Redevelopment Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Welcome to the redevelopment meeting for May 12th, 2026. This meeting is being videoed by Inter-Production Multimedia. Please rise and begin the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. John Spencer? Here. Doug Deaton?

Here.

Eric Combs is also present. We have a quorum. You're provided a copy of the minutes from the April 7th regular meeting. Moving on to the opening bid for the Family Activities Park Sports Court.

I always get a little nervous opening these because sometimes they make it real easy to find the numbers. All right, bid number one, Dan Christiani excavating, $263,069. $263,069. I believe, Tennis Technology, Inc. This is 260,000.

Who is it?

Tennis Technology Inc. This is Sherfik Companies, S-H-E-R-F-I-K. $601,035.32. Did you repeat that? Yes. $601,035.32. This is Temple and Temple, $424,162. $424,162.

Make a motion to take those under advisement.

Make a motion to take all four bids under advisement.

I second.

We have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? None.

Call for a vote.

Call for a vote to approve those and take them.

Please sign. Aye.

Thank you, Sally.

Thank you so much.

of the bids, who's on the claims or provided a copy of the claims for the previous month, ask for a motion to approve.

I make that motion.

I'll second. Before you move on to the discussion, I've got the two that, from an American structure point, that were inadvertently left off of the claims docket. One is for the last bill for 501 Market Street, the demo, and the parking lot, $7,235. And the other also for American Structure Point for the public works facility visioning cost estimating for $11,990. I make a motion.

at a later time. Second on that.

Second on that. Any further discussion? Now I ask for a vote to approve. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Is there anyone signed up for public comment?

No one signed up.

Moves on to the Wheatley Group Consultant Report. Thank you. A few things. I sent my report out in the packet, but I have a couple of things to talk about. Springfield Manor, we're working through, I think, two properties, maybe a third here in the next month or so. We're clearing out those mortgages for a couple of addresses, or a couple homes there. Charlestown Landing Improvements, we talked about this a little bit. That's where the public works facility comes in as well. The city finally received, late last week, a notice of award from the federal government of the $4 million. We still don't have any real guidance on what we can and can't do yet, but it's getting closer to that. And I think those funds are flowing from HUD to the city. So there are rules and requirements affiliated with that. The other thing that I can say is that the city also submitted a LEI application, which Two years ago, the city submitted an LEI application for this project, along with the construction of the roadway, LEI being Lilly Endowment Initiative through the Indiana Economic Development Corporation. That did not make it past the regional level, but there is LEI money available still, either from other entities that received it that couldn't use it and gave it back, or they just had a little bit left A little bit being it could be $40 million, it could be more than that, it could be a little less than that. So the city submitted another application for LEI to ask for a match of that $4 million for an additional $4 million, so eight for public works, and also asked for an additional $2 million for a total of six. through LEI to assist with some site work at the corner of 62 and 3 where FJR Commercial Properties purchased that old admin building and that money would go towards clearing that off and getting site ready for development. What even though they don't have anyone on the hook right now that would in turn be about $40 million of private investment once they build that out in commercial retail, if that's what they're gonna do. If they ask for funding, they would have to match that at least $2 million. If they got to, they'd have to match it at least two, if not more, to make that project work. So we've submitted that both to the IEDC and to the RDA, local RDA, so that it can go through that process. How long do those take? That's a good question. They want to have everything obligated by the end of June, but now I've heard that they might take until July, so I don't know. That's the answer. We could hear something in the next month. It could be two months. I don't think it's gonna be much longer than that, though. Also, the Charlestown signage, replacing the sign that was out at the corner of Highway 52, opposite corner, We did, with the help of HWC, TSW, we've got all of the survey information that we need for them to move forward with designing that structure. And once that's designed, we'll bring it back to you all and then solicit those companies that offer to donate materials and move forward with that project. And the last, well, second to last thing, I've updated your cash flows, which I normally do. We also, next meeting, are going to be doing the pass-through resolution where each year in June, now the state General Assembly has made it a requirement that you have to notify all the pass-through units and county auditor prior to June 15th. We normally, at your June meeting, do the resolution that states whether you have any excess TIF revenues to pass through to those entities So we'll do that at the meeting, and I'll have the letter ready to send out certified mail to those past year entities to let them know what that decision was. We will also give our annual report there at that June meeting. As far as the TIFs are concerned, I know we've had conversation, and it's been a while ago, about needing to review the TIF districts and the parcels within the TIF districts. In particular, the North Park TIF, which is the hospital property that did net the city about $3 at some point in TIF revenue, but since some other things have happened out there, the value has actually dropped below the base, and so there is no revenue there. It makes sense maybe to remove that TIF altogether. Baker Tilly had reached out to me and said, hey, there are a lot of parcels within the tips that are residential in nature. And that, I think, has happened from when the original Central Charlestown tip was formed, and then there were multiple expansions. And so that has Pleasant Ridge in it, it has some other neighborhoods out to Shadow Lake in it. So what we've done is taken the list that Baker Tilly had given us, the Wheatley Group and Jacob Arbital in our office, went through and mapped all those, created some layers, could show us what should be in or out. Some of them might have just been the parcels were miskeyed because in Forest Edge it had this plus a parcel that was down there. I mean, just maybe some errors, either in how it was keyed in the county or how it was keyed in the resolution. So we've prepared that and I'd like to bring that to you next month too, to show you that. I've gone through that with the mayor and Donna Coomer just to get their take on it to see whether they wanted to leave some properties in or take them out. And so I'd like to present that at your next meeting too. And if you're in agreement to do those things, then we can get started in the process of adjusting those and right-sizing them. The last thing I have on my report has to do with a gazebo and streetscape improvements. When we did the short street visioning, I think is what we called the project, where we started with the commons and we also looked at the streetscapes around the square as well as the gazebo. The commons is underway, as you can see, it's moving forward. I think it's time that we look at doing some more detailed work on cost estimates and things for both Streetscape and Busy Boat. And I think Mayor Hodges has something that she would like to add to that as well.

