okay.

My turn. I do agree with Jeff that investigation was a harsh word from the beginning, probably. This is a review of process, history and process, hopefully with a product that provides guidelines, any corrective changes that need to be made, and guidelines on how to proceed. I want to remind everybody that the ordinance we're discussing this under simply was one that says If something is getting taxpayer money, there must be a city councilor on the committee. That's what the ordinance is. But we're using it to talk about this. My frustration, because we're going to talk about our frustrations, is that if this were any other legal issue, this would not be talked about up here. And attorneys would be screaming at us to shut up. So... Denton's has ethical duties, like anybody else, any other attorney, what they do, don't do. I'm not gonna comment on their staffing, their decisions, or whatever else. I think that a mistake was made by getting into a two-hour conversation last week, or last meeting, and I think we're growing here because the more we talk about this, which I thought was the whole point of kind of shifting things The only person that would talk about it would be the leader of the committee, who I still think has done a great job. And I'm going to, frankly, follow his opinion on what we think we should do, because I don't have a strong enough one on this issue. I see the argument why three weeks is offensive to some. Three weeks is three weeks. I can see that argument on the other. My concern is not what the kind of report they provide, but because we've given them an ultimatum, if they don't hit the deadline, we've just thrown away $125,000 because we don't really have a... The penalty is turn over what you have in a non-report form and then there's nothing there. So if... They don't think they can do it by the 20th? I'd rather have a document than no document. That's my opinion. So we do have a motion. We do have a second.

I'd like to maybe throw a little wrench in the works here, Mr. President. Is it at all feasible for the chair of the committee to find out why this three weeks is so important? And is there something of concern? And to vet that, I'm just wondering if there is, I mean, what is this three weeks all about? If it's just about, well, that's when our intern is going to be available, that's not my problem. But if there is something that they're still trying to determine, could you ask that question in all fairness and find that out? That seems to me, what if we're up here arguing for nothing and they just want to make sure it's pretty and there's, you know, it's going to say what we all already know. So I'm just asking, how much interaction do you have

And yeah, I'm gonna be down on the phone tomorrow Yeah, so the conversation I had today about it was about that it was about what do they need timewise to ensure that they get through what they have to put it in a form that fulfills the requirement of getting a report pulled together so I I took their lack of response for the last two weeks as they were diligently working to get through and pull stuff together and And the last minute response, which I think everybody who's ever worked on anything in their whole life understands, is a panic mode. We tried our very best to get it done to see where we would be by August 3rd because that was the deadline we put on just we're having another meeting to talk about it. And they said we would love just a little bit more time to make it work. I am not opposed in any way for anybody and all people to reach out and have a conversation. To here, I, again, have tried to stay out of the minutiae of the details on purpose, because it is an investigation, as Councilor Green said, of us two. So really, me trying to navigate it to the best of my ability stayed out of the question of, did you find anything? Is there anything there on purpose for me? For us, as we're trying to get through it, to let them kind of shape that the way that they needed to, Yeah, no answer. And I will, just to reiterate your judgment point, there's no judgment. This isn't a judgment thing. It's a objective review of what we're doing and how we're moving. And I appreciate your sentiment and your guidance as we try to navigate these things together. but I do not and will not ever see this as a reflection of me. This is a process that I had to run for us. If anything, it's a reflection of all of us and our inability to keep something on the rails where nine people understood the direction it was moving in the same process. So I will be fine when I go home at night and know the decisions I've made were for the reasons that I needed to make them. I know you all will do the same, but I do just want for the record to state that I will not and do not accept that this is a reflection of me in any single way, regardless of what other people may think.

Thank you. The deadline stays at August 20th. Where are we, Rich?

We are old business.

Thank you. Item B, public areas still in land use. Item C, Third reading of Ordinance D-2834-26. Since this was also presented in finance, Rich, would you like to take this one?

Yes, sir. This is a bond ordinance permitting the issuance of waterworks revenue bonds of the city to pay for the design, acquisition, construction, installation, and equipping of various improvements in the city's waterworks system. And I believe Director Young and his team are are also going to present in this one presentation on the third reading of Ordinance D-2835-26, a bond ordinance permitting the issuance of sewage works revenue bonds of the city to pay for design, acquisition, construction, installation, and equipping of various improvements to the city's sewage works system. This comes back from the, both these come back from the Finance Committee with a positive recommendation for approval.

So, Lane, you're going to be discussing in tandem Ordinance D-283426, which is Item C, and D-2835-26, which is Item D, since there's a lot of overlap.

