Board of Public Works - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to the regular meeting of the city of Charlestown Board of Public Works. It's August 6th, 2026, 10 a.m. This meeting is being live screened by Under Production Multimedia. Please rise and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. Let the record show that all board members are present as well as Park Treasurer Donna Coomer and our attorney Perry McCall. We have an agenda that's been provided to entertain a motion to approve. I'll make that motion. Perry Thompson makes the motion. I'll second. Maggie Wild seconds. Any questions? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. That is unanimous. We have our standing business which includes the approval of our meeting minutes from the 16th of July. Our current claims And our payroll allowance docket from July 6th to July 26th. Need a motion to approve? I'll make that motion. Maggie Wild makes the motion. I'll second. Ernie Thompson seconds. Any edits or questions? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's unanimous. Anyone signed up for public comment? I don't see anyone. No old business, straight into new business. I'll invite Chief Eric Cruz, Charlestown Police Department, forward to talk about the first two items.

All right. First morning. First item would be for the purchase of a police truck. The truck would be for me and be to replace my previous unit 3959, which is the motor is kind of out right now. It's not operational, so. This would be so I can get back into something that doesn't have about five pounds of curly dog hair. Can you handle a bicycle or anything? I mean, I can, but I just won't be able to respond to your request. So we put out in June a request for quotes to four companies. There's Bachman, John Jones, Coil, Chevrolet, and another company out of a different state called Utilitac. out of the bid or out of the quotes we got um one john jones quoted as a vehicle at sixty eight thousand two hundred and fourteen dollars and fifty cents cool chevrolet quoted us another one at forty eight thousand four hundred and fifty five dollars and fifty cents and then utilitac quoted uh a truck at fifty three thousand four hundred ninety nine dollars all three of those vehicles are similar ones of 2025 and the other two are 2026 models all with zero pretty much zero miles on my recommendation would be go with the most affordable option which would be in our budget which is the 48 000 455 and 50 cents for a cool chevrolet all right so we have a request from the staff to authorize the purchase of the 2025 chevrolet silverado

quoted by Cole Chevrolet, $48,450.50. I will confirm with the board that the council on Monday appropriated the funds for this. The funding from it comes from the service agreement that we have with river ridge previously we were expecting only 200 000 that was appropriated we got 250 50 000 had not been appropriated so the council at their meeting on monday night made that appropriation funds are in place he just needs the authorization to move forward so i just need a motion to approve that i'll make that motion motion by ernie thompson second by maggie wilde any other questions is it bright green it's white yeah is it really yep that's the only one they had to stop so a lot of them have to get used to seeing you in another car All right, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye, that is unanimous. Next up.

All right, Monroe and Fulkerson stop sign recommendation. Councilman Chuck Beaton reached out to me and asked me to go and review that area for a potential stop sign. With the building of the new soccer stadium there, we were told it's probably gonna hold about 800 people, anywhere between, I guess, probably 80 to 100 cars in capacity in the parking lot. There's going to be one entry and exit out of the stadium on the Fulkerson, and there's two off of Monroe. So with the increase in vehicle traffic and probably most likely the high school kids and other kids walking between the high school and the stadium, we started reviewing this and we believe it would be a good fit to include stops on there. It would also help us in slowing traffic down on McRow through that area as well. Because it's still a 25 mile per hour area between the school property. So that would be a three-way stop? It would turn into a three-way stop if approved.

Okay, good to know. Councilman Deaton's here today. Is there anything you wanted to say about that, Mr. Deaton?

No, I just think I talked to Chief Cruz and Mr. Jackson about that just because, you know, the other side of Monroe, there's a lot of residential, there's a lot of open space in between Park Street and Highway 3. You only have a few homes, I think me and Tree were talking about it as well, but you only have a few homes in there. It's what looks like turns into a racetrack sometimes and with kids and now they're going to be crossing the street. I figured Usually they were on one side of the road. Now they're gonna be crossing up here and be able a lot better to go ahead and get it done and move forward with that. And before it gets built all the way. That's it.

All right, can we get a motion to approve that? I'll make that motion. Maggie Wall makes the motion. I'll second. All right, Thompson seconds. Any other questions? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That is unanimous. We'll get that posted and Brian will take the lead on making sure that gets appropriately distributed to the community and we'll get that ordered and done. All right, at this point I'll call for Carrie to present this thing. I'll call for Carrie Basham to present a couple of parks contracts. Good morning. Good morning.

All right, I have two contracts here. The first one is going to be for our trail and treats. So this year on October 30th from 5 to 7 in Greenway Park, we're going to be doing our Dr. Seuss theme. So we thought what better way than to have the Grinch that we use during Christmas to be down there doing a meet and greet. So I have his contract, his insurance, his insurance waiver, workers' comp waiver, and his W-9 and everything. The cost for him to have him that night is $500.

Carrie, I have one question about the contract. Under the item one under services provided, it's blank before you give an executed copy to Donald. Which one? No, trail and treat under item one under services provided. It says client or library is to engage. Consistency of that's blank. Can you just put a brief description of what he's going to be doing as that character?

Yeah, we'll probably put him under like we do for Christmas. We'll probably put him underneath.

Yeah, just list that out in that sentence before you do the executed contract so that it's clear what exactly he's doing. All right, with that, do we have a motion to approve? Motion by Randy Thompson. Second. Second by Andy Wilde. Funding source for that? Do you use your revenue?

