County Council - Regular Meeting

Call the meeting to order. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. Jim, would you lead us to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, justice for all. Add roll call please

here. Present here. Here. Marissa. Was the agenda posted? Yeah. For clarification, it was posted online and we are required to make sure that it is available at the door to the meeting room before the meeting starts, which we did, but we will make a better effort to uh have it there at an earlier time. I'd entertain a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. Motion by Jessica, second by Dan. Roll call, please. Miss Flang, yes. Sw yes yesout yes

spider yes yes yes next we have uh meeting minutes we'll approve these separately because I think there are some corrections so I'd entertain a motion to approve the December 16th 2025 council meeting minutes move second motion by Jessica second by Dan comments or corrections on December 16 minutes. President Hughes, I submitted some corrections to Marissa. All of them were very minor and none of them change the intent of the minutes.

Okay. Can we accept accept those as submitted? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Roll call, please. Mangan. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Stance, yes. Sper, yes. Steu, yes. I'd entertain a motion for approval of the January 6, 2026 special council meeting. So moved. Second motion by Jessica, second by Dan.

I submitted a slight change in that uh she had Mr. Okay. Any other corrections or comments? Roll call. Blank, yes. Quiet, yes. Yes. Yes. Spy, yes. Pants, yes. Cheers, yes. And I'd entertain a motion for the approval of January 27, 2026. Council meeting. It was not a special meeting. That should be the regular meeting. I'll move second. Okay. Motion by Jessica, second by Dan. Comments or corrections?

Yes. On these minutes, Mr. President, the transfers and appropriations were not broken out and I asked Marissa to break those out individually and I believe that she has done so but I wanted to inform council that that's what okay we can accept that as yes as corrected. Yes. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Roll call, please. Mang, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Spy. Yes. Can Yes. Yes. Okay. Moving on to the transfer and appropriation agenda. Elizabeth.

All right. Starting with transfers in County General 139 public defender 371 rental lease equipment uh positive700 536 equipment negative700 total transfer zero. to approve. Second. Motion by Jessica, second by Dan. Good morning, Shelley.

Good morning, Shelley Harvey, Office Administrator, public defenders office. Again, I apologize for the finance committee miss meeting. Um, this is to transfer funds to fund the LEAP copyear lease agreement. Uh, our monthly payment that we'll have. I had budgeted for it. I put it in the wrong account. Any [clears throat] questions? Roll call, please. Ed, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. H. Yes. Mr. Hughes. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. Right. 149 surveyor 104101 drainage board attorney -6,21.90 311 contractual services positive 6,2190 total transfer zero move to approve second motion by Jessica second by Dan Tom oh this is just uh they hired a new drainage board attorney and he wants to be paid out of contractor services under the 300 line so they have to create that instead of the 100 line just transferring line numbers. So, this was an employee. Now, it's just a contractor. Is that

Apparently, that's what it was set up as before. But, uh they switch they wanted to get paid out of the 300 instead of the 100. Liz, will that will that change? Uh was that FICA and Perf at all? I don't believe so. I believe we just paid them before like a flat fee and it but it came out of the 100 every month versus the 300. So it's not going to change anything as far as if it wasn't a 101 it was probably already accounted for but that just means they have extra in their FICA proof. Okay. Other questions or comments? Add roll call, please. Plank.

Yes. Yes. Fiverr. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you guys. In appropriations, County General 153 commissioners, 342 workers compensation insurance, 333,000 for a total of 333,000. Move to approve. Second. Motion by Jessica, second by Dan. Good morning. Yeah.

So, workers comp was an autogenerated number in open gov during budget and it didn't um account for claims. So, I still have to pay all the claims that come in. Can you tell us the amounts due in January and February, please? The total that the commissioners have to pay for January was 47,000 and February was 45,000.

So this won't cover a year's worth. I'd like to think it would. We'll have to see. So workers comp claims are completely unpredictable. I mean, even old cases can be reopened years later. you know, a successful workers comp budget is wrong every single time. So, you have no idea if or when somebody's going to file a workers comp claim, how it's going to be litigated or not litigated. I mean, there there's no way to predict. We discussed this and for quite a while during finance committee and then I know Stephen sent out a very detailed email outlining was that just was it to the whole council? It was.