I don't want to step on Sally's perfect white shoes here. We were just talking about weight. Hello, board. Thank you for entertaining this idea. So the Disability Advisory Committee a while back access all of the city properties. They went out individually as members and looked at the different properties. And they brought back a list of things that we can do to make these spaces more accommodating and accessible. And the city square is one of those, it's considered one of our parks, so it's one of those spaces they look at. And I just think that it would be worthwhile to go ahead and start looking at the cost of that next phase. because it's on the list of things that we need to improve to increase pedestrian access and make our city more welcoming to everyone. And I know that we kind of went around a way about the gazebo a while back, but more importantly, I want people to be able to access the spaces safely. That means looking at the crosswalks, because there are some improvements that can be made to the crosswalks to make them more accommodating for people who have vision impairments or are blind, things like that, to be able to navigate a little bit better. And so I'm not asking you to commit money to this. I'm just asking if you would please consider going ahead and looking at that next phase. And not from a decorative perspective. Obviously we want things to look nice, but from true functionality. We already have it in the concept to make improvements there. And I think access to the gazebo is one of those things. But more importantly, it's safe access around the streets. And you recall in that original kind of concept we looked at, they talked about improving some of the bump outs and crosswalk areas. I'm not saying adding any new ones, but to look at the ones that are existing and see if they can be made to be more complicated. So if you at least have that conversation and start looking into those costs, um i would appreciate that and then be able to go back the disability advisory board meets next monday and whatever you discuss here tonight i'll report back to them and make sure they're aware of where we are with that progress so just asking for that so we talked about that during the concept of the economy and the square and all that stuff and john were part of that

Whenever they've done that, you talk about the bump-ups that you mentioned and stuff like that, or the crossing itself. When they made those, were they all ADA compliant? I mean, is that something that we can kind of go back to, or do we want to do a new, kind of revisit the whole thing?

