County Council - Regular Meeting

Okay. Okay, it's 8.30. We're going to reconvene the budget presentations. This is day two, Thursday, July 16th, 2026. And the first one we have, I see her here. Joni, are you ready to go? Yeah. Okay, be great. Thank you.

Joni, do you need a minute? You're good? Okay. Okay, good morning. Good morning. I our budgets pretty small probably compared to some of the other departments but Amy I know yesterday you were asking about making cuts when I did our budget that's what I did I went through looked at it to see wherever I could make cuts I did and if I had to increase something I was able to offset it by decreasing something else so going to run through a couple of the items that had changes they may be in a different order than what you have because my list didn't print an account number order but my equipment I decreased that by $1,500 other service fees I was able to decrease that by $2,000 that's because we're going with a new online payment vendor who doesn't charge the county fees our current vendor does charge us a monthly fee and then they charge us every time there's a return they charge us for electronic statements. So we pay several thousand dollars a year to them. The new vendor doesn't have any fees to us and they have a lower fee to the taxpayers. So it benefits everybody all the way around. So we're switching to them September 1st of this year. So I was able to reduce those other service fees. But the $2,000, I was able to reduce that. I had to increase postage, as we've all talked about, postages going up. And for whatever reason, it seems like we're getting a lot more, when we mail out property tax bills, we're getting a lot of them back as undeliverable, but they have a good address on them, so we're having to resend them back out. For whatever reason, the post office is putting the yellow stamp on them, saying this is an invalid address, but it's not. so that's not just a problem in our county that statewide a lot of the treasurers are having that issue so we do have a little bit more postage cost there if someone calls in we try to encourage them to just print it online so we don't have to send it back out because they are all available on the website I reduced the travel training and education by a thousand dollars because last year we had increased it so that my new first deputy could take the NACO leadership class and she did that and she actually is getting ready to start the follow-up class here in July so she'll have had those so next year I was able to reduce that because we won't have those extra classes yes yes wonderful classes we love them and Heather loved taking them too Yes I'm very thankful we were both able to take that because we got a lot out of it I would encourage anybody to take it or elected official department head there First deputies, I would encourage it. Yeah, I think every year we're seeing more and more take it. It is a big time commitment because the first class I think is 10 weeks, and then the next one that Heather's taking is eight weeks. I was able to reduce web development by 13,000. I actually just took that out of my budget. That is our low tax info, but I talked to Carolyn and she said that's in IT's budget, so I was able to take it out of ours. I did put an increase in there for a replacement employee I have one staff person next year in July that is retiring and moving out of state so I will need to replace her I'd like to see about bringing somebody in before spring collection so that they can get started training before then other than that that's everything line items there on my form 144 I know it's up to council about wages but I did put in a request for a 3% increase for my staff for cost of living and provide a competitive wage because I could not do what I do without my staff. A couple things we're working on just to keep you in the loop. I told you about the new credit card vendor or online payment vendor. We're also overhauling our whole bankruptcy process because there's a lot more we can do with that than what we do, so we're working on that. We've been negotiating with our local banking partners to increase the interest rate we're receiving on our bank accounts, and that has gone great so far. We were able to get six bank accounts increased, anywhere from half a percent to, we have two of them that increased 3% interest rate. Yeah, so we're working on that and then I believe we're on target to earn around two and a half million dollars in interest between CDs and bank accounts No, that's kind of where we stay in on everything Does anybody have any questions for me?

Very nice job. Thank you. Yeah, I just want to go on record and I should have said this yesterday our office holders what And they've done an outstanding job of doing that, even making reductions there. So everything you've done is greatly appreciated. And to all the office holders, terrific job so far we've done, or you've done. So thank you very much. Thank you. Yep. OK. Dottie, we're a little early.

So roll right along.

Thank you.

Yeah. Oh, you bet. Yeah. Well, if you thought that Joanie's budget is small, HR's budget is even smaller. So we'll talk a little bit about that. We actually reduced it by almost $4,000. We don't see council asking us for a large wage or hour or job classification project next year, so we reduced that line item. Next year, we will have a few more employees who will meet that milestone years of service, so we had to increase the awards budget. That would be 22-11-5, the years of service awards. So we added an extra $100 there. The criminal background checks, we haven't been told that we're going to get a price increase. We kept it the same. We took a look at what we've paid out so far this year. It all depends on the departments who do not have their own means of doing criminal background checks. Those departments, such as the Sheriff's Office, Central Communications, Community Corrections, things like that. So for the other departments, we do their criminal background checks. And so we kept that the same. We're hoping that our hiring may... balance out with what we've already spent so far this year. And we did add $1,000 to the travel training and education budget to play on what Rick said and what Joni said about the NACO training Morgan took the one training that is more HR-focused, which we had never noticed that there was an HR-focused leadership training prior to this year. So as soon as I got the notice, Morgan said yes. We'd already talked about her taking one of these classes, but it was one of those, hey, could you start in two weeks? And she looked at her schedule, and sure enough, she made time. They are time-consuming, 10 weeks of at least two hours every week, and then there's homework and things like that. And if you do a presentation, there's more planning time for that. Very happy that Morgan did it. She was thrilled with it. Rick, you know, the only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay, right? So that, you know, that just underscores that the cost of not training can be far greater than the cost of training. And, you know, as untrained employees often remain the unengaged and underperforming and, you know, we end up with managers, not leaders. and so I have been a firm believer in leadership training and when Rick talked to me early on in my tenure here about that we pushed and pushed and you know how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time I'm now in my 11th year here and we have so many people taking these NACO trainings they're reading leadership books they are working on themselves and I'm thrilled that that has happened aic right i know yeah it's great that's a good question kind of a crapshoot I will say that our our claims are looking Not bad. Remember, we're self-insured, so we are paying all the bills. I will say that we just received a very large rebate. We did institute that going forward with our pharmacy component. And let's see, Jody, Susan, was that 140-something thousand that we got for the first quarter of 2026? So that goes back into our health insurance budget to help keep giving us that cushion so that when we eventually have a really bad year, we may not have to really stick it to the employees and cause their rates to go up. So right now, we're still pretty early in the process. We will take a look back. Now that we have been self-insured and with Physician's Health Plan, going into our second year with them we will have a lot more data and when you have more data that helps them that helps our broker then take a look do we need to go out to market again or can we negotiate things with PHE and either keep the costs the same or try to reduce some things. But that was one of the things that we did last year with the pharmacy and getting the pharmacy rebate. So we're seeing... Right, exactly, yes. When you are fully insured with your health plan, any of these things goes back to the insurance company. You don't see it as the employer. And so we are now seeing that, which is just really gratifying.

The other advantage, because the last time we were self-insured, we went into the hole quite a bit. But the issue was that we had

broker a person that was managing that that was really in my estimation not qualified PHP will handle this much better and much more efficiently and apex yes exactly apex is our health insurance broker and they are they provide us with so much information and they are always looking to help us with keeping the cost down providing our employees with with better benefits. What can we do? We did institute last year an electronic platform of which most of you have been a part of where you will enroll in the health plan or waive the coverage. And I will say that we had a great response. We had some hiccups. That's to be expected when you have individuals who don't do a lot on the internet. And we had with our platform and with our broker, we had a call center that our employees could go to and either do their total enrollment with a representative online or if they had issues. with getting everything online that they could call the call center, and it worked really well. And that equates to time spent, HR, payroll, which means money. When we spend more money, okay, not me, I'm salaried, but when you have the assistant who is an hourly employee and has to work a lot more overtime in order to go through all the paperwork that we receive from our employees and thus then have it double checked and then triple checked by somebody in the auditor's office and then to get to the payroll person And the payroll person then would have to work overtime to get everything data entered. Right now, we get reports from this steel Solarix benefit platform. And our payroll person is able to, because it also works very closely with Lau, our payroll system. And so streamlining that has been wonderful. I'm really glad that we didn't do it last year full blown. We kind of did a beta. in December with some of our voluntary insurances, which helped us decide about whether or not we wanted people in-house to help us enroll or if we wanted that call center, customer service. And that helped tremendously. And then that way we were able to roll everything out. Then actually earlier in May, get everything ready because normally it would be commissioners would make a decision on the on the plan in very late may and we were scrambling to get all the information to our benefit eligible employees and then the crunch time and it was usually a panic this time i would say it was much less than a panic it was far better so anyway that went that went really well So yeah, thanks for bringing up the health plan. And basically, like I said, we reduced our budget by about $4,000, $3,900. And hopefully that assists with perhaps people getting some raises for next year. So every little bit helps, right? Right, we did our part.

Thank you, Dottie. Dottie, you've been here 10 years? Yes. Yes. There's an old saying, when you're doing something right, time flies by. And it has really flown by. So thank you for all you do.

Thank you, Dave. I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. Time flies when you're having fun. Not every day.

OK. Lita, do you want to go a little earlier? Sure.

All right, well, I'm gonna follow the last two, but my budget's a whole lot different than everybody else, basically. There's a lot you can't do with my budget. The redacting budget, that's my total control. I can only use it for so many things. So sometimes I split invoices from our major vendor. I'll take some out of there. It's not a big total budget or fund so there's not a whole lot that the county does anything with on that one. Same way with the enhancement access. Now you did hear in the commissioner meeting yesterday that the new platter is a lease, it's not a lease to own. I don't plan on owning it. I don't think whoever follows me will probably want to own it. And the reason, we weren't getting service on the old one. The company quit doing service like two years ago and didn't notify us. Ends up there's only one man in that whole company. and they end up being sued by Adams County. So 21 other counties so far recorders are using the company I went with. So that created the 33710 instead of being able to pay it out of the 4430. The enhancement fund does create does become larger but I do pay my bigger invoices and stuff out of that. The 33710 it's a five-year lease and I will be doing it on an annual payment instead of monthly. The company likes monthly but I said no I'm going to do it yearly.

Where does the money come from that goes into that enhancement fund?

It comes from recordings.

So it's not tax dollars. It's not tax dollars. It's things that you've recorded.

Right. Redaction fund, enhancement fund are not tax dollars. Those are not, yeah, those are generated by people that get mortgages and deeds and everything.

And the other thing that, things that are recorded in the recorder's office is also what's funding the elected officials training fund. That's where that money comes from. It's not tax money either.

No. Now to that elected official training file. I have kept 5,000 in there. Most of the time I've asked for five. I went down last year. I'm going back up to six like I've asked for before because I am going to push for at least one in my office to take the NACO training. And it's kind of a succession plan for me. I think it's important that all offices, at least mine, that GOP doesn't have to go look for somebody to fill that slot. I've got two that really want to become recorders. So it's a great thing for the citizens, taxpayers, county government, everything. You don't have a whole lot of training they were already being trained as employees.

And I would just say that if we don't have the money in that fund right now to up it to the six that she's requesting. We don't. We do have.

We don't. That's what I was just going to say.

So let's consider putting the difference in her regular budget. I think that's because it's something that I think is absolutely should happen. She's going to need that money.

And the more I record. The more money goes in.

That's right. Sell more houses.

Yeah. Sell more houses, pay off your mortgage, whatever. The big fund, the big account I have is the recorded perpetuation fund. Again, this is not tax money. This is money that comes in from people that record anything that gets recorded, recorder fees. I do, I am not appropriating anything out of that this year. I don't expect anything huge out of it. I don't expect to appropriate anything because I'm not going to, at least I don't foresee having to cross train a new person coming in. Everybody's younger than me, so I don't have any retirees coming up. And I will say as far as the staff, I can't talk big enough about my staff. They're all willing to pitch in. They're all willing to pitch in on projects I accept that do not have anything to do with the recorder. Sunny Meadows was a big thing. My office looked like home goods for several months. Old records out of the Sunny Meadows, they searched through those moldy records. So I can't say enough about my staff. And any kind of raise that they can get is well worth money spent. It costs more to hire somebody, train somebody, than it does to retain them. And I don't want to see any of my employees have to work a second job to live. Because then that takes away from their efficiency in the office.

How long have your employees been with you?

Tina was here before I came. Bridget would have come in, well my first year I had to, everybody was retiring out of my office my first year. I lost almost everybody but Tina. So Bridges is going on probably five years and then Molly and Sarah were just hired in a year ago February. So I was excited to get all of them. I have two part-time that shift back and forth. I need those. If I go to conference, Tina and I are at conference, I need three people in there. I don't like anyone being there alone at lunchtime. It's not a good thing.

You're on. It's open at lunchtime?

Yes. Yes, it is right now.

Okay, but something I've noticed lately that I wasn't aware of. Yes.

Ours is.

Yes.

I think most all of them are. I don't want to close it. There's a lot of people. We do still have some attorneys in town that will not e-record. They want to walk it in. I used to be one of those assistants that wanted to walk it in because I wanted to stay connected with everyone in the courthouse. Newer ones, not so much. We still get plenty of walk-ins. We still get mailings. Eventually, someday, that'll go away. Plots and surveys have to be walk-in. I won't accept them otherwise. But I will say, going to recorders' conferences, there's a lot of offices that cannot work with their counselor or commissioner. A lot of them in the state. They can't seem to... communicate and work with their council and commissioners. I will say DeKalb County is lucky in that department. But again, on the perpetuation fund, that's totally recorders by statute. So that is also paying for the books that are getting redone. I hope to have at least all the deeds and all the miscellaneous done before I leave office. Then it's gonna be up to the next recorder if she wants to continue. It's important. You have to keep them by statute. They're original documents. You don't have a choice. Now we don't get original documents. They get handed back. They get all put in the system. But those we do. We do keep original files. A lot. I will have all miscellaneous back by fair time. All miscellaneous will be done. Deeds are almost done except deed index. Those will be the last ones. So then there's others. There's partnerships, there's farms, there's all kinds of little ones that can be done, but those to me are the biggest ones. So that's coming. As far as wages goes, yes, I put in. I feel it's important to let you, the reason I put it in I feel it's important you know why we put it in. It's because our people are worth it. Trying to find people, I know Sheila's had problems, Dana, some of ours, it's hard to find people that want to work. I remember being younger and wanting to get in county government, work for the county, and you couldn't get in unless someone retired or you knew somebody. Now it's the opposite. Nobody wants to come work for the county. If you can get them, it's worth keeping them because you spend a lot of time training. You know, Bridget's still learning. Molly and Sarah have been here for over a year. Molly worked in this business and still is learning. You don't get the same thing every day. So it's important, very important. And you know, I know we're losing Susan. I worked with Susan even when I worked with Jim. It's not an easy job. As far as the rest of, we're all connected. All these offices in the courthouse are connected in one form or another. Documents that come into my office come in first, but they hit three others before they come back to me for final. They're all important. We're all important. And wages, it's what keeps us here. Now elected officials, maybe not. We do it because we feel it's something we want to give back. I loved working in the law office. I knew that time wouldn't last forever because he was a whole lot older than me. I don't regret becoming the recorder. I've loved every bit of it. I've only got a little over two years to go. The best I can do is make sure the next one comes up and enjoys it as much as I have. I sit up here, I've sat up here for now six budget presentations. I do it because I think it's important. I do it because I think it's important to know how this all works. and to support all of you. There's been many times you've had questions and we're able to answer them on the spot and not have to table it. And I think that's important. And I'm not gonna speak wholeheartedly for the other elected officials, but they feel the same way. I am very blessed that we're able to talk to our council and our commissioners. because a lot of counties can't. And I appreciate the ears when I want to bend them. So any questions for me on what the recorder does?