Okay. So, if you had a chance to read it, it went through in great detail basically showing that we're self-insured with a with a risk mitigation plan on the backside and then our insurance provider does what they call pooling to try to spread out the risk. So, we're not fully insured. So, we have to pay both premiums which cover administrative cost, legislation or or litigation, all those things. Then, we have to pay actual claims up to a certain amount. Beyond that, then our insurance kicks in because we're selfinsured. Yeah. But last year when the last year when the calculation was made, we were not that correct. Like that's changed for this year or that's always been the case.

No, it's always been the case that we've been self [clears throat] as far as I know. So we corrected the open go component or how does that no correction made? Mike's not on it. [clears throat] There's no correction to be made. So it only accounts for the premiums. Same with healthare. Gotcha.

So for 2025 the it was $333,080 was budgeted and all that was gone by June 30th. Was there an additional appropriation last year to cover claims? I believe so. And was any of that returned to the general fund the end of the year or was that all spent as well? I don't know that answer. I think some of it was returned to the [laughter] general fund. I don't know.

Do we know how much was spent last year out of this line? in claims alone last year was yeah last year was 501,000 and then we have to pay an annual claims handling charge on top of that and that's $25,000. Okay. But out of this line it was 501 $51,38062 plus $25,725 and that claims handling fee has remained flat it looks like for the last three years. And again, the request for 2026, which was $10,973, that was just an error. Correct.

Again, that was an open gov autogenerated number. I don't know that it was an error or not. I mean, I'm hearing the auditor say it's there's nothing to be correct. So, at budget time, um, the auditor's office did a autogenerated amount for the highway as well, and I had to put an additional $100,000 because I knew that I was going to be getting my claims. So, that's the same thing what Jenna is needing to do right now. So, the original amount, the 10,000 I think that was just said, that's just to for the employees, but it doesn't pay for the claims. Okay. Thanks. I think an important point is we really don't have a choice. These are workers comp claims we have to pay them.

I would agree with that. Yeah.

I don't think we have much choice that the claims be paid. The question is where the money comes from. And had we known that it the correct amount was either 333,000 or 501,000, we would have had to take that money out of some other part of the budget at budget time. We didn't have that opportunity. The question now is we're taking it out of our cash balance which will when we get to that point before the next property tax settlement potentially put us in the position of having to borrow money to stay afloat.

That's that's the concern I have. I understand we would had to take it out of the cash balance or you know we would have appropriate for it if it was a budget time even if we would have a correct amount that's all I'm saying any other questions or comments I think also at budget time we talked about the possibility of uh looking at the workers comp to be uh is there anything we can do and I know probably you're both hopefully on top of it be a little bit more proactive so we don't have the workers comp planes that we're experiencing.

Yeah. The the plan is to take uh a corrective action look at any type of an accident that happens and see if we can implement some irreversible corrective action to prevent it from happening to somebody else. Uh implement a training program, educate everybody, those types of things. Those aren't those things are not being done today, but they need to be. What is your timeline? Uh yes. Yep. And thank you for sending out that information to huge help to me. Yep. You're welcome. Other comments. Add roll call, please. Mr. Blanket. Yes.

Mr. Whitehead. Yes. Spiper. Yes. Mmal. Yes. Look out. Yes. Mr. K. Yes. Mr. Hughes. No. Thank you. 125 clerk 129101 deputy clerk registration 29 $22 for a total of $22. Move to approve.

Second. Motion by Jessica. Second by Dan Rick. Council, Rick Spangler, Delaware County Clerk. This is to adjust a payroll problem that we've had for the last two years. We we corrected this in January of last year. Um and then for some reason it didn't get corrected on the books and once we saw our 2026 budget, it was in there. Again, this this person is not getting a raise, any adjustment. We're trying to just pay them exactly what they were paid last year. I did bring the 2025 appropriation if you if anybody would like to see it. questions. I will have a follow-up question to the auditor's office to see if this is going to be corrected or has been corrected going forward. You all get a chance to look into it yet. Okay. Thank you.

My question is could you not find $22 someplace else in your budget and transfer it? I just hate to start this early in the year to, you know, juggle things around. Well, personally, I hate this early in the year to start appropriating money that we out of our balance. Try to set our whether whether it's 333,000 or $22. [laughter] I understand. I don't like to do it. Any other questions or comments? Roll call, please. Miss Flangen, yes. Mr. Wyatt, yes. Miss Piper, yes. Mr. Moble, yes.