I don't think they got into design, not that. I think it was just an overall concept of what could be improved. Because you remember on that concept, they hadn't even proposed adding additional crossing there in front of Charlestown Pizza? Yes. And frankly, after looking at and watching for a while the traffic through there, I just, I don't know that that's wise. I just feel like when people are turning from that light, there's really not much we can do in that short span. I think we have crossings that could be improved here at this top part of Main Cross and Main and then also down at the light. I don't know that I would add another. I just think that maybe we could get someone to look at redesigning the ones we have to make them a little more

Well, I would, this is just me personally speaking, but I would hate to have the commons and a great place for anybody, pop-up markets, sing-along, Founder's Day, some homecoming parades we've all been to. I hate to have someone not have a good area, so I think, in my opinion, I think we should.

And part of the reason I'm asking this is also functionality. If you notice, our crew just recently repainted the handicap spaces out here and in front of Copper Kettle and the curbing. And they're going to do like the rest of the curbing. And I've kind of put a hole on some of that because... to make it more appropriate and specifically if you look at the crossing from the post office side over to the strip here it's not straight it's at an angle and it's not even i don't think it doesn't have the cross hatches in it it's just the parallel lines so i think that crossing can be improved same thing here in front of city hall the weird bump out where the stop sign is on the square here on the corner um the crossing is at an odd angle and We've seen people struggling to get onto the ramp to get up there. It's there, they can get there, but I've seen witness people still having trouble negotiating that ramp. And through the beautification committee funds, we're getting ready, the Board of Works just approved a new mural for the side of City Hall. to kind of dress that walkway up. And we've had that concrete all repaired in the last couple of years. I just feel like this is the next step. And I know that in the past, we've always looked at it more from an aesthetic kind of perspective. And I wanted to approach the board and have you think about it from another angle. But it's not just aesthetics. There is true functionality here that I want to address, especially as we start to see more and more people out engaging on the square with the arrival of the apartments and everything else. So just wanted to put it on your radar.

Who would evaluate that design for us? Who would we hire?

That's entirely up to you.

I don't have, I can get you some proposals if you want. PSW did the original visioning. I don't know that you'd have to throw that out, but definitely some of the things I know the committee didn't want, and then other things that you might.

I think you should get a couple. You know, I think it's always good to compare proposals for what a full assessment of that would look like. So, you have relationships on call with HFC Engineering. You've used TSW on your original thing. It might be worthwhile to reach out to both of those. If there's anybody else that you have relationships with.

We've also got several projects going on. I mean, it could be something that could kind of go into what we've got going on at Country Square as well. I mean, what do we need to do to move forward with it, Jill?

Just...

give me somebody make a motion to authorize me to get some quotes for that make a motion for julia quote from the not as non-aesthetically it could be both it could be aesthetically appealing i'm not designing it i'm just saying second did i word that right close to that we have a motion in a second any further discussion

None. I ask for a vote to approve. All those in favor, please sign.

Thank you, guys. Thank you.

Old business. Clark County RMC is requesting a third easement for the continuation of the power line extension around Shadow Lake Park.

So that's close, I think. We've just been going back and forth with the RMC attorney.

Is it not complete?

It's close. It's a draft. But I think it's down to the last couple little things. So what Jill and I talked about is just, you know, have a motion tonight for once it's final and we sign off on it for you to be able to sign it outside the meeting. You can sign it? Actually, no.

No, I'll sign it outside the meeting.

You're right. She's just testing me.

Okay, thanks. That was good.

I was like, hey, you're not involved in that. Come on.

Hey, you're not going to do that. So I make a motion that we... allow us to move forward with this, and then if everything is okay, Bobby can sign it and Derek's dead. I second to trust you.

We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? I will abstain from voting.

Is that right?

Yes.

With the record reflected, I will abstain from voting.

All those in favor, please stand by. Aye. Move us on to new business. We have the Charlestown Community Crossings, Harrison Street sidewalk and paving of High Street.

