County Council - Regular Meeting

Well, I mean, that would be up to you guys. I'm just throwing it out there. I mean, typically, I mean, we'd like to keep at least like $300,000 or so in there. But, yeah, we do have extra cash.

But increase in income.

Yeah.

And not see that change it.

Correct, and I think it will continue to increase.

That money's collected to promote tourism. Laying it in the back, it's not promoting much.

I hear you.

I mean, give it a year's go and see if they're doing their job, they ought to be able to offset their cost by bringing more people to Greensburg. I mean, I can see that being a positive.

So are you saying like entirely out of our, like all 75,000 out of my budget specifically?

Yeah, you have the money.

Well, and some of it is also the extra expenses of all the traveling. I mean, you would be amazed how much money that will also take in addition. I would say, too, that's another thing. I mean, honestly, another $20,000 just to go to all the conventions and stay in hotels. And I mean, it's a lot of travel. So that's something also to consider with this. So that's something we're trying to work in our budget. Also, I want. Financially, I think it's good for Chris to have a voice and the commissioners to have a voice, you know what I mean, with making sure that we're checking all the boxes on each area that we're talking about. And I do think financially that would be a good thing to share, in the beginning at least, you know what I mean, to see if we're...

You're asking to put $75,000 more into our budgets when you have cash laying there that you could try it for a year. Everybody needs to have a voice in the game. I wouldn't change any part of that. But paying for it, if you could help pay for it out of that funding for a year, That money, because we get to report on that every month on how much money everybody carries across the county and your monies has stayed around to 400. It was up to $800,000 at one time before you got here. Oh yeah. And it's still $400,000. Right. So, I mean, $75,000 out of that for a year is not going to hurt anything.

I hear you. So I just, that's, that's up to you guys. Um, WHAT YOU DECIDE ON OUR BUDGET.

I'M ALL FOR PROMOTING THE COUNTY AND TRYING TO KEEP PUSHING FORWARD WHAT WE HAVE. I THINK WE'RE DOING GREAT. I DON'T WANT TO LOSE MOMENTUM, BUT WE ALSO GOT TO PAY FOR IT. WE'VE GOT OTHER DEPARTMENTS THAT ARE REALLY NEEDING A LOT MORE MONEY TOO THIS YEAR. You know, we got to figure out what rabbit hole we're going to pull it out of. If you can help in that area, why? And keep it going. At least give it a go anyway. Consider it anyhow.

Yeah, I hear you. And a lot of that would be, and I was trying to be conservative just on, I know it's a jump on what I'm talking about here. So that's something you guys feel more comfortable with. I mean, it's worth talking about.

Will the sales position be a full-time position? Yes. And you're proposing...

I think it would be full-time. $50,000? I know. It's low, isn't it? I know. I'm with you on that.

Especially if they're going to do a lot of traveling.

I agreed. So I'm up for if you think that there's more needed in this area, like we're talking.

How much out in the marketplace?

$50,000 is the low end. And when you say that, I'm like it. When I was talking to Madison, he brought up that they offer a lot of flexibility with the position that they've created. And I think they're paying more than we are. So that is something to consider. I don't know. When you guys are doing the budget tomorrow or whatever, I'm not against compensation. I've been the marketing director.

I stay at home.

It's, oh, it's a full-time position. Yeah, yeah, working in the office.

Working out of the office.

Correct.

On the road.

I'm talking about the sales position that they want to add.

That's $75,000. No, it's $50,000. $50,000 salary. And then, yeah, the rest is benefits.

So $50,000 is low. With all the insurance, perfect, like it's

yeah I want the position to be successful so I'm willing and my board is were willing to work with what you guys put in with that the point yes it would be under in tourism that they would point yes report to me but I I would not I want to make sure that we're all together on it and that they can I'm happy with them reporting yeah yes yes and I will make sure to get taken all the input I want them to know what they're doing every day, too, because it would be very frustrating with what you're talking about.

Any other questions, concerns? Okay, thank you, Erica. Thanks. Chris.

Good afternoon, everybody.

All right, so as you all can see, there's a significant ask in My budget, one of those being with the addition to the pool coming in and not, I mean, it's not going to open this year. We're looking at next year. That was announced at the commissioner's meeting this morning. So not fully knowing what... That is going to cost yearly. Those numbers were based on projections of other counties and other community pools that we put in there. I did my best guess, but I think that probably was a little bit of a high shot anyways. I think some of the technology that we have now in the new pools and stuff like that, it is going to conserve some some energy and not as much chemicals, especially as what the last pool, looking at the last pool budget, sucked up a lot, you know, with leaking water and stuff like that. So that, of course, is a significant ask with the addition there. And then I will move to the complex fund now for you guys. If you look at our current complex fund, you know, we do have... PRETTY GOOD CASH BALANCE ON NOW. BUT I DID ASK FOR AN INCREASE. IT'S ABOUT $400,000. OBVIOUSLY, THAT'S ALL SELF-SUSTAINING. THE REASON FOR THE SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IS LAST YEAR WHEN I CAME IN, I THINK I HAD TO PRESENT BUDGET ABOUT three weeks after I started or something like that. And at that time, we did not know as well that we were gonna be running our own rec league, stuff like that. So it was a lot of new equipment and being able to provide that at a very low cost for our community, which I feel is very important. And fortunately we've been able to do that with the success out there. There's one big in the equipment line item, there's an $80,000 line there that is for a security system to put in for preventative maintenance so access control locks new cameras basically just to make sure we are keeping that place as a prime facility within the region making sure we are keeping everything you know, locked down in any riff-raff, we can catch it and make sure people are on when they're supposed to be. And then other than that, the position that Erica was talking about, as you can see, my temp wages and sports complex wages are a little bit higher than what they were this past year. I had rolled that into that just in case it did get approved, we could, you know, move that into another wage. um but all the money you know would be there and it would be on our end not a big deal um for us if i can spend you know 25 000 because for me it's it's no big deal i've got every weekend until 2030 you know aside from when school starts right now um you know filled um and they're wanting to renegotiate with us um my weekday is in march april AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, OCTOBER ARE REALLY WHEN WE NEED FILLED. SO IF I CAN DO THAT AND SPEND $25,000 AND I CAN RETURN THAT IN A COUPLE EVENTS, IT'S NOT A BIG DEAL FOR US. IF WE CAN BRING MORE PEOPLE INTO THE COMMUNITY, I THINK IT'S WORTH IT. AND SO, YEAH, LIKE I SAID, AS YOU GUYS CAN SEE, WE'RE PRETTY OVER BUDGET IN THE COMPLEX RIGHT NOW, BUT THAT WAS, LIKE I SAID, I CAME IN, YOU KNOW, LAST YEAR. AND WE HAVE THE CASH. IT'S NOT A BIG DEAL. WE HAVE THE MONEY FOR IT. Yeah, I sent you guys I presented the last council meeting and then I did send you guys an email As well, I can say I can get you another one though I'm noticing like sports complex concessions are 50% is that for supplies?

What is that supplies?

Yeah, that's so so we had come out of profits of What you're selling at the well it is it's the cash balance, so it's it's the operating But that's the line item that we have to take it Out of, um, and then so yeah, it's all we take a certain amount, um. And put it into a capital reserve fund for turf replacement from every tournament 3500 bucks. After 9 or so years, you're looking just over a 1M dollars. We take a certain amount of sponsorships, put it in that fund as well, looking about 5% there. And all of our weekday diamond rentals, all of our concessions, everything goes back into operating. So that is all your profit there. So utilities, everything.

Yes, sir. I guess that's what we'd like to see. I've never really seen a paper trail on all that money. Have we? Where? You know, the diamond rent, the concessions, the actual payments. numbers that go in when you, because at some point they're supposed to pay us back some money on this.

Yeah, and it's in here. Yeah, there's a loan repayment line of $50,000 on that. But we did get a report from them.

I got a report, but it's kind of general.

So can we see what kind of, I know you projected your revenue, what you look like, you know, $27,000 based on your Contract with the diamond with the ball people Got a number on that as far as what your revenue look like. So you If I understand what you're saying this six hundred eighty thousand or six hundred eighty three thousand dollars you got that covered Yeah, so if you could kind of show us revenue, you know how you're figuring the revenue on that just so we got an idea that you know, we're We got revenue coming to take care of that.

What I got you guys mid-year for that so far, I'll get you guys an end of year as well in November, but I can, yeah, that's not a big deal. But yeah, I know that was a big ask, but it was, like I said, Coming in, I mean, it's an expensive place to operate, but there's significant money running through there, and we'll get you that.

I don't know. I just went through and pulled out all the expenses that you had to add attached to the pool. I come up with $306,000. Is that going to be?

Like I said, I did some. I think it will be lower than that. I do. I hope so. Yeah, me too, me too. But I don't, like I said, there's room to make up for that also with sponsorships and additional revenue streams. Okay. But it's hard. I mean, I've never ran a pool before personally. Also, I mean, it's, yeah, just brand new, new technology, stuff like that.

Do you have an idea – I mean, obviously, you've probably got an idea of when the pool opens, how much it's going to cost to get in, what a party costs. Yeah. Kind of shoot some rough numbers on what you think your revenue might be. It'd be nice to kind of have that, too.

Yeah, I've actually got...

Pull that number at us.

Coming at... So I have to have board approval for a fee schedule. Yeah. And so going through that, looking at that, you're looking... We're trying to keep it affordable for the community, but...

You've got to pay the bills, too. Okay.

Yep. Okay. And then any other questions on the complex-wise from you guys before I move on to general?

Okay. Why are we questions?

Okay.

Well, I'll just go back. I'd like to see an income side and an expense side so we can look at the numbers and see what's going on. Okay.

If you have operating supplies, pool at $12,500, and then you've got pool maintenance, which didn't have any line item, and pool maintenance supplies of $35,000, what's the difference in those two?

So operating, you're looking at, like, toilet paper... hands up like all your stuff you need to operate maintenance supplies would be if you know we've got a robot in there say something goes goes down you know it's gonna be $10,000 repair you know if we have to totally replace it like I said I'm not sure that's gonna hopefully it doesn't happen year one because it's you know new but there's always that that buffer that I like like I said I don't expect it to be this high at all And it was, like I said, I did my best research on it. I tried to build a little bit of buffer with it.

I may not be looking at my columns right, but you have nothing budgeted for telephone, where a year ago you had 3,200.

So telephone, same thing like with what Christopher said. We're on the county system now. We don't pay for the phone.

And then REMC had 3,200, and now it has zero.

FOR WHICH ONE?

POOL. POOL, REMC.

35200 IS THE LINE ORDER. 35200 AND POOL.

YEAH, SORRY ABOUT THAT.

I DON'T KNOW.

LET'S JUST MOVE TO UTILITIES.

UTILITIES, YEAH, MOVE TO UTILITIES.

THEY'RE NOT DOING THEIR OWN BUDGET UNTIL THE FOLLOWING YEAR. IT'S MOVED TO UTILITIES.

I didn't even see that on mine.

So 45 will be for the pool and then 40,000 will be just for the regular parts.