Thank you, Lita. And I'd just like to note, appreciate all your extra efforts outside your office because I know you've done a lot for Sunny Meadows and we greatly appreciate you using your office as semi-warehouse for- Keep that, remember when the space study gets done, okay? Thank you for all you do.

The thing with space is I have to keep them both. I cannot. I would love to have them all. I'd love to have them all. And then I could do away with a lot of space. Statute is I have to keep it. And plats keep growing. I'll be adding another plat cabinet probably in a few years because of development.

Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Lita.

I know we're ahead of schedule. I see Chris. Do you want to go early?

While Chris is coming up, just happened to think but the elected officials training fund I think that that only applies to the actual elected official so if we need if we need to send chief deputies or anybody else chief deputies also I remember we had to add to add the council through a state ordinance.

But it's the elected official.

The elected official and the chief deputy.

OK. Real quick, Chris. Jodi, if you have anybody else that would like to move up possibly.

I've already been working on it.

Good. Thank you. OK, Chris, welcome. Hi there. How are you guys? Good. Thank you.

Really the only kind of big change that I've had for 2027 will be the creation of that GIS data specialist position that was approved in June, I believe. As you guys may remember, the data for our GIS that was housed in Auburn after the cyber incident, Auburn now wants us to get off of their servers by the end of this year. So we are actively hiring. Hopefully we'll have someone, knock on wood, hired and started here August 1st, and hopefully then can hit the ground running with that data enterprise that the other GIS staff are working on. So that's the only thing in salaries that increased, was the increase of that, I believe it's a PAT-A position at 52, around $52,100. In my twos, threes, and fours, As with most subscriptions, even our Netflix and all that has gone up over the years, I anticipate increases in the subscriptions that we have for AutoCAD, InDesign, and then our permitting software. for our ESRI, our GIS software that we cost share with Auburn, Butler-Garrett, and Waterloo. At the end of, I believe it'll, at the end of 27 is when that three-year contract ends, and I anticipate it increasing in 2028, so just so you all are aware. probably will be asking for an increase in that software in 27, for use in 28. The EagleView aerial imagery, we finally got that from them and it should be live on Beacon, I'm hoping, here in the next week or so. But as you can see, that decreased from, 2020 sorry i'm getting my years wrong from 2026 due to the lidar which is the contour imagery that we received from them so that went down we have a chance to be able to re-look at that in one in three years so that would be like 2028 budget for 2029 so i'll discuss that when that time comes if that's something that we want to we want to do The one big change with our Indiana code is, I've been working with Susan on this, is a quote unquote special fund that has to be created for our department. It basically will encompass And I'm not sure how this will work, and Susan can maybe explain a little bit more, but from my understanding, there's one fund that we're gonna have for our department. Basically, all planning, zoning, building application fees will be deposited into that fund and can only be used for my department's expenses. So probably similar to as Lita has for the Recorder's Office, they're doing the same for this.

Like with new state law. Yesterday we created a bank account.

No this is totally this is a totally separate account that is in the wheel into the general fund all goes into the county general yeah so I'm looking at it as more of a user fee based route that the state's wanting to take, which I think is good. I think putting it in state law has its hiccups because we don't know what we can use that money for. They don't say if it can be used for salaries or gas expenses or utilities or whatever. So we're gonna be next year, I believe the fund, Susan, correct me if I'm wrong, we create it in 2027, but we don't have to actually use it until starting of 28. Right, so I'll be using the money that's in this year's budget, or the budget I'm requesting now for 27, but then I'll be able to figure out how to use these funds for 28, I think. It's very, it's this much language.

I'm not sure if it's 28 or if you could.

It's a little paragraph of language of what the state told us to do. Imagine that. So anyway, it's unclear as to what we can use those funds for. Last year, though, we did bring in about over $100,000. So that's about what, a fifth of our budget, sixth of our budget in fees. So if it can pay the salary of the building inspector, then it saves the county those dollars, taxpayer dollars for something. So anyway, those are kind of the big things that I have. not really yeah those are the only things that I basically went down in our budget and partly that was because of number one the contract for our comprehensive plan that money is no longer needed obviously the consultant fees dropped and then the I believe it's called photography and our hume cap fund dropped because of the lidar imagery that we're not paying for this year so again that'll come up in another two years if we decide to to move forward with that so I budget decreased mostly because of not using funds that were there previously so Not anticipating anything, any major changes in 27. So I think things will stay relatively the same.

Do we have any questions for Chris, Rick?

The arrangement that we have, or the county has, with the city of Butler, and you're working with Butler. Is that going to change at all for next year There might be some changes happening in Butler.

So yeah, there's some changes happening with their city planner in Butler. There has been discussion about if because my department right now does all building permits for every municipality except Auburn and Hamilton that those are relatively small with the amount of permits that the county does that can we just absorb those costs or sorry not absorb those costs absorb that work through a reimbursement like we're getting now through Butler I don't want to speak ahead of myself on that and and and agree to something that we're not doing yet. But we're in talks about absorbing that work and then them reimbursing us.

And my concern there is you're already doing so many hours a week for the county. We're not going to overload you specifically. I'm overloaded now.

And Butler's reimbursing me now for that and again not to get too ahead of myself but I think that they would be able to reimburse the other county staff that I have to do that work. Now again there's been talks about can they drop their GIS contract with their outside source and us absorb that. Number one, my guys are good and we can get stuff done way quicker than sending it to a contractor, the contractor putting it in their queue and it getting done in two or three weeks. We do work now for Butler, mailing addresses or new property addresses, updating of their zoning and stuff like that that we just do because we can get it done quicker.

St. Joe, Waterloo, Corona.

When they, if they ask, of course, if they ask, of course. They all, St. Joe, we digitize all of their zoning maps when they found out that they had an ETJ, that whole thing that happened. So we help them out there. We help out where we can. I do make sure that whatever is asked, that it's not overloading or overburdening them more than what they are with the things that I tell them to do and things that they help me out with. But the hiring of the GIS specialist will really take a big load off of the two guys that we have now with the day-to-day work that goes through the recorders, assessors, and transfer office that call it CADmonkey, and that's probably a derogatory term for what they actually do, but the CADmonkey work of just inputting data will help alleviate a lot of that. So it's a long-winded answer, but I'm not sure where that's gonna go right now.

permitting system that we have is being used by everybody except for Auburn?

Correct so we do all the building permits for all those municipalities now if they a lot of them still use their own paper permitting or their own Excel stuff because they just can't get on our system. Butler has. We're still working through some things there. But yeah, it's much better than it was in the past. And being able to create reports for various people is so much easier than it was before.

How did your meeting go last night?

Good. Amy was there. The data center presentation was was good. Roberto just kind of had some very broad data for us. It's gonna come down to what the county wants to see as far as sizes of data centers that we want to permit and then working towards Do we want to have a max of 500 acres for a data center versus 1,800 that the Google data center in New Haven is? So we need to figure out what's our max size going to be and then work towards, if it's 500 acres, what does that look like for a setback of buildings and then landscape buffers? That's obviously different from an 1,800-acre data center than a 500-acre data center. So we're working on that. I'll stop by. Stop by today. I will if I got time.

Okay. I want to stay focused on the budget presentation. Thanks. It's his fault.

I know. I was somewhere where I couldn't be here. Thanks, Chris.

Dave is behind this.

Okay, thank you.

He said he would be more than happy to go a little bit early to keep moving.

Can you guys hear me?

Yes.

Can you hear us?

Yes, I can. All right.

So for my budget, much hasn't really changed since last year. A few changes. I'll just go through the changes from our budget from last year. So we have our budget for software maintenance. went up from last year. So last year it was about 390,000. And this year we have it projected at 425,000. And that is to allow for the increase in vendor cost and also changes that are going to be made by the state, which we're not sure of right now. So some of those changes include CrowdStrike. So we use CrowdStrike right now for

security for our desktops and servers.

The state is paying for that, but that contract ends in March of next year, and they're not sure if they're going to be renewing that or not. So I have allocated some of the budget for that in this account. And the state also pays for Udemy. So Udemy, we use that in our department for different IT training. So if that was to go away, that's something that could be taken out from this account as well. As far as, and also the number four. The number four we use with the county to train our employees on cybersecurity incidents. So we send out, for example, emails that

potential scammer could use to get information.

We send those out to our employees on a monthly basis as a test to see if they recognize the different signs within the email that shows them that it might not be a good email to click on. And we also do monthly training where we're showing them different things to look for in emails, in different communications, So that's what number four is used for. And right now, the state is paying for Grouse right number four in Udemy. And those contracts are unknown if they're going to be renewed or not. The other account that I have going up is our network infrastructure. That went up from 150,000 last year to 210,000. And the increase for that is multiple parts. One, as we all know, hardware is going out. So the computer that you bought last year versus the computer you bought in December versus now has almost doubled. And from our network infrastructure, that's what we use to pay for servers. We use to pay for switches. anything to do with the network so those prices are going up and then secondly uh right now our county network is partly um meshed with uh the city of auburn and we're going through a separation right now so we're going to have once the project is done we will have our network solely uh just for us and managed by us

So for that project, we don't know exactly how much it's going to cost us right now.

We are working with IT consultants to come up with, take a look at our network and help us form our network moving forward. So not just the change, but with the change that's coming, what else we need to

make our network more efficient.

So we are working with consulting for that to get some pricings. But for now, we included part of that in this network infrastructure account to account for that change down the road. And then lastly, we created a new account for membership. So right now, we, the IT department, we're part of a GMS, Association, that's an association of public sector IT professionals. So we use that, I mean, we go to trainees, we meet new vendors, we hear about, we learn about IT things that are coming down the road.

So for example, let's say a network administrator noticed that

a certain virus is going around. So those are all things that we learned within this organization itself, because I mean, when it comes to IT, we're not in a bubble. So there are, so we learn from other accountants, other municipalities. So we are part of that organization and we've been paying that out of our Education and budget. So this year we decided to just make it its own. So that's. That's about all I have as far as changes going for my budget from last year to this year. Do you guys have any questions for me?

Base of the consulting firm that we're using to evaluate the network, is that in the commissioner's budget or is that in your budget here?

It's coming out of the Commission's budget.

Okay, thank you.

Anybody else have any questions for VESA? Thank you, VESA, for coming in early.

All right, thank you.

Jason Meek is going to be coming any time. I also asked Nellie. I haven't heard from her.

Good, good, good. Thank you. OK. We've got a few minutes if anybody needs a break right now.

Okay, so for emergency management for the general fund the only increase we had was the river gauge maintenance $167 that went up for our cost share that we do at the City of Auburn, Maumee River Basin, and DeKalb County. We do a three-way cost share for the river gauge. And that's what tells us when we have flooding or when the water is rising within the creek so we can start to prepare for that. That's the only increase on the 1001 general category. And then the LEPC, which is the right to know. That's our hazmat fund, and that's the one that the state, the industry's put into. Then the state cuts us a check for that. So I always refer to it every year as our checking account for our hazmat, county hazmat teams, to train them, to give them equipment, things like that. So that money goes from year to year, and then the state gives us a stipend for the amount of money that we get from the industry. And then that just keeps adding. And then if we spend money, it gets subtracted, and every year we get one stipend, and then that gets added to that. And every year when we redo the budget, we always kind of reset the numbers for that. And then any extra surplus we put into that equipment fund so we can continue to supply the HAZMAT team with suits or monitoring equipment or whatever they need to be able to operate. The Emergency Disaster Fund, again, it's the same thing. It's the 1,028. We did not change that. That's more of a fund that we have. So if we did have a county emergency, we could throw money into that. to operate to help us get through that disaster. Then the last three are grants, and those just are grants that we've had through the years that we just hang onto that money for just in case stuff. So those monies don't grow. If we spend from it, it just keeps depreciating until it's eventually gone. So that's the 8123 Homeland Security Grant, the Homeland Security Grant II, and then the Hospital Coalition Grant.

Jason, yesterday when Cheryl was here for the Health Department, her contractor for emergency preparedness has apparently left. And I know they're talking with you and Mike about providing those functions.

Yes. So we've had conversations with Alyssa and Cheryl. We, I think we're meeting either next week or the week after to brainstorm what it could look like because there's, it's an emergency preparedness coordinator for the health department. Well, that's what we do on the emergency management side. So there's some redundant redundancy within both of those positions. So there's, I think there's a way that we can blend it and Cheryl does too. So we're going to sit down.

And she would pay those services from a state grant.

Yeah.

Yeah. So between Mike, Cheryl, Alyssa, and I, do you think we could figure out what do we do, what's required of the grant, and how we can better streamline that, those operations, so we're both getting our functions done?

I'm sure if we're using you, it's gonna be a little more consistency than changing contractors a lot.

Sure, yeah.

Going back to that river or Peter Creek monitoring system, I think Maumee Valley suggested that there be one in Waterloo. I know that you reached out to Waterloo about them sharing with us and with Maumee Basin putting one up near Waterloo. Waterloo has declined or is not responding on that at all. so there's been some transition there so yeah right now that that project is on hold but it's still on my radar yeah that question and come up to the Maumee Valley River Basin Commission what where's the weakness in DeKalb County and that one monitoring station was the only thing that he said

Anybody have any questions for Jason? Thank you, Jason. Thank you. Thanks, Jason. Thank you.

Have an early Jason.

Everybody have a good day.

Thank you.

Effie is here with extension office. With extension? Oh, you're soil and water. I'm sorry.