So I guess sometime last year, the Redevelopment Commission agreed to pay the local match for the community crossings grant that the city was submitting for the paving of Harrison Street and Madison Street in Brunel. So what was not included in the Harrison Street was sidewalks, or a sidewalk, which would be on the, let's say if you're on the apartment side. So I always think up is north, but that's not really the case. But on the east side of Harrison Street, there would be a sidewalk. It would then connect from Green Alley to Main Street. And that would allow better access and safe access from Forsage and from that area downtown, which is the reason that I think we approved Madison Street, the Green Alley, and to make better access or give better access to those. So the sidewalks themselves would be an additional $39,961. LIBS is the paper that's got the CMG contract through the Board of Works. the redevelopment commission has the funds to pay for that and uh i think it is a goes into the vision that you had originally in providing the match for a community process in the first place and the work you've done at madison green alley i hate to i hate to have done all that work and not have something connected so is that going to be sidewalks on both sides of um just on the east side It's a five foot, I think it's a five foot sidewalk.

I'll make a motion to do it. I second. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? None. I ask for a vote to approve. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye.

We've got one more with that. Then also, there's another one. I think I sent that in your packet as well. The high street, Pavin High Street and the high street portion that's at level. kind of level and bed ends there. We're now forest edges. It's gravel. And the estimate to actually pay that is $17,857. And that is something that I think the city would like to do and the Re-development Commission can afford to take that. Yes, you can.

I vote to approve. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. That brings us on to the Little League facility renovation project.

So for several years, I'm going to say more than several years, the city has discussed, and I've been a part of some of those projects probably in the early 2000s, where the city center still existed and there was talk of redoing a little bit. So that's been quite some time ago. Um, and I know that everyone has had that project on their list. I met with the mayor maybe late last year, early this year and said, I think, you know, if, if you want to do that, the development commission can, can help with that. I think you're in a position that you can help with that. So we did some preliminary, the mayor had just some preliminary quotes to rehab it. And then we had a meeting, the mayor and I and Frost Brown Todd and Baker Tilly met to talk about whether you really could afford to do that. And you can afford to finance that project and also with your existing TIF revenues. So with the existing revenue you're getting now, you can afford to pay for that project. and finance it. So the estimates that we were working with were anywhere between 2.5 and $3 million. So I wanted to bring that up today to see if that was something that you all wanted to move forward with. Just think about a couple of things, other things here too. One is we don't have to, you don't have to determine whether you want to finance it today. That's something that would come later. But that is a good project to use build-off rate transfer for, which you've used for several other projects. And I would like for you to consider moving forward with the build-off rate transfer portion of the project where you can get someone selected and start going through a scoping period so you know exactly how much that might cost and then decide about your financing at that point in time. And I've got time frames and other things, but I'll stop there and see if you all have any questions before I move on or you want to discuss anything else.

I don't have any questions, but I did have a discussion with a couple people about this. And I've had discussions for the last, I think, 12 plus years being involved in Little League. And it was always... We're going to do it next year. We're going to do it in two years. We're going to do it in three years. We got acreage donated. We're going to do it now. It's always been something. And I wasn't one of those that was very blind to how money works in local government. I had no clue until about two and a half years ago. It's not something that we could really do on a general budget side without raising everybody's taxes. I mean, there was just no way. I do want to say I appreciate the effort in doing this. TREVA's put a lot of work into it, trying to figure out a way that we can afford it, how it would help the TIF, how it could bring more. I just done quick math, and if you, depending on how you've done it, you can bring 1,000 people a weekend plus. I mean, it just depends on what it does. And it's all in what you do. So I think it would bring a lot of people and outside and stuff to the city. So explain when you say that. It would give our community a great place.

Explain why it would bring, I mean, because obviously if you're talking about it in that respect, you're talking about it beyond local baseball.

I'm talking, your local baseball comes first, always, it always has. I think everybody in this room, maybe building, has had somebody that's played or been involved in the Toronto Thunder League at some point in time in their life, whether it was T-ball or whether it was senior league. I think every volunteer that's ever put in even a minute worth of time in the Little League has seen how hard it is to keep up with that place, especially from a volunteer status. And I think they've put in a lot of hard work, and it was the first field that ever had license to save Indiana in 1957. I mean, so I think some of those lights are still up. So, I mean, it's a really nice facility as far as it says. I know they put a lot of money in the parking lot. There's never been the money to put into it for the fields. So you talk about local and community baseball and low league baseball, I mean, you get a lot of rain out sometimes, depending on the spring or summer, depending on what kind of year you're having, you know? I think you build a better facility, you make it, You make it a lot more attractive, you make it a lot more, what was the word you used a little bit ago for the square? Aesthetically pleasing.