Correct, correct. Good evening, Council. Thank you for letting me be a part of this tonight. I come to you with the, what is it, The third reading of these two ordinances, I will say, and I'm not sure procedurally, so I'm going to kind of throw this out there and then let those that are procedure gurus take over. But we did amend this from when I first read it in and was here and presented to you all the first reading.

So let's address that real quick. So you have presented this as amended. And it was noticed as amended. And it's my understanding from our council, city's council, that what's important is a chain of notices and updates. I will say I'm into a little bit of a kink in this just for uniformity sake. And that is we did a public hearing at the last meeting. I've since been informed that that public hearing was not required. But since we did one, we're going to have another one since the dollar amount has changed. Purely procedural, shouldn't change anything. But we will do another public hearing just because the dollar amounts change, and we had one at the last meeting. So what you are talking about is the amended ordinance that we've all gotten and has been noticed to the public.

Correct. Sure. Open up the public hearing for a second. Since it's procedural, it's OK that the public hearing wasn't noticed.

Yes, I think it's okay because it's an item that's coming back from a committee. It's been properly noticed then. The public hearing has been properly noticed the first time. So if members of the public are following this particular item, we should be aware that there might be another action item regarding this specific item.

I think President Snyder was saying he wanted to do it this evening.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's fine. Let me do it now.

We're going to get that out of the way if I have everybody's consent to kind of rearrange the agenda just a tiny bit. All right. Opening up public hearing for item C, third reading of ordinance D283426 at 7.54. Seeing no one rushing to the podium, we'll close that at 7.55. We'll go ahead and do the public hearing for item D, third reading of ordinance D-2835-26 at 7.55. And seeing no one rushing to the podium, again, we will close that at 7.55 and some change. Thank you. I know it sounds little, but since we did one for a different amount, And I did speak with bond counsel about that. Just to stay consistent.

Thank you for that. And I apologize for that confusion when I thought we could do that, we could do it all in one fell swoop.

You see all the mistakes I make here? You're fine.

Well, I apologize again. I know it's been a long night and I hope to not make it too much longer. I did come to you guys, you all, a month ago with this request for some improvements to our system. to help our overall system, both on the water and the wastewater side. And just to start with a reminder that these are improvements that are able to be accomplished within our budget, within our current revenue structure. So I'm not coming before you with a need to raise rates. We're looking at this. And while some things could be funded with cash, these are assets that have 50-year lifecycle. And so it makes sense to issue a bond to cover some of that, allow that to be paid for by people in the future as well, who will benefit from those assets. So letting you all know that this is coming to you with some projects we need to do and fund it through a bond ordinance, which I need you all to approve. So that kind of high level, and I'll kick us off. We'll start with the water side. So one of the reasons for the amendment, I think, and Bond Council is here with me, part of it was I think there was some language that needed to be cleaned up, some typos and things that needed to be cleaned up. So that was part of the amendment. The other piece was the fact that I increased the water amount to cover this project here and one other that I will mention here in a moment. So this is, and you're going to see this slide again, so on your far left is, range line is probably maybe on the edge even of this as I look at it because I think it's even further to the left. But starting at range line on Medical Drive, and going down Medical Drive all the way to AAA Way, down AAA Way, around Keystone Avenue, and back up. That's the sewer, the very deep sewer that I'm going to talk about in a moment. That project had been on the books for a little while. My predecessor had looked at this as one, as a capacity. What I failed to understand, and I caught after our first meeting, was what about the old water mains that are in there as well when we have that road dug up? And so I said, we need to include that. So that was not included in the first proposal. It is being included now. We've got a firm working diligently to get a design number for that. I don't even have that. I can tell you that in looking at this, we've put a $2 million. I think that's what we're going to need. I'll know more when we get the design work. But that's this project, and it's replacing old cast iron, a material that's no longer used anymore. It gets brittle as it ages. And so we will replace a 10-inch cast iron main with a 10-inch ductile iron main. That main was put in in 1969. So we've gotten its useful life out of it. It's time to replace it.

And it's prudent to do it now while we have the road dug up.

