Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

Time is now 7:00. The Cisero Town Council meeting is now in session. If you could all please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I aliance 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. Please remain standing, Miss Gary. Would you bow with me? Thank you, Father. Thank you for this day, this place we have together, all the people that are so concerned about our town. Father, thank you for always showing us grace, love, and mercy. Father, I pray that you be with the council today and help them make good decisions for the town of Cicero. It's in Jesus name I pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you very much. You can all be seated. Miss Gary, if you could please take role. I can. Joseph Cox, present. Eric Hayden,

present. Dennis Johnson, present. Jacob Ever, present. Emily Pearson, present. We have a quorum with all members present. All right. Has everybody had a chance to look over the agenda? Any additions or amendments? I do my There it is. I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as presented. Second. Motion to second. All in favor? I opposed. Have an agenda. Moving on to the approval of the prior minutes. Has everybody had a chance to look those over? Awesome.

Yes. I'll make a motion to approve the town council retreat minutes for March 3rd, 2026 for the town council meeting minutes of March 3rd and for the town council executive session meeting minutes for March 5th. I'll second that. Dennis Johnson. Motion a second. All in favor? I opposed. Good. Good there. Uh moving on to the approval of claims dated 317. So everybody had an opportunity to look those over and are there any questions? Those did include the um rentals the application number 20. Do we want to do that here in Keith's section? You want to do it? We usually do it in Keith's section. Good enough.

So for pay application 20 is up. I thought we we didn't approve it last time, but okay. Yes, please add those. Okay. That just happens under Keith's discussion topic. Anyway, it's all right. Make a motion to approve the claims of 31726. I'll second. Motion a second. All in favor? Opposed? Please pay the bills. Rhonda, thank you. Moving on to council committee reports. I have nothing for EDC. Um Emily, do we even need to have this on here anymore? Okay. Oh, wait. Never mind. That's gone. Where's Bruce? He's here.

Keith, move your head. Oh, there you go. Good evening, council. Uh, storm water. There's nothing new to bring together Wigan for the next couple of weeks. I think we'll start our project during motion. I think Keith will give us an update on it, but that's that's about all I got for you right now. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, moving on. Legal council report this time. Good. Cisco Jackson Township Plan Commission report. Mr. Zawadsky is not here. Mr. Strong, do you have anything there? No, sir. All right. Do you have anything under special projects? No, sir. All right. Thank you very much. Moving along to the town engineer report, Mr. O'Brien. Good evening all. Good evening.

Wastewater Reynolds continues on the wastewater plant. Uh they're still working on oxidation ditch rehab. They're working on the clarifier rehab. They did start up the return sludge waste sludge structure doing a lot of piping forward. And then we ended talked a little bit AF20 was submitted previously. interested in the recommendations that we would recommend paying for the contract. Okay. I've got the dollar. I I have it. He has it here.

I have it. So, I'll make a motion to uh I I reviewed it in more detail from last meeting. I'll make a motion to approve paying pay application 20 and the total amount of 522,81212 split between Reynolds and retainage. I'll second Dennis Johnson. Motion a second. All in favor? I opposed. Good to go.

The 2024 community crossings, which is a West Jackson Street project, we did have our completion inspection emailed on the course of March list form. Uh if you guys are acceptable, we would like to have a motion that sign it after the meeting to document that. Well, that doesn't start the warning period for the contract. And you're good with everything. Yeah. Okay. They've got they've got a few things buttoning up, but mostly weather related. Understood.

Oh, sorry. Thanks. Thanks, Dan. So, a question down by Jimmy's and just that block both sides are the handicap spots. So, I see one blue line. They were not supposed to paint. That's in the punch list, too. But that was supposed to be a white line. It was not supposed to be a blue line. Okay. So, they're going to they're going to correct that. Okay. And they also are going to correct if you noticed uh some of the handicap the blue ones that were supposed to be blue are failing. I believe they put them down when it was too cold. So they're going to redo some of those as well. So Okay. Thank you.

So do we need to wait for that activity to be completed or do we have enough retainage to cover that? No, not for this action because it's this is it's substantially complete. They did it. They just got to do it. So now it's more of a warning and it's on the punch list. But before we release the retainage, it all that'll be done. Okay. So, you want us to make a motion to authorize Joe to sign substantial completion. And is that a letter we're sending to INDOT? No, this is for the contractor. This is just for the contractor. It's part of the construction contract to set that milestone that they're substantially completing. Okay.

Anybody have a problem with that? No. Make a motion to authorize Joe to sign a letter as requested. I'll second motion and second. All in favor? Opposed? I'll get it done. And I do have copies of those if if we need them tonight to 2026 CCMG. That's the East Jackson project that bid. Um all the post bid information was sent to INDOT. Uh Rhonda's got feedback from INDOT that everything looks good and they've sent it on to the uh state board of accounts or what? No, that's not ifa is who they sent it to. Indiana Finance Authority. So, right now we're just waiting for to get the money deposited in our account before we issue the notice to proceed to the contractor.

Gotcha. Uh, so everything's been approved and ready to go. The only thing I would ask if you would consider it is if you give the do a motion to ask to allow Joe to sign that notice to proceed once we have the funds in place. That might save a week or two delay for the contractor if that's acceptable. So, I'll make a motion to uh approve Joe's signing a motion to proceed for the 2026 CCMG East Jackson project once money has been deposited into our account. A second. Dennis Johnson. Motion a second. All in favor? I opposed.

Then the Morselian Drive under drain project as Bruce mentioned the storm water board project that was awarded. Um we did get bonds and insurance and certificates uh acceptable from them. So now we're looking at interest trying to schedule a pre-construction meeting which is going to they want to start mobilizing and start doing the work in April. So you got an email in your inbox Bruce to look look at some dates when you get a chance and we'll set that meeting. Certainly assuming you want to be there. I mean if you can be great. So, that's just a quick update on that and we'll keep you posted. Thank you. That's all I had. Any questions? What about a water task order?

Did you want to Okay. Did we say we weren't going to We talked about it about 10 minutes ago. We're going to hold off till the next meeting. Okay. Oh, Keith had a question. CCMG 2026. When do you think we can

we'll see activity, construction activity on that? Really, it depends on when we get money, but uh they say they're ready to start within a couple weeks of and they're starting to submit shop drawings. So, we're reviewing hopefully by the time we get the money, we'll have all the materials reviewed um and shop drawings. And they said they start in two or three weeks, but if I recall correctly, Rhonda, they thought that that would be deposited in like 35 days is what I remember in that email. And that's probably been 10 days ago. So, we're probably looking sometime 25 days. Hopefully, we get the money and they'll start four to six four to six weeks, something like that. Thank you.

But obviously, as soon as we know, we'll let you know. We'll have a pre-construction meeting for that as well once we have money can start construction. So, that's all I had. Any other questions or any other questions for Mr. Bryant? None. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, moving along to old business. Uh, battery energy storage system ordinance number 03-17-2026-01. Aaron, do you need to

Yes. Yes. If I may. Um, before we get started on the presentations tonight, I wanted to address a matter that came up yesterday. As some people are aware, there was a discussion online indicating that some people believed one of our council members had a conflict of interest related to his personal business uh which is called course of strategies and is engaged in sight selection aiding companies and businesses trying to find sites. I've discussed this matter with Mr. Ever uh who is the individual in question and as a point of clarification he disclosed that his business course of strategies is in the process of closing down and is not taking on new clients. He now works for DMA Incorporated which is a Fort Wayne-based firm that provides guidance on tax related matters and Mr. Ever assist clients with site selection and seeking incentives. In light of that, I have analyzed the the allegation of a conflict of interest on those facts. Per Indiana code 36-7-4-1016 F2 and three, the plan commission and the town council's consideration of a zoning ordinance is considered a legislative act. And this is considered a lawmaking act because ordinances are laws and so that's what's happening when they're considering a law. The conflict of interest requirements for legislative acts are set forth under 36-7-4-223B. This is a conflict of interstandard that applies to legislative decisions before the plan commission or the town council. quote, "A member of a plan commission or a legislative body is disqualified and may not participate as a member of the plan commission or legislative body in a hearing or recommendation of that commission or body concerning a

legislative act which the member has a direct or indirect financial interest. A direct or indirect financial interest in the item before the board is obviously the key term here. A direct financial interest means the individual is one of the parties or the owner of the entity involved or that the individual has a pecuniary or financial interest in the contract, the transaction or the project being considered. An indirect financial interest refers to a situation where the individual has an ownership interest through an intermediary such as a family member or another business that is a holding company or a trust or an estate. It can also mean an interest in a contract or transaction or project that is not held directly by the individual, but by a family member or an entity involved in the transaction. Indiana's courts have previously been asked to interpret how this applies. Um, and there's a case called Perryworth Concerned Citizens v. The Board of Commissioners of Boone County. In that case, the Indiana Court of Appeals heard a an allegation that a Boone County Commissioner should have disqualified himself from voting on a reszoning zoning ordinance because his wife was a partial owner of a property in the immediate vicinity of that parcel. And the development brought on by that reszoning ordinance, which included extending utilities to the area, were arguably going to increase the value of his wife's property. The parties that were challenging the commission's vote said that the term conflict of interest must be broadly construed and they contended that any interest would undermine that would undermine the public confidence in the zoning process should be considered disqualifying. The Indiana Court of Appeals disagreed. It held that the key to determining

whether a conflict exists was the specific zoning matter before the board. In that case, it was the petition to reszone a specific piece of real estate as it was the only item the board was deciding and not the status of land in the area. The court said quote uh that the county commissioner is not statutoily disqualified because he had no interest direct or indirect in the zoning matter. The term zoning matter and the statute does not include property in the vicinity of property being reszoned. Had the general assembly intended to disqualify legislators who own land and near subject properties, it could have stated so. As it did not, there is no basis for interpreting the plain words of the statute under such situations. Using this legal standard to apply to the proposed nickelplate reliability project, a direct or indirect financial interest means that Mr. Everett, his business, employer, his family, or a trust or legal entity owned by them would have an ownership interest or be receiving some benefits in connection with this petition or have a contract or agreement with the petitioner being IPA or Blackstone as a owner of IPA or the properties owners. Mr. Everett affirmed that neither he, his business, his employer, nor his family represent IPA, Blackstone, the Nickel Plate Reliability Project, or the property owners Ronald and Don Kyle Coverdale in this matter or in any capacity. He also verified that they do not have any direct or indirect financial interest in these entities, the property or the project. And that's correct, Mr. Ever.