Not aesthetic, the other one. Functional? Functional. If you make it more functional, then you have a lot better access for your local community. Well, what I'm getting at, and that's good, obviously, but what I'm getting at is you're saying, we're saying it would go beyond that. It would go beyond just local community appeal, right? Yeah. I guess what I'm getting at is maybe give us some more information about that.

Again, you put your community in first. They play Monday through Friday. That's pretty much what they play now. Outside of that, depending on how you build it, this was a lot of talk we had. Depending on how you build it, you can play from the first weekend in March to the second, almost third weekend in November. It kind of depends on how your winter and your ball are running but uh if you're 40 degrees or above they're playing you know they're playing outside baseball and if you do that every weekend there's some weekends where you'll have like a one-day tournament or something like that but uh local tournament companies they they come in and they don't they don't run the park she runs the park with the parks department you know we don't give the park up it's not something that we just give away and say But say you have a full weekend this weekend, they'll bring in 30 to 40 teams on average. If you take 11 players per team, you times it by 30 or 330, 330 players. Not counting parents, if you do just two players a parent, you're almost 990 people that's coming in. And that's not counting siblings and aunts, uncles, grandpas. And all that, you play two games on a Saturday and one game on a Sunday, you're going to buy breakfast here, you're going to buy lunch here, you're going to spend your time here. Some people are going to spend their time at the hotel. They might go to the FAP in the summer. I mean, there's a lot of things they do right here. But if we don't do it now, then they're doing it in other places. I'm not going to mention cities, but they're doing it in other cities.

So there's revenue generation.

Oh, yeah.

On a local basis, what about revenue generation for the park itself?

For the park itself, you also have, if you do it, there's a couple certain ways you can do this, and that's what we talked about. It could pretty much, this is just my opinion, it could almost run itself and pay for itself and maintain itself over time. I think we talked about that, depending on how we run it. Depending on how it's ran, depending on how it's set up, I know several different companies that do that. And it's gotta be good for the city. Because the city, the whole point is if you gotta put somebody in there to work in motion grass and maybe fix a fence or do something, you gotta pay somebody, right? So you want that to be able to pay for that worker. And you also want it to be able to pay for the stuff that does get tore up or over time gets old, whatever. And money-wise, you can do very well.

So one of the things I'm getting at, obviously, is ROI. So if we're going to spend $2.5 to $3 million, obviously, yes, we want to get the benefit for our local community. No question about that. It goes without saying. But if we do it right and we manage it well, then that income, that expenditure can be offset to a certain degree if you look at it in terms of the return on investment. Right, Jill? Mm-hmm. Yes. Okay.

It could also be looked at as, you know, once you make the initial investment, you're pretty well done. It will literally maintain itself at that point.

One thing I will say I'm a little confused by, though, just if you're explaining it, Treva, the idea is the Parks Department would still be handling everything for it, but we would just be getting the revenue that would help us pay for that maintenance, right? We wouldn't necessarily be hiring a private contractor. We might. We might hire a private contractor. Oh, I didn't mean to say that. I didn't think you did either.

I just wanted to... No, I meant we hire a parts worker. We have a parts worker work for us. Okay, so as employees to maintain, whatever. The only contractor you would have is a person that rents it for tournaments. We have people that do that now. So those people are the only outside entity. They come in, they run a tournament, but the tournament by kind of what our rules are. Yeah.

Not unlike these other cities that you didn't mention. I get that. Okay, so I just wanted to make sure that we were kind of, and I know we're not nailing down the details now, but this is an early discussion and it's good to understand where we're going with this concept. So, thank you.

Just my opinion and kind of after answering all that, my opinion on this, this is something that I've wanted to see for a long time, don't get me wrong, but I think a lot of people Pacific Center was there because of Little League, right? I was in and out of that place. I was in and out of that place. That place was on the rocks for a long time. But Little League's still there. So we have nice parks. We put a lot of money into nice places. We're building courts at the FAP. I think it's kind of more or less their turn.