So that's that project. This is also in this Merchant Square area, the second part, along Carmel Drive, and then you'll, is the light kind of, I'm going to call it teal or aqua, don't hold me to my color, I'm a little colorblind, versus the darker blue. And then if you, that's running east-west along Carmel Drive, and then if you go due north, there will be the New Kinzer Road. It looks, it's kind of orangish-reddish there, maybe yellow in there, going straight up. from Carmel Drive up to where Kinzer ends currently. So that road is a road that's being put in. We will replace the water main in there, as well as replace and upsize the water main along Carmel Drive. Again, older water main were in here. This work is being done. So this was part of the process, but the previous one was not. Often we have water main projects that are dictated by road projects. Most of our assets, I said to the Finance Committee, most of our assets are in right-of-way, public right-of-way, as opposed to our own private easements. We have some, but not very many. So whenever we're in a public right-of-way, then we're subject to the rules of the public right-of-way. So the county is coming in and putting in a roundabout at 146 and Hazeldale. They are going to do the project. This project of relocating our main to get it out of the way will be done in contract with their project. I think the bids, I was just told earlier today, the bids have been let, or they've at least been advertised. So we've put a million and a half placeholder on that, but we'll see when they come back and I'll know what that is. So that's that project there. Michigan Road, that's a project that we've been looking at and we chose. Michigan Road is a very important corridor. It's the far west side of our service area. Michigan Road on the picture there is that kind of angular on the very left. So right now that whole area is fed only from one access point or one kind of where we get water, and that's on the south at 96. It comes up and it moves up. So this will give us something around 116th. It's not quite there. It's just a little south of it, but it's going across, and that will give us a loop. It will give us another feed to that corridor. It should improve our water pressures on the west side as well. So that's a project we're doing, and that's about a 1.2 million placeholder on that. And it's actually been designed. It's 1.17 million. So we have a pretty good number on that project. This is the final one that I think obviously we've been a part of the public discussion here recently around stormwater and what's going on in this neighborhood. And so as the city is looking to make some improvements for the stormwater as well as the roads in there, it made sense that we get in there as well as those mains are cast ironed. 1971, they're at their useful life. So we have a real high placeholder of around a million and a half on that. No design on it yet, so we've got a firm working on that. But with this coming, we thought let's get in there and get our work accomplished as well. So that's the water. Those are the water projects. Then on the wastewater, so here's a little bit better picture of that, the yellow. This is the current 12-inch sanitary sewer that is a clay pipe sewer. This was installed in 1969. Carmel was very different in 1969. Certainly Midtown was very different in 1969. So this was largely residential and built to handle and convey residential as Midtown has grown. become more dense. We have seen where this 12-inch pipe doesn't have the capacity that we need it to have. We're fortunate that it's 25 feet deep because we have surged the pipe that's gone up into the manhole. The manhole structure is deep enough and large enough to kind of hold that. But over time, that can only get worse. So we, in looking at trying to project future growth but capture the capacity we have now, We're going to upsize that from a 12-inch main to an 18-inch main. We believe that will give us plenty of future capacity in that area to handle that. Then going a little bit north in this area, I showed you it's pretty similar to the water work that we're doing. We're replacing and adding a sewer line, upsizing it from a 12-inch, the long caramel, making that 15 and 18 as it gets further east, and then 15 going up straight into Kinzer where the water's going in. So those are the projects. Largely, those are capacity projects that enhance our system throughout, right? Because the way it all works, it flows. This Gramercy project definitely needed some additional capacity. And so this will help that as well. But I can tell you they've made a pretty nice contribution to this that covers what maybe the additional that we would do. So I feel very good that this is not, we're not doing this and the developers benefiting at the expense of everybody else. They've actually been a contributor. And there's some more they plan to contribute as it develops out. So just to kind of, I know that was something that was asked of me. earlier and wanted to make that clear in this presentation. I'm going to pause here and allow you all to ask me any kind of the technical, the sort of problems that we're trying to solve. And then I'm going to turn it over to Scott Miller, who will walk through the financial and kind of show you where we stand with our finances based on this issuance.

Can I just ask what that contribution and how does that work? Is it something straight to the city and then goes from there, or can you just kind of explain how that works?

Yeah, it's straight to the utility, and so we look at what future use is going to be, and there's an EDU that we ascribe to every house. One house is an EDU, so we kind of look at, all right, what flow, what water demand is going to come based on that, and then we have a rate structure that, based on those EDUs, based on the use that's going to come in, how it's going to be redeveloped, then we take that times a multiplier. So that's what's out there. I believe they have paid $1.2 million thus far with the potential for another about $2.7 million.

Thank you.