That is correct. Sorry, I don't understand.

This means that Mr. Ever does not have a direct or indirect financial interest under Indiana law. That being said, I want to note that Mr. Ever has gone further than this requirement and stated that neither he, his business, nor a member of his family have ever represented, worked for, contracted with, or had any financial interest in any of these entities. and that to the best of his knowledge of his knowledge his employer hasn't either. In fact, neither Mr. Ever nor his family or family members have ever worked on for a best company or on a best project. Is that correct, Mr. Ever? That is correct.

As Mr. Everett does not have a direct or indirect financial interest in this matter as defined by the applicable law, he does not have a conflict of interest. The mere fact that he works in a related field and has knowledge about this type of project does not amount to a conflict absent any financial interest in the matter. Finally, please note that under Indiana law, individuals acting in a lawmaking capacity, as town council members are when they consider an ordinance, are permitted to take positions on how they will vote and what types of projects, laws, and activities they will support or oppose. They can do this in advance of laws being proposed. They can do this outside of session. For example, members of Congress in the Indiana General Assembly, including candidates for those office, routinely state how they would vote in certain situations and if they were considering certain subject matter. The same is true for town council members. when they are serving in a lawmaking capacity such as considering the zoning ordinance.

Sorry, they are free to state in advance what type of projects they would support or oppose, what sort of conditions they believe need to be attached to projects, and they are free to utilize their personal experience, whatever it may be, and their background to help inform these decisions. Thus, if a town council is considering an ordinance addressing something that a member has knowledge about, that council member is free to share their perspective and to vote accordingly. Thus, Mr. Everett does not have a conflict of interest, nor is he required to recuse himself. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, Mr. Cole. Moving along. As most of you in the audience know, um we took the step of going out uh to further our due diligence and we contracted with a number of different professional expert fir firms um to get their expert opinions on the topic and this includes environmental human impact um financial um and uh basically details for the ordinance. So, at this time, what we're going to do is open up the floor for those firms so they can present their findings of fact. Um, and we just ask that you uh respect their time and let them get their uh their presentation done and um as questions come up, we'll try to address those.

Who we want to start with there? Yes. Thank um the the first presentation is from August Mack and Dan Zeppekowski. August Mack is an environmental consulting firm. As the name would suggest, we brought them in and asked them to look into the environmental impact and safety issues that would be associated with a project like this. Uh part of their research involved they did review the comments that were made at the public hearing and they looked into some of the matters that were raised there as well as any others that came up during the review process. Um Mr. Zepicowski, would you like to commence? Do you have anything you need to put on screen? Um, not not really.

Okay. I could just work through this if that's fine. That's fine. If you could just make sure you're speaking in the microphone. Our audio is not as great here as our other facility.

Okay. So, my name is Dave Zepacowski. So, I'm a geologist with August Mack Environmental. And my my company uh we've been around August's been around about 35 years. We're a local the largest local environmental consulting company. We do everything from air permits, water, super fund sites, hazardous waste sites, etc., etc. So, that's been our bread and butter. I've been in 28 years in the business. Um, I'm a licensed professional geologist in Indiana and a few other states. Um, my my principal roles have really been cleanup of contaminated sites from underground storage tanks, super fun sites, large industrial properties, etc., etc. Also involved in sighting of various projects and businesses, doing environmental site assessments and things of that matter. So I have expertise in this this this this matter particularly. Um so I was asked by the council to basically review environmental issues that could potentially be associated with the uh battery energy storage system. Uh the best um so I went through the process of evaluating all the available information. So, IPA already had some studies done and some of the classic ones of phase one environmental site assessment were done, some critical analyses. There's four or five existing documents that were already performed. Um so review those and then also go back and look at EPA recommendations. Look at um National Fire Protection Association recommendations. Look at Indiana Department of Environmental Management EPA other Indiana Department of Homeland Security and what their requirements are just to um gather more information. provided information requests to to gather information from IPA on some specific things um which they were cooperative with just to understand the nature of uh some of the other documents that they would have to do in the future and get some example documents. Um also looked at the public comments and concerns. We reviewed those um which

some of those are the same that maybe council had and that that we we had too. Um and then finally um start thinking through what the required and future documents would be. Obviously, there's a lot of work to do in these pro projects and there's going to be additional steps that are going to have to be done and additional analyses that would have to get done. So, um overview of the project, I don't think I need to go through that. I think most folks understand what that is at this point in time. So, I don't want to waste any time with that. Um so, from our perspective, we looked at the due diligence and project sighting documentation that was provided. Um that was done by a consultant of theirs. It was not us. So, we were truly an independent third party reviewing these. So for the phase one environmental set assessment, what you look for is recognized environmental conditions. And these would be conditions that um would indicate that you have a potential issue at the site. So and that could be from spills, staining, equipment storage, whatever that might be. Um sometimes the back 40 issues where you might have drums or containers. Even on farm fields, we see them all the time where you have issues uh with with old equipment or drums of old pesticide or herbicide. It's a pretty common thing. So that's what the phase one the purpose of that is. And then there was no excuse me there was no recognized environmental conditions identified in that report. We concurred we agree with that finding as well. Um there was one data gap identified and a data gap is where you just don't have information available and apparently they did reach out IPA or their consultant reached out to Marathon to get a little more information on pipeline between in the 30s to the 60s. There's a data gap there. I'm not sure if that was ever filled, but that's not really a very consequential data gap in my opinion. So, uh, no concerns there. Critical issues analysis is another document that's performed. Critical issues analysis is really cultural resources. Are there are there archaeological sites on in the vicinity of the property? Are there cemeteries, pioneer cemeteries, whatever. Um, they look at threats to bio biological or

water resources and and also sensitive threatened endangered species. That's a standard kind of report as well. Um, and the findings from that we agree with and there really were no cultural resources or biological resources of concern. Um, another document that was done was a drainage report. Another third party for them. Um, the drainage report really looks at wetlands, flood planes, are they in a flood plane? Again, this is all sighting type stuff. Um, and there was no wetlands identified. It's not within a flood plane at all. And then in that document, they also did calculations to determine what kind of storm water storage they would have to have. So that was part of that as well. Um and then lastly, wetland delineation, identify if there's any any wetlands on site. Um there was one agricultural swale on the northeast portion of the property. And that's all that was identified. And then from that perspective, you want to see if there's any jurisdictional waters that require core of engineer permits. The Army Corps of Engineer really manages any any jurisdictional waters. and uh there's permitting processes and that would not come into play with something like this an agricultural swale. So based on the review of those those four documents um we didn't see any aberrations any concerns in terms of the quality and it meets the standard for how we would do those reports ourselves. So um now to the questions. So there was several questions that were raised previously um regarding fire prevention mitigation. That was one of the questions. Um, first thing is the technology they're using is state-of-the-art technology. The LFP battery is the the best one that's out there in terms of thermal control. Um, anybody that has a backup battery system in their house. Um, they're pretty cool by the way. Um, they're they're a lot of times they attach to solar as well if you if you ever have power outages or whatever. Um, and those are all lithium iron phosphate as well. They work really well. Um, I can just say that firsthand.

So um they're they don't have the thermal issues that the older battery technologies have had which can result in potential fires. So I think there's some uh significant advantages there. They don't use the heavy metals and the rare earth metals that are required for the older battery system. So the proposal is the state-of-the-art battery. Um, it would also be outdoor container spacing which would eliminate the potential for any kind of gas buildup or if there was any kind of fire or conflogration, it would eliminate that because it's not enclosed. They are spaced apart and they're outdoors. Um, my understanding is and this is questions that I we had for for IPA and that is uh you know the suppliers are using the type of batteries and it sounds like they're using tier one suppliers which are the best out there. Um they all have various ratings in terms of the enclosure and making sure that they're um enclosed to the elements and everything so you don't have any issues with with with that. Um they have robust monitoring prevent thermal runaway. That was one of the questions I had too just to understand how do they monitor the system and they've got internal monitoring for the entire system. they can identify if there's any gases, if there's any um elevated temperatures, any of those things. That's all built into their um battery management system. So, and lastly, and probably most importantly, they would have to do a fire and emergency response plan. Um that's a big one. It would ultimately have to be approved by the Department of Homeland Security, some other folks as well. That's a pretty important document and that's one that uh really you have to follow the NFPA um guidance on that. So that's one that would have to be done still. It has not been done yet. That would be in a later phase of the project. Um that is reviewed annually and my understanding is that IPA or uh or any other any other uh best um contractor they normally would work with the local fire agencies