Yeah. Okay. And then I did have moving to general. So going in, obviously with our growth, like everybody, you guys know, I'm going to ask for an increase in salaries for, you know, I mean, I'll say when I started, we had 18 total employees, six full-time, 12 part-time. At peak season, we're at 60 now with our camp counselors and coming up with lifeguards and additional concession stand workers and a lot more responsibility on our staff and on my supervisors especially and my full-time staff. With that being said, I did an internal study because do we know salary study-wise? I know I'm probably putting you guys on the spot here, but it was extremely difficult to prepare for budget and I had asked for what those salary study numbers looked like. I mean, have we received that back yet? Do we know what those numbers look like for parks? Because I've asked and haven't received anything for that.

NOTHING HAS BEEN DECIDED YET, BUT THERE'S GOING TO BE A BIGGER CONVERSATION TOMORROW. OKAY.

UNDERSTOOD. UNDERSTOOD. LIKE I SAID, I DID AN INTERNAL STUDY ON, HONESTLY, FOR MY SALARY AND WHAT THE BOARD, AND I'LL LET ERICA SPEAK TO THIS IF SHE WANTS. BUT, YOU KNOW, I FIRMLY BELIEVE, LIKE, I UNDERSHOT MY SALARY PROBABLY DOING AN INTERNAL STUDY. AND I THINK, YOU KNOW, OUR MAINTENANCE CREW, THE INTERNAL ONE, I think they're pretty on par with what I believe market value would be, maybe a little bit of a bump, probably a little more than what the 3% would be. That being said, maintenance supervisor, that one I do think, you know, if you guys look, I did ask for a little bit more of a raise there. THE RECREATION AND SPORTS COORDINATOR POSITION, THAT ONE I DID ASK FOR THE 3%. THAT WAS IT ON THAT FOR ITS START DATE GOING INTO NEXT YEAR. AND I THINK THAT WAS, GO AHEAD. I will say the really the only other major big one that you guys probably saw was in the playground line item is 150,000 that is one we've made it a point we have spent a lot of money this year and when I came in last year in in Greensburg at Rebecca Park the city park This year, we are doing some news right actually in a couple of weeks, getting redone, doing some new stuff. Let's put some in some new equipment there. Next year, our plan was, pending approval, was to do some stuff out at Bernie. Because I firmly believe, I mean, my job, yes, our biggest, you know, half the county's in Greensburg, right? But it's my job to give the whole county opportunities. And we've got kids in Bernie as well. That thing's been there, no joke, probably since World War I. So that playground and that structure. And so, honestly, it's unsafe. And we just need to, especially in our outlier stuff, we need to upgrade from a safety perspective and give those kids maybe the same opportunities that we have here in the city.

Currently, do the trustees pay anything on, like, Clarksburg Park? Do the trustees...

So Bernie, Clarksburg, New Point, St. Paul, trustees, they will mow, get trash, stuff like that. As far as the paying, no, it's us.

That does it. I've proposed in the past we should relish them.

Now, to be fair, when our guys, like I said, they, you know, when something breaks, they fix it. Our guys handle all that. Whenever something goes in, like I said, we pay for it, you know. But, yeah, our guys don't mow or do anything like that out of those parks. But we do replace and fix.

You guys don't mow like at Clarksburg Park?

Nope.

The trustee does take care of that.

Yep. New Point does on that one? Yep. Who mows down there and stuff?

Yeah, Jeff does.

Yeah, I know it was a, like I said, it was a.

Kicking it over to the trustee, I'm not sure.

Yeah, I mean, most counties, the cities, run the parks department entirely. So why are we not only doing that, but everybody else's stuff too? I've always asked that question.

Yeah, they're part of our parks.

Yeah.

That's the only thing I see. They're part of our park. I don't think the trustees could afford it.

If you look just for reference here, and it's not even the same thing at all, but Deanna, you're right. It's either one way or the other, right? You either have city or you have county. Typically, we're very unique in that sense where we do have both. And I'll use Bartholomew County, for example. They take care of Hartsville. They take care of the fairgrounds. They take pretty much care of all the green space in the county. City of Columbus takes care of, you know, mill race, stuff like that, but they run pretty much the athletics, sports, rec side of things. The county does not. We're kind of filling both of those roles right now, doing rec, parks, everything. And like I said, I know it was a significant ask, especially from last year, and I can't imagine not knowing what the heck I was doing. But I feel like we've made great strides, and I'm very proud of what we've been able to do and what our staff's been able to do, and the board's been very supportive. And, yeah, I'd be happy to answer any questions and get you guys the info that, you know.

You're looking at spending at each park as far as to upgrade the equipment. You've got a number in mind, but it costs to do like Bernie and –

It depends on the park. So, like, Bernie needs a new structure, you're probably looking, it's going to be $150,000. You know, at Letts, we spent, I want to say it was like $25,000 this year to put in some swings because the structure was okay. You know, it just depends on the park. Some are definitely better than others.

New point we did last year. The equipment is going to be there for a long time, though.

Yeah, you're looking, yeah, 34 years. It's a 34-year investment.

Yeah. Any other questions?

Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks, Chris.

on there you can go back to and look reference if you need to. So starting out with the sheriff budget. and the vehicle line items. We knew that was coming because of our deal with Enterprise. Next year is going to be our final year to get all of our cars in rotation. So 27 should be the big ask, if you will. After that, it should be on par going forward from there. So again, that's the biggest ask we've asked for in the sheriff's other than wages. We did increase our tire budget by $10,000. The big decreases we put in, we knocked off $20,000 in gasoline. Working with the county highway, it saved us some money. So we knocked off $20,000 there. And on tax warrants, we knocked off $43,000 there. Again, just money not being spent that we don't need to be looking at. So any questions about those items real quick? So, okay, the big thing, obviously, is wages. I provided just lots of information there. I'm requesting a 6% raise for everybody, both sheriff, detention, and administrative. That will put our base next year at 65, 428 for the merit deputies. which would be $2,375 above the GPD base of this year, 63053. Again, that's this year's base for them. They're requesting a 2% raise for next year. I talked to the chief this morning. He's confident he's going to get that raise. So that'll put them at 64,314. But again, the big thing is, is their longevity. They get 2% longevity per year of their base. And that adds on to their base the next year. So it escalates really, really quick. And I've got a spreadsheet in there for you to look at the difference. It's some simple math. It's not exact figures. As you can see, In year five, leaving their base steady as what it is right now, not knowing what kind of raise they're going to get, and leaving our base steady at this year's rate, in five years they're going to be making $84,228. We're going to be making $62,720, a difference of $21,508. I realize there's a salary study out there. I haven't seen it. I don't know much about it. But Indiana Sheriff's Association also does a salary study every year. And I prepared another spreadsheet for you there. Surrounding counties, what their starting pay is. That graph includes both the sheriff and detention. As you can see on the top on the patrol duties, the sheriff's side, everybody is above us except Ripley. I included Jefferson County in there as well because I do have some folks living in Ripley County who could travel to Jefferson County, should they choose to, to work. They're about the same size as us, so I threw it in there. Jennings County did not submit their data to the ISA, so I don't know what their data is. As you can see there, we're lagging behind in neighboring counties starting pay as well.

What will the 6% get you to? Did you just say that?

It'll get us to 65,428. Again, we get currently $200 longevity per year for our merit deputies. We're going to ask to bump that to $300 a year. If you max out at $4,000 now after 20 years, that will max it out at $6,000. Again, to give that little bump. Correct. It does not go on their base. Yes. Yes. And then I'm also asking to increase the night shift stipend. They currently get a quarter an hour. I'm asking to bump that to $0.50 an hour or from $520 a year to $1040 a year. Again, I know it's a big ask, but we're just not getting applicants because our pay and benefits do not match, come close to Greensburg, to be quite honest. For merit deputies, I'm getting four or five people. That's really not a good sample to be choosing from. So that's what we're fighting there. We currently lost one detention deputy and one merit deputy to the GPD. North Decatur SRO, school resource officer, he left that job, went to the PD. And we lost one merit deputy to ISP as well. And as you can see on that spreadsheet, ISP is starting at 70,000. After five years, they're at $85,000. And it just so happens I have a good friend in the administration at the Indiana State Police, and he's indicated to me that next budget season for them, he's going to ask for a substantial raise for them as well. I understand. I know I can't compete with the Indiana State Police, but they are setting the standard for salaries to some degree. So... Other bumps I'm asking for is a incentive pay increase for the Spillman system. There's a lot that goes on there. A notary. We do a lot of notary stuff for inmates. And then bilingual. Obviously, we're having a lot of Hispanic friends coming into our facility now. And we've got three ladies who are somewhat bilingual. And we're using them to interpret for us, quite frankly. I'm asking for a stipend for that as well. We did eliminate our detective line item and consolidated into the regular base bay with Sergeant Rank and we consolidated all of our phones. As those phone contracts expire, we're going to consolidate all to AT&T and those phone lines are our cell phones and our connectivity for our vehicles as well. So that's the big deals, big shots on the sheriff's budget. Happy to entertain any questions you might have. Everything else pretty much stayed status quo for the most part.

How many deputies you got?

20, including me. 20, including you?

Yes. We got 19. Well, I'm a deputy. I stop cars occasionally. You've got a total out here for deputy pay, but don't tell me how many there is. Does that make sense?

Yeah, sure. So, yeah, 19 and then 19.

Anybody have any questions for the sheriff? Concerns?

Ready to move on to the detention center then? Pardon? Ready to move on to the detention center?

We sure can.

So again, asking for a 6% raise, making the base $48,770. Excuse me, $46,770. Again, you can refer back to that spreadsheet that shows what our neighbors are starting out at. So this year, we're still behind every other county. And likewise, I'm asking to increase the nighttime stipend from $0.25 an hour to $0.50 an hour. Again, $520 an hour to $1040. The detention center is tough to manage. I've had, in this calendar year, in this first eight months, 13 people have quit back there. I've got 26 back there, so half of them have quit. I've said this half-jokingly, half-serious. Caterer County Detention Center is the largest mental health facility in Caterer County. Every one of our inmates either has a mental health issue or a substance abuse issue or both. And they are hard to maintain. Our core staff is back there to do a tremendous job. Again, I can't keep it staffed fully. I think I'm short four right now because I can't get people staffed. The big thing is one of my night shift corporals quit two weeks ago. Between his wages, his corporal pay, and his night shift pay, he was making $45,358. He quit two weeks ago to go to the Parks and Rec to make $38,110, a $7,200 hit because of the job at the detention center. It's a bad job, to put it quite bluntly. So some of the things that they're required to do, again, we're responsible for their mental health, their physical health as well. Our detention deputies have to pass medicine when the time comes. Of course, hourly rounds. It's just a tough situation. And I would like to reward them for what they do to some degree. And pay is basically the only way to do it at this point. We've discussed other options, but it boils down to what is pay. We've got to have good, reliable people because, as you all well know, the detention center is the biggest liability this county has. And knock on wood, we've done pretty good the last three years avoiding liability issues. But again, we've got to get some people staffed and get them paid well for what they do. They asked for a bump in the sex and violent offender registry coordinator. Again, a very liability-focused job. She's managing approximately 70 people on that list right now. And it requires a lot of her time. She has to do home visits every 90 days. She has to check their jobs. And then she's writing reports and filing charges for those that aren't following the rules. She goes out sometimes by herself on home visits, on ones that aren't too much trouble. But if it's a more dangerous situation, obviously one of our patrols deputy goes with her. But regardless, we've been recognized by the DOC for what she's doing and how she's doing it. We've been recognized by the DOC, and they're kind of following a little bit of our model, which is obviously a good thing. So I'm going to bump her pay up to $57,115, put her in line with the deputy's pay because, again, she has to do all the training the deputies do. It's a very taxing job. So I'm asking for a bump in that. We took some line items out of the kitchen compliance and transport deputies, consolidated them into this base pay rank and gave them rank pay. So that cleaned up some of those lines. Some big cuts we took, well, one big cut we took in the detention center. Our meal budget, we decreased it by $20,000. Again, the contract we went into with... Our CalWell, our provider, has worked out really well. The food is better. We're saving some money on that. Another big, not a decrease this year, but an even out, Southern Health Partners, our medical provider in jail, no increase this year. And we all know in the medical field to this day, that's a big deal. No increase at all. So we were able to save some money there, hopefully. So that's the high points on the detention center. I'm going to be happy to answer any questions you might have. And if I can, Ashley can, because she knows it forwards and backwards.

