Council - Regular Meeting

It's tireless work. I'm always impressed every year to watch it.

Certainly.

It wears me out. You all are welcome to stay around. We got a really interesting shot.

Don't miss the filter.

Don't forget to check out the ambulance.

Oh, yeah, we'll do that.

Awesome. Thank you all very much.

Thank you.

All right. Moving along. Item number two on new business. Hidden Bay HOA Citizens Dredging Agreement. Are there representatives here? Or Frank? They are. Okay.

I could just give a... 50,000 foot view here, so I was notified by Mr Blicken Dorf of the citizens intention to move their drugging site from where it is currently on. Well, where they're taking the dirt out of, which is up the 7th day at Venice property on the north end of the lake, they're going to move it down to. Hidden Bay area block H is what it's called on the black. I was pretty sure that the Council would have more than a passing interest in this. Particularly considering the new truck ordinance that we had. Subsequently, I had a conversation with Mr Culp and we discussed. Utility Regulatory Commission issues, which I bet Mr. Culp could explain better than I. But Mr. Bliggendorf, and I believe his citizen's representative, or just you, there he is, did show up tonight to discuss and address any concerns.

All right, thank you very much. Aaron, do you have anything to say in advance? No. All right, if you wouldn't mind stating your name and your address.

Sure. My name is Jim Blickendorf. I reside at 47 Legend Court, which is in Hidden Bay. I am the president of the Hidden Bay Property Owners Association. Also available to participate and correct any of us where we go wrong is Roger Goings, He's part of the Morse Waterways Association and is the liaison for this whole project with Citizens Water. and the bodies that govern it. A slight correction on what's going on here. So the dredging access road at the Adventist Church and that location stays. That is not being replaced, but rather in order to have dredging up the Little Cicero side and west of the railroad bridge, There needed to be a new access road constructed somewhere. Hidden Bay, along with many, many others who have vested interest in the lake from a recreational point of view, including our neighbors to the direct north in the Stillwater Cove neighborhood, have long sought dredging as a way to rejuvenate the northwest side of the lake, up Little Cicero. Almost probably two years ago, I think we started conversations with Morris Waterways Association. They originally wanted to pursue a dredging access road through our clubhouse property, which our board was not very excited about. Although we have lots of questions of our own about what we're eventually going to do with that property. We pointed them instead to, as Frank mentioned, Block H, which doesn't mean anything to the commoner, but at the lowest end of Ravine Court, which is a small cul-de-sac that proceeds down the hill, which is, I think, the third right as you go south into Hidden Bay. But there's a very large common property that extends from the bottom of that cul-de-sac with very low grade down to the lake at the cove that is part of Hidden Bay. We have zero use for that property, that common area. And in fact, we are starving for good ideas because we've found homeless shelters and other things down in there. And it's just really almost useless otherwise. Morris Waterways and Citizens Utilities Engineers originally rejected that location as too costly. And so they went away and we thought the whole thing was done. They came back about three months ago and said, well, Actually, after reviewing all other halfway decent alternatives, everybody now agrees that this location is the best. One of probably a lot of considerations, but a major reason being that it does not require I'll just call it a zigzagging of the approach on the road in order to achieve the appropriate level maximum of grade from road to lake. So it's relatively flat, in other words, and much flatter than anything that we could have done on our clubhouse property or anywhere else.

We're going to pull the map up real quick. Yeah, great.

It should be.

Sounds good, right? That would be helpful. All right.

Roger, have I strayed from the facts so far? So here's your clubhouse, right? Correct, so we want to move- Here? Correct, so you can see when- You can come point if you'd like.

Just tell me if I need to zoom out or anything.