on training specific for those units. So, and it sounds like there will be annual training and initial training so local firefighters understand how to how to manage any issue. And again, in my opinion, I wouldn't expect any fires necessarily with this technology. Um, it's a newer technology and it's not generally been a major concern. I just threw this on here. This is from the Electric Power Research Institute. This is on EPA's website. Um, and it talks about the failure incidents and where they are right now. Um and now the failure incidents are they've gone like this while the battery amount the amount of battery storage has gone up this way. So in the last four or five years particularly the technology has improved significantly. So that's really less and less of a concern which is which is good and I am a Hamilton County resident too. I live here so I you know that's a real thing that the fire threat. The other thing surface water and surface water and groundwater contamination we reviewed that and uh from our perspective um the operation itself wouldn't necessarily result in any kind of impacts but it comes down to that odd chance that there was a fire or some some other issue where you could have a release to surface water. Surface water in that on that parcel drains to the east through some swailes ultimately to the White River a couple miles away does not drain towards Morse. So there's a there's a divide right there and it flows to the east. Um the design would have an integrated pond so with a gate valve. So that's a that's a smart move and uh a lot of industrial facilities have that for precaution. So they're following kind of a best engineered practice for that. Um and then realistically the area doesn't have a major flood risk or anything. So bottom line from a surface water contamination um no significant risk to surface water potential for groundwater contamination. I spent a lot of time in my career looking at groundwater contamination putting in a lot of wells and uh and trying to clean up groundwater. This this area the site itself is located in

the area that's got very thick clay soils. Anybody's dug a hole out here knows that we've got 50 to 80 feet of clay with just thin sand zones. Um that clay does not allow contaminants to go down. So the site operations itself wouldn't they don't really store any chemicals or contaminants. It's just the batteries. That's my understanding and from all the research I've done as well. Um so you wouldn't necessarily have a concern with anything um getting into the soil or groundwater unless there was a catastrophic condition. If there was, you're situated on very very tight clay and the you have a groundwater. The groundwater is all at depth. There's no shallow groundwater. If it is, it's just perched. It's not used for drinking water. The drinking water here is if anybody's got wells, it's typically between 80 and 100 ft in sand and gravel units that are overlaying by 50 to 80 ft of clay or more. So, in terms of potential for groundwater contamination, I think it's very very insignificant if there was a fire or anything like that. Very little potential. Um, and a lot of it's just because of the the nature of the soils and the deep nature of the the aquifer itself. um water well records too. We reviewed water well records in the area. So within a half mile of the proposed facility, there's four drinking water wells. Uh the drinking water wells are at a depth of 100 ft or greater. Um the screens are typically 3 to 5 ft. So that's the screen zone and then there's 80 ft of clay and they're filled with concrete around the outside to prevent any kind of migration. So um that's a pretty that's a pretty robust design. Should not result in any kind of impacts at all. Um if there was again a catastrophic incident, potential ambient air contamination, that was a concern. Um we reached out to IPA to ask if they've done any measurements or monitoring to see if there's any gases that are emitted during normal operations. The answer is no. So during normal operations of these, there's nothing emitted in the atmosphere. Um I didn't expect that

based on the research I've done and based on our knowledge base. Um, in the event of a fire, um, CO2, obviously, if you burn something, CO2 is one of the byproducts that would be there. Um, CO2 is heavier than air. However, CO2 also, um, also wouldn't accumulate in in a fire situation like that, unless you had an enclosed area. So, this these are all outdoor. Um, you'd have carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide, CH4, which is methane, and you'd have hydrogen also emitted potentially. Again, those would all be within that short that little distance right around any area that's burning. So, we wouldn't expect any concerns. If there was, again, the rare chance that there could be a fire, I wouldn't expect that it would result in any kind of major gas plume or anything like that.

So, is that typical with a with a battery? So, like a battery catching fire.

Yeah. Every now and then you hear about a cell phone, right, that decides to overcharge or heat up. And these are a different technology. This is not lithium iron phosphate. This is this has the technology that's more the metals metals technology. So it's canicle and things like that. So these have a tendency to overheat. That's why a lot of these larger applications now they're using this different technology. So this the lithium ion technology or the lithium um iron phosphate technology has a much lower thermal um um potential for thermal runaway. So that's why it's being used more and more because it's a very that just doesn't heat up the way these kind of batteries do.

But if there is a fire the off gas is what you talked about nothing nothing else really contam with of contaminating or contamination. Correct.

Yeah. There would be there there would be minor amounts of probably pH compounds and things like that. And that's just things that from every fire when when you burn wood you have the same kind of phahes that are some of our carcinogenic compounds. That's what makes barbecued meat taste good. those phahes. So that's actually in a regular fire. So you'd have some of those things in there because there are, you know, there there's various metal pieces and there's copper and whatever in in there. Um so so if there was a major fire, you'd have some residual there, but it'd be no different than almost any building or manufacturing building, you know, realistically. So,

and and if if I understood what you were saying correctly, basically what you were talking about the plume of smoke, it's it's not in a concentration where it could travel and be of any real detriment, right? Not at least not for those compounds. I wouldn't expect it. No. And then and there would be monitoring right away anyway. If there was if there was that, one of the first things they'd do for their emergency response plan and fire plan would be to do up upstream downstream monitoring, perimeter monitoring to make sure that nobody would be harmed

because of Yeah. For for obvious reasons, right? Um, one of the other things was the adjacent Marathon pipeline. That was a potential concern if that was going to, you know, if the pipeline had any impact potentially at all. Um, it's our understanding that the pipeline folks are aware that this potentially could be a project. They didn't have any concerns with that. Um, that's that's our understanding. Um, they'd be the batteries would be 100 feet or more away from the pipeline area. Pipelines are built very robust to handle earthquakes, flooding, whatever. That's how they build the pipelines for a good reason. and you don't hear about too many pipeline major pipeline incidents and there's pipelines criss-crossing all over Indiana and the country. Um they're built very robust. These will be set away from them. Shouldn't have any impact. Um lastly was really battery disposal and decommissioning. That was some of the concerns I think folks had. Um that was a question we had too. You know there's these things are typically 20 years of service life. That's the expectation. Um these would be a US EPA universal waste. So they essentially go in for recovery, recycling. So they try to get the materials out of there. It wouldn't go off as a hazardous waste. Um at this time the EPA is not identify those as hazardous waste. Batteries go off as universal. Um they they would be required also to have a decommissioning plan in place. And that's a really big deal because you don't want them doing this and getting up and walking away and leaving this. Um so requirement that has to be done is a decommissioning plan. There's usually dollars set aside for that decommissioning plan. That decommissioning plan would say that when you're done with operations in 20 years, 25 years, whatever it may be, you can't just get up and leave. You need to remove all batteries, transformers, electrical equipment, everything. So, pretty much bring it back. So, we looked at example plans that they had from other projects and those meet a standard that I would say would be reasonable.

So, that would include any site remediation to return it to its original state. Yep. So overall guys uh our conclusion is in our opinion reviewing the materials that we had um the nickel plate reliability project does not pose a significant threat to human health in the environment. Um and IPA is following the appropriate protocols for these types of projects. So that is all I have. From a risk standpoint, is there any other type of insulation you could installation that you could compare it to? from a well from a risk standpoint. I already said that. I guess

you know we we do a think about underground storage tanks. All of us here have tanks in the back of our cars, right? That have 15 20 gallons of highly toxic, you know, known carcinogenic compounds that are in their benzene, highly flammable. We get that from gas stations. Gas stations have 10,000 gallon tanks that are from here to the corner over there and they're about 8 ft around. Those are buried at depth. Those are more of a concern to me than something like this. And I'll tell you right now, my cleanup, half of our sites are are underground storage tank related or industrial facilities where they have large where they put stuff on the back 40 that they shouldn't have. So I think this is relatively low risk in terms of the types of projects that we see.

Any questions? Any questions from the audience? Yeah. Um, when the batteries reach their lifespan, can they be replaced? Yes. Or they wouldn't abandon the whole site. They would just put remove one and put a new one in to keep the whole site going. That's correct. That's my understanding. That's normally how these would operate. So, if there's a they manage every single container, it's got its own system and it understands if there's one part that's not working well, then they can deactivate that part and then replace it. Okay. So that wouldn't just get kicked off of the site. It would go into a go through the whole process of waste, universal waste

because you mentioned abandoning the site and I would think they would want to no this this what happens. Um we have seen sites where basically people they have an operation and then they just go home. So you've got tanks, you've got other stuff just sitting there and they claim bankruptcy and they walk away. That really can happen if you have some financial assurance or some other things out there. These type of projects generally have financial assurance to to prevent that from happening. I'm not saying that's what that's what we're working on with the decommissioning plan that has funding behind it. Yep. Yeah. Almost every corrective action and super fund site that we work on has some form of financial assurance to make sure that the responsible party does not um have

and David that's an element of the ordinance as well. There's a financial assurance requirement as well which we'll talk about later. Very good. Yeah. Awesome. Uh any other questions? Um you have stated that um there wasn't a risk of contaminating the soil because our soil is so hard with clay. If that is true, then why do we already have a contaminated site here in Cisco with our soil?

Yeah. Well, it's if if you're if you have a release on the surface and if that gets cleaned up relatively promptly, it doesn't have time to go into groundwater and migrate. And anytime you have an emergency response situation like this, that gets cleaned up quickly. Years ago, a lot of the sites that most of the sites that I deal with, to be honest with you, ma'am, are 40 to 80 years old. And I wouldn't be surprised if the site you're talking about is probably 40 to 80 years old when they did not manage waste well. And they just didn't operate well. They didn't know.