Is the enterprise project working okay as far as everything else? Yeah, it's working great.

Okay. Again, I'm not going to lie, I was hesitant at first, but it's worked out really well. We're getting some good return on the vehicles we're putting back into the system. So, yes, it's working out well.

Well, the $250,000 you asked for this year is what he asked for for four vehicles. Yeah, correct. Four years ago.

We saved some money the last two years, budget-wise, going into this program. Right. And when's the contract up? Next year? The contract goes on as long as we want it to go along. Okay.

Next year is when we think we're going to be even.

We should be even up, yeah. Our full rotation should be in play after 27.

Some of the cars you should get money back on, too, shouldn't you?

We are. Right now we're averaging about $15,000 back on Durangos. That's not chump change.

No, that's good.

Yeah.

Great. Any other questions? Concerns? Okay. Thanks, Sheriff.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. Janet Howe. You want to stay right there?

So for my budget, I proposed a 5% increase across the board.

And just kind of typed up a list of things that we have to do this year that they've added

They did the salary study that they put most of the girls in the wrong, I don't know how you say it, level. They never talked to us in person at all. They never came to our office to actually see what we do. And every time they typed up each individual study, we would send it back because all of it was wrong. And we'd do all the corrections, and then they'd redo it, and they still didn't do it right. Plus, they had a whole extra person job that didn't exist. they left a lot of things out. You know, like we have to get certification to be a passport agent every year, and we have to pass an exam to do it. The child support, there was the states requiring, you know, all of their, we have to do their trainings each year as well. And unlike the 40 offices, even though we have all the money that we collect for them. Because that's not our only job, so that's the reason why they won't let us do it, like before we all look in. And we're pretty much like the only office that we close and all go to training because we're required to be open for the court and cross-consult that space. So that, you know, is kind of part two, and we ask them to do it, especially this summer training where they pretty much update everything. And we're always working closely with all but our pay is much lower than what they get even though we're doing the same thing and we're doing it for them. And also, as far as the salary setting, I don't think it was taken into consideration even though we can track the first offices that are nearby. We don't all do the same duties, actually. There's a lot of variables. I was also wondering, I know it's kind of mentioned, but I'm not sure on it. If the police starts after July 1st, is that still a thing where they don't get the rates next year?

I think it has to be. I think we've got an ordinance we're going to pass or try to run through, but that will be part of the ordinance, yes.

It will? Okay.

For a year.

but I thought, I know if you go by the state, because they have that, but they're, I think, my understanding is that their budget is from July 1st to July 1st, where ours is January.

But the state's from July the 1st to June the 30th or 31st. That's their budget, but ours is January to December.

The budget year does not have anything to do with the higher date year. Those are not.

No, the state works off the calendar year.

The state fiscal and the federal fiscal, the hiring date has nothing, has no alignment with those.

Okay.

All right. That's fine. I wasn't sure. I just wasn't there if it was going to stay or if it was gone. So that's fine. And then additional duties, they've added a lot, like state work. We're trying to, you know, hook up with all of that. I kind of listed some of that down here.

A lot of things that we've added new.

A lot more requirements for the election integrity. They're adding a lot of stuff. We have to try to crack down on that. of HEA 1360 reporting requirements that we must track and report all the requests that we get, the amount that we get, and we have to do reports on that and submit that to them as well. And so

That's where they get named at.

They have a system where all requests for documents, anything, they have a portal that all the requests can go through that, and then they track it so that it can be reported for this HEA. So it's basically, all the counties are gonna have to do this, and it's gonna be a burden to track it, because a lot of kids' emails, they walk in, because we can ask everybody to request it through the portal . So I've gotten a quote on that, and it's gonna add about 500 a month for us to have this added to what we already, like that's gonna be the total. Right now we spend 200 a month . So I had it in my budget. Basically, I did a revised one and added it to 6,000 instead of 5,000 so that we can add that to our . So I don't know if it's too late to add that to it, but I just got a quote that's what it's going to be now.

So you need software storage to go to 6,000? Is that what you're saying? Yes.

And I did do the revised budget. and also like we've got a big increase in the FBI requests and notary, a lot more people come in for notaries now. So we're obviously been doing that. The FBI requests are once that, I get emails from FBI, very secure, they have like a pin number and they're asking

How many deputies you have now? Seven. Seven? Yes. And you want eight?

No, I'm not asking for a new one.

Well, it says additional deputy on here. It does on my budget.

It does on mine as well.

Why 10-200? 10-200 says additional deputy.

We added one last year. This is counting for that one compared to last year.

Okay, so it's not really seven is what you got.

I think you have a paper that I don't have. But it's not for additional.

So seven is the number.

Yes, seven is the number.

Okay. Do I have any questions for Janet?

Okay. Okay.

If not, take a look at everyone tomorrow. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Tressler, is he here? Here we go.

Good afternoon. Our budget is pretty... Pretty similar to last year. I'm not sure if you guys got my breakdown sheet, the separate one that I do also, but I'm sure this has probably already been discussed today too. The total increase in our budget is mathematically 7.9%. If you take out the 27th pay, that goes right down to right at 6%. The little spreadsheet that I do for the councils and for the mayor and for everybody to see has a breakdown of all of that, but I SAID, GOSH, YOU LOOK AT THOSE PLUS-MINUS NUMBERS AND THAT TOP LINE LOOKS LIKE SIGNIFICANT INCREASES, BUT THAT INCLUDES THAT 27th PAY NUMBER. THE BIG CHANGES ON THE BOTTOM LINE, OUR OFFICE SUPPLIES TRAINING AND TRAVEL ARE KIND OF STAYING THE SAME WHERE THEY ARE. THE TRAINING AND TRAVEL, WE KIND OF USE THAT, I'VE MENTIONED BEFORE, KIND OF AS A WAR CHEST. WE DON'T DO TRAINING OR TRAVEL EVERY YEAR, BUT Every couple years, you know, one conference, flight, and hotel is going to eat up all that, so we try to stagger that out. We used some of it last year for some in-house training on some software. Our miscellaneous line item is labeled switch router computer power. We also kind of use that as technology for our individual office computer replacements every three or four years, those kind of things. a two thousand dollar increase there that's literally just to cover the cost of where we are right now with storage and memory and things the next line item are utilities telecommunications just an increase in there with additional usage we've added some additional network connections and things out to take care of like the new community building and adding in here hopefully eventually sports complex, things on the other side of the road, pool. We're working on a combination right now of some cellular modems and wireless things to shoot across to try to keep stuff together, but I think we're working, commissioners are working on a project and we're trying to work that in to get that connected back to the network. So we'll save some money in one account, but spend a little more in another. and then the probably the biggest increases in the maintenance contracts and this is kind of a I'll just put this to you I think I came and asked for an additional a couple months ago and we kind of explained where things are skyrocketing I can only get quote seven days out based on what I can see today the way our lease payment and we consolidated that line item a few years ago that's why it's so large it used to be two separate accounts one year we funded the equipment purchase and that for three years and then the next three years it was additional support we put those together all of our hardware and software for that big line item the contracts and everything were done in july so i always have to pay attention when i'm budgeting because those contracts will end mid next year and i'll either be purchasing some new equipment and adding additional extended maintenance or maybe less maintenance and more equipment It's kind of my buffer on how we do those replacements. So I added $20,000 just knowing things are significantly more expensive. But I just want to reiterate and caution that if we have any major equipment purchases that are sprung on us. I don't have anything forecasted. Everything's still in our rotation cycle, you know, doing the lease payments to keep the budget flat instead of coming to you every five years and saying, I need an extra half a million dollars. It's been working really well other than, like I said, just two months ago when I came and said, hey, I need $20,000 for something that We were going to replace next year, and it's already gone up another five grand since I came to you guys. That's just kind of my best guess in there. And then real quick, back up to the top of the line, I know there's been a lot of discussion on salary study, raises, whatnot. Just to kind of go in line with what I talked with the city about and what other departments are doing, we did put 5% in there. So depending on what you guys decide across the board or salary study, that obviously will change that top half. Other than that...

I got a question. Yeah.

Is there any vendor competition in these maintenance contracts? I mean, are you... There ought to be.

Yeah. That's ridiculous what that was. So... Best way I can put it is there's two pieces to that line item, basically. One of them is the vendor that we buy the hardware from, and that's kind of a when we purchase them, yes, we look at.

They don't give a warranty on any of that?

They do, and that's part of where. So the first three years, we build in the equipment cost and that warranty into the lease payment to try to spread to float. When that three years is up, I'm not going to replace half a million dollar equipment that's only three years old. We're looking at five or six years. So then I shift those funds and use that to pay for maintenance for years four, five, and six. Is there that much maintenance on that? No, no, not just for those. We also have another set of equipment that we hopscotch replace. So that money will also start paying on a new lease for new equipment. So the reason we put it in one budget is because I would constantly, every three years, be coming to you guys saying, oh, I need more here, less here, or maybe more here, less here. So we consolidated them to make that... But you're just building on your electric bill, basically. Basically. I'm just kind of the float.

I'm not arguing that. I'm just arguing, why is there so much maintenance on this stuff? I will tell you... On a new truck, you don't have that much maintenance on it.

I will tell you, and this is the part that I'll try not to be super technical, but these six devices are... Basically what run? Absolutely everything technology for the entire city and county From all the financial applications to 9-1-1 to call handling to call recording to the phone system, too. So it's We've pulled a lot of money from different departments and expenses and things to put this cluster together so that we were All of them Scale you know what I mean? It's 83,000 times six, five. Yeah, I think it was about 600,000. And then, like I said, the other piece of this, and this is what really, really threw us when we did this three years ago. Rick, your name is right there, and I'm looking at you like...

I've been around since 1958.