So what I mentioned was ravine court. So this is the cul-de-sac that we're talking about. And so between the bottom of that cul-de-sac, really the common property block age extends all the way from Timberline all the way to this cove location. But it's specifically the space between the bottom of ravine court and the cove that citizens would use and construct a new access road. They would construct a seawall along the front side of this cove in order to then be able to drive the barges in and unload into dump trucks that would end up backing into the new access road from here and then hauling the dredge out relatively short and by the way, super efficient as it relates to potentially coming through the town because they don't go anywhere near the town. The dredging drop off in this case, as opposed to the one up here that has to get all the way west of town to drop and dump. This one would come out our ravine court, out the rest of timber line to our front entrance. and then go west about a mile to the dredging drop-off location, which many of you may know is about a mile west and then south of 236. But if this is the swap, it's probably, I don't know, do you remember, Roger, is it like 60 feet wide or something? I don't remember the dimensions. But it would be, there would be a fair number of trees taken down, rewriting a creek that runs through there, installing a new road, which would be gravel, installing the new seawall. And interestingly enough, even to do that or to get any barges in to this end, a serious amount of dredging has to take place because this cove is barely up to anybody's knees in terms of depth. It's just a really, really, really full of sludge. We are not entirely unselfish as Hidden Bay. We don't intend this to be making us any money. The price tag, if you will, on a 99 year utility easement for this location is basically $10 plus our out of pocket expenses. But what we are gonna lobby for is some first rights on getting dredging on our own shoreline. Obviously this part at minimum has to be dredged in order to make the whole thing work. But we would love for most of our shoreline all the way up and especially our clubhouse and maybe even being kind to our neighbors in Stillwater Cove to get dredging of our shoreline and make that side of our lake, our lake side of the annex usable again from a boating point of view. But anyway, thank you. That helps a ton in terms of where the location would be. But again, I think when Frank originally responded about the new weight limit through Cicero, the 11,000-pound max coming through Cicero, great news. It doesn't help. Anything that continues to come out of the Adventist location, but in this location, there would be no dump trucks going anywhere near the bridge or the town of Cicero proper. Roger, anything you would like to add?

That access road will be gated when it's not used, so it's not public use. It will be a place to So it will be isolated from Yeah, great point.

So while we might try to, we don't know if there's going to be any width of that land left for our own use, but it's never been anything that Hidden Bay residents have used anyway. So we're most excited to support the dredging project with that allocation.

Have you already entered into a written agreement with citizens?

We have not. So the draft that we have is simply that. It's a draft of the agreement. That's what I forwarded to Frank and to Terry for review. And so it is the right time to the extent that there are any issues within the agreement that either need to be in our agreement with citizens and the utilities. Or outside, stand alone, directly between the town and the same bodies to guarantee, for example, no damage to utilities or streets.

I think that's the main concern from the town is going to be the wear and tear because the street in Hidden Bay is not designed for that load of those heavy trucks going back and forth.

True, but I'm sure that, I mean, originally, and there's probably been construction vehicles coming through there before, but yeah, we really more on the town's behalf, are concerned that those roads not be damaged because, by the way, we don't own and operate those streets anymore. Those are Cicero's streets to own and operate. There was, I'm trying to find it, Roger, in the agreement, there was a section in here about restoration and repair and We've got this agreement in with our attorney. Trying to find what it specifically says about repair. Do you remember, Sherry? Section 2. Yeah, construction. So, thank you. So it says the grantee, which is citizens, and the citizens' trust would construct the access easement We don't have the exhibit D that shows exactly where yet. And so it performs the work on that property and it says that, where's the section about repair though? Sorry, I didn't highlight this yet.

Frank, do you have a copy of that dredging agreement?

Yeah, so Frank and Terry, we both have the electronic copy, which we encourage you to share, especially for legal review and utilities and roads. But we want to make sure that whatever the obligations of citizens are in here, not only to Hidden Bay, but also to the town related to the streets, which are asphalt and paved. and any utilities, I doubt seriously if there are any utilities in the block H parcel, but we can look at that or would appreciate you looking at that. But we want to be protected and I certainly believe that it's citizens intent not to cause or certainly not leave behind damage to the streets.

The access will come into Ravine Court?

It'll enter off of 236th Street onto Timberline and yes, then go down to the bottom of that little Ravine Court cul-de-sac and proceed northeast from there to the lake.

Say that again? The new road would not connect to 236. Correct. No, the new road. You were just describing the route.

I was describing the route, correct. Takes advantage of Ravine Court and Timberline to reach the exit of Hidden Bay. Okay.

Why do they want it for 99 years? I mean, do they express a reason?

You want to take that one, Roger? A lot of this has to do with how dredging is financed and the pace at which dredging can really happen, including then the degree to which we have done nothing so far in Little Cicero side. Roger?