They Well, sometimes they knew better, but they still, this is my experience. So, a lot of the a lot of the issues that you see around if there is issues around town, it's not from a release that happened yesterday. It's literally from things 40 or 50 years ago. One of the sites I'm working on is literally a hundredy old stuff. And you'd like to think that it's already been gone. It's not. It's still there. The bugs work their way in and eat a little bit here and there, but that contamination is still there. So, um, so yeah, that's the stuff we're working on. So, I wouldn't suspect that if you had a a situation like a fire, it would usually you'd excavate that material out right away after that fire. You control the water from that and then you wouldn't necessarily have a large tail in terms of like groundwater contamination or anything. So, it's really some of the previous operations where they dug holes and buried stuff. That's how you get groundwater contamination. So, is there an example of something like this that's happened that I mean like what's the clean up time if that does happen?

Yeah, there there's not a lot of examples. There's not too I don't think there's been any best any any fires with the lithium with the lithium techn lithium uh iron phosphate technology LP technology in in the US. I think these guys got a few other operations. Um and I don't believe there's been any any concerns there. So, and one other quick question because you mentioned something about the decommissioning. How where? Okay, so we're saying we're decommissioning in 20 year for a battery life. This is these are relatively new seven years. Have any of these plants ever been decommissioned and that we're out there and what are we basing this information off of?

That's a great question. Um I do not know the answer to that. So the the decommissioning plan um is also going to be part of what's reviewed by the Department of Homeland Security as well. So, it's something that the town will be reviewing under the ordinance, but it's also something that the Department of Homeland Security as well. So, there's kind of multiple opportunities to understand what the costs are involved in that and to make sure that those make sense based on, you know, other other examples. Yeah.

I wanted to ask you um you said that there would be no issue with the um little Cicero on the back side. Are they going to have like a barrier so that uh nothing from the plant goes into the dirt that way? Because they said it's on a on a cement um pad. Yeah. So this is if there was a fire or catastrophic incident run off. Are you I just want to make sure

anything anything from the the battery storage facility that could run off um into the river. Is there like a a wall or a a dam or Yeah. So so so what they do when they do the design like they would for um even even a subdivision, right? You have to have some storm water management. So you got to control runoff. That runoff would go into a ditch. Oh. U or a series of swailes or drains and then into a into a retention basin. It's a line retention basin into the river

and then there's an overflow on that which eventually goes into the ditches and through that. So part of the process you'd have to do some testing initially to make sure there wasn't any concerns there shouldn't be on just the batteries themselves and everything. It's when there was a fire or something along those lines that outlet has a gate valve and that gate valve can be closed in the event of a fire so that any water is captured totally on site. Okay. Yep. I see a question in the back. No. So, would you be okay if they built one in your backyard? Um, it's not quite my backyard, but Yeah.

You know what? There's I've got I got underground storage tanks right around the corner from my house. I've got, you know, I all of us, you know, there's there's factories around town. Maybe not right here in Cicero, but in uh other parts of Indianapolis. So yeah, you it's just part of uh part of uh modern living, I guess. We've got high tension wires that are zipping across that same area. There's underground pipelines carrying fuel through that same area and through the through the area around here. So, you know, I'm comfortable with it. Yeah, that was a question you asked. So, I'm just trying to be honest with you. Yep.

Um you mentioned that there's four wells, like drinking wells within a half a mile, correct? And they're all over 100 ft. Yep. Ours is not only one of those houses and I don't know probably is not either. Ours is only 60 ft. Okay. Yeah. Which houses are those? 216 just south of Okay. Um did you recently install? We just had a new pump replace. So I know the depth of it. We just had it done last year.

Well the pump could be at 60 ft but the well records show that here 100 this because what happens you got a big pile of sand you got a big pile of clay 60 80 ft and then you got sand sand and gravel down here they install a screen down here that water shoots up that screen to about 10 ft below grade so that's where that's a static water level well because it's pressurized um and then what they'll do is they usually don't put the well pump all the way to the bottom because it more easily follows that way they put the well bump in the middle of the casing so if they replaced it at 60 ft that's probably just the well pump to the casing. That's my guess based on typical well designs.

And you did say that you looked those up in the records. So just for your guys awareness, they any well that's dug, they log all those wells and that data is all available. It's all available on DNR's website. So I encourage you guys take a look at the DNR website. That's where we got our information from. So it's out there. It's mapped up and it's got all the old records. So where's he at? He must be right here. And you believe you believe everything is well below the clay. Yes.

Yes. Most well drills will not install a well less than 50 ft anywhere just because most people have septic systems also. And if you got a septic system where your waste water's going, you you want to have some separation between that. So sometimes that's a local ordinance too, a requirement that you have to have so much separation or set back between your septic and your and the ground water. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Oh, gotcha. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. You're welcome to stick around if you want. Stick around. All right. You're welcome to go as well. All right. Moving along to the next

uh the next up will be David Hall of Integra Realy Resources. Uh as the company's name suggests, they look at uh real estate valuation. They do appraisals. They also do market studies and look at impacts. uh we asked them to perform an analysis of what if any impact there would be from this project on real estate prices.

Good evening. Uh my name is David Hall with Integra. Um got just a quick Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I've got some paper handouts as well. Um, I'll try to read this for folks if if it's not super readable there on the screen.

Um, sure. Uh again, David Hall with Integra Realy Resources. Um as you know, uh we are an appraisal firm. We were uh retained by the council to do an independent analysis of residential property value impact. Uh got about seven or eight slides tonight that will just give you a a real quick overview, kind of hit some of the highlights. Um the report obviously contains uh much more detail, but I'll try to be relatively brief and just provide a summary of our findings and conclusions and then be happy to answer um any questions you might have. Uh little bit about our firm. So we are based in um Indianapolis. Uh we're the largest appraisal firm in the state of Indiana. Um cover the state of Indiana exclusively. I've been working with Integra for uh approximately 20 years. Currently a managing director, licensed in the state of Indiana. Um have designations through the appraisal institute. Do quite a bit of uh expert witness uh work and uh testimony and court proceedings. Um we have done um similar types of analyses for a wide variety of alternative energy products or projects. Um wind energy, solar farms, um also did some data centers. So um very comfortable with this type of work. um felt like we had uh an abundance of really good data to use. Uh I did inspect the project site as a part of our scope of work here. Um you know, one thing that I think makes appraisers a little bit unique, you'll see this here on our our first slide, um is that we are required by law um to be independent, impartial, and objective. Um it's not just a good idea, it's something that we are legally required

to do. So for that reason we take it really seriously. Um we're bound by certain legal and ethical requirements. Uh need to be competent, have the requisite experience, education, licensing. Uh we're required to perform assignments without bias. Conclusions cannot be predetermined. Uh and then obviously we're always seeking credible results. Um we cannot be misleading, fraudulent, or negligent. So um with all that said um that sort of governed our our scope of work and our approach to this assignment. Um generally speaking I think we felt at the start of this that the best way to forecast the impact from a valuation perspective or property value perspective of this particular project was to um measure the impact um of uh other best projects on surrounding residential properties. Um so that's a part of our first analysis. Um you will see in our report that we did three distinct um analyses. This is the first uh which we're analyzing the impact of other projects uh on surrounding residential properties. Some of the considerations uh for our research methods and data selection include data relevance, data quality, quantity and transparency. Um, one note about transparency. I will say, um, in a previous professional life, I was a county planner. Uh, was for five years worked for Monroe County and zoning administration. Did the same thing for the city of Columbus, Ohio. Um, I sort of sat on your side of the table many years ago as a staff member. So, um, I do appreciate that something like this, uh, is of concern to residents. Um, so part of what we wanted to do was to try and be as transparent as possible. uh not just with our methodology but with the data itself. Um so you'll see in our report um you know we analyzed a data set of 100 homes. Uh you'll see the address in there for every home. Uh

various data points about value, square footage of the home. Um all of that documentation as well as everything else that we used to develop our report was obtained from publicly um available sources. Um so that means anyone can check our work. So felt that that was important to to do in this particular assignment. Uh we did use Zillow for part of our analysis. Uh we think there are a couple good reasons to do that. U certainly if we're looking at home values, uh one of the reasons is it's the largest and most widely used real estate database in the US. Approximately 80% of US home transactions involve agents who rely on Zillow's products. Approximately twothirds of US home buyers use Zillow's websites and apps. Uh Zillow's Zestimates, their proprietary valuation tool, are derived from actual sale prices, MLS, uh multiple listing service data, and agent submitted transaction data. Zillow has a low median error rate, and it's widely used in economic research by the Federal Reserve. Zillow's website is publicly accessible, so anyone can uh check it, look at uh look at it, and use it. Most homes can be analyzed. Uh Zillow has very broad market coverage. Value change can be measured uniformly over a period of time. That's what we've done here. Uh Zillow also allows for direct comparison with benchmarks and specifically their Zillow home value index which is sort of a broad market average um indicator and that was really our benchmark for this first analysis. Um we selected a total of five best projects uh around the country. uh used a variety of criteria to select those. I I won't belabor it, but you'll see that in a report. The specific criteria that we used to try and find projects that would be comparable to what's proposed here in Cicero. We then analyzed value