When you're going through this, what are some of the, I guess let me ask you this, how many miles? It's not that important, but it's more than one. It's more than one. So this is kind of where I'm very good at pipes and ground, but the supply on force main sides. I'm going to make the assumption, or I made the assumption, that a 12-inch pipe is probably an 11-inch pipe because of buildup and everything else. And we'd love to see the cross-section some of the pipes you take out, because I'm sure there, I've seen some 12 inch pipes that have a half inch opening. But that's about 70,000 gallons of additional volume over a mile, from 11 to 18. Which I think has pros and cons, if I'm reaching back in my memory. One, it's more volume, which is great. And my understanding is that Big difference between volume and, four, pressure. That doesn't necessarily impact pressure. But at what point do we need more capacity on the back end, storage capacity, to maintain the growth? I mean, whether it's underground water storage with pumps or additional water tower for supply line. I know that in 1967, the fire service flows were a lot different than they are now. What's the thought process on are we doing so much at once that it may impact, it may create another large project in the future? Is that?

That's a great question. And it will. It will, right? Because the flow is going to come from the far west highest point and work its way all the way down to 96 and Hazeldale where we treat it. And so we have added the capacity here They feed right now into 15-inch mains once they kind of get out of the merchant square and head south. So at some point, we're going from a 12 to an 18. We probably could have gone from a 12 to a 15 and been fine. But if there's any future growth, and we're down in these, again, are 50-, 60-year assets, let's go ahead and make it a little bit bigger so we don't have to worry about that. But as the flow does come and as more demand and more users jump on that upstream, yes, we will have to look at, and we have been looking at those projects. They're not ready. We're not ready to do that. There will be a lift station involved in that. There'll be a force main. Could we look at gravity mains? So this is on the sewer side of things. You had thrown some water terms out there too. I think on the water side, we're in pretty good shape with our water with this project coming in online here soon on the far west side with that storage tank. We may look at some, making mains a little bit larger where we've got some pinch points. Places where we, when we bought the Indianapolis system and they had smaller mains, but we had larger, like there's some places throughout our system that are like that, that create some problems on the water distribution pressure, getting that out there, you get head loss and some different things like that. the water side but i think on the water side we're good for water uh production and storage so this is really i think a future project that will as that flow increases um kind of just east of keystone heading south down 116. we are looking at a project now we stubbed it out so one of the things we're doing i forgot to mention is we're paying off a ban there are a couple projects in 2023 that were done under that ban one of which was to increase capacity and redundancy at our 106th street lift station, which is kind of the final receiving structure for a good amount of our flow before we send it down to the plant. It's right there at the Hazel Dell Landing Park. It comes down to 96. So we stubbed out a 42-inch main to be able to do a force main down 106, up gray to somewhere, all the way to 116 or somewhere south of that. That will... ultimately take that flow that you're asking. That's a future project down the road. We don't think that doing this now will create that need, but it will be the next thing that we look at.

My question was predominantly on water, consumable water, but on the wastewater side, I know you're doing a lot of things with lining, and I do want to put some immediate responses. Well, why wouldn't you just replace the pipe or A lot of your sanitary pipes have issues from roots and collapse or clay. But the lining, to put people at ease, is going to be stronger than any pipe that you put in the ground. It's a resin base. It gets in every nook and cranny. And it's going to hold the shape of whatever it is. So the whole pipe around it could collapse once it's said, and it will still service just fine. I know there's some concerns about, well, won't the roots go back through it? Well, no, they won't. And the other cool thing about lining is that I find interesting. You get rid of all joints. It's one continuous thing, but it kills the scent trail for tree roots. So now tree roots aren't craving. They go towards where they feel nutrients are. Now they're not going towards that, I think. So not only could the tree roots probably not penetrate the resin-based liner, but it won't seek that anymore either.

And we do quite a bit of that. That's our first go-to, and it works well until you reach kind of a bottleneck capacity and you've got to expand the pipe because then that's a different project.

Thank you, Mr. President. I had a bio break, but I just wanted to ask you specifically, did anybody ask you about the life cycle of those liners? Because I asked you during the finance meeting, and I think it's worth just, since Matt was talking about it, just telling people what the general life cycle is of this.

I mean, I would be remiss if I said I went to the tech specs and studied it. We believe there's at least 50 years of life. So I think it extends the life of the asset at least 50 years, which is pretty decent for the price that it costed. All right, well, I'll pop back up when he's finished and take any final questions.