Mr. Bookout, yes. Mr. Can Yes. Mr. Hughes? No.

Thank you. 138 courts 109101 administrative assistant 09 $40,000 129101 court administrator 28 15,600 198 101 part-time 98 30,60 171 FICA 6,561 172 PF 6,227 7 for a total of 98,548 to approve. Second [clears throat] motion by Judge, second by Dan. Judge,

thanks. Good morning. Judy Calhoun, Judge, Delaware Circuit Court 1. I told you last month that Emily um Anderson has given a resignation. Actually, her last day was on Friday, February 20th. And so, um we we appreciate everything she did to try to get us to this point. So, I ask for forgiveness in advance because I have no idea what all she did. Um, we tried, but I'm trying to work on that. So, really what we're doing is first of all, her payout, um, I think I corrected it in finance. It's 155. So, it's 15,500 for Emily's payout for her PTO. I'm asking permission, I guess, whether I need to or not from the council is her last day technically would be May 7th. I can't wait until May 7th. So, I want to make sure I can hire someone, pay her out her some, and then hire someone. Now, we have some really good applicants that we've interviewed. I'm hoping if we get the permission and blessing of of the council, whether I need it or not, I want to make sure I'm on the right track. Um, and it's to get somebody hired in the next couple weeks and start them in the court administrator's position. I do come to you again. I'm not asking for both of those positions, part-time or full-time. We came before and asked that back at budget time. I was told last month that was the wrong time to ask, but I'll ask again. Um, I really think this job has morphed into something that one person can't shouldn't I shouldn't say can't but shouldn't be able or obligated to handle with the grant situation with our self um help center with all of the technology that we do in our courts. One court administrator probably can't handle it or shouldn't have to handle it. So, I come to you again, whether it is a full-time position, which was the $40,000 plus benefits, or whether it's a part-time position up to 29 hours at $20 an hour. I put those both in there just so you could see the numbers. I'm not asking for both. I would love to have one or the other. Um, the other additional thing I told finance is that u Miss Anderson has agreed to come back on a contract basis um for a few hours after hours for her new job as well to train the court administrator. And so

we'll adjust that issue, but we still have some money right now in our budget for professional services. We'll use that. If I run out of that, I'll ask you, but that'll be help really helpful. And so the idea being is not only train the new court administrator after hours, but if I do get either a part-time or full-time person, they could train them together. Um, we do have Carrie Buck who is our assistant otherwise, but I'll be honest with you, jury just the juries in general is her responsibility and she takes care of that. And so it's that's kind of her purview, but the court administrator's job has really morphed into something um more than one person probably should be required to handle. So I come before you, as I said, to make sure I have the blessing to hire someone. We do have some great candidates, and so we're looking to make that job offer, but I want to get your blessing first. And whether or not, again, I'll ask every time, can I get some help? Um whether it's in a administrator's assistant in full-time or assistant as a part-time position. So, I think we've calculated the FICA and the PERF. I hopefully, as I said, she helped me beforehand, but in the future, if there until I get somebody there. Yesterday, there were no emergencies. That was the first day without her. Um, I'll let you know today. [laughter]

What uh what uh salary are you proposing to bring this new uh person in? We put in there $40,000. The individual Oh, 75,000 is what we posted it as. That was the the salary we already appropriated for um for Emily's position for the court administrator. Do you plan to shift that to a 40-hour position?

They're on call 24/7. So whether I say 32 and 1/2 hours, there's no single person that's going to do that job at 32 and 1/2 hours. Right now it's listed at 32 and a half, but they are a salary employee and will work. They're also 247 on call for five judges. Additional magistrate. It's unclear because you had mentioned it's unclear that we know exactly what the administrator all of the things that she does. How do we know what the administrative assistant or part-time person will be responsible for versus the administrator themselves?