change for surrounding homes. Um proximity was a factor. Typically our in our process, we will start with the closest home to that best project and then sort of work outward from there. Um again, we've got five projects that we analyzed. Uh 20 homes surrounding each of these for a total count or a total data set of 100 homes. We then compare the rates of value change for those homes to the local benchmarks. And again, that would be that Zillow home value index. This chart here summarizes the data and conclusions for these comparable projects. Uh the first project was the Sierra Estrella Energy Storage Project. Uh that one's in Arizona. Second was Superstition Energy Storage, also in Arizona. Chisom Grid Energy Storage in Texas, Gambit Energy Storage, Cunningham Storage. Those were the last two. I believe those are also Texas projects. Um you'll see there we've got a couple of different metrics. The first is total value increase. So here we're measuring the total change in property value over a 5-year period between 2021 2026. Rates vary a little bit um for the surrounding homes. Then we've got the benchmark in there for that corresponding local market area. That's that Zillow home value uh index that I mentioned. And then we also looked at the compound annual rate of increase for those same homes. uh and again that that same benchmark again some variation here around each project. Uh I'll skip ahead to the next page which is the uh aggregate for the data set as a whole. So for that data set of 100 100 surrounding residential properties total value increase between 2021 and 2026 was approximately 31%. Benchmark for the local market areas was

just slightly less at 28%. Compound annual rates of increase are very similar. For the surrounding residential properties, compound annual rate of increase over that 5year span was 5.4%. Benchmark for the mark areas was 5.0%. Few things to note just about our data set of 100 homes. Uh the distances to the best projects. Uh we used Google Maps and Google Earth aerial photos. They're little measurement tools to confirm distance. uh range was anywhere from 300 to 5,000 ft. Most fall fell within that 1,000 to 3,000 foot range. Uh home values varied quite a bit. Uh the least expensive was 103,400. That's uh the Zillow's estimate as of 2026. The most expensive was 1,400,000. Home sizes also varied quite a bit. Smallest home was 945 square ft. Uh the largest was almost 5,000. Second analysis. Um I would say this is less persuasive, but the reason we did this is um one, it gives us a point of comparison. Um essentially we're looking at a best project that would be connected to the grid. Um we don't really have at this point a whole lot of best projects in Indiana to look at. It's fairly new to the state of Indiana. So didn't have sufficient data really to do this this sort of analysis in Indiana. Um, but we do know that there are some similarities between a BES and what I would consider to be sort of an expansion of an electrical substation. Again, both intended to improve the the capacity or efficiency of the grid, their electrical infrastructure. So, um, we looked at those types of projects around four substations in Indiana. the AE Southbend substation, the Duke Energy Francis Creek substation, the NIPCO Sherville substation, and the Indiana

Michigan Power Adams Road substation. Very similar methodology here. Uh data sets of surrounding residential properties. Again, we're looking at a span of time that would begin before the project was complete and then ends after well after completion. So, if there is in fact some sort of impact, you would expect it to appear at some point within this 5-year window. Uh, got data here for each of the um projects. Again, the corresponding benchmark. Uh, not a lot of variation here. I'll flip again to the summary on the following page, which is our conclusion. Total rates of value increase for the homes surrounding those uh electrical projects in Indiana was 53%. benchmark for the local market areas was also 53%. Compound annual rates of increase were also identical at uh 8.8% per year. Third analysis um this is really just a summary of some academic research that was completed about a year ago. Uh was a research project um the title of it is fairly long here. the impact of utility scale battery energy storage system projects on property values in California, Massachusetts, and New York. And again, this was a a two uh 2025 research project. Um couple things to note about this research and and one of the things we liked about it. Um very large in scale and scope. Um they looked at 178 utility scale best projects located in those three states. Um all of those projects are in suburban locations near residential development. Uh capacity ranges from less than 1 megawatt to 200 megawws. Uh fairly broad range there. They all had operational starting dates between 2012 and 2023. Uh one other thing I would note, they mentioned this in the study is the

reason they picked California, New York, and Massachusetts. Uh really two reasons. One, they had an abundance of best projects. Um and two, those particular best projects were located in areas where there were dense concentrations of residential development. Uh they had two groups that they studied. Their treatment group consisted of homes that were less than 3/4 of a mile from a utility scale best project. The control group was outside that radius, homes that were 3/4 of a mile to one and a half miles from the same utility scale best project. And then they just simply looked to see if that there were discrepancies or significant differences uh between those two groups. Ideally trying to find out if proximity to that best had an impact on property value. Uh their conclusion was that homes near an operational utility scale best project did not experience significant price changes compared to homes um farther from the same project. Last page here is just a a summary of what you'll find in our report. Um have an executive summary in the first few pages. Our scope of work. Uh our methodology, the data we looked at that's summarized on pages 10 through 12. Uh the assignment requirements that are applicable to this type of work are summarized on pages 13 through 15. Uh we've got a brief sum brief summary of some of the best projects that are being undertaken uh and under completion right now in the state of Indiana, pages 17 through 19. Uh descriptions of this project on pages 20 through 26. Our first analysis of those comparable best projects around the country, pages 27 through 53. Our analysis of other electrical substation projects in Indiana, pages 54 through 75. Uh and then that research paper I mentioned got some discussion there pages 76 and 77. I would be happy to answer any

questions. So I had a question maybe just to to make sure everyone else the the comparison that you went against was that market value um of that same community. So you took the hundred versus the whole entire market value. Correct. That was a question I had for him just to just to clarify making sure that it was kind of on par. Correct. Correct. each of the the five best projects that we looked at are located in different market areas. So, we compared that set of surrounding homes around the best to that benchmark in that local market area. And the reason you didn't do I know the answer. I'm just going to ask. The reason you didn't use any in Indiana is

correct. At this point, at least at the time of this report about a month or two ago, um I think there were maybe four that went in various stages. um only two I think were maybe just recently completed. Ideally, if you're measuring value change over time, you want more than maybe a month or two to look at. Uh and ideally a data set that's more than a handful of properties. So, I just wanted that out there. Thank you. Yep. Yeah, it was entirely based upon the quantity of data uh and how recent those projects are in the state of Indiana. Would aesthetics make a difference for you uh regarding properties around it? the aesthetics of the home itself of the best site.

Oh, the best site. Um, I mean, we've got I would say we've got five projects in our analysis. That research project had 178. I would I don't know the details of all 178. Um, I have seen the aerial photos and site plans for these particular five on our report. You'll see that you'll see those aerial photos in there. Um, I would say they look very typical, fairly routine setbacks or normal setbacks. There's some landscaping. Um nothing that was too elaborate though that I saw. Um all of these projects like this particular project are in relatively I would call it sort of suburban fringe locations where there's a mix of agricultural land, some um lower density residential development and then some clusters of existing residential subdivisions.

Okay. Any other questions from council? Any questions from the audience? Kim. Okay. Um, what was the size of the five best facilities that you compared those two? Because ours is 200 megawws, correct? Um, can I flip to my report? Okay. Absolutely. Okay. And so, you know, the these will be made available. Yeah. On the website. Yep. Uh, we did disclose that in our report.

I'll flip ahead. I know we've got the numbers. Uh, Sierra Estrella, that's our first that's a 250 megawatt project. Second is a Superstition Energy Storage. That's a 90 megawatt project. The third is the Chisome grid energy storage system. That's 100 megawws. Uh number four is Gambit Energy Storage. That's 100 megawws. And last is Cunningham Storage. That's 190 megawws.

So there's only one that's really technically right around our uh number two. Yeah, there's 250 and 190. 190 and two. Sorry. Yeah. And then my other question for you is did you cross check with the county records to verify that the last time um those comp homes have sold because Zillow isn't reliable, this home has not sold recently, right?

So, yeah. Yeah, great question. So, um theoretically, right, another way you could do this sort of analysis would be what appraisers would call paired sales, where you have the sale and resale of the exact same property. in perfect world that's that can be good data. Um we always like to start with that to see if there's enough data out there. But um one the home has to sell twice. It also has to sell before and after the best project was completed right for doing this sort of analysis. Um we started down that road and after analyzing the first three I think we found a total of maybe two or three sales. um that's just not enough to do kind of a robust study. The other thing that complicates that sometimes I would say if you're doing a paired sales analysis as an appraiser is you would have to be able to verify what other factors impacted those individual transaction prices. So if you're looking at two sales between two points in time, you would have to know um and be able to verify with buyers and sellers, was the kitchen remodeled? Was there any expansion? Uh did they let the house go sort of fall apart? uh there are many many factors right that can explain any one single sale price. So as a practical matter that becomes really difficult to do. Part of the beauty I think with Zillow is that is in fact based upon real world transaction prices MLS listing data real sale prices. Um we found that every one of these data sets actual not every property but some of the sales did have prior sales. uh not necessarily two, but the data sets in here have actual sale prices in there uh verified from public records. And at least in in our research when we were looking at this where you would see that little dot where that sale price was, the margin of error was pretty small. I think Zillow advertises um a margin of error or median error

rate of maybe 2 to 3%. Not perfect, but it's pretty close. U the other good thing about Zillow is we're at least comparing apples with apples. So, while anyone's estimate might be off on one particular house, we're still looking at the exact same source for all of those other homes. And we did see quite a bit of consistency within neighborhoods. Similar sized homes built at the same time, same square footage. You'll see those estimates are right on top of each other. So, um, we didn't see any evidence of any significant errors.

So, I do have a question. David brought up the fact that there are essentially other utilities there such as the pipeline, the transmission lines, and the substations that are there. If you were, let's say one of those were proposed, would you essentially would would it be pretty congruent with how you did this? I mean, pretty similar how you would do the study and the effects do you feel would basically be the same from one of those installations versus this? Well, I would say that was part of the reason we we did that secondary analysis of utility substation projects just as sort of a hypothetical. If it was not a best, but maybe just the substation was was expanded, would that give us a different result? It gives us sort of a point of comparison. Um can't answer with respect to underground utility lines, but other types of electrical infrastructure. Um that's part of why we did that second analysis to try and capture that. Got

one other question. Sorry. And These five other areas, are they growing like Hamilton County is growing?