Thank you, Lane. Scott Miller with Baker Tilly. Just going to hit some high points for you on finances. The great news is Lane already stole the thunder. We are able to do this without a rate increase on either water or wastewater. So that's the really good news about this. I'm going to just skip right ahead because we've already talked about most of that. This is on the water side, the current schedule of project costs and funding. So we've got about $9.6, $9.7 million for the actual construction projects themselves, plus some additional for the cost of obtaining the financing. The way pricing works, that we see right now in the market looks is that we would likely issue these bonds with a net original issue premium. So we're only going to issue about $9.5 million of bonds and have about half a million coming in in premium. Those are numbers. Landon Boehm with Robert W. Baird, the city's underwriter, is here tonight. We updated numbers late last week. And so that's as current as we have right now. We'll talk more about that in just a second as far as the market is. That's what we're looking at from a sizing perspective on the water side. In terms of current financial information, this is a picture of your outstanding annual debt service for the bonds that are currently issued and outstanding. And then along the very top edge of that graph, just over the $10 million line, that darker green color is the principal and interest that would get added as part of this financing. So you can see $10 million on the debt that's already outstanding for the water utility is relatively minor, maintains the level structure that we've had in place since we did the major restructure back in 2024, 2025. From a coverage perspective, and this is why we're able to do this project now without a large rate increase. We had the increase that was approved by council back at the end of 2023, went into effect early in 2024, and you can see the jump in results there. That, on the water side especially, significantly improved the financial situation of the water utility and gets us to a point where we're able to issue these bonds without any sort of additional change to the rate ordinance. on the water side. A little bit different picture or different form of that same picture. The bars are the outstanding debt service payments and then the red line is your net revenues. So revenues coming in, operating revenues coming in, less operating expenses and you can see that still, that line is still on an upward trend. We're still gonna easily be able to support the debt service payments that are there. The water utility right now on its outstanding debt has one bond issue that's rated at a triple B plus. We hope that going through this process, we'll be able to raise that rating one or two notches to maybe an A minus or an A. Over time, I think we'll see that continue to improve, but I think for this financing, that's a good target for us to have, and hopefully we'll be able to do that From a timing perspective, the way, well, actually, I'll hold that. I'll hold that because I'll move on here to wastewater and talk about timing in total. Any questions about water finances before I move on to wastewater? OK, same format layout on wastewater. Much bigger project here again is the sources and uses. $15 million for the construction projects themselves. issuance costs for obtaining the financing, but then as Lane mentioned, in addition, we've got that ban bond anticipation note from 2023 that is outstanding. Final maturity on that is in 2027, but since we need to enter the market anyway, might as well do it all at once, get it taken care of. So we'll be taking that ban out and rolling it into this long-term financing. So just a little bit under $25 million of new bonds for the wastewater side. This is the outstanding and proposed debt on the wastewater. So that tan or light brown is the new principal and interest payments from this new bond issue. This is showing you kind of a worst case scenario, getting all the way up to $4 million per year in principal and interest. As we work with Landon and his team, Engage the Market, what we'll probably end up doing is taking some of the principal in those early, however many years that is, 10 or 12 years, and delaying the repayment of that out into those later years, 2040 and beyond, so that we can bring that total down below $4 million a little bit, just kind of smooth that out a little bit. What that does will help us on those bottom two numbers there in the right-hand column. Right now, With the existing debt, wastewater's in great shape. Wasn't as bad off before the 2023 rate change as water. But since that change, kind of getting ready because we knew these projects were coming, it has been in good shape. And then even with this debt, even if we leave it at the rate that it is now, we're still at 150% coverage. But once we do a little tweaking on the structure, I think we'll be able to bring that coverage up even more. Right now, wastewater doesn't have any outstanding rated debt, but we anticipate that probably in the same ballpark, A, A+, maybe on the wastewater side. So as far as timing goes, back to that topic, if council moves forward with adoption of both ordinances tonight, what we'll do next is start to initiate the rating process with Standard & Poor's, so we'll ship them a bunch of information in the preliminary offering documents so that they can go through their process. That'll take 30, 40 days or so as we work through that. During that time, we'll be working with Landon and his team in terms of marketing the bonds. And in the interest of time, We're looking at a variety of options and trying to keep as many options open for as long as possible as we look at marketing this. So either a private placement or a negotiated sale on the public market is where we're headed. And we're seeing changes in the market right now where it may make more sense to go private placement versus a public sale, but we're monitoring that and we'll see where that ends up. Timing-wise, where we think we'll be is hopefully pricing Honor around September 15 and then closing on both bond issues early in October Again same sort of picture as on the water side, but again net revenues increasing and Really utilities are looking looking really good financially right now and and with the planning and having a plan for these improvements, because as Elaine said, these have been on the docket here and knew they were coming. Just happy to be here and not have to tell you you need a rate increase tonight. So with that, we'll take any questions that you have, and if nothing else, I'll turn it back to Elaine.