I know, I think I was struggling with commissioner, councilman. Well, he was commissioner at the time. Councilman Navi worked with me as Commissioner Navi several years ago when we did this the very first time and you know I said this is a big ask but I said from a reliability and a redundancy standpoint this is a better method to get into and then when we actually approached the council at the time they were very very supportive of oh we'd much rather you do this than come and ask for you know 500,000 the part that's changed since then is we've brought in more city RESOURCES AND MORE COUNTY RESOURCES, OTHER OFFICES. THERE WAS A SERVER THAT I THINK WAS PUT IN IN THE BASEMENT OF THE COURTHOUSE IN 2019, RIGHT BEFORE I CAME IN, THAT WAS, I DON'T KNOW, $17,000 OR $18,000. THAT WAS ONE SERVER IN THE BASEMENT THAT RAN EVERY APPLICATION IN THIS COURTHOUSE. AND IT GOT BACKED UP NIGHTLY ACROSS THE STREET, BUT IT WASN'T, COULDN'T FULLY RUN IT DOWN THE STREET, NOT ACROSS THE STREET. all of that infrastructure is moved. All of 911 applications, 911 and all of the jail, sheriff, public safety departments had much higher maintenance contracts in all of their budgets to pay for the third parties that were supporting all these other servers that you guys maybe didn't see altogether. So I truly see your point. I appreciate the question. It's a lot of maintenance, but that's not necessarily $220,000 worth of maintenance. Some of that will be maintenance. Some of it will be payments towards the next hardware refresh of our file stores, things like that. So it's just very variable. Every three years, especially with the lease being in July, I always have to calculate. I have a spreadsheet that's just offset Okay, new equipment, here's what the new lease will be, here's what the maintenance will be, does it fit within my 220, the number we wanted to try to stick with, and it's not going to. Things have just absolutely skyrocketed. And hopeful that 2028, things will be back to normal. Hopeful.

Any other questions?

All righty. Thanks, sir. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon.

I don't know what all you have before you.

I know I submitted statewide, countywide, so I'm going to start with statewide because it's the easiest. Usually it's pretty simple, cut and dry. Or... For a lot of you, we get state funds from the state, comes from state 911 funds. And for some of you, I don't know, it doesn't state in our budget, but every month the state sends us $27,600. So for a year, we get about $331,200 every year from the state. And that comes from the 911 fees that everybody pays on their cell phone. uh... in the fall it's not a guarantee but approximately we if there's enough funds left over the state will divide up and if it's a good year they'll divide it up and they call it kind of like a bonus money and in the fall it averages out to about forty to fifty thousand it's what our usual uh... deposit that we get in the fall can't guarantee it but it's been pretty much on every year that we get that so for the most part every year we get about 380 to 400 000 from the state that supports our state budget so yes when you look at our budget that i submitted it's over that amount but we have people that come and go and we don't always utilize that. And if you look at our surplus on that fund, we have a pretty substantial amount and we run it pretty conservatively. And I use that as pretty much, even though I've only been director for a few years, uh we use that kind of as a reserve as to fall back on to do these big projects that we just recently finalized in june with upgrading 9-1-1 and using that money to upgrade 911 towers and infrastructure and stuff like that so we don't have to come to you guys and ask for money out of other funds and where are we going to get it so The budget for statewide actually decreased. So I don't know if you got some of my notes for the state fund, which is that 1222 fund. It does reflect a proposed 5% wage going with what most everybody else has proposed in their budgets. It does show a decrease of about 13,000. The reason for that is because if you guys remember, we had talked about when you guys gave approval for us to add two dispatchers to our roster last year that we agreed to put one on the state side and one on the county side. But we didn't want to pull too much out of that state fund because As you can see, we're already budgeting more than what we get on revenue coming in from the state. So we talked about eventually moving that over to the county fund. So we don't take out too much money for that. So this year I removed that extra Dispatcher that you approved and moved it into our county fund. Okay, so Also going with the fact that this year we're budgeting for 27 pays that made a difference also the 5% in raises also removing that one dispatcher what is our extra to and you'll see it reflected on the countywide fund That reflects about a $13,000 decrease on that state side. Part-time and overtime wages, I kept it the same. Even though at times I may have to fluctuate here and there and call the auditors to move some money, for the most part, we can manage that internally, and I don't see any reason that we need to change that. equipment repairs and maintenance training budgets I feel like they're still pretty much dead on occasionally we may have to come and ask for an additional but I don't think we need to until you know it may if we see that we're not if we're needing a little bit more I think it's pretty spot-on so needless to say the end result is a decrease on this fund from last year of about 13,000

How many dispatchers?

This fund is funding nine dispatchers. How many? Nine. Nine? Nine. And then going to the county fund, countywide fund, which is the 4930. This fund is funding 10 dispatchers, and I'm part of that 10. which makes it a little bit more interesting because when we did that one time longevity, everybody has a different price salary. So I had to do different line items for everybody too. So you'll see that reflection on that. Again, reflecting proposed 5% wage increase. 26 pays I broke it down with what 26 pays would be reflected against the 2026 budget showing the 2020 or that showing the 27 pays and what the end result would be that showed an increase of seventy four thousand three ninety but also remember that's also moving that one full dispatcher over so that's another forty five thousand of that that's the difference All the rank pays are staying the same on that. However, you'll notice a difference on the last line item for the rank pay. It's decreasing 5,000 because one of my dispatchers in that group, took a shift lead position. So that decreased it down 5,000 and she went into a shift lead spot, which that was already budgeted. So that minimized that down to only 3,000 for rank pay this year. Then FICA showed an increase. We do show a decrease in our insurance benefits of about $32,000 to be budgeted. And office supplies, uniforms, public education, those are all going to show the same. The biggest difference that you're going to see is on my contract services. And that, you may ask, why? Because it's about $40,000. So I went through and tried to go through all of our vendors. And a couple of years ago, when The previous director and Josh, I think you guys had provided ARPA funds that went to Motorola and they prepaid ahead for some of our service and maintenance contracts. So when I reached out to them, those are paid up to like 2029, 2030. So that's always been left in our budget for the last couple of years. So this year, I took it down. There's no need to obviously leave that in there. Obviously, we've got a surplus on this countywide fund anyway. So that made a significant difference. The only thing is, obviously, when The budget comes around for 2029. We're going to have to add that back in and you're going to see that increase. And you know, if you are still here on the, which I hope everybody is that you're going to realize that's going to show another $40,000 increase on the budget for, for the county wide. But that is the biggest difference for the contract services. That was part of it. I also found where we changed our emergency notification. That dropped almost $1,000 on that. We are moving to a new system hopefully at the first of the year. But yeah, that's most of the changes. And in the end, the end result is this countywide, even with the 5% increases, is only reflecting about $17,000 increase. For the most part, it pretty much balances out when you show it with the state side fund. However, it still doesn't fix the problem, which I had spoke with Ashley about privately in a meeting-wise. We're obviously low on our salaries, our starting base salaries. I did not put that in here because I know you had originally said you were planning on doing market studies at some point every so many years. I didn't know it was when I did this that it was this year. So, I mean, I did get surrounding figures and I did not put that into this budget. But Rush County, Ripley County, Shelby County were $3,000 to $5,000 less on base salary than what we, I mean, which are all places that we used to be higher than, but now we're $3,000 to $5,000 less than their starting pay. So, I mean, I still would like to fight the fight on that. I mean, I don't know what the market study came back and showed since you guys got a new one, but it's obviously something that we are still fighting and having an issue with. And I know you're hearing it from everybody, so... Um, originally when we were doing the budget, I heard to be conservative because Senate bill one, and I tried to do that and try to keep it as, but at the same time, I want to fight for my people that obviously work hard every day for the county. So that's all I have unless you have questions. Well, I have any questions, anything? I did present this to the city last week at their city talk. They didn't have any problems or issues or mention anything. I think they pretty much go with what you guys have to say, too. All right. Thank you.

I was going to email to all of you, but forgot it amongst the things that we've got going on letter-wise here. So, starting out with our budget, I'd like to come back to the salary portion of that last here. As that would probably be the most question or discussion at. Most of what we are doing is not a super large increase of things. We do have a few increases. One of those being in, our communications line item for telephone that covers our cradle point access uh... for two cradle points and our cell phones and those services uh... i'd just got us renewed and upgraded on everything that had been a bit antiquated and uh... looking at the price increases that we know it's going to go up next year but We don't know how much yet. I have asked for an additional 500 in that. Moving on down, we've got dues and subscriptions. I was asking for an additional $100 there, an additional $50 in our fire extinguisher fund. And as far as it goes on most items, that was it for those you have any questions on those before i go over to the south

Can I just say, it seems like pennies, but it sometimes comes down to this. You've got office supplies bumped up to 800, but you haven't used any this year. And same with, there was another one that looked kind of like that, EDC activity supplies. You've got 2,000, but you've only used 500 so far this year.

We've used quite a bit out of EDC activities, I believe.

So it just must not be reflected here yet.

It must not be. I don't have the exact number of views so far, but...

This is six months anyway. It's just ended in June.

Yeah.

Yeah. I know in the... I was discussing with Danny the other day in the telephone line item. He had made the remarks that, well... Hadn't used a lot out of that yet. I'm like, yeah, well, the next month or two, you're going to see that go up because I just upgraded everything and finally got our access. Speaking with Mr. Trussler and technology, our cradle points will now be for public safety access. Those will finally be the standard as opposed to being limited. outdated and behind. It's one of those key items if we need it to work when we need it. So we did get those upgraded and that account's going to be taking quite a hit here in the next two months as those come through. We'll get some bill credits on it, but it's going to take quite a hit on those.

So you got your garage and motor supplies that there was zero in there last year and you put three grand in there this year and then your gas and oil went to $3,500. We had zero last year.

We transferred them to public safety. Oh, we did? Yeah, we put them in public safety. We ask everybody to put it in their budget so you know what you're doing, and then we move them over.

I got you. Yeah, we move them over. That explains that. Okay. And then one other question, radio and lights, you've got $2,135. I haven't spent any money on that.

Yes.

Is there any room there to...

There's not a lot of room there because that is now what we are looking at we do need Emergency lighting as we have found out now twice this year that we as the EMA department have to borrow lights from other places and When it's in an emergency status So when we were doing work out at the Lake McCoy response We had to find lighting elsewhere. We had actually borrowed ones from the voting from the clerk's office and borrowed those and took them out there because they would set up on a stand so we could be seeing what we're working on there after dark and looking at that situation. Another one, a missing person incident that we were called out to to respond to. got dark on us, we were looking at lighting there also. The old lights that we did have, takes two people to move them and a generator. And the new lighting that you can get will run on a battery and I can carry two of them in each hand. So that would be also, I always wait till the end of the year, toward the end of the year to be sure that there hasn't been another emergency come up. we got to have this now and I got to go get it now. But that is one of the priority items that's on my list for this year is to get some emergency lighting for us because we just don't have it.

I don't know what trailer is sitting out there behind the building because there's no lighting and it's stashed in there somewhere.

I have, so interesting thing that you mentioned that. I found in a storage cabinet spotlights. They were so old that you can't charge them up and use them.

Well, I'm sure you've probably got a lot of that going on out there. Yeah.

So a lot of resources that we have had are so antiquated that it just doesn't.

Have to start cleaning the house.