My name is Roger Billings. I'm the Vice Chair of the Service Advisory Board for Citizens Energy. Also a director of Morse Waterways Association and live in Noblesville. Our long term intent is to place collection areas at the mouth of both Little Cicero and Big Cicero so that we can continue to collect the material in a deeper pit and then go in on a routine basis. We don't know what that is, every five years, every eight years, and clean out that pit to reduce the amount of material that will be going under the 238th Street So this is, we got 99 years as I understand it, because that's all we can legally do. But we want to be able to continually go through there. Once we've completed the dredging of Little Cicero Bay, then five years later we'll come back, probably spend two, three weeks cleaning out the pit, be gone again for another four or five years. So that's the reason for the longer duration. So what I'm hearing is this isn't a one time thing, this is an ongoing thing. It will be a long, long term and the same for Big Sisterville. We're intending to put a pit just to the west of the bridge to serve as a collection mechanism. The west of 19? Right. Okay. When would this begin? That's a good question. I wish I knew the answer. My predictions on this project have not been very good. This project was started 14 years ago. We did Hinkle Creek first and then we started on Big Cicero. Many, many interruptions for a variety of reasons. We have not completed the survey. We did a survey of Little Cicero and it was worthless. citizens going back and doing another survey to find out how much material we have in there. We're also looking at various methods and scope of that dredging project, so there's a lot of issues. The total dredging, my estimate, again, I'm not very good, probably 8 to 10 years to do the dredging itself. And then that would be a continuous ongoing operation from that point on.

So based on what you're saying, we're probably not looking at a 2026 start?

No, no, we're not. Okay. At the earliest, 27.

Just a question. Current location that's over next to 19, was that also done through a 99-year lease? It was not.

They are in the process of renegotiating that at this point. Okay.

Do you want to talk about the financing of bridging and how it is the combination of state grants and citizens water?

Yeah, Citizens Water is making a commitment on an annual basis. In some cases, we've doubled up on that to reduce setup costs. take annual budgets, their annual budget and put it in a single, two years into a single year so that we can reduce that expenses. We also have applied at Hinkle and at Big Cicero and in the future Little Cicero for what are called layer grants. This is a grant by the state, The source of income is from our boats and personal watercraft. A part of that expenditure every year for you citizens goes into a fund called Lake and River Enhancement. We, through Jim and Morris Waterways, apply for a grant. They range from 80 to $125,000 a year. We're hoping for more. Mark, the counselor for Hamilton County, has been assisting us with the legislature. Hopefully, we can expand that. Of course, if we can expand that, we can reduce that time duration. Last year, we got $125,000 on the part of Big Cicero. These load grants require 20% other investment to support it. The Big Cicero Drainage Board has been providing monies. They provided, committed to $60,000 to assist us with matching those grants. We'll be looking for entities to help us with Lowell Cesar Road, but that's premature at this point.

Are any of those monies set aside as part of what we talked about with infrastructure repair with the roads themselves? Because we see an ongoing cost here to the town.

The roads will be repaired by citizens. We don't know how or when. Various options, one, we let it deteriorate and then do it at that point. Do we repair or do we go in and improve the level? the quality of that road to support it for future years. A lot of questions that our engineering people are looking at, but no decisions have been made on that. Okay. But that will come out of the citizens' funds. That will not come out of the LARA funds. LARA funds have to be used in the lake.

gotcha terry um timberline drive can you talk a little bit about yeah so a timberline drive is originally for a campground so the sub base i i'm worried about the sub base being there uh to support what you're saying construction even making your road plus you know something that's something i would like to see some sort of agreement, exactly like you said, after you're finished, it's destroyed basically, then we pay that stretch, stretch, grow, some sort of agreement that we can work on.

Well, could we work with you and And let us share our engineering findings with you, and we'll try to work that out to your satisfaction.

And you pretty well answered my question. Do you go in there and base it, sub-base it the correct way, backstretch, and then...

And that's why we're asking for the engineering assistance. Two management people trying to make that decision didn't work really good.

And I would ask that you loop me in as the town attorney as well on that, just to make sure that it's covered.

Yes.

So as far as what you're seeking tonight, is this just an initial conversation or are you seeking an actual approval tonight?

We are not seeking approval. We haven't even completed these. That's my concern. I think that has to come first before we do anything here.

I think definitely not to the point for town vote at all for the council. I believe, you know, the reason that I personally and our board felt like we wanted to involve people like Frank and Terry and then maybe ultimately Aaron at the town was to ensure that there's nothing that is within the terms of this agreement between Hidden Bay Property Owners Association and citizens that should be modified or in any way either modified here in our agreement or supplemented by reference to some standalone agreement with the town.

Gotcha.