I just had one question on that. You mentioned that we're at about 147 to 149% coverage, and you mentioned that you were going to be trying to look to reduce that. What is your ideal rate? Look, what are you hoping that you can get this to?

Yeah, so we had a similar question in finance committee. So let me throw out a couple numbers. We have to have a minimum of 125% debt service coverage to issue new debt and have it have the same status of lien against the net revenues that will be used to repay the debt. So 125 is the minimum to issue new debt. Ideally, I would, well, let me say it this way. I start to get nervous if I see that number start to get into the 130, 135% area, and not nervous in the sense that we're going to miss payments, but hey, if we've got more things coming that we need to do, we need to start thinking about changing the rates. If we're able to smooth out some of that debt service, we're going to be back closer to 180, maybe even Probably not 200%, but we'll be closer to the 170, 180% coverage, which is going to be pretty strong from a rating perspective. So that's kind of where I think it's likely going to play out. There's some math, obviously, that needs to happen to get to those numbers. But that's my goal, is to get us back over a decent amount over that 150 threshold on the wastewater side, just because we're going to get a better rating doing that. And I think because of the structure of the debt, we have the opportunity to do that without a significant financial impact. You know, if we delay principal in total, we're going to pay more interest. But from a rate perspective, we know there may at some point be additional projects that's going to leave us more room to do more work down the road without impacting rates.

That was my next question, so thank you for that.

That's why we're doing that, is to try to create the ability to do more work down the road without another major rate increase. Not to say that it might not happen. Make sure you heard that right.

I'm quoting you. It's not happening.

But we're trying to control that as much as we can.

Can you go back to the slide that shows net revenue over debt? My question really is this versus wastewater or however you want to break it out, but there's major swings in where your net revenue is and your debt. And my question is, there's going to be some years that are better than others. And what do you do with the excess money? Do you have a utility rainy day fund, for instance? Does it make sense to put money back in? Do you do more internal projects? Just generally, it looks like there'll be a few years where you have a windfall and really not negative year because you're planning for it.

Great question. That was what I was going to pop up and wrap up his bit with, is there's always this balance of what do we maintain in cash balances to use for projects, knowing that cash balances also are very important to the rating agencies. And because of the community that we are and just sort of our demographic, we will never qualify for the subsidized money that comes out of the federal government through the Indiana Finance Zone. right, because we're just, our MHI is too high. So we really need to ensure that our ratings are strong. And so part of what I look at in this last budget I did, and I'll do it in this year's budget, is what amount of cash do we put away, what our cash balances look like, what are they projected to look like, and make sure there's cash sitting there first. Then what are the projects that we can do and should do and need to do out of cash second, right? trying to match some of those up with their life cycle. If we've got leases on vehicles or purchase a vac truck, that isn't as long-standing an asset as a pipe is. So we just look at what should we pay out of cash, what makes sense to issue debt for, and you just hold those in balance. And so I think we're looking at ensuring that rainy day fund, if you want to call it that. It's built into our financials. So if you look at our financials, there's a pretty hefty line of depreciation. That's a non-cash expense every year. That's there to sort of make sure that money's being put away for those future assets.

When you say put away, just as a reminder to the general public, you're a utility. You operate as a business separate from the city. Do you have a separate financial policy than the city? Or are you able to park money that you know you need long term to be able to do these kind of things in better investment accounts than the city does?

Those funds are enterprise funds. So by that creation of that, they are only to be there and managed within the enterprise fund. And so they stay within the enterprise fund. As far as do we have an investment policy, I don't believe that we do. It isn't that we couldn't have one, but I'm not sure. If you're asking that kind of a, I haven't seen a specific, you have to put away X. I don't think it's a you have to.

I think it's if you want to.

If you want to, right. Yeah, but we build that in, and that's where I come, and I look at everything, and with my team, I say me. It's a great team behind me. It isn't me. I stand here, but there are a lot of people behind me. Once we put all that together then we present that to the administration administration. Here's where we are.

Here's what we recommend and That that's our that's that's our budget Yeah, let me clarify one thing as well on this picture because I Line what that line is showing you is just operating revenues less operating expenses And then the bars below are your principal and interest payments that two million dollar gap that you see there that that's that two million dollars is money that would either get set aside and saved for the future or spent each year on improvements that this is that the utility does outside of bond issues and two million dollars of annual expenditure for Utilities this size is not a lot of money, but that's what that is that it's not it's not profit. It's not you know We're charging the customers too much. It's to continue to maintain those I don't think anyone was suggesting it Yeah, I just just I just wanted to clarify that that that's what that gap is that two million dollars for cash and replacements Sorry Scott, so what you mentioned that two million dollars isn't a lot for a utility of our size what would be a

What would you want? I'm curious.