I started on that, yes. One of the other things, too, is one of our trailers that has set out there for a considerable amount of time. I know I discussed this with Danny a little bit the other day. i think for a thousand dollars i can get that trailer back in service and that would be a huge benefit to our ability to respond to various types of emergencies certainly for rehab situations in the winter time when we need to go out on incident to assist fire departments and that's going to come out various remaining items of what i can find in that I think we can do that for probably 1,000 or less and get that trailer back in service. Luckily, the tires are still good on it. But, you know, we will be needing to do some more work as well on our Tahoe. That's seen much better days. But I need to find out what all is exactly going on with that there.

All right.

It does. But right now it's one of our two vehicles that we got that we can pull trailers. And unfortunately, when we get called, we usually end up using both of them. So I hate to get rid of it when we still use it. Any other questions over those portions before we move to the salaries? No? Okay. The paper I handed out to you here at the beginning is a snapshot of what I had received last year regarding our EMPG funding, which is the Emergency Management Performance Grant. We are guaranteed to get for 2026 an additional $5,500. That's supposed to go to our salaries. It's obviously not. So the county is going to be getting that, and I figured if that's going to there, part of these increases that I'm asking for for the 2027 year is basically the money will partly be there, and we're really only asking the county where I'm asking a 10,000 increase in my salary, that would mean the county would be actually acquiring 4,500 of it. So, and I know what 24's salary study reflected, and I have reasonably good indication of what the current one is as well. That also means as EMPG comes out every year, then there'll be also an additional, as there's the additional 5,500 coming in for 2026, there'll be that 5,500 again in 2027. Again, EMPG states it's supposed to be four salaries.

Is that guaranteed or you have to reapply?

We reapply every single year, but that grant's been around for a considerable amount of time, years.

It's $5,500?

Yes.

That went up $5,500. It's $35,500.

Yeah. The additional, sorry, I probably explained that wrong. Yeah. Total of historically every year, the County would get 30,000, but now it's going to be 35, five. So it's an additional 5,000 compared to what we've been getting every year.

Okay. So that that's all game changer. And that $35,500 is to be applied towards salaries? It's supposed to be for salaries. All of it, okay.

Well, it's kind of a reimbursement for salaries is what it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a reimbursement.

Yeah, okay.

I asked the same question. What happens if it goes away, you know?

Across the country, MPG has been one of the backbone things that's been in place for a considerable amount of time. You apply for it every year, and it's pretty much one of those things you just do every year. They give it to you. Do you have any additional questions for me?

Any other questions or concerns for Mike? No? Okay. Thanks, sir. Soil and water. That's you, boys. I know you're not Jenna.

No. Yes. Ben McCoy, Baron Deck. On behalf of the soil and water, we're here to request $22,740, the same as last year. Itemized out, and that's about $5,600 for advertising, $840 for cell phone, $7,000 for education, $6,000 for operating supplies, and $3,300 for vehicle and equipment. That money is used for most of the education workshops, field days, and events that they put on for the kids, some of those from last year. The tree giveaway, the rainbow workshop, the pond clinic, THE RECESS CAMP THAT THEY PUT ON FOR SOME OF THE KIDS. THE SOIL HEALTH FIELD DAY, WHICH IS WHY THEY'RE NOT HERE TODAY. THEY'RE PUTTING THAT, GETTING THAT READY. AND THEN THE AG DAY, THEY HAVE WHAT, A MONTH FOR THE LOCAL SCHOOLS. SO NO REAL CHANGES. ANY QUESTIONS OR ANYTHING?

THEY'RE MORE EXCITED FOR YOU.

You guys contribute to the other two wages pretty good, don't you?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean.

I mean, there's a lot of, I'd almost call it subcontracting work at FSA. I've really picked up in the last couple of years, checking filters.

You get state money or what?

FSA. Oh, okay.

Do you have any questions, anything? Thank you, fellas. Thanks for coming out. Appreciate it.

Thanks for coming.

You need a break? Okay. Let's take about until about 2.30. You want to?

All right.

You're up.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. So I know we've got 10 minutes for this, but I usually speak longer than that to commissioners, me, I think. But anyway, we'll get through this. So just a few little facts. First of all, right now we're sitting on about $8.6 million in cash is what we're sitting on with the highway department. Luckily, SB1 don't affect our budget. I mean, ours is NVH and LRS. So we actually come out of the House Bill 1461. So last year, 1461 actually helped the highway department for a change. For one, all the bridges is less than 20 foot span. All the incorporated areas was our responsibility. 1461 took them away from us and gave them to the incorporated towns. Greensburg, New Point, Millhouse, they have all that responsibility now. Also took and made it that any townships that have over 30% of their operating budget, they need to start earmarking them for infrastructure within their township now and funding part of that. So for once, the highway department got lucky on that part of it. so our equipment capital improvement plan that we started with we're sticking with that so we're in good shape we like that plan we feel we got a pretty good road program right now going with the preventive maintenance and stuff we're doing chip and seal etc some asphalt so we're going to continue that our bridge program seems to be pretty solid so we're just going to continue that not big change in that so basically it's our It's a ransom repeat next couple years on that stuff. The big issue we got is salaries. You hear it everywhere. I get it. You really do. But it's really becoming evident in the highway department. So we've been trying to hire. We had four good candidates we offered jobs to. They were local boys. They were really good. Three of them declined because of salaries. So we went back out for it again. We got four more good ones in, and two of them declined because of salaries. We just... It's becoming a big issue.

It really is. I mean, you hired.

You got two. We got two hired. We've got two more that's looking at coming. You know what I mean? But like I said, we got some good candidates through the door, which I was tickled. We got some really good candidates we're looking for through the door. We just couldn't see the deal.

That was the bottom line.

So we went back and looked. We compared other counties, compared a lot of things. Jackson County is a county that does stuff very much like us. They have a dedicated bridge crew. Jackson County is basically Seymour-Brownstown area. It is where they're at. They run an hourly basis span, which I really like. For one, it allows us to have a position tied to CDLs. So if we've got a position, say it's a greater operator, if he loses his CDLs, we can actually take money away, have the CDLs on him, money. You know what I mean? Some positions, we don't have to have CDLs. So, you know what I mean? We can call a couple bucks an hour, all right, and have them positions, all right? We also don't have an avenue to give anybody a raise during the year, the way we're typically set up right now. So this would allow us to, somebody gets certified in something, they'll give them a little bonus. We don't make them pay. So that's why we spent our budget this year, we did it on an hourly range. We would have to define them ranges, what sets up what. The other thing it does, it allows the employee to know, if I want to advance, these are the steps I have to make to get to the next step. It's very defined. So that's the way we laid it out. Like I said, we used Jackson County. We actually got their salary ordinance from last year and the year before to verify that the numbers coming off the gateway was accurate. So we actually got their salary ordinance.

I can forward it to you if you want to. I mean, 25 and 26 salary ordinances.

So we did that. The other way we looked at these numbers is we looked at Decatur County as a whole. We took department heads out, took elected officials out, took the highway department out. This also hits the hourly wage for the county. So the average county rate was actually like $26.74 since 2025 is what the average was. We're nowhere near that. That's bomb bomb. I mean, they were actual numbers. We used 2025 numbers. So there is no speculation 26 a.m. So that's where we came up all of our budgetary numbers on that. We did the same thing with department heads. The salary study, it complicated things for the highway department with the way the longevity ran. And we did that. Our hope was we would get a greater separation from bottom to top. What would happen? Well, the way it ended up happening in the highway department is the top got held down and the bottom got advanced. So it condensed everything and it condensed it greatly to the point that we got operator now that's like making three cents less than Foreman is the way it's worked out. So it just has not worked out or panned out well for the highway department at all through this process. That's the reason we propose a different scenario, a different way of going about this. We understand budgets right now, but we still have the rest of the year to figure out the steps that would fall out within that, what it would be and what the qualifications would be set for if we go this way. So I can give you all the facts, no problem whatsoever. 2025, the average county employee was $26.74 an hour is what it was. $26.74 an hour. And that came straight off the actual salary order is what they made is what it was. The actual department head, and like I said, this is not counting the highway department in on this, okay? The actual department head in 2025 was $79,645 is what the average department head made. So whenever we turned our salaries in this year, that's basically, I mean, we turned in the Brownstown numbers, Jackson County numbers, but they hit within that.

So that would put us right average with the rest of the county pretty much also. That's with CDLs.

26. 26. We would tie CDLs. The way we've got it proposed is CDLs straight Class B with $2 an hour. Class A restrict would be $2.25. Class A would be $2.50. So that's how much it would be. If they lose their CDLs, that's how much would be deducted from their pay if they choose to keep their job. Right now at the highway department, you're required to have CDLs or you lose your job. So if we've got some guy that's an equipment operator, don't need CDLs, we're still paying him to maintain them is what we're doing. But if he loses his CDLs, basically he loses his job. So, you know, you get somebody that's a year or two from retirement, if there's a job they don't need, they just get caught and catch 99. Knock on wood, it hasn't happened, but the possibility is there because we don't have an avenue right now to address it if it don't. So the other thing I'd point out is LTAP run a salary study, what they call a salary study, and I can forward it to you. It's actually called the Indiana LTAP Workforce Report. They run it in 2023. The report, the research report, is actually done for the purpose of the report to investigate the workforce issues faced by Indiana local road agents to provide strategies to inform local road agency and policymakers. where it's going to be. The whole gist of that report came out. I mean, it's basically what I'm telling you. I mean, local workers versus state workers, about 22% difference in the same job is where it came out. A lot of their deal is, is if we give a two or 3% raise once a year, you'll never stay with inflation.

It just won't happen.

It's not happening. And I can go ahead and forward that by email to that report of LTAP that goes through everything. And like I said, it's more for understanding where they should be and why they should be. So it says the report provides the local agencies and their elected officials the information they need to make sure wages and salaries are fair and competitive. And like I said, that comes out of Purdue as a research study.

So are you taking out of two budgets for your employees?

Yes.

I didn't understand that.

So the reason we do is because it's restricted versus non-restricted?

I couldn't understand none of this. You didn't put down 10 employees here. You understand what I mean? You've got 1,101,011,927 in two places.

Yes, because basically we split the salaries because restricted fund, we only do certain things with the restricted fund, which is reconstruction, structure, and preventive maintenance. So basically we split it half and half, what we did, part of it restricted, part of it not. Everything we do isn't restricted eligible, so we split it half and half, yes. So that's the reason it's the two different funds, the restricted fund, non-restricted fund. So I'll use a very good example. Snow removal is not something that we spend restricted funds on. So anything snow removal, snow plow, salt, has to come out of an unrestricted fund. So all them salaries have to come out of an unrestricted fund. Basically, it's pretty much the same sign we talked about at the beginning of the year. We talked about them changes going to be in it.

So the restricted is the 1169?

No, 1169 is the non-restricted. That's local road and street. 1173, 1176 would be the restricted funds. 1135 would be the bridge fund.

So 1173 won't actually have a breakdown because after... We do the budget. We move. It's funded by 1176. So until the budget is in there, we cannot move money over to 1173 because that's what funds it.

What is 1173?