Yes, all of these are in um I would call again sort of suburban fringe locations where there's a mix of agricultural land growing residential development. There were in fact several of these um where we saw some newer subdivisions being built. Um ironically, we couldn't use that data because the homes were too new. So, we couldn't get, you know, estimates over a 5year span of time. But there were some homes that had been built within the past one two years that we had to just sort of skip past because we don't have a long enough period of time to track value for those. But we did see evidence of residential development occurring around existing best projects. But with how fast Hamilton County is growing, these places would you would say that with your best guess that these would be very good to use as um

compatible to compare a house in Hamilton County. Uh at least one of the projects maybe two that Arizona projects I think are in Maricopa County. That's a suburban Phoenix. Uh very big city growing fast. I know we have another one that's in the Fort Worth metropolitan area, Fort Worth, Texas. very big. Um I I can't say that I measured rates of development or growth change, but those are certainly very large metropolitan areas with a lot of growth.

I'm not going to provide the name of a realtor, but there's a local realer that provided us. we didn't ask for this information that that um went out on their own and did a little bit of research and what they came back with um they actually looked in the Boise metro area which we've done no we we just got this have done no research which um was mentioned to us that it's the same if not faster paced with growth and really they're not seeing anything on what they are seeing at this time either here now how that's from a realer perspective. It didn't go to the detail the actual data but that that is another data point to take into consideration.

Other questions thank you very much. I myself I'm data driven though hard data not what somebody thinks. I need empirical information to make decision. I was asking if it was empirical information. No, absolutely. Yes. No, very good questions. So, right, Mr. Colt. Next.

Yes, sir. Um, the next is analysis of what the potential financial impact of this project would be. Um, we have engaged uh Adam Stirwall of Barnes and Thornberg. He's an attorney who does a lot of financial and governmental finance work for Barnes & Thornberg and for municipal clients. And then Jason Simler who is with Baker Tilly. Baker Tilly is the town's financial advisor. We asked them to analyze if there could be a an impact on the town, if that'd be what that would be and and how we would have to address that situation.

Erin, can you talk a little louder? I'm struggling to hear you over here. Oh. Uh, good evening. Hello.

As Aaron mentioned, Jason Similar with Baker Tilly, principal with Baker Tilly. Um we serve as the financial adviser, municipal adviser for the town. Uh we've I've been with before Baker Tilly, before we merged Baker Tilly in 2019, I was with Umbal. That name may sound familiar uh to a lot of you, but I've worked with them for 26 years and have worked with the town in some type of capacity either through bond issues or budgeting or through the redevelopment commission uh for almost 26 years as well. So we have been asked to put together some numbers um for the town uh so you can kind of anticipate what type of property taxes uh that could be generated uh if the project uh comes to fruition. So kind of before I start I want to give a little bit of history because I think this is important uh as we talk about uh the property taxes that that could be paid. uh the the majority of the investment uh that's being discussed is considered utility property. Um so somewhat different uh the manufacturing equipment that we're often used to for uh and uh equipment like for in the retail or restaurants or uh normal type of manufacturing that we're used to. Uh that type of equipment is all self assessed um called personal property. In Indiana, we've got what we call personal property, which is the equipment. And then we have real property, which is the land uh and the building. Um equipment or personal property. Uh that's typically self assessed um by the company itself. Uh and they have to go through set depreciation scales. It's set by the state of Indiana. So it's kind of like your car. As soon as you, you know, buy a brand new car and take it off the lot, it depreciates. Same thing for manufacturing equipment. Once they buy it, install it, and start using it, it depreciates over time. Um, same thing for utility property as

such as we're talking about here. Uh, and in Indiana, um, before SCA1, before 2025 legislation, you know, different depending on the pool, um, the equipment could depreciate down to 15% or 30% or 10% or 5% depending on what type of equipment. But in Indiana, for property tax purposes, that equipment can never depreciate or pay taxes less than 30% of cost. So it could go down and depreciate to 10 or 15%, but when they're doing their property tax calculations, they would pay no less than 30% of their cost. So you may have heard of uh what's called the 30% floor. You you said 30, right?

30. Yeah. 30% floor. Uh utility property work the same way. um whether it's you own batteries, solar, wind, uh any kind of utility property, Duke Energy, any of those properties had the same thing except they could depreciate it down to zero for federal tax purposes, but they would for Indiana property tax purposes, uh they would still be subject to the greater of the depreciated value or 30% cost. And that was really to protect the tax base of the town and all the overlapping taxing districts. Well, in 2025, SCA1's legislation changed all that. They eliminated the 30% floor. So, manufacturing equipment, you know, retail, restaurants, they could depreciate their equipment down to that uh uh 15% or 10% or 5%. Um, but utility property, they could in theory depreciate their equipment down to zero. So that was a huge one of the huge changes that occurred in SEA1 in 2025. Um now in the legislation this year in 2026 they amended that u for utility property. So not for manufacturing they can still depreciate their equipment below 30%. Um but for utility property uh now they are again subject to that 30% floor. So the law changed in 2025 to wipe out that 30% floor and gave a huge tax benefit to utility property and then 2026 they amended it again to put that 30% floor back in place. U I think that's very important uh because if you see these schedules I think you all have received these uh ahead of time. If not I have copies. Um the second column here, um based upon the information that we received from the company, they are looking at making a $200 million investment. Uh they are planning on filing uh the equipment as utility

property. Uh so under the law as of 2025, they could potentially depreciate their equipment down to zero. Uh so if you looked at the assessed value uh we're assuming that this uh based upon information received would be built uh in 2028 uh assessed in 2029 and paying taxes in 2030. So you can see the assessment is about $64 million. Um take that times the tax rate for the town of Cicero and they'd be paying about1 million $297,000 in property taxes. uh they also receive because of that it's a utility property they are uh entitled to receive a credit in the first year of the investment. So that's why you see in 2031, even though there's some depreciation, you see a higher number of $96 million. Again, based upon the 2026 tax rate for Cisero, they'd pay about $1,946,000. And then again, as that equipment depreciates, you can see the assessment decreasing. The 57 million um paying taxes about 1.1 million. the fourth year depreciating further to 34 million paying only $700,000 in taxes. And then in 2034 uh depreciate at 11.5 million uh to 233,000. And then by 2035 based upon this depreciation uh scale uh they'd be paying potentially no taxes after the full depreciation of the equipment. Now that was the law in 2025. as I again said uh and that's kind of when we first were approached by the town to run this analysis and that's what we were looking at but again in 2026 they amended that to go back to the 30% floor. So that's where you see the right side of the schedule

and you can see the first two years um um 64 million 96 million same as before but you can see starting in 2032 that's when we would anticipate them hitting uh the 60 million or 30%. So again they pay the higher of 30% of cost or the depreciated value. So by year three they had hit that 30% of cost and based upon the 2026 tax rate would pay about $1,216,000. So you can see with no four over that 20-year period, they pay about $5.3 million in property taxes compared to what the law is now. And based upon the 2026 tax rate, they'd be paying approximately $25,142,000 in property taxes. Uh now I know something that's been talked about, you know, we talked about decommissioning agreement earlier. You know, one of the things that uh has been talked about is an economic development agreement. Uh that's something that we strongly recommend because um as you can see, it's $1.2 million. Based upon current law, it's very likely that legislation could change next year um that could impact the amount of property taxes they could pay and the benefit to the town. So that's something I think you know as you guys have talked about they strongly recommend uh that you do have an economic development agreement in place and uh in place to negotiate uh what those you know property taxes could be so it doesn't fall below a certain minimum because again it's changed in the last two years. Um it's a good chance it could change again and it may not be in our favor. So you want to do something to protect protect the town. be happy to answer any questions.

Yeah, I was just going to confirm. So, you ran this out for 20 years. So, um with the current change in law that brings the floor back as long as those assets, assuming it's all of the assets, the 200 million, uh assuming those assets are operating beyond 20 years, then that that taxable value would continue as long as the assets operate. Is that correct? That's correct. Thank you. So the total investments 200 million correct in that neighborhood. Correct.

Questions questions. What happens if you change the tax law again back to the 2025 terms in the future? Does that let them depreciate it down to nothing again? Uh it could and that's why the the town is talking about if they decide to go forward for forward uh also going to an economic development agreement uh that would agree that they would regardless of how the law changes they would pay a minimum amount of property taxes. So to protect the town from something like that occurring. They can do that.

And it doesn't cost homeowner property tax. It doesn't cost us anything. Any other questions? No. Is that a is that a net benefit or does it reduce residential property taxes? With a new assessed value, it could reduce property taxes. Yes. Depending upon how uh the assessment is is it accounted for. it's added to the tax base or it could be captured uh for

TIF question I can't I can't see that state or what is the calculation directly to the local municipality

um well this the tax rate that this is made up of is made up of the town the pool uh the county uh library um and we be a township. Uh so it's kind of based upon that respect respected tax rate of all the overlapping tax units. So unless the town decides to create a tiff area which there's you know advantages to that um this revenue would go to help fund all of those budgets but there's nothing goes to the state. It would all stay here in the county. Okay. additional questions. What did you just ask?