Well, so as we saw tonight and what I'm asking, and I put some placeholders, 500 feet or 5,000 feet of a water main is $2 million. Yeah, yeah. We have 500 and well over 500 miles of water mains. So $2 million doesn't get you a lot.

Yeah.

One thing on the construction of this. Are you incorporating more valves just so that if there is an issue, you're able to shut down more localized, on the water surface, more localized sections than large swaths?

Are you wanting to bring up last August? It is August.

I just assumed you were just feeling the need to bring that up again. I'm just saying, in general rule, are you looking at that as you design?

No, we do. Yes, we do. We do look at kind of resiliency. And we're working on a water model right now, updating it. So those are the kind of things that water model will show. If we have a valve here, this will expand it. These projects are very specific to some water main replacements that are really tied only to that.

Thank you. And I will remind the council this came out of finance with a unanimous positive recommendation. Are there any other questions?

I move for approval ordinance D-2834-26 as amended. I move for approval ordinance D-2035-26 as amended.

Excellent. Thank you, Lane. Thank you all. On to public hearings. We have the first reading of Ordinance D-2838-26, Ordinance of the Common Council of the City of Carmel, Indiana, authorizing and approving additional appropriation of funds from the Parks Impact Key Fund, 106, to line item 4460715, White River Corridor. Our sponsor is Taylor Austin. Go ahead. Move to introduce. All right. Now, my understanding is this is taking your money and moving it so you can use your money.

That is correct.

Okay. And this is for the White River Trail?

That is correct. This will fund the design and construction administration contract for the White River Greenway South Extension Phase 1, which will take the White River Greenway from the new 106 trail that connects to the Borough Bridge south as far as we can go. So we're super excited to get this project. I also will note that we received a $400,000 grant from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources to help contribute towards the construction of these costs, but we are using impact fees in those dollars that have already been collected and are in our fund and just asking for appropriation to move forward with this contract.

We'll open up the public hearing at 8.31. Close the public hearing at 8.31 and 30 seconds.

I move to suspend the rules and enter this into action this evening.

Second.

Excellent.

Move for approval of Ordinance D-283826 as presented.

Thank you. Next up, first reading of Ordinance D-2842-26, an ordinance of the Common Council of the City of Carmel, Indiana, authorizing and approving an additional appropriation of funds from the Lane Mile Direct Distribution Fund, Fund 225, to line item 435-0202, Road Maintenance Preservation. Councillor Austin? Move to introduce. Second.

This ordinance appropriates $332,191.32 to cover costs related to city road maintenance and repairs. I don't know if there's someone here to... Here you go.

Good evening, Council. I'm Matt Higginbotham, Street Commissioner. This is funds that the city received that was distributed by the state of leftover Community Crossings money, and this is just transferring it out of that fund into our funds so we can spend it.

Any questions or discussion? We'll open up the public hearing at 8.33. And we'll close the public hearing at 8.33 and 30 seconds, seeing no one moving.

Move to suspend the rules on interaction this evening. Move to approve. Second.

Thank you, and thank you, Directors, for sticking around. New business. First reading of ordinance D-2843-26. In ordinance of the Common Council of the City of Carmel, Indiana, amending Carmel City Code Chapter 8, Article 4, Section 8-44. And subsequent sections, councilors Austin, Menard, Snyder, Taylor, Worrell, sponsors, and this is the micromobility emoto ordinance that is in land use or is current, I guess we need

Yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead. To clarify the language that we have, I know we're going to probably see a lot of changes to language, is what was originally presented minus those two items that were removed and voted on, correct?

And a couple more comments that have been added in the interim. So yes, we introduced the ordinance. It might seem like a deja vu. It is. The impoundment provisions and forfeiture provisions have been passed. The rule has been suspended. Everything else has been removed. The topic has been assigned to land use. It's been discussed already. There are certain ideas that came out of it. So there are four things that's been incorporated into this ordinance, which is brand new material. Number one, expansion of a partial dismount zone from City Center Drive to West Main Street due to the recent extension of Monum Boulevard. Jack actually brought up an excellent point. I walked the entirety of Monum Boulevard to check out the new section. And I also noticed that there are two sections on Monum Boulevard that are shared biking lanes. So this is probably one of the things we will discuss at land use on Wednesday, because that language right now does not amount for it. Number two is prohibition of operation of e-bikes without the display of manufacturer or distributor's labels. That requirement was introduced in 2020 by state law. There are some issues with that language as well. We'll discuss that on Wednesday as well. Number three is expansion of prohibited activities, including wheelies, jumping curbs, burnouts, drifting, riding on maintained lawns, unpaved footpaths, and stormwater facilities, and a couple others. And finally, the expansion of ways to identify an e-motor device and distinguish it from e-bike. The rest of it you've seen.