Motor Vehicle Highway. MVH. MVH. Motor Vehicle Highway.

You don't have the breakdown on that because it's not funded yet.

Well, there's... We've got a page here that says we'll transfer to. Yes.

So that's the breakdown. Yes, that will be the breakdown, yes. And I sent the, I believe I sent the 144 of 1173 with what it should be.

Yeah, what it would look like.

Yes, what it would look like.

It's the last page in here.

Yeah.

Like 1,264,000.

So our budget will stay whole. Everybody probably seen the governor did the gas.

You all know this is my. So we're hoping, and I've got people working at home, and this is all coming out of perpetuation fund. So they are putting the data entry, putting the names with the legal descriptions, and updating all that for us, so that keeps us going. We did have them come give us a quote on miscellaneous books. They came and looked, but that was in April, I believe. I have not heard from them, the company, on a quote for it yet, but I intend to get something hopefully soon, and maybe next year Linda then can get the miscellaneous books put on the computer, all of it digitized, because that would be the next step. Then I'll have that ordinance to you for the part-time again, like I do every year to, you know, you just sign it so I can pay the part-time people out of perpetuation. Now, as far as the budget, I didn't really have any cuts because I made cuts when I became recorder. I made several cuts. And every year, I've kind of kept it the same because I try to take as much out of the perpetuation fund as I can. Honestly, I go in the gray area there, but until I get my hand slapped, I'm paying as much as I can out of that perpetuation fund. The only other big thing is, and I do it every year, I'm begging, I hate it, I hate begging, but the pay is so disappointing for our office because the ladies in the office have longer, they've worked here longer than others that are in the same category, which that salary study that you did, They're not getting paid the same, and I don't understand, and I didn't understand before, brought it up at a council meeting, why are we paying the ones that are over that spectrum, why are we still giving them a 3% raise? Well, and I remember Ashley saying, we want to keep those people. Well, what about the ladies in my office? Because they have longevity, and there's people that are making more than them, and they're not, yeah, it's disappointing. We'll put it that way. Because they're in the same category. People make mistakes because we're all human, but the fact of it is, is our office has to check, well we do check because other counties do not, but we check to make sure the legal descriptions are correct before we put them in. Last week, actually it was two weeks ago, an attorney brought in a deed, it gets passed at the auditor's office, and my understanding, if it gets passed there, I have to record it. Now we get to our office and we question it because what it amounted to is they're putting land in a trust that doesn't even belong to them. It could belong to you. It goes into their trust. But we're looking at that to make sure all the ducks are in a row. um it was like i said just a mistake that was made but we're and we're all human but we all work together and that's the part i don't understand and i don't know if you do if you understand how much we all work together and this pay structure is to me is crazy it's it i guess it isn't fair um last year The auditor's office asked me to file my claims different. I have Lao on my computer, which is the one they used. I'm not going to lie. I was mad and told them I'm not doing your work for you because you girls are getting paid more than we are and that's not right. That I'm doing now more work, your work. Well, I'm doing it now because sometimes you have to put your big girl pants on or big boy pants on and you have to do what you're asked to do. We get a lot of calls in our office that are forwarded from other offices that could answer the question. But for some reason they don't. They just send them to us and we take care of it because we are all servants of the public. We're not gonna just keep passing the buck. And that's where I feel like we don't get the credit that's deserved in our office. And mainly because people come and they praise us for the work that we've done. uh... and and they tell us that they can't get anybody else to help them the other part is the three percent when you take three percent of a thousand it's more than three percent of a hundred so when you guys do your three percent instead of the two thousand that you used to do or a thousand or whatever when everybody was over the board then Everybody was even, you could say. But when you have some salaries higher, naturally 3% is going to be more of a spread. We don't understand that. I think it was Ruben that suggested it, if I remember correctly, to switch over to the 3%. So it's the pay that I'm asking for for the ladies in the office. I do have one for you because today I had a recorder ask, who all gets paid for lunch? And I was like, what? Yeah, there are five counties out of the 32 that responded that get paid for their lunch hour. I'm sorry, but this is taxpayer money. Why would you pay the employee for not being there? Or, yeah. So just to say, I don't know, we're trying, I've tried my best to save the money for the county. I didn't take the insurance. I had to this year because Greg is officially retired, but not. But I just, anywhere I could, I tried saving the money. So I would appreciate it if you guys would please pay the ladies in the office what they're worth. I mean, don't have the attitude that, oh, they're this age, and for them to go find another job, they probably won't, so we just won't worry about it. We won't give them that. I don't like that. If that's been your attitude, it's not right. It's discriminatory. So last time, I'm out.

Thanks, Greg, for getting me mad. Well, thank you.

Thank you, Donnie.

Airplane, Doug.

Maybe I'll skip the salary part.

Yeah. We've heard it enough.

That's every year.

We're used to it.

Big runoff, Doug. It's the territory. We can handle it.

I JUST WANTED TO KIND OF GIVE AN UPDATE SINCE THE PAST YEAR AND A HALF. AND I DON'T WANT TO SAY THE CHANGES THAT WE'VE MADE, BUT JUST FOLLOWING THE ORDINANCE THAT ARE IN PLACE AND FOLLOWING THE FEES THAT WERE IN PLACE, LAST YEAR OUR INCOME FOR OUR OFFICE WAS $114,560. YEAR TO DATE, THE REVENUE IS $245,168. So we've already doubled what we did last year now. I will say that there was one particular permit that was That was a high revenue permit But because of following the the fees that were in place we collected the funds that we should have collected so Even without that fee were the the income is still up 36 percent from last year to this year, and that's just following the ordinances that are in place. With that being said, I am looking to increase fees here in the near future by the end of the year because of HB 1003 is requiring that if we don't increase the fees by the end of this year, then we have to wait five years. And if you wait five years, then the rate that you increase those fees is based off of what the prime rate is for those five years. So we have not increased fees since 2015. So we are going to move forward with that with increasing the fees. As far as the budget is concerned, I'd say the biggest thing is we've had ARPA funds that have paid for a part-time position, and that's going to end at the end of this year. I still want to maintain that part-time position, even without the ARPA funds. Now, we are going to be receiving ready funds for blight, but it has not been told if we can use that for administrative reasons. So that's why I want to put it in the budget, as well as... as some of the other increases that you see in the budget are because of those expenses that have been being paid by those ARPA funds are now going to fall into our budget. That's the biggest thing. And then contract services, there's a big increase on that, and that is due to GEO permits, the annual fee on that, It was my understanding that it was like $9,000 to $10,000 a year, but there was an additional hosting fee of $15,000. Tim, we took that out of GIS this year, and I want to put it in my budget for next year so we don't take it out of GIS. And then also, we had to have the Title IX and ADA updated this past year. And through my discussions with USI, they said we need to continue to update that every year in order so the highway department can still get their funding for their grants. And they're saying that's going to be around $5,000 a year. So that's included in the contract services. But other than that, do you have any questions for me?

The blight program. I know when we first saw that and how it worked, it was hopefully be self-perpetuating. Is that still something we think might happen?

I think it will eventually, but I don't think it might be as quick as we initially thought.

I know it took a while.

It took a while to get us set up legally to be able to do what we wanted to do. When I took the job in January of two years ago, or last year, January of last year, It was like, okay, here's a blight program. This is how Jennings County does it. Just copy what they do and let's go. Well, it wasn't quite that simple. I mean, you have to have meetings. You have to have readings. You have to change the ordinances and have the readings. So it took longer. So we've gone. We've had eight court cases. We've got eight court orders to go clean up. Weather last week hurt us. We didn't get some of them cleaned up last week. But this week we'll have... I know we've got one in Sandusky this week to clean up, but we've got eight that will be cleaned up, and then probably, say, another eight more by the end of the year. So that will use up a lot of those funds.

And that expense goes on to the tax roll, if I'm correct? Correct.

I mean, obviously we would give the property owner the opportunity to pay it, but the court order does state it eventually goes on the tax rolls.

And we'll get reimbursed.

And then we get reimbursed however that happens.

You think we will get reimbursed?

That or we'll be sold on tax sale and nobody will buy it. Because some of them are, I mean, because we're... I mean, we've got a few that there are actually some valuable pieces of land if somebody just cleaned them up and just as a bare building lot would be more than what is either owed on it or what the taxes are on it.

Okay. Any questions for Doug? Anywhere?

All right. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Mobley.

Good afternoon. I want to give you an updated.

Your APC attorney? If I'm reading this right. 7260 is what you budgeted a year ago?

For the APC attorney?

We got raised to 30. Go back to the front page, Rick.

That's $30,000.

So it's not unchanged? Yeah, it's unchanged from last year.

Yeah, that's the APC. That's the allowance. The $7260 is the allowance for the members of the Area Planning Commission, the $50 a meeting that they get.

Good afternoon and thank you for having me come by. Before I, as with some of the other ones, talk about any kind of salaries or wages, just to go through the other normal things that we have in our budget for us, really nothing's changing a lot. I do want to point out that gas and service for the vehicle, right now we have used zero dollars out of that fund and it's because I actually just got the license plate to drive the vehicle. So it has not been operated since we've got it back in November of last year. But we do finally got the plate and we're going to be starting to exercise that a little bit more for that vehicle. Everything else is still pretty much the same as what was last year. I think the only other thing that I saw. that i really didn't understand um was back for repair and maintenance i think last year's was up to ten thousand dollars i don't know if that's a standard i don't feel that that vehicle that i have would need that much i actually dropped it like 2500 bucks i don't even think that that will cover more than what we would need on the vehicle that i currently have for the vso so i dropped it a little bit but it's not that's one of those that i think we would be fine with where we're at. I think the vehicle of that age, tires and probably just a routine maintenance just to make sure everything is going well, I think it'll be good. We'll treat it very well for that. Everything else is still pretty close to the same. Office supplies is probably my biggest expense. Our last, there is some quarterly training monies that are in there. I didn't really have to use a whole lot this year because our last training that we had was in Franklin. That's close enough. I didn't stay at a hotel to waste county money. I drove back and forth because it's easier for me to do that. And so really the only expense that we had there was for mileage to drive back and forth. If my VSO vehicle was there, I would have used it and really wouldn't have had the cost of anything of my own vehicle. That's probably the biggest thing that we have, and then we're still budging a little bit just for what I call the swag. It's getting things to be able to hand out at the different places that I set up a tent. So I was at the county fair this year and giving out different things just so that it's getting the name out of what we do for the veterans of our county. The position that I have here is very centralized to a very specific group of people. It's not for the entire county, which is sometimes a little unusual, but mine is really isolated to just the veterans and their families. And so I don't get to touch a lot of the communities as much as I can, but the veterans is my main focus and what I try to strive to hit as much as we can. I believe that we have been doing a great job in my office. I say we because it's just not me. It's the people that are around me that are bringing veterans and saying, you need to go here. You need to go see him. And because of that, I will tell you, my average in my office is 30 veterans a month. That's not counting walk-ins. Those are the ones that I'm physically scheduling a time for them to come in. So that's 30. It's averaging out about two, three a day is really what it comes down to because Fridays, I try not to schedule it. So by appointment only, I try to schedule everything Monday through Thursday so I can concentrate a day of doing nothing but catching up on the packets for veterans because I can spend eight to 10 hours a day on one veteran getting their packets completed enough to be able to get sent to the VA. So there's some time consuming into that job. So as far as salaries, the only thing that I did differently there, and I'm not sure if you guys are aware, Danny, when we talked for this year's budget, we set a number and for whatever reason, I went from a salary to an hourly. when I went full time. I don't know why or how that happened or what was the change, but I did go from one to the other into the position. I had no issues with it. If that's how we want to remain it or if that's something that we say, hey, you know what, being where you're at, maybe it's better a salary. That's totally up to you guys. I have no preference one way or the other. It's what is best for the county, in my opinion. What I did on mine for the Veterans Service Officer, I went and just looked at the multiple counties around us and their salaries or their budgets are based around 42 to as much as 54. I don't need 54. I'll be straightforward with you. This is going to be something you won't hear from any other people. this job is i don't do this job because of the money that you're going to give me i do it because i believe god opened the door for me to do this job and the passion that i have for the veterans of decatur county if the salary meets that great if it doesn't i'm still going to do this job because that's the passion that i have So just straightforward with where that's at. I just looked at again the surrounding counties and I did the base number of what surrounding counties are for this position in other places. I will tell you that I would prefer if you had to give money somewhere is looking at whether or not I can get an assistant VSO. With the job that I'm doing, I literally, today, I have 20 veteran packets on my desk that I'm still trying to work through to get to the VA to get their claims submitted. It's not that I'm not busy, but when I spend an hour and a half to two hours on one veteran a day just introducing him to what the VA and how the process works, There's little time, so walk-ins and everything else just takes up and eats up a lot of my time. So if I was to say the only thing that I truly needed in my organization in the veteran's office would be take a hard consideration of potentially maybe an assistant VSO. Whether or not it's admin, or whether or not it's just an assistant to give me a hand in different things that I do. I just took a base number of what I think is around $19 an hour and from there, I'm not sure what our entry levels are being new into what we do. But that's really the only two big changes that I have in there. Everything else is still pretty much straight across the board. We're making great progress, and that's where I feel that my passion is. And so what you give me, we'll utilize the best of our ability. And if I can save this county some money, we'll save the county some money for other things that are just as important as what I do. Other than that, that's all I have. Any questions that you guys may have?