Can I make sure I understand something correctly on that? Sorry. So 1 million in property taxes is equivalent to what? 200 homes paying 5,000 a year. Yeah. I need a calculator to do math, but I was just making sure I I'm understanding kind of Thank you. Yeah. I mean, you're looking at $60 million of assessed value. So, you take how many houses that you would need to generate $60 million of assessed value be another way of looking at it as well. Rhonda, do you remember what cis assessed net assessed value is? Jacob, do you we had this discussion? We did. I don't remember.

I have it actually. There very little. Yeah, very little. I have a number. I just don't want to be wrong. Yeah. The tax base of the town net assess value. We the tax base was net assess value is 492 million. The town's 500 million and I think the entire township maybe a billion. Yeah, we were close to 900 million or something. All of Jackson Township's between 900 and a billion dollars.

Yeah, Jackson Township's a billion, 63 million. And we're right at 500 million. Okay. I mean, that gives you a little bit of a comparison. Yeah. Part of the consideration there is the I I don't know the right word for it, but what's the partial size that generates that versus what a partial size required for a housing addition would be essentially.

Yeah. When you're thinking about, you know, houses, especially with SCA1 with all of the additional deductions and exemptions that homeowners will be getting, I mean, now houses are a couple hundred thousand. you know, the gross, you know, maybe you three or $400,000, but once you add on the deductions and exemptions, you're talking, you know, a couple hundred thousand. So, you'd have to know quite a few very large subdivision to equal this type of assessment.

Yeah. Can I lean into that because I think this is correct. You tell me if I'm wrong. Our tax rate is 2.0276. So, let's just call it two, right? you if it was residential, you couldn't just to say to make it equitable, you couldn't just add 60 million in assessed value. You'd have to have add 120 million to get the the same amount of tax revenue, right? Because the residences would pay 1% max. Yep. This is a commercial property which would pay the full tax rate. So to get the same amount of revenue off of this, which pays 2%, you'd have to have double the assessed value in residential to get the same amount of revenue. Is that correct? At least at least the deductions.

Yeah. With the exemptions deductions once SCAS once phased in in 2031, you get like a 67% deduction on your home. So So at least double. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. There there would also be a lot of additional costs with residences. $60 million worth of homes of traffic on the street as well as students in schools and all the other impacts that population would have with it. Um question because this is not in Cicero proper. Correct. That's correct. Today it is not.

So how do we guarantee that Cicero gets tax money? What are we doing? that they they have agreed to we are able to annex this and they have said they would agree to be annexed if we decided to do this town to that property. So okay so it doesn't go to the county it comes to that that would be correct. Okay. And and I do want to just elaborate more on the the economic development agreement to make clear, you know, the the way I I think of it is it would be a backs stop. And so if we agreed to a minimum number amount of res of income we would receive, the payments they would make so that if the taxes were reduced, they would still have a floor,

right? And and so that way if that got changed overnight again to zero, we would still have that floor. So the town would still get those payments. I just don't want the county commissioners to get their grubby little paws on this money cuz they're a bunch of crooks. I I don't think that's called for. I mean, it's I'm sorry. But I just All of us are trying to do the right thing. So So let's just keep it same, please. I want it to benefit. Any other questions? What I was wondering is um are how are we going to benefit from this facility besides property tax?

I'm going to talk here when we're done. Okay. Because I'm going to give you my complete perspective. You guys know if you've been here I like to talk. So I'm going to give you my complete perspective. Yeah. Right now this is purely financial but they are going to I I'm listening. So sure. It could be through the reduction in property taxes or if they decide to tiff it area then all that money would go to the town and it can be used for capital projects or even some operating uh specifically for for the town. I'll I'll walk through a little bit. Who's going to use the electricity? Is it us or is it going to go somewhere else overseas? That that's a question for hypo. The electricity from the project remains in this area

in Cisero in this area. In this area, it includes Cisero. It includes all of Hamilton County. It includes uh the surrounding region. Uh so the grid reliability specifically where the facility is operating which in this case is right off state route 19 here and then emanates outwards. So those are the start of those transmission lines right and wherever those transmission lines go benefit.

That's correct. And the 345 KB transmission line it is all in Hamilton County in this area here. It's serving late in the immediate area. There's no there's no scenario where this power is somehow shipped out to somewhere farther away. Okay.

So, it is interesting. We um through research I I mean I would have had no idea, but there's even Dennis, you can tell them the website. There's websites that you can see. So, through your daily use, your energy bills, what what different companies buy energy for is up and down. and we've had another person from the community walk us through it as well. Um, so it's very interesting. So there the idea of this is in those high peaks you discharge low peaks when it's cheap you charge back up which makes sense.

You're essentially saying once they capture that energy in the battery they've captured it at that rate. Uh I I don't know about that but but it's you're minimizing the high peaks. The grid operators that utilize our facility are shielding rateayers from those high spikes in prices. So just to be very clear, Hyper Power is not arbitrageing energy prices. The energy that is from this facility is used by the transmission owner and operator which in this case would be you know for example a local utility or an electric co-op. Okay. How come last time you said it wasn't going to be used locally? It could be all the way switched. This could all go all the way to California. So now you're saying it's only

No one's ever said that. Localized. You said it could be sold back to the grid and go anywhere across the United States. Well, no one has ever said that. Yeah, last time. Last time that's what was implied as it was. Okay, let's get out of this is how energy storage works and the electrons are utilized locally. So that three so maybe just tripping. So, so I want to clarify too because I heard something similar that I think I'm not sure if we heard the he heard the question corre correctly initially those 345 KV lines to are are used primarily to power this area. That's correct.

Okay. So, so that and some of that power if there's excess is sold elsewhere

that's at the discretion of the utility not by us. Okay, because I I think I heard something similar as well. So that I mean it is benefiting our area as well. So that power had nothing to do with with them. We um were speaking with other I'll call them experts and I had no idea power spikes and prices were all over the place. So it was interesting. Thank you for that information. Thank you.

Thank you, Adam Sterol with Barnes and Thornberg. So, uh, and the great news, the legislative changes actually make my role so much easier than we, uh, were anticipating. So, um, here with the with the new 30% floor, like Jason said, you can either pass that through or capture. if you do capture as a tiff and then have them sort of backs stop that minimum dollar amount because in addition to that the interest rate or the tax rates could change could fluctuate this this helps keep that sort of minimum floor and then what you can do with uh if you were to tiff it you can do mainly any kind of construction project any capital expenditures just like your other tiffs and then also um police and fire expenditures as well. So you could pay for police capital expenditures, fire capital expenditures or operating costs. So it's very very flexible and can help the town from dipping into other costs as well, including sewer or any other utilities. Um you can kind of dispatch that money as as needed. Can you maybe give some examples of the way TIFF is TIFF dollars have been used in with some of the towns and you know counties you work with whether it's infrastructure projects, quality of life, whatever. Maybe just give us a sampling of how you've seen communities use those dollars.

Oh yeah. So it's mainly all capital expenditure. So it can be uh quality of life projects uh from parks, trails, any other um thing the community is is is interested in um to sewer, water, any other infrastructure that is needed. Um roads either road like either roundabouts, major uh pothole filling or um improvements, expansions. Um, and then I also see it a lot for uh public safety. So, new fire trucks, right? Fire trucks are, you know, expensive uh police vehicles, equipment. Um, seen everything from tornado sirens. Uh, really anything that the community wants. Uh, but you can't pay operating costs other than potentially fire and police.

So, Rhonda, um, I'm going to put you on the spot. I mean, we we have tiffs set up around town today and we use those funds for capital. Can you just give an example of a few projects and we just uh recently purchased the uh property on behind the u shell station. Uh we finished uh Jackson Street. We used $400,000 of the tiff money to complete West Jackson Street and probably a good portion will go to doing East Jackson Street. So, it's great funds. We've made great use of them. So,

otherwise, you're looking at most likely either bonding for those projects, property taxes, or income tax. So, it's back on the taxpayer at that point. I'm guessing the causeway was funded with some tiff dollars. That was that was significant if I remember right. Just we've done some great projects with tiff dollars, that's for sure. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. The final presentation we have tonight is going to be by Will Gardner of Taft Law. Will is an an attorney with Taft Law. His practice encompasses uh environmental issues as well as he's helped us with some zoning matters and other things. Speak up a little bit, Erin.