OK. We're ready. Thank you.

She's at home with her new baby. Fortunately for her, she's at home with her new baby. She had her baby on July 7th of this last week. It was early and so she was very happy. And I brought the usual from many years ago.

She's going to sweeten the pot.

Take it. Those are wonderful. Thank you again.

And then we also have with us Tim Hine. He's one of our newer board members. He was elected last year and he's here for moral support. So Nellie has this huge long letter, commentary that she had for me. I'm just going to kind of skim over it, so I won't try not to read it word for word. One of the things that she did do, though, I believe, was send you all an email with a letter explaining some things that she was, what we were doing, as well as some highlights of what we had done last year, and then also the leveraging sheet.

I don't know if you guys have it with you or not, but pass it around. It's all uploaded. The money that she gave us is uploaded.

that we bring into the county or what the county invests in our soil and water conservation district and the money that we bring in there's a return to the county of in 2025 was $12.16 for every dollar that you invest into our department. So with that being said we also We decided on, as the staff and as the board, to go with your suggestions of not raising any of our, increasing any of our budget for this year, including our salaries and operating expenses. I'm looking at here. For the board members, they are... that is mandated by the state at $35 a meeting that stays no matter what so the the rest of it again is just the same as what we had was approved for 2026 hoping that you guys said that you were going to look into maybe doing some salary increases after you get through all the budget and hopefully you guys will be able to add a few extra dollars to that so some of the things that if you're not familiar with what we do we are We are mandated through the state. Each county in Indiana has a soil and water conservation district. We do get some funding from the state. We've received $20,000 from the state to go towards operating expenses. And then the rest of it, and what we do with that money is we put it into our cost share program, which we have... which is very popular. It helps with septic replacements for those septic that are failing and need replaced, not for new construction or if you're selling your home, just if it's a failing system to get it back up to code. We also do conservation practices such as tree plantings, grass plantings, pollinator plots. We also have where we do invasive tree removal which is basically the pear, the Bradbury pears. If we pay up to $600 to have that tree removed, and then we want them to plant a native species, so $600 total for that. That's been very popular also. So that's the kind of stuff that we do for the community. We also have things such as we have a rain barrel workshop, which is very popular. We do it twice a year. We work with the city of Auburn. We had a composting workshop recently that was very popular. We did a pollinator plot out at Doc Coleman Landing, which part of that is owned by the county. Well, I think it's all owned by the county. We have a pollinator plot out there, so we had a field day out there. We had lots of people show up for that. And we had a controlled burn out there. So we've done a lot of different things outside of the office, which is kind of nice. With field days and such, we have the county farm, the demo plots that are out there. We're going to have a field day coming September 14th. Hopefully you guys will all be able to attend. And so those are the things that we do for the community. We also, I don't know if Commissioner Dooley's here. No, he had come to one of our board meetings and told us about the Hamilton well sampling. So that's one thing that is new on our budget I guess the DNR from what I understand the DNR used to do the sampling for the Hamilton well and why I don't know but anyway they were doing the sampling they lost their funding and so they asked the county to take over the funding so Commissioner Dooley came to our board meeting asked us if we would be willing to put that into our budget and do the pay pay for it out of our like as a pass-through.

And it's monitoring what?

It's monitoring the Hamilton well, the Hamilton water supply over there in the city of Hamilton. So, and then we had said that that was going to be the one thing that we did that was not on our, let me see what she's had on here. That's not on our, was not, it was new to our budget, I should say. And the DNR and the USGS, which is the United States Geological Society, they were the ones that provide data or to collect the data and then what they're looking for you know I'm not I can't say for sure but anyway that's something that we would we're going to do just as a pass-through the DNR would continue to do the sampling it's just that we would make the payments for that being done is that well in DeKalb County or Steuben County or I believe it's in DeKalb okay okay yeah

reason they are is because of the cutbacks by the governor and that program nag programs on that side and stuff so right that's why we were asked to do that and that's probably I think if she I remember that's why that 2560 and other service fees up there is the Hamilton well yes because she explained that to me yeah everything but that's why they they lost their fundings because the governor right right so

So they asked us if we would be willing to do the pass-through, and our board decided that that would be fine, that we could do that. We would be willing to take that on. And it's just that hopefully you guys will let us add it to our budget. So anyway, that's in a nutshell. If anybody, if you have any questions, either myself or Tim would leave. I'm sure happy to answer anything.

Any other questions? Thank you.

Thank you. Brian, are you ready?

I'm ready if you are, sir.

Yes, sir, thank you. We are ready. Good morning everyone. Good morning.

Good morning, Brian.

If you've had time to review the 2027 budget, you'll notice we have had a huge increase. The majority of that is the new Spillman servers that we signed a contract in 2024 for. We knew this was coming. Current servers are going to be outdated by the beginning of next year. And that was about $147,000. The entire county benefits from that. I should say all the agencies in the county benefit from that. What line item are you looking at, Brian? What's that?

What account are you looking at, did you say?

It should be under CADRMS.

Okay, gotcha, thanks.

Going from $137,000 to $347,000. What's that? That's the maintenance fee? For this year, 137,840 was our maintenance. And that will, we have no negotiating power with Motorola Solutions. That goes up 4% every year. And the additional costs on top of that are the new servers. And we are going to a fully managed system where Motorola out of Schaumburg, Illinois, they will monitor our system to watch for any problems, continue to do all the upgrades and updates. We felt when Jack Smith and I talked about this in 24 that this was the best way to go because we knew at that point the city and the county were going to be separating their networks. This way the IT department can now take one of their current employees that has network background and transition them to those duties. Tiffany and I can still handle a lot of the day-to-day stuff, but Motorola, they'll know if there's gonna be a hiccup in the system before we ever see anything. We should virtually say 99% of the time have zero downtime. Right now, if there's a system upgrade that needs to be done or maintenance needs to be done, we have to kick the dispatchers and every law enforcement agency out for anywhere between 30 minutes and three hours. We use our backup CAD system that was designed by IT for us at zero cost to operate. And then we transfer that information into the system once it's back up.

Having the contractor monitor the system like that is fairly standard now at the hospital. GE is constantly monitoring the function of the CT scanner and the MRI unit. And they'll notify us long before we notice there's a problem. We won't even know that there's something wrong. They'll notice it, notify us, and then fix it. That's the same type of service that Central will have. It'll happen and take it out of their hands and hopefully have no downtime because of it.

Fingers crossed. Other than that, any other increases in the budget are non-negotiable. We cut back on a couple accounts, but I didn't really have any room to cut anything back other than what you guys said as far as your guidance on wage increases. I wish I could cut more, but I don't want to start getting into the quality of public safety that we provide.

Now, you and I have talked about this in the past, but the State 911 Board is looking at what expenses they might be able to take over from the state and pay for. They've already done some of that, taken those expenses off of us, and hopefully we'll find more.

Currently, I have one submitted, a company called Bright Speed. They provide phone service to, I believe, about 788 customers in the western edge of DeKalb County. It's $344 a month. If they'll take that over, that's a little more money that we'll be saving. The state has taken over currently everything that they say they can take over, which has helped us out a ton. It's just hopefully the state is Rick do you know where they're at on the 911 surcharge?

They are reviewing it as to whether or not they're going to increase it. Right now the state puts the $1 fee on everybody's phone that pays for 911. They are reviewing as to whether or not that's going to be increased. I think it will be but how much?

They're proposing $1 move it to from $1 to $2, which would be great. I don't know what the trickle-down effect will be. It would double our money. That'd be great. Because we are running into when the public safety load is no longer funded after 2027. All of you that are still here with us, commissioners and the other municipalities are going to have to all work together to figure out how are we going to fund a major, major portion of central communication. Currently, we're out of the public safety load. We're just about $1.7 million a year we're paying out of that. So we're going to have to make that up somewhere, starting in 28. We've done our best to, as Jan used to say, be good stewards of the taxpayers' money. But that's the big challenge for 28 is where are we going to come up with the operating money that we need.

And that could be, depending on how the council would want to deal with it, what Brian is talking about could be covered in part by the fire and EMS local option income tax, that point four. And that's my opinion. My opinion only, I mean it's not specifically fire, it's not specifically EMS, but central communications dispatches for all of them. And so I think that's a legitimate expense that could be applied to that new tax.

Was that out of the general or was that out of the?

Okay Yeah, okay 150 to whatever jump that's out 9-1-1 That is that the 9-1-1 budget And if I heard you right

That will free up a tech person to come back and get their monitor so we don't have to have someone out there?

Correct. The IT person is stationed in my building. They have Spillman duties, which is a majority of what they're doing, but they also still help with the help desk tickets that come in. This will bring them I think BESA wants to bring them back to the courthouse, and they will basically manage the county's network since we won't be a shared network any longer. But he will still be able to help Tiffany and I because I'm still learning servers. But as far as adding users and keeping day-to-day things up to date at the local level, Tiffany and I can do that. So I think we're saving money in a way by not going out unless Basie changes his mind, and hiring just a dedicated network engineer. And we all know how much those cost.

Any other questions for Brian?

I know so much of this is out of your control, the increases. And this 911 fund has been banded around in the state for the last 15 years or longer there. And it's probably still going to continue on. You do a great job of trying to plan around this and look ahead, but so much of this is still up in the air, always is. So thank you.

Thank you very much. I greatly appreciate that. Jan and Susan have said, be stewards of the taxpayers' funds. And that's something that Tiffany and I pride ourselves on, is getting the best deal, best bang for the buck we can for the county. I really appreciate that.

Great job. Thanks.

Brian, before you leave, yesterday we talked a little bit about the equipment in your building and the need to get the HVAC redone and the battery backup. But as far as the cube cap is concerned, We also have a number of dead spots in the county, and we've talked about the need for some new towers. That could be a major expense to us in the future, depending on who we get as a partner in any of that. But where is that lying right now?

Currently, the county building three independent towers. That project is on an indefinite standstill. It's $8.5 million. The city of Butler is about to go under contract with Verizon for a cell phone tower located at their Butler fire station. The Verizon representative says, sure, we'll give you space. They said give. They didn't say charge. Space at least 180 feet, which is a good area for us. After talking with the architect, no contract has been signed. No tower specs have been done. So that project, even to be able to do that, is probably a year plus out. I did find out that Huntington County has it in their building and planning ordinance. I'm still waiting on a copy of it. Anybody that builds a tower within the county must provide, at reasonable cost, space for emergency services radio systems. I don't know how many towers anybody's planning on putting up. I think that is an excellent solution. Then we're not on the hook for tower maintenance and things like that. But there are so many unknowns with it. There is a program through Marlon Stutzman's office. Everybody at his level gets to submit almost a pet project or a project they believe warrants funding at the federal level. Commissioner Dooley and I are working on getting more stuff for the 2027 submission to see if we can get any type of funding for that. I know we have a lot of big expenses coming up, jail. I don't know if we can even do it. I would love to see it all wrapped into one power project, jail. more office space let's do it as one huge project for the county that that's for you guys to decide and the commissioners and what is allowable with the financing option brian where are those dead spots in the county uh st joe's pennsylvania area um they've always been a weak area northeast of butler once you get north of uh 24 and then once we get over to the west side northwest has a little bit issue not as much as southwest of garrett anywhere in that area it depends if you're standing here or here if you're a pager though we did purchase dual band pagers which are vhf and 800 megahertz pagers for all the fire departments that has helped but it doesn't help your handheld radio um The radios affiliate to the tower with the best signal. So whatever tower you're close to. Garrett, Corona, their nearest tower is either north of Ashley or there's a small Miriam is where the one is in Noble County. And that's some distance off the county line. I would love to get better signal for them. It just provides better responder coverage and helps speed up the response so there's no having to repeat things two and three times.

So when you say a dead spot, there's absolutely no communication that happens in those areas?

There are a few spots. Depending where you stand, you will not get a signal on your 800 megahertz radio. And the fire departments, the majority of them have done away with their VHF radios. So it's literally a matter of feet of where you stand in some of the areas Like a whole area of dead it's like you don't have a square mile of dead okay your house is 200 feet from Chris's house in the middle there could be a dead space and they're working on a An emergency in that dead space, now they've got to move themselves around.

It's very similar. Just think of all the places you drive and you're on your cell phone or you're at and you're on your cell phone and you have no reception. Same thing. Not while you're driving, though, Amy.

I never talk on my phone when I'm driving. Never, ever. That's not right.

I am envious of Steuben County, because when they did their radio project, they put seven towers in Steuben County alone. We have one. And that's the state Ipswich Tower at State Road 8 and Highway 35. I believe that's Johnson's Farm. That's the only state radio tower we have.

We need one. So it would be nice to get some state support in putting up a few more.

The last study we did a few years ago, the state says these are acceptable limits down around St. Joe and Butler area. Again, it's positional, you know, spaces. Just because you have 70% radio frequency doesn't mean that's the best. We need better. 100% would be awesome, but if we can get 85 90% I would be a lot happy we add to we add to existing towers or do we need to build our own new towers we would have to identify the towers we want to use and try to negotiate with the owners of those towers hey do you have space at this height also is your power spec to handle the antennas and then we They call it a habitat, the little building at the bottom. Do you have room for space there? Do you have backup power? Or do we need to put our own habitat in, our own generator? In the long run, me personally, I would rather the county own the towers and lease out space. I identified a few areas that were on municipal property. St. Joe, just a northwest of the fire station off of Hart Street. Town of St. Joe owns a lot of land there. There was a couple spots in Butler. And Corona was a little more challenging Um, we could do a self-supporting tower on about an acre, acre and a half, and the county has a couple plots up there. We just have to see if the elevation of the ground and what the power would be, because I'd like to stay under 200 feet, or you'd have to put a light on top, and that's a whole other thing. So airplanes... Go ahead, Chris. Uh, each tower's going to cost about $2 million. Um, Now, I have worked with Motorola. They will basically finance it. Hey, you guys owe us this much when this tower is done, then you owe us this much when this tower is done. And most of the time, it's 0% financing. And if we went in to contract with them now, they will hold the current price. That's going to require everyone to be on board with where it is. Are we going to spend that much money and go from there? I love that option. I've helped broker deals with other departments that need handheld radios, car radios. I work with Motorola rep. What kind of financing can you get them? And most of the time, it's 0% financing over

I just want to say that now you have some understanding of Brian's job and Brian does an excellent job of managing his department and there's a whole lot more than just making sure there's a dispatcher answer a call or to answer a 9-1-1 fund and you know again one of those 24-7 departments has to be up and it has to be operational all the time so i appreciate that sir the stress level is can be kind of high but he's got more than just making sure there's a dispatcher in the seat?