So this one comes out of our revenue for this. Well, actually, I take that back. So trail and treats, that will come from our sponsors because the Housing Authority and Progressive Materials, they sponsor trail and treats for that one.

All right. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's unanimous. Thank you. And then you had a Christmas.

I do. So here is the contract for the... Same person, but this will be for the Christmas season. So same thing, we have his contract, and I see that he left that blank, so I'll fill that in as well. Yeah, so we have everything attached for there. Now, these funds we do pay out of our revenue fund. So he's $4,000 for this season. Okay. And this is the same bridge that we've had for the last couple of years.

All right.

And he's a character.

All right, entertain a motion to approve. Make that motion. I do want to pause for some of the parks and I'll let you introduce Carson. Carson is our new program coordinator for the parks department. who's lurking in the back, is transitioning back over to the building department. She is going to be working in the department with Tony Jackson to do some of the admin stuff out of the building department, building commissioner role. And so we put out a job call to hire a member for replacement with program coordinator, and that's Carson. Carson comes with a background of events coordinating and events planning. Most recently she worked with a senior living community and coordinated a lot of great events for them and she's already hit the ground running in this brainstorming events that she can add to and build here. So this is the Board of Public Works. Most of what you present will come before this board. Maggie Wilder, Ernie Thompson, and of course you know us. Hi everyone. Thank you.

Thank you all. Don't pick up none of Carrie's bad ass.

Carrie don't have any bad ass. Alright. Next up, we reached out and sought some quotes to do some blacktop seal coating of the Arts and Enrichment Center parking lot. It's long overdue and needs to be done. Our crew internally can do the striping. We have the striping machines. We just need the seal coating done. We received three quotes. Stalled blacktop seal coating gave us $2,900. Lips paving, $3,650. And PSI paving incorporated, $6,186. So the staff recommendation is to award the job to stalled blacktop seal coating at $2,900. And I would need a motion to approve. Motion by Randy Thompson, second by Maggie Weil. Any questions on that? All in favor say aye. That is unanimous. Tony Jackson, do you want to present the Lincoln Street Consulting?

Yeah, another Indiana unfunded mandate. House Bill 1001 is now requiring us to do a survey, I guess you could say, of all our permittings and all our variances and stuff like that. So they're wanting us to list everything and it's It's stuff like calculating new houses, calculating the permit fees, and it's too intense. But luckily, Don Lopp, who used to work at River Hills and was also the Floyd County Commissioner's retired, he now does it. He's a professional planning his own guy. He actually has a business that does this, and he's pretty knowledgeable. And so I spoke to him, and we come up with a contract, and he said he would complete the job by the 30th. seven thousand dollars seven thousand five hundred seven thousand five hundred dollars it'll come out of the uh planning and zoning fund but it's uh that's what it's for so this contract is a not to exceed amount of seven thousand five hundred and

This House Bill 1001 that was adopted this time, so three specific deliverables, we are required to provide a housing study, like a report of our housing stuff. And with Tom being a limited office with just him and now Hannah, who's in training, we just simply don't have the internal resources to meet the deadline on those and get it done without taking them away from everything else they're doing. And we can't do that, so we have to continue to operate. They also, we're also required to... have a special hearing on the unified development ordinance and housing. So there's a major push from the state legislature to increase the density of housing Their basic theory is that we have a lack of supply, and that is why the cost of housing has gone up. They're using a basic economic principle here to say that if we increase the housing supply, it will drive down the cost of housing. Now, there are a whole lot of other factors that go into that. I am on a legislative committee with AIM, with Accelerating Indiana Municipalities, and specifically I'm involved with one of the House representatives looking at housing issues. So I'm also working to inform about why Charlestown is different than Carmel, is different than Evansville, and how a blanket approach to this across all of our communities doesn't work. But in the meantime, we are legally required to provide this report, hold this hearing, and give them this information. So rather than pull Tony and Hannah away from their regular permitting duties and everything else they're working on, I support Tony's recommendation to hire this consultant to do this for us. With that, I would just need a motion to approve. I'll make that motion. Second. Motion by Maggie Wilde, second by Ernie Thompson. Perry, did you get a chance to look over that consulting agreement? Went out with the packet? Yes, yes. You saw no issues with it? No.

All right.

So I'll call for the vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That is unanimous. We'll get that executed and get that over and done.

Get it to you so you can get it done.

Next up is the regular street sweeping. This is the agreement we must adopt every year within DOT. We have absolutely no ability to negotiate this with them. It is what it is. We tried that. Yep, we tried that. They pay us a small amount. We agreed to market street twice a year and call it a day. So with that, I'll see the motion to approve.

I'll make that motion.

Motion by Maggie Wilde. Motion. Second by Ernie Thompson. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That is unanimous. And where are our charge-offs now? Both of these meetings had a lot of documents this time. And then our regular sanitation charge-off, an amount of $164.16, representing one, two, three, four, five, six, so I just need a motion to approve those charge-offs. That's not much, and I'll make that motion. All right, comments on the next motion? I'll second. Maggie Wilde seconds. Any questions on those? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's unanimous. That, unless anybody has anything else they need to bring up, includes our business, it leads to a motion to adjourn.

I'll make that motion. Motion by Ernie. Second by Maggie. All in favor say aye.

Aye. We are adjourned.