What I've gone through with Emily is trying to look through I have a calendar of all the the reports that are due and so it's a matter of delegating some of that um once we get that new person in. Um, and I I think that's I always said it's drinking from a fire hose because I'm sure whoever walks in there not knowing what not just the budget we have a few months before that, but also everything we report to the court as well. So, it's a matter of just delegating some of those responsibilities. So, Emily literally worked I can't tell you the number of days that she left before six or seven every day because I called her. But the reality is a new person won't be doing that. No, in reality they would be working right now. It's the 32 and 1/2 hours which is what the courts are working

which I think is why it's an excellent opportunity given our situation as we've discussed at Nauseium about 32 and 1/2 versus 40hour work weeks that the administrator of the position be able to set the tone of of shifting that into at least documenting it as a 40-hour work week with on call potentially as being you know a secondary piece because eventually we're going to have to get there

and I think that gets to the situation I'm not sure what you intend that would be more. It's not like we we're not making widgets. So if you're there longer hours, it's not making necessarily more, but also the idea being that you're the legislative body and we're the judicial body. So we are different branches of government. Um and so at some point in time, we do get to control our staff. You have to pay our staff, but we get to control what I mean actually we would I mean it is in our purview to to to dictate what that that number is. You can pay us, right? you have to obligated to pay us, but I'll come talk to the judges as well. But with regard to the court staff itself is under the purview of the judges.

I understand that. I'm saying, do you not see an issue with this administrator position not setting the tone to trying to shift to a 40-hour work week? At this point in time, I'd like to discuss that longer with all of you. And right now, we're not switching anybody to a 40-hour work week at this point in time. So to say one person is going to go to 40 when the rest of them are not, I'd love to have that discussion later. Okay. Pardon [clears throat] me, Judy. During our finance committee online 198, I believe we talked about that being able to be reduced as well. I have a note for 25520

because of the we're two months into the Yes, that would be true. I didn't figure that number. I apologize for that. So, obviously, we're looking at the rest of the year for that person at 29 hours, at $20 an hour. If we had a part-time position, I will take whatever you give me on that issue. I'd love to have, as I said, I'd love to have full-time because I think that would give continuity and exactly the situation we're in today. I think one, if we had it, I'm not sure Emily would have left or leaves would not have left this soon. And two, if I get a situation again where the court administrator stays for a couple years and then leaves, I'm exactly back where we were. And I can tell you that the courts cannot function without that court administrator. And they do so much, not just for the courts, but I think there's a lot of people in here would say that Emily worked for so many of the other departments. She was the first line of phone call for a lot of departments. I will say that. Um I did tell whoever the court administrator, whoever we offer the job to is they might want to set some boundaries and kind of say this is I I can help you and I can try to direct you but my job is the courts. And so um there may be some changes for all of us coming whoever gets that job and I've given them permission whoever gets it is to take those boundaries and say this may not be what the court administrator is supposed to do. Um and so that may change a little bit once as I said Emily I always said she's a victim of her own success. She helped everyone who came to her door.

Is that not in the job description?

Technically not. I mean, I'll be honest with you. Technically not. It's not that the just for instance, Miss Harvey Shelley. Technically, it's not under the court's public defender. But if Shelley went to her, did Emily help you? Rick Spangler, the clerk is not under the court's department. But I can guarantee you every time the clerk's office called her, the court administrator tried to help. They're not under the court administrator. So the court administrator is the courts themselves. So the five courts and our court reporters and staff, the probation department, juvenile court and CASA. That is the umbrella over the court for the court administrator. But the other departments within the justice center, I can tell you the first line always went to Emily because she had the answers. And so a lot of that is trying to figure out what all really is she should have been doing or should have helped. Not that she wouldn't have helped people, but I think everyone used her because she knew so much. She worked in the county for 25 years.

Judge, I'm not asking you and the other judges to micromanage, but is that something that you can watch?

It is. And I think um we've talked about that as maybe we'll divide up some of those responsibilities and to be oversight for some of that. We just didn't have to. And I I'll tell you that be honest with you. I walked in my job and my job was a whole lot easier because I had Emily there to tell me what I need to do and make the reports and and do all of that. So we may within our own the five judges kind of delegate some responsibility over certain sections. One person may be over budget, one person may be over personnel and kind of do a little bit of that. So it's a good opportunity for some changes. I'm sure you all know that we're year of flux. We have two very seasoned judges who are retiring at the end of the year. We'll have two new judges coming in. So, it's a good time to make some changes within our own um organizational tier as well. But until I honestly until I learn everything that she does at this point in time really she did it. She worked smoothly. Um my reports were always done to the state. Nobody ever had a question. Um so yes, we are going to try to look at that as well and try to adjust within our own. I'm not sure we'll take away the responsibilities. It's just going to have a little more oversight. So, you've indicated uh that you're interviewing quite a few people and I guess my question would be how many of these people if you have any insight, any gut feeling, uh maybe the people that are applying for this full-time position, would they uh would they well I say welcome that may not be the right word. uh would they want to do this part-time in your opinion?