Well, September 26th makes my 32nd year. Pretty much my entire adult career has been giving to this county. The county's provided very well for me, and I'm very appreciative that I continue to do this because I care about the responders. I care about the citizens. So I'm not looking for a raise. Give my people raises. We have some of the best dispatchers in the state. We have one of the best centers in the state. We are envied by a lot of people. And I'm going to do Jason's horn a little bit. Our emergency management department, in my personal book, is top notch 100%. They are the gold standard. Everyone reaches out to Jason and Mike saying, hey, do you have a plan for this or do you have this? And I'm not talking small counties. I am talking Marion County has reached out, Allen County, and Jason and Mike already have something in place that they can build off of. So I am very happy and honored to have them in my building because that is a collaboration that we use almost daily to make sure we're getting everything the responders need and the county. I just want to give Jason and Mike a little plug because they deserve it.

And I will add on what Rick said. I've used you guys two times last fall. At one time, I had a panic attack, and that lady talked me through it. The combine was on fire, and she was very polite and everything. And then the other time, when 4 o'clock in the morning, I had to get them because we had cattle running down the road, and I didn't want someone to hit it. I have to say they were very, both of them was very polite and talked to me, and they called me back to follow up, so I appreciate that.

Thank you, sir. That's what we aim for.

Thank you, Brian. Thank you, everyone. Let's take a ten minute break. Let's be back here at 20 after 10.

All right, we're on.

Okay, one, two, three, four, five. Okay, we are back in session. We will hear next from Commissioner James Miller.

Morning. Good morning. Good morning. Where do you wish to start?

Wherever you would like. Let's start with flat line money and no expense increases and everything like that. Boy, that drew applause.

Such is life, right?

Yeah, that's right.

Obviously, the commissioners took no increase in pay. The one that should be noted is we have combined, if you look down at 32001, 002, 004, we have combined everything into 004. And those other two are empty. They're zero. And so again, that's flatlined at $50,000, which has been in the past. EMS, that's something, if I understand correctly, the commissioner has been paying. And that's been put into the budget for the council to take over. Obviously, our lit funds are going to end. So we're asking the council to have to take over that payment. And I don't think there's anything else. The liability insurance is the same. Official bond went up $100,000. We expect that, as everybody else does, that expense will go up. The EMS agreement, it doesn't show what it was adopted.

So for 26, it would have still been in lighted. For 27, the next payment is $325,000. So that's the account.

That's for the contract that's already existing.

Was there much change in that? Is it the same as last year, 325?

No, 25,000 more. OK. The contract is 25,000, a three-year contract at 25,000 additional. 325 for the next three years, right?

No, 25,000 more each year.

Yeah.

So this year it would be $300,000 next year.

OK. OK. I understand.

Are there any questions on that first page?

And I do not have the insurance and stuff, big values in there yet, because we had to finalize.

A question on the animal control.

Yes.

We are still doing $50,000 a year towards that, is that correct?

Yes.

Did we opted out of that at one time or not, Jim?

What do you mean opted out?

Well, had we not been paying, had we been paying $50,000 a year all along on this or?

Well, that, excuse me to back up a little bit, that $50,000 was paid directly to DeKalb Humane Society. Correct. Prior to Kellen and I coming on board. It was paid without a contract for three years prior to us. When Kellen and myself found out that there was no contract, obviously that's not legal. from my understanding. And so I took the lead to try to get a contract with DeKalb Humane. And after now five different contracts, they've rejected all five. And so I asked Kellen if he wanted to take over, but he and I, and I'm speaking for him and I don't like doing that, but the bottom line is we both are on the same page that we're not going, in fact, Dave wrote a cap. The president said, well, just continue giving us the $50,000. And at the end of the year, we'll show you what we're doing. And it doesn't work that way. We need to see numbers. We have to be able to tell the taxpayers, this is what you're getting for your money. So anyway, we did not have a contract. They did not receive any money this year whatsoever. Since we don't have a contract moving forward, they won't receive any money. The $50,000 this year has, between Cheryl Roba, which has been a godsend for the county, has been taking a tremendous amount of dogs and cats and helping out. Fort Wayne Humane has been the other entity that I couldn't say enough about that has really helped out and I mean, Erica, our humane officer, animal control officer, I should say, has come up with situations where one had 40 dogs. And it's just impossible to take 40 dogs to one place. And she was able to get them between K-9 and Fort Wayne Humane and Tara, I never pronounce it right, and I apologize.

Shadaroba.

Shadaroba, thank you. She was able to get those 40 dogs placed, and they've I think the vast majority were eventually adopted after shots and brought back to health, and it was a total mess. But anyway, so that's why we combined the 50,000, because going forward, we don't see Doing business the way we're doing it now with the animals, it's just not going to continue. We can't continue. She's an elderly lady, and I don't think it's fair to her to try to push that many animals onto her. But we're working on a solution.

Well, I appreciate the clarification.

Thank you, Jim. Yeah, but it's not going to go to DeKalb Humane. It's just not because, yeah. Until we have a contract, they're not going to get anything.

Thank you.

Does that answer? Yes. Okay.

Council on aging. OK. Yeah, the 48,000.

Commissioner Yard, or Commissioner, Councilman Yard, just for clarification, the commissioners are working on trying to solve this problem. Yes, thank you. We're definitely working. We have not given up, and we're going to continue to come up with a viable solution that's going to work.

Thank you.

I just want to comment on that too, Jim. I've had some instances where I've had to call our animal control officer on behalf of the golf course and helping us with a dog or two, and she has been wonderful. I mean, she said, I'll be there in 15 minutes. I'll be there in 30 minutes. And she comes and asks pertinent questions. And away she goes. And I can't say enough good things about the officer that we have that does what she does. I can imagine it's an easy job.

Yeah, she's doing a wonderful job. It really is. But she's also created this situation. But that's off the record.

Oh, you spoke in the mic.

It's my dry humor. Any other questions on that page? The continuation on my second page, I don't think there's anything that's Well, you can see 34200 says Humane Shelter, and that's zero. I don't think there's, I think everything else is.

Northeast Indiana Mill, that's what we're told to pay, right?

Northeast Center, yeah.

Yeah.

My understanding is that we have to pay. Yeah. Yeah.

We have no choice there.

Jim, some of the other ones.

Pardon?

We don't have the number provided to us from the state for that yet. So I just put in last year's number.

Will that come soon?

There was some changes, though. to provide us additional reporting every year for the services that they provide. We also have to demonstrate that the money that the county is giving them is spent in the county. It's a four-county operation, but the DeKalb money needs to be spent in DeKalb, and they need to demonstrate that it is.

I had a question. There's a couple other not-for-profits on here. What is the reasoning from the commissioners of why we are supporting those particular not-for-profits?

I'd say basically because many, many years before my duty, the county commissioners have paid those and we have just continued them.

You had mentioned contracts with humane shelters stuff. So was that just for, because those are service providers, right? These other not-for-profits are not necessarily service providers for the county. They're just, we just continue to have provided them some dollars.

Okay.

Yep. Any additional questions? The bottom of my second page is the lit economic development. The administrative fund is $830,000 less. The county building and improvements is requested as half what it was last year.

One of that is all kind of dependent on what projects commissioners do or pay for here and whether they're going

So what you're saying is the grant match dollars, if we have no grants to match, that money will not be spent.

as I'm sure the public is aware, or if not, that at the end of 2028, the lit funds for the commissioners goes away, according to what is the law now.

Yeah, the current law.

And those bond payments are coming out of lit funds for the highway department, which was done prior to Commissioner Kelly and Ellen and myself. The one thing that I think the commissioners, again, I don't like speaking for the other two, but I believe we're all on the same page that any lit funds we have, we're going to have to really conserve because this bond payment, with our money going away at the end of 2028, and this bond payment goes until 2032, if I'm correct, if we don't have the LIT funds, the council is going to have to come up with the funds to make those payments. And I certainly don't think the county wants to default. That's just not an option. So we're condescent of the fact that we need to save those LIT funds to make sure that these bond payments are made. can only enforce that enough that an input to this fund goes away in 28 but the money that's in the fund right now that stays there until it's all spent so it could be a number of years after that correct yeah at this point currently unless they change it uh the lit my understanding is the lit fund stay in the lit fund and there is no time limit But once they're spent, they're spent. There just won't be additional monies. It'll be interesting to see down the road as a commissioner without the LIT funds and able to do specialized projects for the county to improve life and safety or whatever the reason that where we're going to get these additional funds to make those things happen.

And the other part of that is the last couple of years, $1 million for the highway operations has been funded out of Commissioner's lighted funds, on top of what Ben budgets out of his funds that he has available. So at the current moment, they have $1 million in their lighted fund right now. And I've also included a line item for $1 million in county general. to be able to play around with with you guys once we get all the numbers in and see where things are landing to and you guys can determine if you want to remain lighted or part of it lighted part of it in county general as you move forward because eventually i'm then still going to need the operation

Is the money in that fund able to be invested? It is being invested. So we're getting some return on it right now. But as we spend it, that will be less.

And the interest on the money that's invested go back into that lighted fund?

OK. Any other questions on the lighted? And my last page is the commissioners and the general, 1-0-0-1. Again, commissioners are taking no pay raise. Pardon me?

You're on the courthouse one.

Oops. Yep, sorry. Got the wrong page there. I guess personal services fee is zero.

So let me join in here for a minute. Yeah. For a million years, A1 janitorial was always paid out of personal service fees. And I believe, I'm only guessing because it was way before us, that that probably was something that was set up clear back when Clint was still here. But we decided to move it this year down to the amount 3,001 into a service account because we're actually paying them to do us a service item. So that amount has, that's why that's moved down in the avenue. The other thing that we tried to do here is we tried to, some of the sunny meadows expenses that will still happen such as like utilities and maybe some repairs that might be needed some things out there has moved over to the courthouse budget and they'll they'll just pay for that part versus having a completely separate budget so some of those things have increased because of that Otherwise, we left it as much the same as possible compared to what has been spent. And in, I believe, building repair and maintenance, I do have a little, and I have to look, I have a little bit of money figured in there for some of the community corrections expenses. but not anywhere close to the 120,000 number.

Any questions on that? Obviously, electric.

We're at courthouse now.

So while we're talking about that, Larry, Evan, and everybody that's doing building maintenance will all be under courthouse.

They are now, except for 11409, the maintenance person some of that is paid by Community Corrections and some of its paid by central okay it doesn't have to be that's just how originally was set up because he was being shared with those two areas but now he's really anywhere the arrangements not going to change as far as what buildings he's working on or with

just maybe need to change what pocket it's coming out of, essentially.

Yeah, so I mean, that could be also a possibility of something that community corrections would pay for if we brought it, their part into county general under courthouse.

As we move forward, I would like to see everything that involves county buildings But I you know, I think the county the whether it's under courthouse or the commissioners budget or whatever I think the all the building maintenance

associated Personnel should be paid for by the county Through the county budget Well, if if they're a little bit short out there, you might as well pull it over and put it in on the county Well, that's that's I think that's this we're gonna have to come out of the general fund either way to pay that So you can look make their budget look a little better And you put it out put it in this one. It's like I think it should be out paid all on account. I

And we want to make that happen. I want community corrections and central communications, for that matter, to be responsible for their programming, not the head of community corrections should not have to be an electrician and a plumber and a person that's determining whether or not we need a new roof, all of those building maintenance things belong to the county and should be under the commissioners. Can we? No, go ahead.

Can we get that form put into?

I've asked for that. That makes it much easier to read this than the other forms.

I do not see that anywhere. That's a request.

She's working on it.

That's fine.

That's fine. This makes it easier to tell what's up and what's down. Yes.

Correct. Correct. Thank you.

Sorry, I'm using, I have two different .

Yeah, there are multiple different One Drives, so we have to do some.

It is easier to read, isn't it, Amy? That's what Rick was talking about as well. It's easier to read in that format.

It is easier to read, and it's easier to compare to see. where have they done a great job of helping us save some dollars where should we expect some increases so we can plan for those so very helpful that format and that's what you know we in our money we have the report in that format every council meeting for the current budget

So you get used to reading it that way also.

Well, and if she can, just pull it right over to that one drive and you can see it. Yeah.

Yep.

She's got it. She's putting it at SharePoint.

Obviously, electric and gas are bigger and they're going to increase. I think that's a fair statement.

And

Okay, building repair and maintenance is an increase of 100,000 there, but then I think, if I remember correctly, that personal services fee, some of that money got moved down to 100,000 of it to allow more projects to get taken care of, especially in the courthouse. Other than that,

As far as the building maintenance, I know that the commissioners have been working pretty hard on making some updates or fixes on like the cannon and other things in the building. Roof is in good shape. Is there anything major coming up with the courthouse itself?

And I'm not speaking for Larry, but I think he's looking at The rubber part of the roof, working on getting that replaced, it's well over 25 years old.

He has quotes. He just told me this morning.

OK. So I think that, if you want to consider that major, I'd.

And then when the prosecutor was in here yesterday, he mentioned water damage to the one building, which I think we've known about for a number of years. In that one room in the prosecutor's office getting something done or renovated there, so I Was unaware of that See yeah, they've tried on the out, you know a number of times I'm in the Amy that Where they thought there was a leak on that south side of the building Yeah, yeah that wall. It really is I think extremely important that we maintain this building. This is an anchor for the county and we receive an awful lot of compliments. how well we've maintained not only the building but also the ground. I would hate to see the building deteriorate to a point where it would be too expensive to repair it in the future.

I totally agree.

But just to confirm, that's not what you mean.

And we have a little bit in there, not the full. Everything, but there's some other departments that will pull together the . We'll get a new value.

On the grounds maintenance, it has snow and ice removal. What buildings are those for? So evidently, we contract snow and ice removal out to somebody else?

I don't believe so.

That's at $26,000 and I wasn't sure.

What was the question?

For grounds maintenance, it says snow and ice removal for $26,000, $33,610. Oh. Or sorry, $00. Yeah. In courthouse, right?

Yes, in courthouse. That is when, I think it's Summers when they came out. Because Summers comes out and does like, They'll salt areas and they'll salt around the sidewalks. They do all of ours.

Do they? OK.

But the county doesn't do that. I just assumed the county did.