If you want some specific numbers, I have them.

I'm not necessarily looking for that now. I really wanted more of a high-level understanding of how, I mean, so we've talked about for decades some kind of facility that would accommodate travel teams and things like that. Sometimes we talked about it on a grand scale that was probably inconceivable, conceivable but not practical. But in this case, I think we're talking about something that's much more viable. And I just want to make sure that as we discuss it, the context, that we can do something that's major and it's important, but that maybe not on the scale that sometimes was too high.

So this is one of the benefits, I think, about the makeup of this particular board, this particular commission, and that is not only do you have a consultant who has been with the city in some shape, form, or fashion through part of all of it at River Hills and then all the way up through and has a deep institutional history here. We have residents that have lived here for a long time. We have residents that are relatively new here. We have Chuck who's involved with the schools involved and everything. And then John, we have you. And you were on the previous Administration for Development Commission. And so there's a lot of that institutional history that comes up through here. We often get asked the question, why invest in parks and recreation? Somewhere along the way, maybe back in the day, cities didn't do that. Maybe municipalities once upon a time just did paving roads and making sure that people could flush their toilets and bills got paid and streets were swept and all that stuff. But what we do know from tons of economic development research is that quality of life initiatives grow communities. And it's not that every community is seeking to grow, but when your community is growing because of the natural things happening around us, which is what's happening to Charlestown, people are choosing to live in those communities based on those quality of life enhancements. And that term gets thrown around a lot, but that's largely what Parks and Recreation Programming and Spaces provides people. It provides them spaces to enjoy with their family, things to show off when they have visitors here, time outdoors to enjoy green space, and all of those types of things. When it comes to the athletic facilities in Charlestown, the facility that we're talking about was built, what, in 56, 54? I think it was 56.

First lights in 57. Lights from 57. There you go.

And, you know, it's a facility that's been in decline for a few decades, and there's no... One single person you can point to to blame for that. No one's trying to do that. But, you know, I look back at the work that we've done just with this commission. I know some of the membership has changed along the way. But if you recall, in 2021, we started looking at the Civic Center. What do we do with it? How do we make use of it? We did the study, and the study overall came back and said, your best bet with this is to tear it down. It's not salvageable. We went inside and did a video to help people see how bad it was. Chuck, you participated in a listening session. We advertised a listening session from the community for people to come talk to us about their goals for recreation in the city. So everything we've done has been directly with community feedback. We had that listening session at the Family Activities Park, got a lot of really good feedback from there. And then we were given Shadow Lake land. Somewhere along the way in 2019, we were given the 100 acres over behind the wastewater plant. At one time, I met with Luckett Farley after I came in because of that concept that was out there on that land that we're talking about. It was a $40 million project, guys, a $40 million. We just built a wastewater treatment plant for $40 million. It was a $40 million project. Our city just can't absorb that. We're 9,000 people. Our general obligation, Chuck mentioned this, our general obligation debt, the debt that we're able to take on just as a city without doing any kind of tax increase, but that has to be tax-backed without doing a referendum, rather, is $2 million. And even with that, we would still have to back that with taxes of some sort, just as a city. When we looked at doing the Little League part, we reached out, we did a concept. We said, we started with, what if we scrapped it? What if we just completely bulldozed the whole thing and rebuilt? Chuck was a part of that process. Brian Hester, the council member, was part of that process. We had Little League involved. We brought board members in. They looked at it. It would have been a $6 million to $8 million project. There again, we don't have the ability to bond that in the city. So it's just been kind of a right-sizing. It's been an effort to right-size. The property belongs to the city. We owe it to the community, in my opinion, to upkeep it. We don't have the ability on the city's general fund to do it. And the thing I like about putting it through the redevelopment commission is that now the businesses are paying. We've had some business growth. We've had some industry coming in here. We've got apartments that came in here. Those are the tax dollars and the TIF that go to pay for these kinds of things, not our residents. We don't have a residential TIF in the city of Charlestown. If you live in a regular house, you're not paying into the TIF. You're paying into the general fund. So when we're using TIF dollars for something, those are the businesses' property taxes that are paying for those things. And we've used that to provide critical infrastructure. We've built quality court. We've fixed drainage projects. We've done these things. But I just feel like this investment is wise. because of the larger economic development impact that it can have on our community. I reached out to Little League as we were starting this process this year to ask for stats on the last three years. In 2023, they had 457 kids enrolled in Little League. In 2024, they had 652 kids enrolled. And then for 2025, they had a little bit back of a dip down to 476. Those are just the Little League kids. When I asked about how many people were coming on the weekends, They were serving anywhere between 800 and 1200 people on the weekends that they do travel ball on top of Little League. So Chuck's numbers are spot on. And these were tracked through them. So when you're bringing that many people in here, not only are you serving the Little League community, our people right here, giving them free ball play to have access to the facility. But you're also bringing in anywhere between 800 to 1,200 people on the weekends, as he said, that are servicing that TIF district, that are helping to continue to bring those kinds of opportunities. But they need a nice facility to play in. So that's why I'm asking the board to go through this process, allow Jill to start the VOT process, and just at least get through this voting period. And let's just see what we're able to produce. Let's get the numbers running to see what the debt service would look like. Our TIF is growing. We had a little bit of a retraction, we know that, for this year. But we know all these other properties are about to come online. Read any social media posts. What do people say? Oh, more apartments. Then give them something for the apartments to pay for. Show them the return on the apartment investment. Because that's who ends up paying for these kinds of projects.