Right now, the ones that we've had the applicants for, I'm not sure they would want a part-time position. I think that's going to be a separate entity because everyone who's applied, I can tell you, are all looking for full-time positions because of benefits and elsewhere. Um they would be leaving a full-time job, so they wouldn't be looking for that part-time. So, when I look at the the group of applicants who have applied, do I think there's someone in that pool that's applied that would be great for a full-time assistant at the 40,000? Yes, I think we actually have some really good candidates for that, too. Um, but I also think that pool we have right now would not be the part-time. I'd probably look elsewhere because I'm sure they would the ones who've all applied all have full-time jobs. So, they're not going to give up a full-time job to come work part-time.

Was there an updated job description for the administrator role? [clears throat] I do not recall if that was done last year when Emily and I apologize for that, Mr. K. For the assistant, you mean? No, no, no. Well, that that's a separate question. No, the actual Emily's role, the administrator, was there changes made to that job description when you guys posted it? No, I just posted exactly the same way it was before. [clears throat] Okay. And then there are there job descriptions for either one of these other positions. There are not right now unless we created one last year and I can't tell you if Emily did that. So, I apologize. That's why I'm asking. I can create one. I just didn't have a chance to do that.

Judge, can you or somebody on council remind me of what we're paying Emily? $75,000 was her annual salary. These are new part This would be a new part-time. There's no part-time line. Correct. Correct. You know, wait a minute. I thought we were paying them. No, I believe it was 75,000. So, you're bringing somebody in new with no experience at 75,000.

I'm not saying they don't have experience. The ones I've interviewed have experience not necessarily as the court administrator, but they have experience in doing that type of job. Yes. Assuming I I offer the jobs to one we're talking about as I said we we've not offered the job because I wanted to make sure I had the blessing of the council first just for timing wise because of typically I understand the rule is if you're paying somebody out I can't hire till that is paid out that's why I said I can't wait that's why I'm asking not that I have to ask permission who I hired just simply Timing wise, if I have to wait, I cannot wait till May 7th, which would be the end of her PTO time.

Is this new person? Is the salary not negotiable? Well, if it's negotiable, they probably ask for more. [laughter] To be fair, to me, it doesn't seem like 25 years experience to bring somebody in new that just at the same pay rate doesn't equate properly.

I think if you're looking at that, I think a whole different batch would probably be apply. and I wouldn't have the caliber of the ones I've had the applicants for if I was offering less especially for the job descriptions. So, and what's required of them. I'm not saying judges are difficult, but you are on call for 20 for five judges 247 some days. We have our moments, not going to lie. [laughter] When things run smoothly, you probably never know that the court administrator is there. And when things in the middle of a jury trial, when I'm looking at somebody and their life and their liberty is on the line and I need someone right now, that Emily was my go-to. And I'm not going to ever deny that. That court administrator is going to be there. If I'm there and I need that court administrator, I need them at my beck and call basically for that issue because I want to make sure our jury trials and our court systems are run properly because that is somebody's life and liberty that's on the line.

Other questions? I know we're asking for a lot for the well the payout is not for that's what happened. It's just the issue. But as I said, we would love to if we can get someone else. I don't want to be in this position again. I'm hoping that we can train the next person. Um and there's not one person who's all in charge of that. Um as I said, it's just the job has morphed.