We don't plow the parking lot. Right. But Larry and Evan, they have a smaller one that they can do sidewalks and pick those up, but it's not the big parking lot.

OK. Yeah, that was basically what I was. I've seen Larry and the crew out there, and I learned something new. Anything else any other question?

Yes, you had mentioned Money for sunny meadows for repairs and that are we budgeting money for sunny meadows for 27 or I guess where does that stand? We have an update So we still have utilities on out there Correct. I guess, do we have a status update as to what's happening? I haven't heard anything lately.

The committee is still working, I believe, diligently trying to come up to a solution. Obviously, we can't turn the heat off.

Oh, I understand that.

And so we have to have the natural gas and electricity yet to maintain the cameras that are out there, which I'm sure is not very much. But again, we can't shut the electricity or the natural gas off at this point. I know that the committee is working diligently, trying to come up with a solution. And the commissioners have said they have at least till the end of the year, at least. We don't want this to go on forever. We at some point, we the commissioners and the council will just have to make a decision. If nothing does come of their work, we'll deal with that when that decision comes.

I think we need to come up with a deadline because as we know, utilities aren't cheap. And that's a huge added expense on the council to budget for going forward. And an empty building doesn't do us any good. Either way. I agree.

The liability if somebody were to break in or do damage, get hurt around that building.

Are people allowed to go in there?

No.

Because I did see a video where there was a walkthrough that was posted and I wasn't, I had people ask about it. I said, I'm not on that committee. I don't know what the status of that is or, and that's why I was just asking for an update. I hadn't heard anything. So I was curious.

We had a report at the last commissioner meeting, and I know they're still working. I know they're still working on it. We're waiting for an answer, too.

While there's the issue of what to do with the building is one thing, but what about the furniture and equipment that's there? I mean, some of it could be disposed of if it's not worth anything. Others, like refrigerators and things like that, could probably be sold. Is there any movement to get rid of all that stuff?

Yes, yes. The refrigerators, and I won't, anything that was worth any value has been removed. Anything that's left in the building now is virtually junk. And the commissioners gave Larry, head of maintenance, authority to get two dumpsters, one for iron and steel and one for trash, and clean out the building completely. So it'll be completely empty, and if there's No one on the council that doesn't know the commissioners did spend the money to have Billy's bug. They came in three times to make sure that any bed bugs, any insects at all that were alive are now not alive. They guaranteed that whatever they used was would kill anything and everything, which is why they did three different times. But anything that's left now will just be put in a dumpster, either as iron or trash, garbage. So yeah, that should be cleaned out. We told Larry that whenever it's convenient for him and his schedule. But I would say in the next two months, for sure, it ought to have nothing in there.

But still, we're maintaining the utilities, but we're also maintaining the insurance.

That is correct. Yes, that is correct.

I think we had, there were still some budgeted money left over, right? Like $210,000?

There's probably money left in this year's budget, I'm sure.

For this year, there's still some budgeted money. Yeah, for sending money, yeah. I can give any. I think it was two, I thought they said 210 or 240.

Yeah, I thought it was around 212, but I don't know if that was before Billy Bugg's invoice.

True. Billy Bugg's.

Yeah. We'll just say around approximately 200,000.

Yes, that sounds good, 200,000. Yeah. They're still left in that budget. There's more. Okay.

Yeah.

Any other questions for Jim? Not so much for Jim, but EMS budget, the amount that we pay yearly to mark you, that in the commissioner's budget or in the light of budget?

The commissioner's moved it to county general.

County general?

For 27. Okay. start moving some of those expenses.

This is just more information because as they look to the local option income taxes that are coming down the pike there is one specifically that will be that can be divided up among the local fire departments and cover that EMS budget. So it would not it would have a in 28-29 it would have its own line item and source of income since it won't it won't be out of the county general and there won't be of course it i think formerly it did come out of the lighted budget didn't it it always had until until what there there is a there is a process a place for it to go in the future so you said that

Technically, that doesn't have to be moved until 28.

28 or 29. 29. But the commissioner just moved it. Local option income tax might go into effect on 28, but the money's not there until 29. But there's a place for it to be paid from or a source of revenue other than property tax or the county general fund. If you can use that.

To answer your question, went with moving it to county general for 27 to start planning some of the expenses that the county will have to have some way of paying for when that lighted money is gone so by moving that then that's at least almost half of a highway bond payment that would remain in the lighted fund to help even though they'll continue to have the lighted fund next year they're taking

They moved some of those expenses over to us to pay that they could still pay in the lighted fund, but they have moved it over to the county general.

But because of that looming $800,000 bond payment, if we can restrict as much to that bond payment rather than all this other stuff.

Because in current legislation there is not any guidance on What happens when that lit structure changes? What happens if you already have a bond? So the county could be trying to figure out not only highways million dollars, EMS over $300, over $800 bond payment.

No, it's OK. I get it. But it was said so quickly in passing. I'm like, wait a minute. That's a big expense. I want to make sure that we are all understanding that.

That's big. Somewhat. plan for the future that we don't know yet because of. Yep.

I just want to make sure it's clear, because in passing and .

For myself. We're waiting. We're going to hold this until Ben's turn.

Ben's buying lunch.

For myself, I wanted to make sure that those lighted funds are there to pay those bond payments. Because I don't want to put that back on the council. I wasn't here when this project started. But I do feel a huge responsibility that since the commissioners took that on, that those bond payments are made. So we have to protect those lighted funds to make sure that that bond gets paid off. For me, that's a top priority.

Any other questions for Jim? Jim, do you have anything else you want to add?

Just quickly that I believe the commissioners are trying our very best to be as conservative as possible, not spend money where it's not necessary. We still believe that there may be cuts that we can make in different areas. And we've tried to make sure that we're using the funds judiciously and to the best of our ability.

I just want to concur with Rick. We don't want to do anything that will compromise the structural integrity or anything here with the courthouse. And I know you're doing a good job of minding the funds here. So thank you. Thank you all, appreciate it. Mr. Parker, we're ready.

Larry be presenting anything on the courthouse from his perspective or things that he, or no?

I don't think Larry, nothing has been planned for Larry to be here.

I just, his name was in- Had you asked him?

Okay, thank you.

But yeah, he might be busy at this time cuz it was early, right? Was he not early?

No, he was supposed to be on at 11. He was supposed to be on at 10. 11.20.

On 15 minutes early.

Oh, yeah. It is there. It is there on the agenda with Jim.

Yeah, I emailed him and asked him. I was thinking we had him early.

Did you hear that? Yeah.

I was curious. I didn't know. I haven't talked to him. He had anything from his.

Yeah, I did see that. Thank you.

Well, how are you guys holding up? Everybody's asleep. We need snacks? Yeah? I understand. Could have brought up some Mountain Dew for y'all or something. So, well, the highway department's very large, which you guys all know, so I'm going to hit on some things, and if there's a particular thing you want to hear about or want to know, let me know, because otherwise I could be up here for a while going through the whole budget. I'm going to go through my budget with you, and then I've got some things on some funding that I'd like to update you guys on as well. So starting with the highway budget, I'm going to start off with the salaries. I know the position you guys are all in on these salary increases. I did think a note in there that I did request a 4% raise, but at the end of the day, it was what you guys decided what you're going to do. I did meet with, I'm sorry, what's that?

Is it still as difficult to get CDL licensed drivers as it was previously?

That has not changed. As long as the new requirements are what they are, the cost to get a CDL, the cost to get one is $6,000 to $8,000 now. How much? $6,000 to $8,000 to get a CDL license. So that demand is still there. And then also the federal government has put more stipulations on the physicals. This made it harder for a lot of the drivers to pass their CDL and maintain their licenses without respect. that's that's been an issue statewide as well unfortunately so I did meet with Bob Kraft on this and I see he's not here today but the one thing that if we don't do anything with any of the other salaries I would like to draw some attention to one and that's the assistant superintendent's position for the last several years my hourly employees salaries has outweighed the assistants salary because that was salary he was salaried the other employees are hourly and then with the overtime they've made more than the assistant and unfortunately that was some of the reasoning why my assistant retired it just bothered him more and i asked for increases on that for the last few years it's never changed so i do have a new appointed assistant his name's joe harrison he's been with me for just over 10 years he's doing a great job but i also don't want this to him in the future he's a very hard-working dedicated employee so I did put in for the increase for him so if anything if you guys could pay a little attention to that and I'd appreciate moving on with my budget I'm gonna start out in the Cover Bridge Fund, that's the 1134. Most of that's all stayed the same. As far as repairs and maintenance, I did not do any increases in that budget line item. The 1135, the cumulative bridge, that is where all of our bridge maintenance comes out of, our small structures and guardrails and pipe. I've left most of that all the same. There is a line item in here that I did not put back in there, and I'm going to have to. I've been talking to Susan. We've been back and forth, and our times have not met to cover some of these final endings of my budget, so I apologize for that, but hopefully we can get with her soon. Bridge 503 was in there for engineering and for construction this year. That bridge was bid. Estimates come in really high. I'm going to re-bid that hopefully late this fall through the winter for next year's work. I need to incorporate that back into the budget. So I'm going to need a little bit more in the engineering, and then I'm going to have to put the construction cost back in.

Moving down. Was it over the estimated cost significantly?

Yes.

Was it? Yes.

It was 22% was the lowest bid over engineer's estimate. Highest one was like 104%. So there was a pretty substantial difference. And I think a lot of that was due to the restraints we had in it for when that could go to construction. Because Bridge 503, if you guys aren't familiar, is the bridge on Auburn Drive here down over Cedar Creek down by Auburn Gear. That is the detour route for Auburn when they have the fair, when they have the ACD festivals. So I had pretty tight restraints on that project that that bridge had to be open for them to detour. It was a $2,500 a day liquidated damages. Plus the DNR was still holding our 404 permit. I just now received this week. You'll see I couldn't even give them those to proceed 1st of July when we wanted to because the permits were behind, unfortunately. So what's not behind are up in cost, right? So that's why that bridge is delayed. So just for your information. Moving down to Kuhn Cap 1138. Most of that's all stayed the same there was a just a little bit of a reduction in our anyway bridge inspections Just for this first phase when I had budgeted last year I'd like to put bridge 503 back in there for construction for next year That would be I'm going to increase that amount to four hundred and eighty thousand why talk to the auger about just as the bids come in high Okay, perfect, thank you I've got a bridge 89 I'm going to put out for engineering and then a bridge 59 I'd like to send out for engineering I got those cost in there as well uh ones for 200 000 I've got one for 180 000. I'm going to move down to I'm following my sheet I'm not following that thing up there I get way off I try to follow that you're fine 1169 local road and street I've got 290 000 in for salt and sand and then on equipment this year I've done We put in for a new wood chipper, replaced our current skid steer with a new one with a road whitener, and I need to update a mowing tractor. And for vehicles, I put money in 55,000 in there for a new pickup. That's to replace one of the older, I think it's a 2000, it's got about 300,000 miles on it. That's due to be replaced. Moving on to, let's see here. Highway administration, 73 account, Susan. Most of that's all stayed the same prior to potential salary increases. 074, highway maintenance. It all looks to be stayed the same. And then highway restricted fund. That's all road work money. It looks that I've kept all that the same from this year to next year as far as projects and stone and gravel. And then restricted match grant match money. I've got that $334,000 appropriated in there. That money kind of sets in there for a backup. Historically, the commissioners or councils always funded the grant match for the Community Crossings Matching Grant. I'm I hope that continues, because that will be something we'd have to budget for, and shrinking my budget that much more. So historically, the commissioners or council, I'm not sure which one, that has always budgeted for that. The 1176, I've increased the repair parts supplies from 200,240, just because we are spending a tremendous amount of money in repairs. I've increased the petroleum. the 350,000 for next year. That's the crystal ball effect. This year we have made out great because we are contracted at diesel at two, I think it's like 289 a gallon this summer. So kudos to us for contracting that because we're huge savings. If you guys have any diesel trucks, it's like five or six bucks a gallon at the pump. So that was a win for us this year. I have increased our liability insurances and our insurance because that stuff goes up each year That is mostly what I have for The highway budget Is there any questions on that I'd be glad to go over stuff I know I went through it kind of quick or several line items at one sticking out at you I would be glad to explain or go over I Otherwise I had some funding things I wanted to touch base with you on I I talked to Dave about here We could slow go and I wanted to bring it up into the council meeting today Well Dave you had questions on any particular thing in my budget Five was way more than 26 and 27, but I lost track of what it was No, you're fine I kind of lost it I

Yeah, maybe even it may be quite a bit of difference from 25 to 27 I was looking at expended and then 26 adopted and requested and I was gonna ask but I don't remember what it was I'll scroll down just a little bit not the other way.

Sorry no new dump trucks this year. I

No, because see, the sad thing is that local road and street fund don't rebuild as quick.

Oh, it was under tires. I think maybe I misread it, though.

Rebuild slowly. So I've got to watch the receipts come in to what I can appropriate for that year.

Okay, I was misreading it. Sorry.

I'm going to do it. Just the one in here doesn't have the, what it's for, it just has the...

It was a repair maintenance road 613 and then 26 and 27 were 500. That's what I saw Yeah, I just noticed there's a Big discrepancy over what he already spent just was gonna ask if there was enough in there local road and street money comes from Property tax or gas tax.

Yes How much how much what's been our our normal receipt of gas tax in any one month? Well, since they suspended it.

We are still getting our same receipt as of now. I am not sure when that restriction will hit us if they don't fund it. Do you know, Tanisha, when the shortages will actually hit us? Yeah, so we are still actually getting our receipts in.

Did you see the receipt I sent you today?

And what do we get from our wheel tax? What's on that?

You really want us to know? I do.

I want to know. I'm going to cover that here in a minute. What are we getting from?

Ben's going to cover it.

I'm going to cover that here in a minute. OK, go for it.

Let's hold off until Ben tells us.

Okay, so I want to talk to you guys a little bit about some of the the funding that we're looking at So last year you guys had the meeting with LTAP come in Jen Sharkey come in and give a presentation to you guys about the wheel tag and also in that gave the presentation with community crossings and then the change of community crossings from all the matching grant to given the Lane mile distribution funds and with that they give projection, okay, so during that presentation was June of last year she give you guys that distribution totals for 27 28 29 for DeKalb County if we got the lane mile distribution okay so our first distribution was supposed to be in 2027 there was the state was not going to give any local or the road miles distributions in 26 it's gonna hold that money over for a big to do ones in 27 well June 30th I received our lane mile distribution money. The Cal County received $410,693.22. One more time. $410,693.22. During that presentation, the estimate that we was to receive was 1.6 million to 2.1 million is what we was supposed to receive on our first draw. So we're 1.2 million short from the estimated cost of what LTAP presented to us a year ago. That's a pretty substantial difference from what we was projecting to get.