So I think the first thing that I was hoping for, and I will commit on behalf of the Hidden Bay Property Owners Association Board that we will not sign this until we have heard back from the town. about whether the terms and conditions herein are acceptable. And if there is anything to be changed or supplemented, we'll work that out on the way to signature, but we will not go out in front. I did find the section that originally caused me concern on the town's behalf, and it reads this way. This is the current language. The access easement includes the right, but not the obligation, to construct, use, maintain, and repair all roadways and pathways as grantee, meaning citizens, shall deem necessary or desirable, and the right to enter on, over, through, and across those portions of grantor's property adjacent to. the access easement area, which are reasonably necessary for the exercise of the rights granted herein. It's that right but not obligation phrase that has me concerned, not only on Hidden Bay's behalf, but also on the town of Cicero. So I think that maybe that's the tail end of section one in this agreement. And again, Frank and Terry, I'll count on you guys to share within the town council structure so that, I don't know, within a month or two maybe at most, we would for sure have some kind of response and know what we might need to do to change this. Again, Terry Monday, our Hidden Bay attorney, is also looking at it from his perspective and on behalf of the association. but we definitely need and want input for the town.

Sir, I assume you have not had an opportunity to review this yet?

No. Frank just forwarded it to me during the meeting. I haven't seen it. Gotcha.

And you've got my email address is there. I am the president. I also happen to run the accounting function, so my email address is the hbpoa.finance email address.

Go ahead.

I have one last question. Has there been any discussion about not taking down trees unnecessarily?

I'm pretty convinced that the engineers wouldn't spend extra money if they didn't have to, but it is a very solid wooded property.

Yeah. Trees removed in that area are going to be mitigated with the state. So there's costs. on our part to take the trees down. So there's no motivation on our part. We're going to minimize that from a financial perspective because there is mitigation costs.

Sure. Thanks. Between tree removal and then probably rerouting this creek and drainage that runs down there and containing it off to one side or the other, those are where the big expenses in addition to just the foundation and the gravel of the road itself and the seawall, but a lot of expense just to even make the thing ready. Sure.

So for me it sounds like there's still a lot of questions to be answered and some work to be done. From a legal standpoint, Aaron, or from a council standpoint, do we need to seek a consensus to move forward with these details?

I would treat tonight, we're being given information for the first time. And we're going to have some questions and rely, especially Terry, but staff to get back to you and then we can move forward from there. I don't know where you are.

Sounds great. I will say that the distance I'm just trying to do a quick math on figuring out the distance from the court to the end of City Limits. It's around seven-tenths of a mile just to City Limits. I know it's further than that to get to the dump site.

Going west, you're talking about. Yeah.

Yeah. And you've rated, Terry, those at a two. Not 236th Street.

It was at a 3. At a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being brand new and 1 being destroyed.

I'm looking at the report for 25.

So Timberline should be, not for me, but Timberline should be a 3. Yeah, Coral Springs Drive, 6th Street, Timberline Drive is right ahead of 3.

It says 2 on this.

Are you looking at Pacer?

Yeah.

Timberline, does that turn into Hidden Bay? That's what it shows on Google Maps.

Timberline is the road that... Did it turn into a road or no? It's the main north-south three-way. It curves west and then goes back north all the way to Stillwater Cove.

And that's actually the pace of Reagan. You looking at the number of lanes?

You don't have to admit it. I'm going to say no.

I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no.

It says two. It says two? Everything says two. Everybody here, so that was just a test. I agree, Terry, by the way, it's a three.

I'm just testing.

I support the, personally, I speak for myself, I support the spirit of the project. Like I said, though, there's still questions and details that need to be worked out. Super appreciate you bringing this before us tonight. And we're good to continue on with the conversation in my eyes. Does everybody agree there?

I appreciate you guys working on it and the fact that we'll keep the conversation going with our department heads. Sounds great. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right.

All right, moving on to the LWCF grant.

Jim, you want to talk there? We've been continuing to work on that. We have to apply for that by the end of July, July 31st to be exact. And what I am after tonight is some discussion about the commitment letter on the funds. And after some meetings with Rhonda and Dan and our previous meetings with council, We put together a commitment letter which would require $200,000 from park impact fees and the $1 million from the town. Is this in addition to what we had initially discussed?

No, it's the same. It's within that amount.

It's the commitment letter we have to sign and submit with the grant. So you're just looking for the formal signatures for what we've already agreed to. And for Rhonda to be able to sign that, or Rhonda or you to be able to sign that document. Okay.

I've signed it. Well, you can't do that yet.

Whoopsie. It was a two. It was a two.

I can see the news report tomorrow. Local club treasurer.