So, not to poo-poo anything at all, but I will say that as we add more people to our mix here, even on the weekends, they're going to need, and hopefully these things are coming online in the next year or year and a half, they're going to need additional places to eat something to eat. Obviously, it doesn't benefit us if they're driving to Sellersburg or they're driving to Jeffersonville to eat. And I know we're working on that. I guess I'm adding this as a positive on the one hand, because as those things come online, hopefully on the corner here, not too far away, right up on North Highway 3, that should be, what, a year away at the most. So they'll have more places, more choices to spend that money within Charlestown area. So that would definitely be good.

Well, and if you talk to any developers, so the ones that come in and talk, remember, they're looking at numbers before they do anything. They're not going to come in and invest millions of dollars into a new restaurant if they don't have the people to eat there at all times. Not just on Friday night, but at all times. They're looking for job work. Mark Hildenbrand with River Ridge just came to the council last night and gave an update on River Ridge. And 3,000? He said 3,000 jobs coming online on our end of River Ridge within the next year. So that's the daytime population to help provide that. Are they going to come just for Little League? Absolutely not. Are they going to come for just travel ball tournaments? Absolutely not. But it's a part of the puzzle.

And when they come, we want them to have something to eat.

Yes, and it's the weekend part of the puzzle because the jobs aren't going to be out here working on the weekends. So this provides a more consistent basis. We have the jobs coming for daytime, we have the housing and residential growth for the evenings, and now we're adding something for the weekends. Once upon a time... Don't make me whip out Barry's 1909 history on you guys, because I do it all the time and I'll do it here. In 1909, he said that Charlestown was a recreational mecca. We were headed to be a recreational mecca. The plant changed all of that for us. And with the new progress at Shadow Lake Park, thanks to the volunteers that came out and activated that walking trail, that's one look at it. With the improved road going down to the new entrance to Charlestown State Park, That's another leg of it. And I think that revitalizing the Little League play area is another major piece of that puzzle in giving us part of that recreational identity that we had once upon a time that we can claim again.

I mean, I look at, I sit on the council side and we approve the HUDs or apartments or all these other stuff that come online. And, you know, you ask them, but you want to know about restaurants and all that, but Restaurants also look at, I look at several places. I've been to Indianapolis. I've played baseball there. I played softball in Columbus, Ohio. They've got 33 fields up there. I've been to E-town where they have 12 fields, and they have, I think they have 15 soccer fields. If a business is coming because we have apartments, because we're putting on 3,000 jobs of over $27.45 an hour, I believe you said, everything's above that rate, and they see that you have that travel law and you have organizations out there just to kind of a little bit more to it they don't want to rent weekend to weekend to weekend they want to rent month to month and year to year they want to sign a long-term deal with you where they're paying a certain amount of month and they have to run and they have to bring the people for them to even survive as a business you know so when a restaurant comes in they say hey what do you have as far as apartments okay well we got these apartments and we've got this business that runs first shift but hey on the weekends you're going to stay busy because we're running tournaments over here even if it's twice a month i think it's just an extra incentive but again i am a little league person through and through you know i've coached i was the president of the little league several times um i've coached at the middle school level the high school level and watching these kids come up through there, it's about Charlestown first, it's about the community first.