It was around what, 1.2 estimate?

Her estimate for our first distribution was 1.6 to 2.1. Thank you. So when we received 410, so that's almost $1.2 million short for what they projected us in that presentation. which that was just an estimate from them. It wasn't a goal. So for 2028, that estimate showed DeKalb County would receive $700,000 to $1.3 million.

I had no idea what we were going to get.

And for 2029, the estimate was $1 million to $1.5 million. And that distribution cost is unknown from year to year. And obviously it's unknown because I didn't even know we was gonna get the distribution this year. That just changed two months ago, three months ago, they changed that, I believe so.

What was the 29 estimate?

The 29 estimate was to be 1 million to 1.5 million for DeKalb County.

So the lane distribution that we got, was this from actual from 25, payable 26? We already got it.

It was 26. So basically, we've got it in 26 that we was not supposed to get until 27. They was going to hold the funds for the community crossings grant. The extra funds was to be held to accumulate to have a big reimbursement in 27. But they changed the legislation. Instead of holding it, they dispersed it in 2026. But you got to remember, they also made other changes because the first change was they took the community crossings that was I forget how many million it was originally. They cut it down to $100 million. A lot of communities didn't get awarded last fall or last summer. There was enough stink raised that the state then added another $70 million to community crossings. Any locals that did not apply in that round and get funding, or did apply, did not get funding, could apply for the $70 million. That's what was just awarded. And then this year, they're going to put $170 million in it for the September call. But since then, that is, excuse me, let me back up. That is for a million cap, for all locals, a million dollar cap. So now, since they give me this lane mile distribution of 410, I can only apply for the $580-some thousand. I can't even apply for the full million because I cannot receive more than a million dollars community cost. So it's kind of threw a wrench into my whole plan for this year.

So did they change their formula for the land mile distribution? Did they give you a reason why that was lower, so much lower than the estimate?

Well, it's a year earlier. They give out more money. They give out another $70 million on a call. They're giving out another $70 million this year, plus the gas tax suspension. They can only give out what money is in the pot. So I do not have all those answers. I don't have them. I'm just giving you the facts of what I have, where we're at currently. So it's potentially a lot of money lost. I mean, that's why the council, one reason they pushed to do the bill tax was to get the larger lane mile distribution money. Well, now that money's coming in substantially less. What it will be in 27, I can't answer. I have no idea. Because they was originally going to hold it to 26, let it build. And with the gas tax suspension, I don't know what to expect next year. It may only be the same amount again. It could be a million. I don't know. I can't answer that.

And back to my question. How much is the wheel tax bringing in for us?

I'm heading there right now. So the wheel tax money, as of today, DeKalb County has received $1,697.41. Well, that doesn't pay for very much. So we're seven and a half months into the year and the Highway Department's received sixteen hundred and ninety seven dollars in wheel tax A lot unless we got an extreme amount of X Y's and Z's in the county They're gonna get astronomical funds That's not going to help with that Well, if Garrett and Auburn create their own wheel they did there's that registrations that we will not we're going to lose more lose more so i mean that's something you guys have to think about the other big funding that i have is from the the county commissioners they give a million dollars a year to the highway department and even given upwards to 1.5 million a year if you guys remember during that presentation uh back june last year when jen was here i believe i was here just before that

and I give you guys a presentation of the highway funds and where we're at and what our funds are coming in at.

And last year, we are operating on a, I've got $2,213,712 deficit each year from where we should be operating, not where I want to be, where we should be. So if I potentially lose the light of the funds, we're going to be 3.2 million. And that's going to be drastic enough that we're going to have to have a talk with commissioners about what services will be cut. The money's just not . So that's something I hope we don't get into. It's kind of discouraging with the lane mile distribution funds coming in less.

I've got a question about that, Ben. Currently, the state distributes on road miles Versus lane miles because there's an Indianapolis and the big cities are pushing that we They distribute based on the number of lanes versus the number of miles Okay That's part of the reduction because that was one of the arguments that the rural counties had versus The big urban areas that I mean it would we would lose money because right more of it would be directed towards Indianapolis for Wayne I have like four or five line highways.

There are just two.

Yeah, and that is playing a factor into the formula But I don't know how I didn't know that I've been hearing a lot of complaints about Indianapolis not getting enough And there's been a number of articles written on it, but I didn't know that the changes had actually taken place.

Thank you, Tanisha.

I'm sure. This is Tanisha Weigelt from Butler Fairman Seifert. I'm not sure I'm any of the familiar with her, but she's a firm that we work with on our bridge inspections and things. I think she come up just to poke at me during my presentation.

So we knew we knew you were bringing the big guns in.

Yeah. Yeah. Never enough money in highway funds. You know, it's just it's a necessary evil. So I had one last thing I wanted to touch on with you guys. Each year I've been up here during my budget presentations. I've always brought up the comment. If we have extra funds, let me know. There's a lot of opportunities to go after federal aid projects, and I'd like to do that, but I knew what the constraints and the things that the county was looking at. I did not want to bring those up until we was a little bit more fiscally ready. Well, I started one, and now we're getting hit with a whole bunch of other things. But I'm in it. I'm moving forward. So far, I went to the commissioners, and they funded a lot of the stage one engineering projects. We are looking at County Road 60 over here between 427 and I-69. I know there's been a lot of talk about that being an interchange, but that's not going to happen. I don't think for one, the hydraulics aren't going to support that drastic of a change there. Too much foot playing there. And I've talked to some pretty high ups at the state that wasn't even aware of that even becoming an option. And if it was, I'm sure would have heard it from them. So that preceded me to proceed with this project. For those of you who are not familiar with that, that area floods dramatically down through there. We have a small structure that has actually raised elevation. It's not because the structure is moving. It's on pylons. The ground sinks by it. That road, we get an inch of rain, we've got to close. And it stays closed for several days. DeKalb County did see a fatality down there a year ago, unfortunately. And it's just things we don't want to see in the county that we can prevent as much as possible.

And if I remember, when we were talking about the wheel tax, that was our most expensive project that was out there.

No, I think that was kind of road 60.

Road 60 from 35 to St. Joe's, $22 million. This one's a little less.

A little less? Not much, a little bit.

But that project, we're almost through the stage one plans. If everything goes good. I could potentially submit for a federal aid for that this November. But with that, I'm going to need to have a commitment of funds from the council. And them funds won't be, it'll be five years out. So the next federal aid call, that would be a 20, 2032, right? Yeah, so it'll be a 2032 levy. So all them funds would not have to be there until, that's when the majority of it will come out. There'll be some that would come out for engineering in the meantime, but that would be minimal versus the construction. Right now due to the soil samples down there where you found Pete anywhere from seven as low as seven foot deep up to 55 feet The piece that shallow was seven feet and found it all the way up to 55 foot deep That was 15 foot deep and this is 55 So in a nutshell, this project, it's going to have to be bridged. We're not going to be able to dig that. We're going to have to pile on that and bridge that area. Now, the stage one is not done yet. That will help rule out the repair that we're going to have to present to the state and how we'll move forward. But 55 foot deep in a muck and wet area, you're not going to dig that. And you've got to have something to stop it. So it'll probably be piled, driven down, and bridged. The asphalt on each side of that small structure has been built on over years, over years. And that has been showing it from six to eight foot deep asphalt. That's how much that's been. So for right now, just shooting from the hip, just to give you guys a ballpark, we're looking at around a $17 million project for construction. So with that, if it is 17 million, the county would have a 3.4 million match. But we still have to have construction engineering and construction inspection on that. Right now, I'd tell you the plans are close to $4 million. That's what we would be looking at. So in five years, you're going to be a little under $1 million a year we'd have to have in savings to put back. So something for you guys to think about, consider. The commissioners has funded the stage one. So we'll have the plans. The plans will be good for quite a while. If we wait very long, the environmental will have to be updated for any changes. And then obviously the cost estimate will have to be updated because everything seems to go up drastically every year. But then some things I wanted to hit on today as far as our funding, where we're at, some upcoming projects. And like I said, there's more opportunities that we can go after funds as well, too, guys, but it's always going to take a commitment from the county, commitment from the council, in order for me to even apply if you guys are willing to fund this project. We did do County Road 56. The county committed to that. I think the FIF funds paid for a lot of the match of that. I don't think FIF funds reach out that far over here. So I think that would mostly all be on the county's map. But there's a lot of other opportunities we could do and look at. I've talked to engineers about County Road 60. It's got a lot of peat and muck on it going from 35 to St. Joe. That's a $22 million project. Things that we can seek federal dollars for. But I don't want to put our money and effort towards getting it ready than not have it to be able to be funded. These are things that council, if they want the highway department to proceed, we're going to need a little bit of guidance from you guys. Say, hey, Ben, we can do this. Get working on the project. Or, Ben, we can't. Don't even waste your time and money. There's plenty of other things I can put my time and effort and funds towards. I think that's it. I mean, there's a lot of things I could talk to you guys about. Not just roads, but equipment and everything else. But we're doing the best we can with what we got.

Anybody else have any questions for Ben? Thank you, Ben, for the updates. Really appreciate it.

That's all right.

We appreciate you doing more with less sometimes. Thank you. All right.

What we got to do is what we'll do.

OK. Rhonda?

Well, listening to Ben's presentation, mine's much, much simpler. No million dollar. requests hey go for whatever you want and she'll you just start talking okay great so I know that council would prefer not to have included on the budget salaries so of course I did not But on form 144, I did put in a request for a 2.8% wage increase. And how I came up with that was projected cost of living for next year. So I think enough said on that. And next, we have a new employee in our department, Megan Brown. She is going to be our VSO assistant. I'm leaving in about two weeks to retire. And Samantha Saylor was appointed the new director. And so Samantha hired Megan Brown to be her Veterans Service Officer Assistant to do the office managerial duties in the front office. So I'm expecting a smooth transition for that. I told Samantha, the new director, that I would be available for mentoring if she needs me. I'll be a phone call away, just the way Brian Lamb and Travis Holcomb was for me. So passing the torch along. Office supplies. I have not asked for an increase or decrease for that. So everything stays the same. Memorial Day Flags. Memorial Day Flags are our department's second largest budgeted item next to payroll. And what I did this year for Memorial Day Flags, we order 5,868 flags this year in 2026 for our deceased veterans in DeKalb County. For those of you who don't know, we supply all the flags for our fallen heroes in DeKalb County. And that number goes up a little bit every year, unfortunately. And so what I did to be proactive was typically we have at the great site what we call a wrong number. This just happens to be Vietnam Veteran. Vietnam Veterans are our biggest clientele that we have in our office. Number one, because their age, their health is failing. And so this particular flag This year ran us $1.12 for this flag, one of these. And I have to have, this year we had 5,868 of those. So this is our second largest budgeted item. Now, Collins Flag is our distributor out of Marion. Try to keep it local. We've worked with them for 16 years. And they are family. And we're family to them. And so we're always asking for a coupon. And so they do their best to allow us as much discount as we can possibly get, because they don't want to lose our business. And in order to save the county money, I use the county, DeKalb County van, and I go down and pick those flags up ourself to save on shipping and freight, which is a savings of about 320 bucks. So we take a day off, we go down there and pick up our flags and use the van. What I did this year was,

Trying to figure out ways to save money.

This is our 250th bicentennial year and so for the flag that you just saw, that's 30 inches tall. To get a smaller flag, a 24 inch tall flag, that would be 80 cents per flag versus next year's cost of $1.12. So I just wanted to kind of let you know we got a quote on that and that would be some additional savings. The DeKalb County veterans families we give these out as a thank you to the family Thanking the family for that deceased veterans sacrifice and service to our country So what we would be doing is giving out a bronze marker and a flag that would be a little bit smaller in height So I thought you know what I can put the ball in your court and you can make the decision if you want to scale back the size um on our 250th bicentennial year and you know i'm just trying to think of ways to save the county money so you were able to get that quote and look at those as options okay now what you see on your budget is the one quoted for the 30 inch tall flag okay and you could do the math um 80 cents a flag needing a total of 5,868 Blacks. Okay? In addition to the budget for the flags, we also provide the county for all flags, courthouse flags in front of the courthouse, flags for the highway department, flags for the 911 call center, flags for the display in front of our office over by the health department, flags for the annex building. And then in addition to that, we've got the little bitty tiny flags that you see in parades. Occasionally we'll have school systems stop in, need a box of those flags for events like Veterans Day, Memorial Day, and that kind of thing. those are the types of flags that come out of that budget money all right postage postage is $100 for the year that does not need to be increased or decreased the majority of our VA disability claims are sent electronically but we do have times when we need to have postage and so that does not need to be increased or decreased next we would have on our list there Recruitment and advertisement. So for recruitment and advertisement, those would be things like ink pens that have our phone number on there and veteran services. So contact information.

This year, we kind of changed it up a little bit.