And if we were to prove hiring an additional person, uh would would both of them start at the same time? Ideally, yes. Um, we've not interviewed for a second. Obviously, we didn't know that we had another position, so we haven't had that. So, I've not interviewed those, but I'm hoping I to start from the pool of applicants. I would look through those and ask them if they would still be willing as an assistant at that lower rate, if they'd still want to apply, and I would give the interviews immediately. So, I would like to hire them within a week or two of each other if I could. Obviously, most people are going to have at least two week notice to their employers um if we do offer the job this week. Um, so I would say within a couple weeks and I probably would start them if we did at the same time. What I would do is ask Emily to come in maybe after both have been hired to start that training process. The ideally is after hours Emily has offered to do that is train both people at the same time from Emily. They can still go through the job. We have a description. They can kind of get acclimated to our courts the system. Um, we have a calendar what needs to be done right away. But specific training on budgets or court reporting, we have a couple months with regard to those issues. And so that we can wait a couple weeks to get those started to training. But ideally, yes, I would love to have them at the same time. The motion at the present time is to approve this entire $98,000 appropriation. Are there amendments? I mean, I'm I'm open to the

15. Yes, the 155 on line 129. I think there needs to be discussion on 109 and 198. One, if we want to go ahead with one of those options, and then two, like I Matt doesn't, we don't have job descriptions, so it hasn't gone before the that committee yet. So I I do have a pause there, but 10 109 and 198 are same person. Correct. One is full-time and one's parttime. Yeah. And we're not asking for both. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So your 98,000 number is

is too is too high. Yes. Obviously, we put both of them in just to give you that alternative and let you know what that is. So, obviously the numbers would be different if we went with the full-time versus the part-time person, but I wanted to put both of them to show you the numbers. Mr. President, um we can reduce that 98548 by whatever. uh if in fact we even approve a second person uh by that amount either the full-time or the part-time

depending on what you would do you reduce it by the $40,000 if we're not in plus FICA and perf if it's not going to do the full-time or reduce it by the 30,000160 if we're not going to do an assistant. So that's the issue of the numbers and again it's 155 I believe that we corrected that in finance for Emily. We break this out Mr. President at least approve line item 129-101 for the 155

as a separate issue and then more discussion in regards to the new person in the either part-time or full-time position. We can do that. So, your motion is to amend the first request to just the 129101 in the amount of $15,500. Is it 129 or 128? I apologize to interrupt. I have 129. Is it 129? Was it my air? I apologize. Yeah. Is that your motion? Yes, Mr. President. Is there a second? I'll second that.

Second motion by Jim, second by Jessica. The motion is to approve the 12910 or to amend the request uh to limit it to the 129101 court administrator in the amount of $15,500. So, this is a roll call on the motion to amend the request. Roll call, please. Miss Fleen, yes. Mr. Yes. [snorts] Spiper. Yes. Smok yes. Bookout. Yes. Mr. Can no. Mr. Hughes.

Yes. So the request is amended to just the $15,500 this point. The first request. Any further discussion on that?

Yes. I guess I'd like to point out that just because she's coming, the judge is coming to ask for money, they have the opportunity to go ahead and hire as soon as they want based off what we have done in the past. As far as the back filling, we're allowing departments to hire, as soon as somebody has left their position. It's just at the end of the year, they have to make sure that that line has enough money to pay it out, whether that's through transfers or coming back for appropriations later. I believe that's correct. Thank you.

That's all I want to make that statement. Beyond that, I mean, personally, I'd like to see the courts come back towards the end of the year and ask for the money if they can't find it in a transfer later, but looks like we're going to have to cross this bridge sometime. line. Well, now we just gave it to that was just to amend. We've amended the request. Any further discussion? This is a vote to approve $15,500 additional appropriation line item 129 101 court administrator.

Mr. President, if in fact uh uh what um Councilman White had just uh told us uh it might be approved for me to withdraw my u request a motion. Uh it's already been approved. Yeah, it's already voted. Oh, it's been voted yet. Will we voted to amend and your motion was to amend? So now we're voting. So now we've amended. The amendment cannot be withdrawn. No,

I do want to say like I agree with with Eugene, but I look at it a little differently. I'd rather see it before we go into budget. We've had this discussion in finance before because when we do appropriations towards the end of the year, that does impact our operating balance going into the next year. So, kind of a different mindset, but I agree that they can hire him whenever. Well, to Jim's previous point, it is posted at $75,000. If they hired somebody at 60, they would have $15,000 to work with. So, it's there is there is negotiation potentially there to be had. You don't have to give them that. They can negotiate it how they see fit. But so, I mean, there's leeway. So, I agree with Eugene, that it doesn't prevent you from back filling in the short term. We just wanted to make sure. I just didn't want to since we were so close in the issue, I wanted to make sure I had the blessing that we could do that. So, I didn't want to offer a position and tell them I couldn't hire them until May 7th.