It hasn't been sent yet. Is this the most we can spend from Park Impact, or is that what we have available?

That's as much as he wanted me to spend.

Wait a minute.

He didn't want me to spend that much. That's correct.

Jimmy, is your microphone on? Yes. Okay.

How much is in our park impact fund? 375 or something?

I think it's 374. Okay.

Park impact, I have. Apparently it's gone.

That's the right dance that he looked at today.

I believe him. $375,000 in there.

I think the spirit was to leave a little bit in the fund so that he, for emergency purposes, he had something to work with. Yep.

Any questions, concerns?

No.

I'm good. I mean, we're just basically agreeing to sign what we already agreed to. Mm-hmm.

We need a motion. Yes. You want to sign it, Rhonda?

It said the fiscal officer, so I assumed it would be.

Motion to approve the grant application for Rhonda to sign.

To submit the signed document.

To sign and submit. The order of that is up for debate.

I'll second, Mr. Johnson.

Motion to second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Aye. Go ahead and put your Ron McGarry on it. Thank you.

The only other thing that I have is we'll have some ancillary forms for the Friends of the Park to sign, or not the Friends of the Park, the Park Board to sign on Thursday night. I mean, to submit with this also, but they're pretty much standard forms. That's all I have. Thank you. Awesome.

Thank you very much. All right, moving along. Actually, before we go any farther and jump into miscellaneous, there's a lot of new faces in here tonight. Does anybody plan to speak? That's amazing. I was just going to ask you to fill out the blue form if you did, but if not, we're good to go. All right. Emily, moving on to miscellaneous.

Oh, I would like to acknowledge the police department and Officer Dominic Smith, who gave the e-bike training session on Tuesday, June the 30th. Chief Rednauer was there flipping hot dogs. Good job, Chief. It was truly a community event. We had around twenty or more show up quite a few adults so that was great I'd also like to thank Sierra Fisher and Katie Strong they helped with the food and Pizza House donated coupons for mini pizzas and Cicero Market gave out four twenty five dollar gift cards but it really went over well and it was The spirit of the police department wanting to reach out and educate people was really a great community thing. So well done, Chief and staff. Absolutely.

Please pass that praise around. Particularly Officer Smith did a fantastic job putting all that together. And she did it quick, which actually really impressed me. So thank you all that were involved very much.

Great job. And the Parks Department helped, too, and Friends of the Park with the food. Beautiful. And the fire department showed up and gave support as well. So it truly was a community thing. So thank you, everyone.

All right. Thank you very much, Ms. Pearson. Moving along, comments by citizens.

I'm sorry. I have something under miscellaneous. I just want to remind you that our staff meeting next week is not on Thursday. It's on Tuesday. I'll not be here. I'll be at a clerk's conference. Mr. Strong has agreed to set in for me. It's not his fault, it's Mr. Zawadzki's, because BCA took our spot. Also, I got a call today from a resident who wanted to really talk to me about Mr. Cooper's staff and how professional. He had a huge leak, and they just came out, and it actually was the contractor, right? Mr. Cooper hit a water line, hit the sewer line. He just really went on and on about Mr. Wilson, Mr. Fidler, and Mr. Bennett. So they really walked him through the process. They said so many good things, and I told them I would publicly thank you guys tonight for him. So thank you.

Thank you guys very much.

Good work. They always go above and beyond. You're appreciated.

Comments from my citizens, which I understand there are none.

I don't know what these are for. Build America, Buy America. Is this for your grant? Yes.

Do we need to have these signed? Okay, never mind.

Sorry. Thank you. We're done.

All right. That's everything.

Do we want to congratulate Mr. Hunter on his award?

Oh, yes. I almost forgot about that. I'll let you do that as well.

Oh, okay.

Unless you want me to do it.

No. I would like to congratulate Jimmy Hunter. He received Friday night the Sagamore of the Wabash. It was... presented by Doug Carter, and he is so very deserving because of all the things he's done for the citizens of this town. He's a former police chief, but he took over the parks when he retired, and he just keeps making the parks better and better, and he works well with the other departments. He works well with the town board. You know, we appreciate everything you do, Mr. Hunter, and thank you for always going above and beyond for our citizens and the employees and everyone in town. Absolutely.

Hi, anyone else? You want to give a speech?

Yeah.

All right, like we said earlier in the meeting, the new ambulance is outside. If anybody would like to take a look at it, Mr. Frazier would be happy to show that to you. But otherwise, I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved. Second.

Motion to second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Thank you, everyone.