And we went over and kept it local. We went over to Garrett and Hometown Graphics on Randolph Street. they took a coupon to give us a discount and we got these eyeglass wipes that's what falls under advertising recruitment that does not need to be increased or decreased now dues dues Indiana Department Veterans Affairs has mandated that now each County Veterans Service officer must belong to their local American Legion. We're accredited through the American Legion, and so I have membership and have had for a while over at the Garrett Post. Samantha Saylor has membership at the Auburn Post. It was kind of nice, even though both of us are from Garrett, we thought, you know what, let's share the love and let's each one choose a post. And so I had already belonged to the Garrett Legion. And so she chose to do Auburn. It's a large post, Post 97, who does tremendous things for veterans and is the largest post and actually has the most income coming in to be able to support worthy causes. And so we are mandated to pay dues. And so that has been incorporated in the budget monies. Those dues are $55 per veteran officer per year. And then the Indiana Association, Indiana Veterans Service Officer Association, those are reasonable dues. Those are $20 per veteran officers. That's something we have always had. And so that's always come out of our budget money. But I've increased that just a little bit to include the American Legion dues. So I had to go up just a little bit, not much. Software maintenance. Software maintenance is through, excuse me, software maintenance is through Vetrospect. Vetrospect is our software that is very similar to what the courts use, and that's what every veteran office utilizes. There's 92 counties in Indiana, and we all use Vetrospect. And so the amount that they charge us per year is $504.50. I'm lucky. The director, Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs, pays my user fee. Now, they're able to do that, but can they change that at any point when their budget starts to get a little bit tight? And so I don't ever just assume that each year that that's going to be taken care of for the director. So I do allow it in the budget for three users to be able to utilize that software. And so right now, just for a short amount of time, we've got three users in our office. Mine's absorbed by Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs, and so we've got two users now I'll be exiting at the end of the month, and so Megan Brown, she'll kind of pick up where I left off. Where I'm a little different, maybe from other department heads, is once the budget money comes in January 5th or maybe a little bit later, I start paying bills right out the gate, especially with Vetrospect, before they get an opportunity to increase their cost. for that year. So I just get a little ahead of the game and go ahead and get those paid. Because each year it goes up slightly. Vetrospec's pretty good. They haven't had a lot of jump up on cost usage for software maintenance, but they did just recently. Travel and training does not need to be increased or decreased. Where we have been very blessed in our department is that DeKalb County van. That is wonderful. So all you got to do is reserve it. And then that way you're saving money out of your budget for travel and training. We are required to go quarterly for training to school. And so it's all over the state. Last time it was up by Valparaiso. And so by reserving the van, it sure does keep money in the travel and training budget because the van, Larry, has it fully gassed up. And that works out really good for us. So we're taking advantage of that. And historical markers. That is right there. Those are the bronze markers. Does anybody want to see one of the bronze markers? I know I bring them every year for the budget.

I'm really impressed with the bronze markers.

Some counties use a plastic marker that deteriorates real easy. Ours is quality. And we get those from Ohio. And get a marker that's durable one that is worthy of that veteran Those markers cost us approximately one of them cost us approximately thirty six dollars For many many years and so I feel like they're reasonable and so I yeah that's something I feel like we should not skimp on and so but that budget money does not need to be increased or decreased and I'm grateful that we can proudly hand that off to a family something that's just so beautiful compared to other counties who are trying to cut budget money and they're given plastic ones or ones that are going to deteriorate or what have you okay promotions that does not need to be increased or decreased and what falls under promotions is our time at the DeKalb County Fair so we've reserved a table this year at the fair last year we skipped the fair it felt like when we were at the fair last year or excuse me the year before It felt like when I was there on a Saturday and a Friday evening, specifically in the evening, I didn't get a lot of clientele through there that were veterans. During the day, more so. But in the evening, I was at the fair, and I didn't feel safe. And I already had a plan in my head. If an active shooter comes through, I'm always positioned, Dave Bund positions me right in the middle of that industrial tent. And while I was there, I just, I didn't feel safe. I don't know if it was a feeling of the clientele that was coming through there or what have you, but just an intuition for me. I had a plan in my head. If an active shooter comes in, I was going to go out the back of that tent right underneath there, and I already had an exit in my head of what to do, and then we had a shooting last year. It was unfortunate that we had a shooting. But we are back at the fair this year. I know Samantha, when she interviewed, the county commissioners asked her, will there be a presence at the fair where we have somebody from your office present so that veterans in our community know that there is somewhere to go. There's someone to help you. If you've got a question about benefits, if you're struggling and you need to figure out a way to get income, there are certain benefits that we can put through quickly. and get help for those veterans. And so we're back at the fair. I'm not sure that we will be there in the evening so much, but during the day, I think that's where we get the majority of our veterans coming through the industrial tent during the day. So that's what that money comes out of. Amy and I have talked about Dave Bunn maybe providing us a table at no cost. And that is not allowed. We have really tried to really talk with him. Can you do this? The health department has a presence at the fair as well. And they don't get the luxury of getting their table, their station, at no cost either. I wish that could somehow be changed, but I'm sure it has to do with budget money. Furniture and fixtures, that does not need to be increased or decreased. Neither does equipment. And what kind of questions do you have for me?

Just a comment. Excuse me. Thank you for all you do. You do a tremendous job in your office. I know many veterans that really depended on you for help, and you've guided them in many different directions. Very seldom do I editorialize, but I'm going to take an opportunity here. We wouldn't be here without our veterans. I mean, that's just a given fact. I think if it's between a small flag and a larger flag, that larger flag is a small token of thank you from the county to remember them. And when you drive by a cemetery, it's very visible. And if we would need the money, I would head up a private fundraising group to make that up. But I think that's just a small token of appreciation for all the sacrifices that they've done. Because like I say, we wouldn't be here without our veterans.

Thank you.

And thank you.

The other amazing thing is that not only Rhonda, but the previous directors, the veterans are still coming from other counties because our office provides the exceptional service to them. Thank you very much.

And I have to agree with them. I wouldn't go to a smaller flag. You know, I got one of my dad's, and it looked so nice. Everything and I would I would try something different before we go to a smaller fight That sticks out when you walk drive through our cemetery for all those veterans and everything if anyone ever needs a fresh flag Swing in we can hand you a fresh flag Yeah, you get a brand new in it Memorial Day, but sometimes they get tattered I do want to thank you, too.

I know personally my husband and my dad have both really Relied on your office and you guys have always stepped up you also treat people with respect the auditor's office specifically we get all of the veterans that you're sending to us for property tax exemptions and we've yet to hear a complaint about how thorough you are and how you make people feel valued so we appreciate that although we will miss you thank you we appreciate that you know um when i got the blessing of being able to step into this role i knew i had big shoes to fill

And if you show up for work every day and dig your heels in and learn, it's going to be okay. And God has blessed that all so much. I have a reputation sometimes, and you may have heard it, that we'll just say a prayer before I hit submit on the claim. And we ask for God's will be done. And I really know that makes a difference. And so thank you for everything. Thank you for the support. I'm going to miss this place 14 years in, and it's kind of bittersweet.

Thank you.

For the record, I'd like to also note that this is the first time in many years, many, many years, Bill VanWy has agreed with anything I've said. Thank you, Rhonda. Greatly appreciate all your efforts. Thank you.

We're going to miss you. I'm going to miss you.

Yeah. Okay, it's now lunch break. Let's get back in about an hour, be a little bit before 1, and if we've got anybody else that.

I have, just to confirm, I've got Brady coming over. The sheriff is coming over at 1 o'clock. And I've asked the surveyor, I haven't heard back from them yet if they can come any earlier. So I'm not sure about them, but I'm checking. The extension office said that they were going to try to come over early. I told them we get a lunch from 12 to 1, so anyway. And then Becky Calhoun with Drug Free is the only other one. She had requested the latest time, and so I'm not sure if she can change her time or not. But I requested it anyway.

Thank you. Thanks, Jody. We really appreciate it. You're welcome.

OK. I'm assuming not.

We haven't heard anything. No.

I have reached out a couple of times, and I haven't heard Patrick Grant. OK. He asked us to enter everything, and he submitted it and signed it. And that might be this.

Okay, we're back in session. Cheryl, are you ready? Thank you.

Thank you for coming early.

Oh yeah, no problem at all. Okay, so starting off, I think this will be fairly brief. I don't think there's a whole lot of changes in the budget. for the sheriff's office. But starting off with the general fund, much of it was left the same as requested. The merit board members that we have, that pay stayed the same. We have on-call for our detectives and transport that all stayed at the $25 per day for being on-call. part-time hourly rate stayed the same. And then outside of our pay matrix that we have for the deputies, that stayed the same. But there are three deputies that are going to reach their next milestone. The pay matrix works on a five and 15 and 20 year scale. So we have three deputies that are gonna reach their 10 year next year in 2027. So their pay would go up because of the matrix. Some other increases that we'll have in the budget due to contracts that we have at the Sheriff's Office is the medical contracting that we have through UCC. They provide all of our medical services in the jail, a full-time nurse and an on-call physician. So that contract is going up roughly $7,000 a year, a total $183,000 and some change. And then the other big contract we have is with Canteen Food Services. They do their contract based on, I think it's the consumer price index. And so as food costs go up, that's how they do it. And that's 3.8% next year. So that's a $12,000 increase for the entire year for their contract. Some of the decreases that we have in the budget, we decreased our ammo and flares account by $15,000 and moved some of that money into one of the newer positions we have for the animal control officer. We've had some expenses with that this year. And so a new account has been created for that. So $2,400 was moved to the animal control services account. and also we moved some to our petroleum products for all of our vehicles, just general increases in fuel costs. We have a insurance policy for our reserves, and we don't have as many reserves, so we were able to reduce that a little bit, $100, so that was a decrease. Another decrease that we had was Spillman is our police database that everybody here in DeKalb County uses and took a look at that invoice that we've had and was able to cut out some services that have not forever been used through that system. So we're able to reduce that by $4,000 and that money was also moved to the animal control supplies account. Another small decrease we had was it says Butler PD contract Butler the city of Butler contracts with the county to provide police coverage in times that they're short-handed For vacations and that type of things so Butler pays the county and then the county pays the deputy so an account was created for that. They don't have that lack of coverage as often, so we're doing that less, so we were able to bring that down a little bit. Back to the new accounts that I mentioned that were created, the animal control supplies requested $4,000 in that account. Those are things like just miscellaneous supplies that are needed, syringes, body bags, respirator cartridges, and cleaning supplies. And then the animal control services, $2,400 for that for autopsies that are born on animals when that's necessary. And then a company that we're contracted with called Trusted Journey that disposes of animals when that's necessary. Once they've been euthanized, they have to be disposed of properly by laws because of the chemicals that are used. One of the things that I wanted to touch on to the council was when it comes to the pay matrix, the pay for the deputies, frequently what we're doing is competing with area agencies Oftentimes, when you have someone that wants to get into law enforcement, they apply just like anyone else would. If you get a degree, you go out and apply to several companies. It's very similar in the law enforcement world. They go out and apply to several law enforcement agencies that may be within a vicinity of their home. So oftentimes, we're competing with Allen County, Noble, Steuben, LaGrange, Fort Wayne, State Police, and then all the local agencies here. Allen County is at about, they start their deputies at about 73,000 right now. Steuben County is at 64. Noble is at 65. And LaGrange at 66. The Auburn Police Department is starting their first class patrolmen at 69,000 a year. We're currently at 64,000 for a deputy when they start starting pay. So I don't think that's egregiously under the ones that we can compete with. Some of them we just simply aren't going to be able to compete with pay-wise because of, well, their budgets are different. So I do understand some of them we simply aren't going to match. What I would ask the council to keep in mind as all this is considered is When we look at that, the process to hire a new deputy, we have to advertise. We usually advertise for about a month so we can get a pool of deputies in our process. Then that application process, once we started, is about three to four months. They go through an FTO program. They go to the Law Enforcement Academy for three months down in Indy. They drive back and forth every single week. They come home on the weekends for that. So a lot of driving back and forth for that three months. Then they do another field training program and they get back before they start on their own as a full-fledged deputy that's out handling calls by themselves. So that process is a minimum of a year, depending on the timeframes of some of the field training programs. And that's just starting as a brand new deputy. That doesn't account for lack of experience that they're going to have at that time. I'm just trying to emphasize the amount of resources and time and commitment and money that the county puts into the new deputies. So I'm requesting that the council keep that in mind when they consider the pay. I'm not requesting something that's 10% to 15% to where we're up in the $75,000, but a small adjustment that would keep us competitive. And I would say we're competitive. We're within the ballpark. Like I said, we're not egregiously behind anybody, but if we don't make small adjustments and move forward with everybody else, then we will start to fall behind. So comparing to nearby counties, DeKalb is about 3,000 below the local average when you look at northeast Indiana counties. And which is, because Allen County is, I think, moves that needle a little bit, we're 1,900 below the median of that.

Brady. Yes. The base or the beginning salary for road officer, When I was with the city, on city council, that first class patrolman's pay was what drove the pension amounts or costs. Is that the same way with the county?

Yeah, the sheriff's, the deputies are on a separate pension. They contribute 3% to that pension. And then their pension is based on their highest five years of pay.

Okay, but what does the county put into that? Is that I get maybe I'm not either I'm not thinking it correctly or I'm not explaining the base salary and the city is where the pensions started and so everything we could do a lot of adjustments with a lot of other off when they would get promoted and things like that was fine, but everything focused back on that first class patrolman's salary is the beginning point. Is that the way our pension works or is it based on their highest pay at the end?

I think I understand your question and It's not based on what you're making when you start. It's based on your highest five years, which is typically gonna be your last five years oftentimes. But yeah, it'd be, it's based on the average of your five highest years.

And then the matrix that we're using and have used for probably about six years now, maybe? That's right. The first year pay would drive the rest of the matrix up.

It would, yeah. In order to prevent compression of that, because of the way that is structured, it would be a domino effect. So it would affect everybody. Whatever percentage that is, everybody would be bumped up, but it would still be within that pay matrix.

And Brady and I have talked about this, and I've talked to other departments and other people about this. This is an ongoing issue. It always has been. It's probably a little worse now at this point than it was before because the state increased the beginning pay of a state officer of Indiana State Patrolman to the point where it's driven everybody else up. The state police superintendent at the time that it was initially happened that they were starting to offer crossover, letting people leave the department and come into the state police. He would say that they don't recruit local officers. Well, they do recruit local officers. And I think even back then we were able to show it. But we're all fighting this same battle of we raise it, the neighbor raises it, and the next neighbor raises it a little more. It's just ongoing, but as Brady has said, If we train an officer and we lose that officer, it's going to be a year, maybe two, before we're back up to the same place because of the training. And so it's really important that we retain our officers.

We've been very fortunate, you know, I have to say. I mean, we're fully staffed on the road. And, you know, I do recognize that if we were to go far above and beyond, I do understand that that's where we get into this. They're above us. We're above them. You know, if the deputies at $69,500 a year would put us right in the middle there to be able to compete with the Auburn Police Department's wage, that's where they're starting. And that would, you know, we don't want to be in a boat where we're chasing in the future. You know, we want to try to keep up with it and stay competitive so that, you know, a couple years from now, we're not talking about being down five deputies and how we need to try to catch up because we're 15,000 behind everybody else. So my request is to stay competitive so we can retain our people.