Further discussion. Okay. The motion as amended is to approve the $15,500 line item 129 101 court administrator. Roll call, please. Mr. Flangen. Yes. Mr. Whitehead. No. M. Piper. Yes. Mr. Mole. Yes. Bookout. Yes. Mr. KZ. No. Mr. Hughes. Yes.

Are there any further motions or any other line items? Mr. President, I'd like to uh once again discuss uh maybe uh I need some clarification on this as well. Uh does uh do the courts have the uh permission I guess permission may not be the right word. Can they go ahead and hire somebody for this new position uh without our approval? It doesn't exist. I mean, in my opinion, if they don't have part-time money already and they don't have this line approved, they cannot.

Uh, but the new person's line has been approved. Correct. I mean, we have somebody in that position. No, the replacement is is there. Oh, that's we wouldn't hire someone without coming to you for part time. I mean, I don't know how much part-time money we would have at all, but we would not do that.

Okay. My my reference wasn't into the new person. Uh I guess I would uh like to make a motion that we go ahead and amend the present document to uh give the courts permission to go ahead and hire a new person immediately. Um what do you clarify? So the court administrator ruled the 129 point of order. He made a motion. So we need to second it. But but I think we already covered that.

We we voted on the core administrator. Now we're looking Does anyone have a motion with respect to administrative assistant or part-time person?

I'll withdraw my motion at this point in time. Anything further from any council member? Mr. President, we discussed part-time during budget and I know consensus of council was not to fund part-time for the courts. I believe that uh we need to rethink that. I sure would like to see us give some money towards the courts for part-time. I'd like to hear the rest of council's opinion before we make a motion on whether we go with part-time or a full-time position.

I would definitely be more open to the part-time opportunity. U I think I'd like to still see a job description of that person do, but I would be open to that. I might be in favor of it if this was a 40hour position at the port administrator level where we've start to set that tone, but I'm not in favor of part-time at this point.

I think we back during budget season, we were all running and still running scared of sea one. We don't know how to budget stuff in the future. I I'm with Eugene. I mean, I'm with you on the part-time being the preferred method. Don't get me wrong. I mean, I do think that that's true, but I mean, not to to be argumentative, but the the new position has yet to be filled. You know, there's work to be done. I I think that, you know, again, nobody wants to make the jump to the 40-hour work week. I I I get why, but eventually we're going to be the ones making that decision probably because we're going to be having to consider making cuts and other hard choices that others don't seem to be willing to address currently. So that's why I think we have to start drawing a little bit of a line in the sand to say, "Hey, when offered the opportunity for something like this to transition, as bad as the transition is for the courts, unfortunately, we need to be pushing to to consider it." And right now, we're not. So that's my soap box on that. If we hire If we did hire a fulltime assistant administrator, I would want both of them before we would there be two people for

Well, we have FICA and Perf in this administrative position. I guess that's what those are for, right? The FICA Perf. Correct. FICA could also be for part-time, but we what we don't have if it's a full-time, we don't have the rest of the benefits listed. Correct. It also includes the 155. the PEF and the FICA. Okay, so that 155, we need to do a FICA ad just for the 155 currently and Perf and Perf. Do you have that any other position or any other I do, but I was waiting until we figured out where we're going and I needed to add the other ones. Right.

So, but we don't have benefits company. We don't have benefits for a full-time position included in this request currently. In the request, it is. It's in there. They they included for PEF. It has um I'm talking health benefits. Oh, no. Not the benefits. So, it's this number is not would not complete if they took benefits. The administrative correct.

Yeah. And if if the council would appreciate that, I can do a for next month or even before then, if you'll consider the appropriations that we've requested it so we don't have to publish again, I can come back with more details either for part-time separately or full-time with a job description for each and get those to you in the next couple week or so prior to the next meeting if that would be appropriate. If you can table the issue on our appropriation since we've already requested it, but then come back on that issue that's if the council would so like that, I would get that together for you. I can make a motion to [music] table uh in favor of her providing documentation on the part time as she described it. I'll second that.