And I don't have that background in Little League. My biggest concern with all this is taking care of our properties. With the help of the Redevelopment Commission, We've been able to do a lot of good things for properties around here. We built the retention wall down in the Greenway Park that helps save the Doe Corn Pavilion. Thanks to the investment from the Rehabilitation Commission, we were able to revitalize the first phase of the A&E Center, which has been phenomenal. And because of that, the rental revenue is way up. Carrie is about to do a long-term rental unit on Sundays, which will bring in $75,000 to her rental budget. And it's because it's a nice facility. That had a great return on the investment for the work that you paid for there. And we can keep building new, but if we neglect what we have, I don't think we're getting anywhere. And so that's why I think that's a good investment.

to be done it's used and i think that it will have the economic impact that we want to see it happen from the council side i can tell you we've talked about this several times for two and a half years and i wouldn't even consider it because it's raising taxes i'm not gonna speak for anybody else on the council but there have been several people we're just not doing that you know that's not the right thing to do you said it i mean businesses are paying for this with their tiff and their tax they're gonna they're gonna be the ones that

get a better house value because we built the little league but the business is going to get their money back tenfold i think you might get a little property value increase too but um so i make a motion that we move forward with investigating uh the rehab rehabilitation of the little league park a second motion a second any further discussion is that all you need

So moving forward with the BOT process, so I can start preparing an RFP and doing all that and advertising that thing you have scheduled?

He made the motion, so I'll follow him.

That's okay. Is that what you meant by moving forward, that it's okay then for me to start the BOT process?

No.

Okay.

Yes, I did.

All right. Okay.

I make a motion that includes all the additional words that Jill Sengasser has put into the motion. I'll second that. Great. Thank you. I have a motion and a second. If there's no further discussion, I ask for a vote to approve. All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye. I have one other thing to add. Oh, man. I just landed my motion. I know, but a selection committee. So usually BOT has a selection committee because just to... familiarize you with the process, since it's been a minute since we've done it, you'll get your request proposals, proposals will come in, there will be a scoring, the selection committee usually takes care of the scoring, and also recommends that to redevelopment commission for scoping, to move forward with scoping, and then at the end, when it's time to present the contract, then selection committee also makes a recommendation to the redevelopment commission. That selection committee can be involved in the design, but you can add more people, which I'm sure you'll want to in this, to add more people that are experts in that field throughout the process. But who would you like to have on your selection committee?

I would like to be on there. As long as I've been around that place, I'd like to. Does that make sense? I think it makes sense.

Sounds good to me.

mayor do you want to be on the selection so typically we usually involve mayor someone from council because of the funding because of the funding part and someone from redevelopment commission so if chuck is representing redevelopment commission then we'll convict the council to decide who they want to represent them Okay. He's the president. He has to accept. That would be my recommendation is that we have the council decide somebody from their end, and then if you guys are happy with Chuck, and then I'd like to be a part of the staff, because parks director will need to be involved in something.

Yeah, absolutely.

So if somebody would like to make that in the form of a motion.

I'll make a motion that we have a selection committee for the VOT process that includes from redevelopment, Chuck. Okay.

I second. Motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? I can't vote on that again. Do I vote on that? Yeah, you can.

Okay. Then I'll ask for a vote to approve.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye. Motion passes.

Thank you. Do we need one for Brian or are you good?

That's good, Council. That can come. Just as long as, and I'll put in the minutes what was discussed.

Our next meeting is scheduled for June 2nd at 6 p.m. Make a motion. Second. I would let you have it. All right.