Which I think in the not so distant past, we were in that position where all of a sudden we had to jump up Quite a bit because we had fallen behind. Yeah. We have an excellent department and they're all pretty dedicated to DeKalb County. And some of them may leave not so much for the money, but for opportunities. When you've got a small department, there's only so many positions and so many different types of specialty. Maybe they can't be in that particular specialty. In a department this size, but if they were to move to Fort Wayne or to the state police there'd be other opportunities We so we have to we have to also consider those things

I do agree. I mean, if someone wants to go to work for Fort Wayne City Police, they have tons of opportunity. Other opportunities we simply don't have here in DeKalb County. Not able to do that, but what we want is people that want to work here in DeKalb County and be in a community where hopefully they're from and where they live. And I do recognize that the pay will never be what Fort Wayne PD pays, but the bigger that difference gets, the more attractive it is to go do that. Any other questions?

What did you say Noble County is paying right now?

I want to say it was 64, but let me check my notes. Noble County is at $65,112. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Brady. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Hey, Rick. Have you? Right here. I've heard that Noble County is going to get 4%. Have you heard anything out of that? I have not heard from anybody.

Well, I can find out too. Yeah, we can ask. Probably Noble County and Mr. Benton County are the ones that we'll be competing with. Well, that's what I say.

They're right with that 65, but if they get 4%, that's quite a jump there a little bit.

You can start now. Good afternoon. Some results should be pretty easy. We kept our wage budgets at zero percent as requested and then our operating accounts we also kept those at zero percent. We kept them the same as last year. We already run a pretty slim budget. We didn't make any changes so that way we could meet that request of zero percent increase.

You've got all your vehicles up to date and everything. You don't need anything new as far as vehicles or anything. No, our vehicles are pretty good as is.

We're in a pretty good situation, our motor pool. So we don't have any items on our five-year plan, no major items to purchase. We're pretty good there, nothing that is a necessity. I could think of a lot of things I would want, but nothing that I necessarily need.

Well, I know that since you and Glenn have been there, we hear a lot less, a lot fewer issues coming from the surveyor's department. You've worked pretty hard with all of the area residents. Which, by the way, did you get that second email? I did.

I'll reach out.

Yeah, complaints about the surveyor's office have gone down considerably. my that's who i got the most calling most of it just come from you huh no i have to say you did get yeah you did get my pumpkins out of my drain so they'd run yeah save your drain so anyhow but no as has he said the complaints have come down so

I think the only thing for consideration is just like the training fund. I'd like to try to see that stay there for whatever we have possible. You know, Chris Comer and myself have taken on parts of a lot of different committees that cover a lot of different areas. So we're trying to become as well diverse as we can. So if the opportunity arises that we need some of that training and just want to be able to come to council to get that or have that.

There is one like the recorder that he had requested more than what we're going to be able to do in the elected official training fund. We will need to put more in the county general one.

Which you've asked for right here, right? Asked for 3,500 out of county.

Yeah. Which, that doesn't go very far for training opportunities, so.

And then this is where you had wanted this to be higher here, and that's what Sam was saying, that we can't give you more of that. That was four.

yep yep that's what we had had previously for yeah that's that's a fun for Glenn and I the rest of the rest of the office comes out of that 3,500 but 2000 doesn't get you very far You know, this previous year, I went to a data center conference. Chris and I went to that, tried to learn some more about data centers, what all the new technology was, what's the issues with them, what's the pros, the cons, so that we could bring it back to Planning Commission and hopefully have a more informed board. So that used up this year's training, so it didn't go to any floodplain or stormwater conferences this year. The plan is to try to, you know, every other year to go attend the Indiana floodplain and stormwater management conference, learn any new changes in the state regulations, any new up-to-date technologies or strategies for maintaining stormwater and floodplain. Next year, that will probably be the plan is to attend stormwater conference again.

For Becky Calhoun this will be something you guys need to decide She can't come early but her budget is exactly the same as it was for this year so I could, it's 3 o'clock, it's a long time to wait. I could, or Jody, one of us could message her and have her send us an email or a document or something of any changes that she had anticipated that we could relay to you guys.

You can't come in until 2.30. The extension office can't come in until 2.00.

Extension, yeah.

extension or the or drug-free I probably shouldn't ask I mean I just feel like we should ask her to see if there was anything she wanted to speak with us about

Well, we're still are we still are we still trying to get rid of the money that didn't get spent ten years ago oh I don't know about that, but I mean she comes every year to commissioners and we He has plenty of money to give out in grants There was a there was a time Eight years ago, whatever, the previous person that was in charge of this program was not doling out the money appropriately. Got everybody and his brother from here to Indianapolis involved in it, the judges and everybody else. And finally came up with an agreement that they would give out money that hadn't been given out plus the current whatever income they had and they were going to spread it out over a number of years but it became a big issue this comes from some court cost doesn't it Yeah, the tobacco settlement was part of it, but I think there might be some that's put in when you get convicted in court. And Dana would maybe know this, or she should know this too if you're going to ask her. But it's not tax money.

It is from drug abuse prosecution and Interdiction and corrections and also alcohol and drug countermeasures.

Yes. But again, it's not tax money, it's coming in from Fines and stuff that people that they're paying But if I remember right it I mean it was because God you got it we had Indianapolis and everybody Like an hour ago before we went to lunch I emailed her and asked her if she could come in early, but we can try to call her That or just ask her if there's anything specifically they want to bring up. I With her stuff, it'd all be, does she have the?

So back with Becky Calhoun and drug-free .

Can you put it up there? There's nothing in the folder.

Well, the thing of it is is that there was something in the folder.

I'm looking at what I brought over. Because I always just save it on my computer.

$42,000 in award expenditures. Those would be those that apply for the grant. $12,000 in her contractual services, which that is $1,000 a month. Consulting service. Total budget's $58,000.

Talk to her about our budget. In that special fund, what's that her grants and stuff are coming out of? How much is in that fund total? It's just asked.

I don't know. On your shoulders.

she's not she's not gotten rid of it all yet 2025 we receded in 34 846. so they're still trying to get rid of how long has michael been here she said there's nothing special

We're specific that she wanted to tell you that it's basically the same budget.

All right, I just say we approve what she's got. Amy, previously, the former head of probation was running this. And part of the reason that the former head of probation is no longer here is because of the issues that happened with this. And then it was taken away from them altogether and pushed over here. But this money, the money comes in from sources other than tax money. And this is not anything we have a lot of control over. And I'm not sure who all she gives grants to, but she can give grants for non-smoking stuff and she can give grants to the jail and to the probation department and whatnot. One of those things that we have control but we have no control. So does that bring us So that brings us down to weights and measures maybe Okay, but I was gonna say is can can we look at that one then if he's not coming in can we look at that one Oh

I talked to Patrick.

He got a new vehicle last year, this year. Yeah. And he got new equipment for the measuring and all that. He did, yeah. And all that works well.

Yeah. It's really nice because you can take it up to the gas station. Think about like a Casey's that has multiple pumps with multiple different kinds of gas in there. He doesn't have to literally take it by hand back to the pump. He can just pull up in.

It's a nice truck. It works really well.

So it's working out really nicely. You should see that those little stickers with little punches getting done sooner, which is nice.

Because he only works half time, doesn't he?

Yeah, he is only part time. Correct. It's definitely not a full-time position.

I've not paid attention to the percentage increase from the other departments on the petroleum is 9%. Is that close to what the other ones were asking for? I mean, it doesn't sound unreasonable because he's all over the county, checking everywhere. Pardon? Probably not. Yeah. When he was there last, yeah.

Can't come to win to third What speed you get more money? And if you that's all it's last right because you're getting more air air pump moving through it.

I think Yeah But I think the one thing I would like to ask her is The changes that are coming down with the extension office I Does she need as much room as she's currently got for the extension office? Yeah, I mean, that would be the big question here, because how this new regionalization thing is going to work, I don't know.

So Effie is coming for Alicia.

She is not. OK.

It was in that letter, wasn't it?

First of the year.

He's judging at 4-H, so I don't know. Maybe Bill knows something more than I do, but good. That's what Elise said.

According to the letter that she wrote, that she wrote, gave us, with the transformation of the extension taking place effective January 1, 2027, The contractual service wording will be the same as it was last year. Services will still be provided to the county in the areas of 4-H youth development, agriculture and natural resources, health, human sciences, and community development. But skipping down. They're going to a regional team of extension educators. So that means to me that not everybody is going to be based here. But one person may still be based here, but everybody else sharing. I think that was addressed in here too.

Right here.

The line, let's see here. The contractual services line item has increased by 2.4%, $3,330. And the second point on here, because educator expenses are now included with the contractual services line item, the travel training education line was decreased by 93.5%. $6,550 and the computer equipment line within the CUME cap fund was decreased by 58%, or $1,600. Overall, the extension budget reflects a 1.9% decrease of $4,820. being included in their fee. And this is strictly a commissioner's decision. It is. But if they don't, and they have, I think the space study found that the extension office had an excessive amount of space to begin with. We, the commissioners, have been looking for a place to relocate Chris Gallmer and the GIS people, get them out of that red brick building into an appropriate place. If we can find a different, if they don't need as much space as they've got, if we can find a different place for them and put Chris and the GIS staff in the actual annex building would be better for them. But you all, I mean, we still have to provide something for the extension office. It's just a matter of how much space and where.

said that Rick is talking about the extension educators, not their clerical staff. Brenda and Heather being reassigned.

Two of them will be reassigned.

Daddy said that Rick was talking about the extension educators, not their clerical staff, Brenda and Heather, being reassigned.

So the educators are being reassigned. The clerical staff will still be here.

Yes.

But in either case, the space study already says they have too much space. What can we do to rearrange that? But that's a commissioner issue. That's not us. That's for them to think about.

Yeah, it wasn't. That's what Susan just said. But it should be now if you can hit refresh. You're talking about extension, right?

Yeah.

Anybody else?

Yeah, just to reiterate, so it does say in her notes, so for the contractual services, Purdue has asked for a 3% increase. I have 3%, but then she said that they switched it to 2.4%, which now includes educators, mileage, and computer leases. And then 58% decrease as educator computers are now being paid for the contractual agreement. So that just leaves the three, basically, there's one part-time requested person that's very, very small. And then the two other clerical, which he has in parentheses 0.12% decrease in wages for the first deputy. And that's on that budget line items by department.

What I was reading to you was the letter that she provided us on July 6th, which everybody should have a copy of that.

And then the other page kind of looks like this. It would have came in your email, but the very first page looked like that. But I also uploaded that.

$4,500 for supplies and $4,250 for postage. Those just seem high for such a small office.

You send out a newsletter.

One sec, we can look at that. Does that have a percentage on it? Are we missing a column there?

Well, we took that off because Susan said a lot of times that percentage isn't correct.

All right. Well, if it's not going to, if there might be a... For whatever reason.

Yeah. You said that some of them are all...

Okay.

I think it's because one of them is adopted and one of them is requested. Okay.

Thank you.

They didn't spend it all, I guess that's .

Versus 46374 is probably what that category would be paid at the highest rate.

A little space thing as a commissioner issue to deal with, not us. only the only reason i bring it up is we have been trying to find a better spot for chris and gis which is very very important for a long time we can get it it's junk junk in the basement the sheriff the sheriff has got fingerprints from 100 years ago down in the basement and there's some other stuff but it's a lot of Fingerprints and all that they'll be dealt with separately, but all the other stuff's just done Truthfully the building could be torn down and made additional parking space I think that's what the space study recommended. What's that? Isn't that what the space study recommended was just Yeah, cuz we don't want to have to maintain that though I still to this day When they tore everything else down in that block Why did they leave that red brick building standing? I have no idea. But it's terrible. You know, when I first moved to Auburn, there was the Clock Tavern was in that block. There was some type of a, I think there was a meat market there. There was a meat market where Cruz's building is. There was a locker there, and there was something to do with eggs, some poultry thing that was there. And maybe that's the locker. But they tore it all down about 45 days after I moved over. But anyway, for years, we've been trying to find something better for building development. We keep pushing him off, pushing him off. Yesterday, Michael Lapham owns new carpet. And he said, well, we've denied Chris for so many years. And granted, Michael needs new carpet in his office. But hopefully, whatever change is happening with extension office will give the commissioners an opportunity to take care of a couple other issues.

So are we supposed to let her know not to come extension?

The only thing that you know as now these guys have the next 45 days or maybe a little less to work with moving getting the right numbers in. We still need to determine what we're going to ask for as far as pay increases for the staff. And two, three, and four. And when do you need to know what the number is that we're going to have officially approved? September or the August meeting? Or when do you need to know that?

Not until September. Except at the beginning of September is when you guys decide all your cuts and what you're going to do. But that's the meeting that we advertise prior to. So I always advertise high to be able to adjust for any possible increases in wages. Now if, yeah, I'll still have to advertise high because you guys aren't going to be able to tell us next month whether you're going to be hard and fast at yes, 2% or whatever. So I'll still have to advertise high to accommodate for any increase that could be.

And the next meeting date is August 1, Susan?

12th, I believe.

The other thing that I would like to see, and they could take care of this now, Over the last two days, we've talked a lot about education and training. We know that the elected officials training fund couldn't accommodate everybody for everything that was necessary. I would like to see that we add into, because they all held the line very well, I would like to see at least $1,000 put in for the training line in their actual department budget. so that there is sufficient. Well, the ones that I wrote down that I remembered, the surveyor commented on it, the treasurer's office commented on it, the recorder's office commented on it.

Surveyor and recorder are the ones that requested more, that actually are planning on using it. It's going to be more than $1,000. I thought we were putting in the difference. If leader requested four, we were able to do two.

And if we can do that, fine. I'm fine with that. But let's put it in now so that it's not forgotten. Because we want to encourage them to get the training that they want or need. And they all held the line pretty well. I think if anybody requested anything excessive, it was due to contractual obligations that they didn't have anything they could do. They couldn't change it. Officeholders did a great job. They really did, keeping it flat.

And I think the council did a good job. I just want to compliment everybody on the council, because did your homework, you asked the pertinent questions, and there was no stones left unturned. So when we walk out of here, There's there's very little question and everything was very transparent. So great job everybody.

I Think I think I'm looking into the future The where we're really well, we're really going to have to and it's not going to be me I'm gonna be Amy We're gonna have to figure out ways to supplement the highway funding and only getting $1,600 in six months out of the wheel tax isn't going to be worth a whole lot.

We put on the agenda for next month the wheel tax to have our big discussion on. Anybody else have anything to come before the council? Hearing nothing, we don't need a formal motion to adjourn because we're... I think we do. We're good to go.

You have your motion.

Any further discussion to come before the council? OK. What's the vote? Yay or nay on adjourning? Yay. Yay.

OK. Now we're done.