How easy would it be to find an assistant?

I don't think it would be hard at all. I think finding somebody will be easy. My only thing is I want that person to have as much passion as I do because that may be the next VSO. I don't know how long I plan on doing this. I'm 60 and in five years I may say, you know, it's time to retire permanently. Who knows what other doors may open. But I want to find that right match that fits in with me and with the passion that I have for our veterans and not just a job that takes up space. But I also want to make sure that, you know, we got to be have a position that pays enough that person will want to stay and not be so tied up with, you know, I got to have a certain amount in order to survive. I mean, I think there's some of those guys who are out there that I think would fit in well.

Would it be something you could slowly roll out as some part-time money instead of just automatically having an assistant VSO?

Yeah, I think anything that would help. Like I said, I don't necessarily – right now the only thing that's big, I think, with the VSO is there's a requirement that they have to be a veteran. If it's an assistant that's not handling the job of – that needs the accreditation that I have to be able to do what I do, then I think we'd be okay if they're doing administrative things. The benefit of having somebody that's accredited would be able to then I can train them to do what I do and to continue helping veterans instead of just the administration piece of that.

Any other questions?

Okay. Thank you.

Judge Day?

I guess if you have to, you might as well. Kill two judges with one stone.

All right, yeah. Both up, same kind of work. good afternoon thanks for letting us come in all together at once i think it's the best way to present things uh have us all here because we do a lot of things uh we work together on so uh i'm gonna i wanna kind of go through some of the background of what we do we've all written letters to you we've all explained all the numbers that we want um but they're really for the the judges they're really two big ticket items uh one is uh probation and the other is public defenders Probation is bigger, so I want to talk about that first. And when I say probation, I'm kind of generically referring to community supervision. uh... the vast vast vast majority people convicted of crimes in decatur county will be put on some type of community supervision at some point in time and the state has created statute creates three separate agencies for community supervision one is parole that's run by the state that does not have a lot of impact on us you're really only talking about people who have no supervision on the back end and that does not happen real often, and there's not a lot of, I would call, robust supervision. The other two are controlled locally, community corrections and probation. And so, uh, we have just to toot their horn a little bit. I don't think anybody has a better community supervision than we do. Uh, we're going to people's homes. We're drug testing people. We're checking to see if they're where they're supposed to be when they say they're supposed to be. And the prosecutor's office has taken it very seriously. Uh, when there are violations, the prosecutor pursues them and it pursues them timely. It doesn't let them sit forever. So we have a great system. And the system we have now is really kind of a court services model, which is sort of a cooperative combination. In 2013, they changed the criminal code dramatically. They reclassified offenses. They came up with really different policy on things. And at that point, they were real excited about it at the state, and then there was grant money. So the secret to that was to do the things the way they want us to do them. which we have to do anyway. So Matt had connections with other departments, and we came up with a way to combine them. And so the benefit from that is they share offices, they all talk about cases together, and we share whatever resources we can so we don't have independent things and independent spending that we don't have to have. And that's been really effective. And Matt and Abby have been great leaders of those departments. I think a testament to it is we don't have a lot of turnover, but we recently did have one officer leave to go back to closer to where that officer lived. And we had someone come back. that had been there before so Matt can't be all bad he must be doing something right so we have a great department and the way that this is funded we try to fund it as much as we can through fees we take it seriously imposing them and collecting them it's a big deal and we do it and those fees are all set by the statute we can't freestyle we can't say we want to raise this fee or come up with a new fee and so When you talk about probation, you're talking about two kinds of fees, probation user fees and the probation administration fee. The probation user fee is an initial fee and a monthly cost for every month on probation. The administrative fee is a one-off upfront cost. And I did a little research to try to figure out how far back these fees go. And the farthest that our research program will go, provided to us by the state at no cost to the Decatur County taxpayer, I'll add, is 2002. We can go back to legislation from 2002. Probation's initial user fee has been unchanged since 2002. And in 2003, they increased the monthly fee, and we, of course, have gone to the maximum monthly fee. 2003 was also the year they instituted the probation administration fee, and that's because the state at that point started setting salary scale. So they went hand in hand. And so the salaries are set by the Supreme Court every year. They go up every, well, however often they say they do. I don't think they go up this year. But the fee that's supposed to pay for that is unchanged since 2003. So to give you a little idea, I went to the Federal Reserve website. To buy what a dollar would buy you in 2003, you must have $1.82 today. So there has been significant inflation. I don't expect it to go away. I think that the federal government, one of the ways you pay massive debt if you owe it in your own currency is inflation, and I don't think they're terribly opposed to it. So those fees have been static since then. For purposes of our budget, at that time, Matt Hoeing's salary, which is divided evenly between us, the two of us, has been frozen in time that comes out of County General. So there's a portion that comes out of County General frozen in time since 2003. We have never asked for an increase of that from County General because we want to try to pay it ourselves if we can. we don't want to come to you until we're getting to the point where it's a problem and We have I've been told by Matt that it you're now at that point and so each of us are asking To increase the line item in our budget from County General for the chief probation officer salary $25,000 or a total of $50,000. That's the that's a big ticket item another thing and this is maybe in Judge Day's budget, but since i've since i'm going to keep going is uh... he has a juvenile probation officer and he would uh... recommend that the benefits be paid out of the public safety fund and just to kind of give you an idea about hiring people and retaining people the pool for probation officers has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller and when we have someone go matt has not a lot of options to hire people so if you find someone that wants to be a probation officer that has a four-year college degree and that lives here that is a wonderful thing because they're likely to stay The ones that we've had leave, the last one that left didn't live here and wanted to be closer to where that person lives. And so that's the situation with this probation officer. We really want to keep her. She does a great job, and that's in Judge Day's budget. The other thing that I'll cover with my time is public defenders. We're in a lawyer shortage in Indiana. Once again, you always say, people, is that a bad thing? Well, if you want to have a functioning criminal justice system, you must have lawyers. It's not optional. We're required to do it. And we have joined long, long ago the state reimbursement program as far as that, so we get money back on the felony cases and some of the chin stuff, too. And we are in the pool competing with the other counties. We have people leave. We have a set of people here. And so the cheapest way to provide public defenders is a contract. That way we don't pay benefits. We don't provide any overhead, nothing, just straight salary. And that's the cheapest way to do it. Other counties, like somehow Rush County has a chief public defender full-time. I suspect they pay way more than we do, and we process a lot more cases. Our main competitor seems to be Shelby County. And so I had my staff check and see what Shelby County would pay. And Shelby County does contracts, but they also have a chief public defender who does the assignments. And they also have staff to do some of the motions and work for them, right? So there are some things they give that we don't give. And so Shelby County, for 2026... That's last year. They paid public defender contracts $51,090.58. I don't know why the number is so specific, but that's what they paid last year. Um, or currently right now, and we are at 45, that's what we pay right now. 45. Uh, we don't provide any of the extras. We do try to make it easy as possible on them. Try not to be, uh, try to be respectful of their time when we schedule things. which is a benefit to them and us as well because a public defender that has a lot of cases set on one afternoon is unlikely to try to continue them at the last minute. So we try to do that. So what we would like to do is increase our public defender budgets so that we can pay next year 47,000. We think that that'll keep us close enough where they can at least see the other counties because they're getting paid more elsewhere. Fayette County pays more because they have trouble getting them. But we think if we're at least somewhat competitive, we'll be able to keep the people that we have. Those are the big-ticket items. The other things, you know, salary, you'll set it. It is what it is for court staff, and so I don't have anything on that other than that we use the numbers that were suggested to us. So at this point, any questions that you might have, anything you want to ask us? We're all here in the same place and can probably come up with most answers. And, Matt, I don't know, did I hit everything?

You did. I just had a few things to add, and it was in your letter. scale. They're not getting increased, but it is what it is. We understand it. We've lived through it in this annual era before. Um, rightfully, that will go up next year or so. Um, and then mentioning those grant employees started out at $61,500 on the probation grant. So as we are asking for more fees to help pay with my salary, we can sustain that out of probation user fees that they all set a little bit. But the only other thing that was not in the letter that I have not put a word on yet, we get a grant from the Indiana Office of Court Services and it funds Becca's six I just got one question. Where's your coat and tie man?

Isn't that the question?

You know, I think I heard that joke way back when, when I was still commissioner. When we went down to JRAC, you could give him shit about that.

We don't kick in any more than what the state says we have to pay them. But if you imagine that $50,000 every year coming out of probation fees, it's not sustainable. We don't apply that much. And I did ask him to bring some figures.

Yeah, and so far this year, we've collected 113, 204. We've spent 113, 204 and only collected 87, 742. So I can answer that some of that was done when we were asked to make it with the health insurance a couple years back when we did. I shifted costs over to probation fees, knowing that it was probably going to eventually lead that fund to be depleted. And like I even said, if I'm coming back to you for salary in a couple years, that's why it's hit. It's just It's simple math, and that's why the fees are just not being collected as much with the expense we have.