So I... It's going to be a little redundant to make sure this is clear. We had a micromobility ordinance that the council worked on for a year and passed. Then the police department had some changes that they wanted to see with legal for enforcement. They brought that to us, and we carved out those and approved those to help the police department. But with comments from most of the councillors, but Councilor Worrell and others, it was quite obvious that our initial ordinance wasn't quite doing the job. But because we approved an amendment at the last meeting for the police, we needed something to bring back to this meeting to actively work on. Correct. So what you see in this ordinance that you say needs changes, that's because it's effectively a draft already and will continue to be vetted through all the processes with community input, land use, working groups, and whatnot.

That's exactly it. So we ask this ordinance to be sent now officially, not just the topic, but the ordinance to the Land Use Committee so we can continue a discussion that has already started.

And that shall be done. So this will lay in.

Mr. President?

Yes, sir. Have we ruled out any prohibitions based on age yet?

Yes, there are certain prohibitions and safety requirements based on age. Specifically for e-motor devices, it's 15 years old. So it's similar to a moped. That's why it's not 16 or higher. So state regulations is 15. And there are a lot of safety requirements. As we worked on the original ordinance, some of them have been expanded as well.

So right now, 15 is the youngest you can be to operate these?

For e-motor device. So not your e-bike, but the ones that go really, really fast.

But whether to do it for the other classes, there's really no age restriction on those.

That's right.

You're saying there can't be, or you just haven't done the legal research to see if that's a possibility?

I'll be honest with you, I have not looked into it.

That's fine. I would encourage us to look into that. I mean, I don't know what age you put it, but there are, like I said, A kid who's eight years old operating some of these vehicles, very unsafe for that age. I think that there's obviously, I don't know where you draw the line, but I think a line does need to be drawn. And for the children's safety, there's just some devices, even the slower e-bikes that just really, for younger ages, are not safe.

And we have held those discussions throughout. Dr. Joshi has been a proponent of this from a very, very get-go, and I'm sure that this discussion will continue.

We are continuing to have them. We, as you said, did have them right from the very beginning. The American Academy of Pediatrics has worked very hard on safety regulations, and some of this is state statute-driven, and that is an unfortunate consequence of the current state of the state. So I think that is something that the Academy will continue to advocate for, and we will continue to push for. And I agree with you, Adam. If you have never been to the Traumatic Brain Injury Award at Riley Children's Hospital, I encourage you to go. Your life will be changed forever.

Any further discussion? All right.

President Snyder, we do need to introduce the ordinance.

It wouldn't be a meeting if I... It's been introduced and sent to land use. All right. Add-ons, there are none. Any other... Excuse me. Other business... We have the acknowledgement of changes to allocation of funds and estimated project costs from the 2024 infrastructure bond. Do we do, is there action on the acknowledgement?

Yes, we recommend that you acknowledge it through a vote. And one, I have to say that there's one addition that we just need to put it on record that four specifically for Station 47 line item, we would have to comply with Indiana Code 6-1.1-20, because unfortunately, reallocation of funds puts it in the controlled project category, which requires two public hearings and a remonstrance period of 30 days. We can approve it today, and we will start working with bond counsel on that. It's a different type bond. It's a property tax-supported bond. So it has a different structure than the ones you just approved. So we will bring it to you in the next council meeting or so to comply with that. But we can move forward with acknowledgment of those three reorganizations of funds.

Move to acknowledge.

Silly question, Sergey. But what does not acknowledging it do?

Well, technically, it wouldn't change the reorganization of funds.

Yeah. I guess I just wish we'd had more conversation about this before we went through and did it. So that has been acknowledged, although I guess I'm not acknowledging it. Announcements.

This is a little far in advance, but I want to give enough time for everybody to know about it, even my fellow counselors. I was contacted by a neighbor in the Legacy who wants to have a micromobility education evening, so I have scheduled it with the police department with the help of my at-large counselors, and it is on August 27th. 6 p.m. at Wilfong Pavilion at Founders Park. So just putting it out there. I'll continually remind people of that. Everyone is welcome to come.

Thank you. Nothing else. We will adjourn.