I'm sorry. I keep thinking I'm loud. just moving forward. Um, but he he's worked with the town on the past on some matters involving environmental things and Mr. Gardner was asked to look at the zoning ordinance for the PUD. There it goes. And based on that to make recommendations and revisions, he has worked through that ordinance. And so he's going to explain um the revisions in the revised ordinance. Thanks, Aaron. Uh, let me just pull this up. I have a just a couple of slides. Not too many. Um, as Aaron said, my name is Will Gardner. I'm a partner at Taft. I'm chair of Taft's environmental practice group. Um, and, uh, worked with Mr. culp on um putting together the proposed ordinance related to the nickel plate reliability project. As part of that, we um evaluated uh other ordinances and sample language kind of from across the country looking at what others in Indiana have done, neighboring states, um groups who have have focused on these kind of projects and really tried to take best practices from what we found in a number of different communities and incorporate that into the ordinance um that we put together. So, uh, first just some background. Um, the proposed PUB plan unit development ordinance amends the Cicero zoning ordinance and zoning map to address this project and it only applies to the real estate on which this project is going to take place. Um there's a 4-year window of time for construction of the project to occur and it doesn't change the underlying uh zoning district, but it does allow the

best project to be incorporated into the to the site. Um you know, importantly, we've talked earlier a lot about um you know, concerns that the community had about fire safety issues, thermal runaway, those kind of issues. I think August Mack did a great job of talking about from a due diligence perspective what their view on that is, but we've also made sure to incorporate into the ordinance um these uh fire safety standards um that the uh project would have to be subject to. These these fire safety standards are also part of Indiana Department of Homeland Security requirements, but we wanted to again from sort of belt and suspender standpoint incorporate them in the local ordinance as well. There are a number of development standards that are going to apply to the project under the proposed ordinance. Um there's landscaping requirements, screening buffer requirements, fencing standards that includes a 7-ft anti-climb security fence, um large evergreen trees, and a burm all to try to provide some visual buffer from folks who are passing by the property. Um there are signage standards that have to comply with fire safety regulations um to properly label equipment for emergencies and things like that. And there are also uh requirements related to drainage, storm water management, erosion control, and requiring that utilities have to conform to state and federal regulations. Um there are noise standards that are incorporated, vibration standards, glare standards, um dark sky lighting standards. Again, the intention of all of these requirements is to um you know reduce the overall impact that this site would have on the community around it to create more more buffer and ensure that um you know to the extent feasible uh

there's minimal disruption to residents of the town. Uh it would include compliance with environmental laws, communication laws. Um and as I mentioned earlier, these fire safety requirements are also incorporated in the ordinance. And importantly, um the owner has to provide the town with a third-party audit that they have paid for um that shows that the site is going to comply with these standards. There's an emergency response plan that has to be developed and provided to the fire department. Uh and the owner also has to provide fire training to the department as well. Uh we talked earlier about decommissioning so I won't go into it in a lot of detail. Um de a decommissioning plan is required as part of this project and we tried to sort of go above and beyond what we thought um that should include. It not only includes removal of all of the best equipment, disposal of all waste, but there's also a component that requires environmental testing of the site to ensure that after the project is done, if there is any residual contamination that they would be responsible to remediate that uh and the site would then be graded and reveated. We talked earlier a little bit about financial assurance. um that would have to be provided in the form of a bond or a letter of credit or other shity in an amount equal to 120% of decommissioning cost. So, you know, we're trying to build in some conservatism in that budget by making it not just 100% by making it 120% instead. Um there are significant insurance coverage uh requirements included in the ordinance and the town and the fire department have to be named as additional insureds under those significant insurance policies. And there's also provisions requiring the

BEST owner to indemnify the town for any losses arising from the BES. Uh in the in the event that there were any safety uh incidents at the facility, IPA would have to provide notice to the town related to that. Um but there's also provisions in the ordinance that the town can inspect the best at any time just by providing notice to the owner. Um lastly, we thought it was important to build in some additional enforcement and remedies provisions. Um the town will give the owner notice um if any alleged non-compliance occurs. And if it's an emergency situation, that's required to be addressed immediately. If it's of a non-emergency nature, then they're allowed 20 days to remedy the issue. Um there are then provisions for fines for violations that are left unressed. Um you know local permit revocation if necessary um and the ability to enforce the ordinance in court as well and seek other remedies through that. So overall, we feel like we've tried to take again best practices that we've seen in ordinances in other communities to ensure that there are layers of protection um for the town with respect to the ordinance um and uh that the town would be ultimately protected in the event if there's some uh incident that occurs. So I'll pause there, see if there's any questions from the council. So noise is a pretty big concern. The home it's 55 dB dB at the property line. That that's what's in the PUD. 55 at the property line, 50 at a home. If

it's found to be 55 at the home, that's when $1,000 fine could be levied until action is taken and or additional or pulling the permit is what I heard. Correct. Yeah, those are those are all remedies under the ordinance. I'm sure that if that were to occur that they would remedy the situation before any permits would be uh dealt with. But there's also um you know provisions in there related to testing for sound as well. So I think ideally that type of issue would get you know caught early on if there were any concerns related to it.

Right. I mean that's one of the issues that's been brought up multiple times. Yeah. And me personally it would drive me absolutely crazy too if I heard a home. So yeah, I understand. Thank you for that. And one thing I wanted to expand on when we're talking about the 120% bond for the decommissioning every 5 years that would be re-evaluated and potentially the total amount of the bond increased based upon inflation or any other price pressures. That way we make certain that if this happened 30 years from now, the bond is keeping pace with what the cost would be.

That's a good point, Erin. Yeah. So, when is that set? And when does that bond go into place? As soon as they start construction, it didn't. I don't believe it says in the P. Yeah, I don't remember off the top of my head. Aaron, do you remember the exact timing for it? I think it might have been in connection. Well, I I'd have to go back and check. I don't remember off the top of my head. Are you likely be in connection to issuing building permits, so they would be prior to construction activities. Yeah. Okay. And how is that value set for decommissioning? It's a third party estimate that must be verified. So that is not just a opinion for Michael Power. It's a third party uh line item estimate.

Okay, those address my concerns. Thank you. So at at building permit time and estimated by a third party and that's reestimated every 5 years to be adjusted. That's correct. Okay. And and that amount is also subject to the town's reasonable review as well. So, you know, we have an opportunity to review that and make sure that it we're comfortable with it. Okay. Thank you. Questions, Mr. Mr. Gardner. Yes. We can we also the town has the ability to reasonably uh have reasonable satisfaction in the type of shity financial we Yes. Thank you. Absolutely.

Go ahead. What happens if they if they go out of business in five years? Is that bond set at that amount? So the was like put at that fivey year mark or Yeah, but keep in mind it's also 120% of the decommissioning amount. So I mean the idea would be that you know I suppose if there is any fluctuation and inflation that happens in between the time when the um decommissioning amount is adjusted that we would always be keeping a pace of that. Other questions? Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, that wraps up the segment of our findings from the third party consulting firms. Um, is this where you want to talk?

Yeah. I wanted to take a Are you guys able to hear me? I know my voice carries. So, I wanted to take a few minutes and just talk about the impact, how things happen, what's and and just some background on what goes into these decisions. Um, because the these are very important decisions and I mean affect us all. We're we're all citizens here. Everybody on this board wants to do the right thing for our community. So, as you all know, and I heard somebody mention it a little bit ago with the wastewater costs increased. Um, costs are rising or are rising in every aspect of town expenses. That's just the way it is. I mean, we just had to deal with the fire department insurance standards standards status change due to manpower. Um, where the council approved significant investment um to add additional resources and OT and fill in to meet those ISO standards. Ultimately, what that means is that ensures that our insurance rates, our homeowners insurance rates stay the same and and there were thoughts that maybe even some insurance carriers would be dro would drop residents. Um, so there are actions like that. Wastewater project was more expensive than initially expected from when it was initially discussed. Um, so diligently working to minimize rate increases to the customers through that. And that's not because we wanted to have that that wastewater improvement those wastewater improvements that was driven by IDM. We've had non-compliances over many many many years. And the the resolution to that was you have to after we sunk substantial amounts of money in um stopping infiltration, we had to create a plant. So it's those type of issues that that drive these costs. Um, next up actually is we're we're

discussing a water plant. So that's a significant investment that's looming out there. Um, and when you have those significant investments, you also have rate increases, right? Some it has to be paid for some from for by somewhere. So that that's out there. So as it is our responsibility of the town council to manage those costs and our priorities as elected officials is to min minimize those costs increases to residents of the town and we all take that very serious. I I hope you guys all realize that um we we work to keep costs down and our utilities I would say are more competitive than most areas. Um the town over the years has done a good job with that. So based on that focus um town has several options on how to manage those costs. We either increase utility rates, provide less services, um less fire support, less police support. So you decrease those services that we're generally accustomed to in Cisero and and make minimal improvements to the area. Um as I think it was discussed, our tax rates are fixed. So no opportunity to gain significant increases in tax revenue unless you do something. It's just the way it works. Um so this prop ah shoot sorry this proposed project area in discussion I mean along state road 19 it is currently zone C3. So at some point um in the past it was decided that commercial would be along that that pipeline or that that road surrounding the area has the following. As you go from Noblesville towards Cicero you have green cycle you have an electrical substation you have a natural gas gate regulator station. you have the 345 kilovolt high tension power lines

and you have a marathon petroleum pipeline dissecting this particular property. Um so based on that this quarter is already or this corridor already hosts regional scale utility infrastructure today. So based on that thought process and trying to maintain reasonable rates within our town, this location has the type of infrastructure in place. The US needs facilities like this and financial benefit to the area. This project was worth investigating further. So I'm not leaning one way or the other with this. I'm just telling you the thought process that goes behind it. So please understand that. So I mean it it deserves further investigation, which is what we've done. We've gone out and hired experts and um have are doing our due diligence. Um so that process leads us today where the council work to ensure the impact of the proposal would have minimal impact to the surrounding area. This is why we requested outside experts like I just mentioned to provide guidance independent of IPA. Ensuring a safe community is a standard that all of us appear um feel has to be maintained. Um, so there's a question we have to ask ourselves at this point with all the information known and presented from the independent unbiased experts. Um, does this project fit the area? I mean, that's a question that has to be asked to all the council members making these decisions. Um whether it's this project or in other projects, we need to divest from our standard 1% tax rates um that are taxed on homes with some industry to help maintain expected living standards within the town. I mean, we talked about all the major projects above that we're having to deal with and all the costs

associated with it. So, these type of projects unfortunately are not just optional. um they are required to m some level were required to maintain a safe reliable services. So I guess another question that I'm I'm asking is what other projects are potential fits for this area where they if they were to come forward um highdensity housing traffic school impact I think We