The only other thing that's different in my budget than Judge Bailey's is my second juvenile probation office. And that grant's going away, which is why we're asking for it.

from out of the public safety fund.

And she's been, I'll echo what Judge Day said, she has been such a benefit to our department on the juvenile side. And she's done MRT on the adult side, which is a programming that we have. And it's just, she's just been a real asset.

Other than that, I think that's the only three changes. His salary and the second year of probation. Is there anything else in mind in the way of saving the salary?

Any other questions? Thank you, fellas. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Matt.

I've got three different budgets here. You want to start with the commissioner's first, the 0068? Sure. Yellow tab there. It's the third or second yellow tile. Those are all different. Oh, yours are different? Oh, sorry. 0068? Yeah, 0068.

It'll be under 61.

Yeah, it's right after your council budget.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, council on top. So it's very, really what we had changes are the 3% raise for the administration, which is Patty, 3% raise for maintenance, and 3% raise for Chad, our attorney. I think the rest of it is plans and implementations. There's a small increase in that. Everything else has stayed the same.

What's the supplies for 500? $237. Didn't budget anything last year.

So that's for Patty when she orders toner, anything for her office supplies. Patty's stuff comes out of theirs. So paper, pens, that kind of stuff that she orders.

I'm not sure why 21300 and 21301 are not combined. I'm not sure why there's a differentiation there between office supplies and supplies. So I honestly can't answer that question.

And so then on the courthouse flags, we had 2000 in this one and 2000 in the courthouse ones. We go to courthouse, there's another one there for $2,000, if I remember right. There is.

Yeah, and I can't answer that question. I'm not sure why we have two different... Where did you get Jeremy in here?

I know, right? What are you doing here?

Yeah, Jeremy should be here. Where are you doing here? I'm not sure why we have two different... budgets for courthouse flags. That should not probably be in our commissioner's budget. That should be in the courthouse budget. So we can strike that one. 2,000 on the courthouse flags on the 37,500. In the commissioner's budget and keep it in the courthouse budget. Yeah, good catch. I did not, I didn't see that.

Maybe the veteran VA could get you for that kid flags Yeah, we've tried that before I think we have before right and it I don't know if he'll do that I don't he's always honest about making sure they're in good shape.

Yeah, I Actually thought that No, it was

Bumgardner, Mike Bumgardner.

Mike, yeah. I thought he supplied those.

He used to. I think we've hit him up before when he was still here, and I don't think he would for some reason.

What's odd is, as you both say that, you look at 26 or 25. 26, there's nothing in there on either one of those Line items for flags for 26.

The flags you got on the courthouse now, is that what it was for? Yes. $250? Yeah.

I'm not sure why it's $2,000.

Check that out.

And we have, I mean, there's, you know, if we replace them twice a year, if they're, I think there's five plus the state, plus the five military, plus the state, plus the United States.

I got them over to Annex, too.

Oh, yeah, the Annex as well. I didn't think about the Annex. But that's, if they were a couple hundred bucks apiece, well, I mean, a hundred bucks apiece, I'm not sure. I'll have to look into that. Fairgrounds have one yeah, they really need one the fairgrounds does not we should have put a flagpole up there, but that's Okay, so we probably just have one right Didn't show you spending money at all That's why I'm not sure

And examine records. There was a flagpole out there, and it seemed to disappear.

We got 30,000 budgeted. Haven't spent a nickel of it, and you got 45 next year. Wait a minute. What are you talking about? Examine records, 38,400. See where I'm at? I do now. $38,400. Yeah. We budgeted $30,000 last year.

I'll have to look and see what we have spent those years. Do what? I said I would have to look and see what we've spent in previous years. I know this year it's zero, but do you know on that, Tiff?

Why it's... How come they bumped, you guys bumped plans and implementations?

That was, we had talked about what we'd spent in the past and then talked about that that has not, the $75,000 hasn't changed and we felt like it was going to, there would be more use for that for us. There wasn't a specific reason on the plans and implementations of what we thought we would use it on.

If you stay on track, you end up at about $80,000 this year if you stay on schedule for more.

Yeah. Did they bump, the state bumped the regional health to $280,000 this year? Have we got the chart yet?

Regional mental health.

$3,900. Yes, they did bump that. To $280,000?

Everybody complained, so they bumped it up.

Went up $40,000? I believe it did, yes. I never seen the chart on it yet. Because that's sent by the state. Yes, yes, it is sent. I wouldn't give him a nickel anyway.

Where does that money go to, yeah, Cornerstone?

To Centerstone, where I wouldn't give him a nickel. The only reason they're helping us now is because of that $5 million grant. Yeah, they're wanting that. That's the extended program.

I don't know what's going to happen with that. They'll say, we'll show you. We'll just raise it $40,000.

Where are they going to go? Take that. Yeah. We'll have to absorb it. We'll have to do away with mental health. You can't really do that.

All right, you want to the fairgrounds?

Yeah, sure As of now commissioners are paying for Charlie's vehicle out of But it has not been budgeted All those fun things

Well. I can take that out of P&I next year.

They raised it $25,000.

I can take it out of P&I. All right, fairgrounds.

The only really change in that one, and that's the 4910, is the part-time. that $10,400, and that is for the additional, we talked about the marketing director, but now I see it's a $30,000 increase, and it's supposed to be $25,000, so I don't know why that's 30 instead of 25.

All three of you.

Because all three of the idea was to...

They probably did that because of perf and...

Well, the idea was the salary was supposed to be around $50,000, and then we wanted to make sure we had, each one of us had more in our budget to cover all of the other expenses, the Social Security, the FICA, all that. So that was part of it, was to make sure, and the benefits, that that money was in there for that as well.

Not just the salary only. We wanted to cover the whole expense.

I'm with Kenny.

I think tourism ought to pick up the whole tab. Pardon me?

Yeah, I know.

Tourism should pick up the whole tab as far as I'm concerned. Well, I know Kenny mentioned that in their budget, that they have a – They got enough money to pay that.

We got enough. We can do that. Yeah, they got a whole year's worth of – They just sitting on that money.

They've been sitting on it for years. You look at the location budget, I don't know that it's – if it dropped down to $300,000, it was close to $400,000.

I know, and I understand that they want to – It was $800,000 at one time. I understand. They want a buffer in there.

But I don't know what what they're she said it was a year supply I think is what she said So she think that the hotels are gonna shut down for a whole year, I mean get better that Ball diamonds is not gonna go away for at least 10 years If they actually promote some events

You used to give money to New Point Crackway Days. They gave money to Greensburg's Fall Festival.

They don't anymore.

They don't get to watch the Fall Festival. So if you're going to spend it on something, spend it on somebody that's going out and at least market what we're

Well, I think the fall festival, they bring in 20,000 people over those two days.

Yeah, and they give them, I don't know what they give them. I don't think they give them anything.

Well, they give them $2,500.

Visit Greensboro gives them $2,500. They pay for the hotel rooms for the band.

Which I guess that's visit is still tourism, right? It's the same one. So I think they gave, this year they gave $1,500.

In my opinion, that money's collected to be spent. If we're not going to spend it... That's my point.

They're giving no festivals at all.

They're talking $75,000. They're not talking like they're going to spend a half a million.

But here's the thing. If you think about it, you guys all know this, but when you give somebody a $50,000 salary, then that's every year. So if that fund continues, then I can see it.

If he does his job, he should pay for his own.

And you mentioned that. Let's see what a year looks like and see how much that brings in, which I understand what you're saying.

I mean, I don't have a problem with you guys paying them that, but I think initially we don't know what SBA 1 is going to do. We don't know. We've got $3 million to cut out of the budget. Take some of your money and invest it in yourself. It's a no-brainer to me, and do it for a year. And if that person is, if it does what everybody says it'll do, and it should, it'll just increase everybody's income, and it'll pay for itself.

Yeah, that income tax is just going to keep going up because you're going to have more.

Exactly. Who come up with that idea?

Jeremy wanted to do it, but he said maybe we put it under the Visit Greensburg Tourism, under their idea. under them because it's kind of bringing the fairgrounds, the sports complex. All of that kind of is part of tourism, getting people to come to Greensburg.

To use the facilities.

To use the facilities, right. And so it's a marketing to use that. And Dennis, he said, I'll do it one year, volunteer. And his year's about up. And he's like, I don't want to do this full time. So we thought, okay, we need somebody to do that full time as well. Because also Benita is leaving now. I didn't just realize that. But they're going to go from a full-time salary to a part-time salary. She's the one that takes all those phone calls like, hey, I want to use the community building. So she's the one that's doing that. Now you don't have that person.

That should be automated online.

Yeah. Believe me, that's what we want to do. But we've got to go through all the channels to get it done.

So anyway, that's my statement.

You asked that question, right? That was Okay, so if that's the case then we can't do what Kenny would propose to have tourism pay for it I I don't know that that would be absolutely the case if tourism is going to pay for it and you guys manage that thing.

Well, the management side of it really wouldn't change any. That person over there is to sell and promote tourism. Bring things to Greensburg.

I think the way I understand you is who do they answer to is more of the question. Is that what you're saying?

I think you'll get more success answering to the commissioners or Chris, maybe, than you would to us.

An office in the extension office would be probably the best place for them to be.

Well, the only problem with that is you're talking about just the fairgrounds and that. That person's going to be promoting... all of Decatur County, everything that goes on. So they're not just going to be doing just, yeah. I think they could, tourism could manage them, but the fairgrounds and all that's still under control of the commissioners. You still have to go to them, and they've got to work through the scheduling process, however that does. But one thing we don't need is more people managing people.

I think there is a— No, but there has to be an either one. It's called either accountability or responsibility to somebody to make sure they're doing what they're doing.

Who has the sales experience to manage someone in sales?

Deanna Burkhart.

You have to have some knowledge of the process to manage them. What did you say, Ashley?

I still think tourism needs to fund that the first year.

I wouldn't do a sales job for $50,000.

That's the problem.

Therein lies the problem. Who are we going to find for that?

Unless you've got somebody retired, who's going to want to do that?

Going to do what?

Promote Greensboro.

So where did you have that $25,000 at? I was in the fairgrounds. Fairgrounds.

Yeah, I was in the fairgrounds budget.

Where at?

Part-time? Yeah, part-time. Because it was a combination of those three.

You were just paying part of it.

Yeah, so that's why it was considered part-time, because it was $25,000, $25,000, $25,000 to get it to that. And I believe it was a $50,000 salary, and then the rest of it was to pay for all that. So we wanted to make sure we had everything covered.

Right, and that makes sense.

So I got.

Well.

Charity's supposed to wait on Charity. Charity's supposed to wait on Charity. She was supposed to let me know, but I haven't heard from her. Because they had their bus routes.

Hers is pretty much cut and dried.

I mean, at the corner, she don't do anything out of line. If you just leave them there, I'll switch them over.

I'm going to leave this right here. Okay.

Thank you.

Are we adjourned?

I'm done. I'm done. We don't need a motion. Shut that thing off.

Is Reuben going to be here tomorrow? I'm going to call him in a minute.

I've been... All right.