Okay, we have a motion second to table the remaining uh parts of the request for further study. Roll call, please. Men, yes. Matt, no. Miss Piper, yes. Mr. No. Mau. Yes. Mr. Sc. No. Mr. Hughes. Yes. Remaining requests tabled till next month.

Okay. I will get you the other documentation and a job description for that issue um and break it down between part-time and full-time what those numbers look like. Anything else I can do for the council? Again, I beg your forgiveness for a little bit till I figure out exactly what I'm doing plus my job. Thank you, J. Do we need to vote FAR? Yes, we do. Okay. We tabled the remaining. Oh, you know, just the FICA per 155. Okay. For the 155.

Thank you. Um, I did round up on one of these, but 171 FICA would be 1,186 and 172 PEF would be 1,736 for a total of 2,922. Motion to approve. Second that

motion by Dan, second by Jessica. This is on line 171 FICA for the payout of the core administrator $1,186. Line 172 Perf $1,736 for a total of 29 $2,922. Questions or comments? Roll call, please. Mangan. Yes. Mad. Yes. Piper, yes. Mr. Mole, yes. Bugout, yes. Scans, no. Hughes, yes.

I would welcome anybody if you have any questions, come see me or any of the the judges. Also hope to have a note court administrator by next meeting and I will bring that person in to introduce you to all of you. Um, and we'll go from there. So, thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Moving on, Elizabeth. All right, we have a major transfer. Uh, this is uh 1,146 311,26 311. Okay. Um, all right. Give me a second because there's no names here. 146 311 contractual services negative $30,000. 126311 contractual services positive $30,000 total transfer zero.

All right. Move to approve. Second motion by Jessica, second by Dan here to explain this to us. Sure. So 146 is that's the IT department under the commissioners. We're essentially transferring $30,000 over to the auditor's office to pay for contractual services for IT support. This is for um uh forgot his name. This is the gentleman that is going to work with the auditor's office, assessor's office, and the treasur's office. Yes, that is correct. [clears throat]

Bruce, I knew it would come to me. We discussed this at our last meeting that this was going Other questions or comments. Roll call. Mangan. Yes. Swag. Yes. Spiper. Yes. Smok. Yes. Spookout. Yes. Mr. Kz. Yes. Mr. Hughes. Yes.

All right. Uh, back to appropriations outside of County General 1195509 high-tech crime unit 362 repairs and maintenance software 5,500 and 392 education certification schooling 4,000 for a total of 9500. Move to approve. Second. Motion by Jessica, second by Dan. Chuck Zimmers, director for the high-tech crimes unit. Um we are uh appropriating funds remaining from 2025 and just moving that into lines so we can spend it questions.

Roll call please. Ed. Miss Langan. Yes. Yes. Spiper. Yes. Smoke. Yes. Yes. Mr. Kz. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. 1192 228 SVO 211 office supplies 6,000 324 communication 6,000 for a total of 12,000. Move to approve. Second motion by Jessica, second by Dan.

Hi. Nancy Marvin, Delaware County Sheriff's Office. This is just money that is uh taken in in fees from the sex and violent offender program and then we use this to pay for the office supplies and the computers that he uses for that program plus the cell phone and Wi-Fi. It's divided out accordingly. Questions? Roll call, please. Miss Lang, yes. Mr. Wyatt, yes. Swiper, yes. Smoke. Yes. Mr. Bout. Yes. Scans. Yes. Cheers. Yes.

Thank you. Right. 11351 190 cumitive bridge 107101 engineer 13,400 310 professional services 28,76 and.36 311 contractual services 61,72 and.32 368 repairs and maintenance bridge 391,639.13 13550 other capital outlays 591,31843 for a total of 1,85,5624 cents.

Move to approve. Second motion by Jessica, second by Dan. This is out of our cumulative bridge fund.

Hi Carrie D. County Highway. So the 107101 has been removed. that is going to be paid out of the commissioner's edit funds. Um the rest of this was um remaining money in 2025 that in the past we have been able to encumber because we have ongoing projects. Um this year I was informed by the auditor's office that I would have to come back to council to ask for an additional appropriation. So these funds are needed to finish out paying for bridge projects and work that has been ongoing

questions. How much of this is uh reimburseable? I do not have that answer. I think you indicated that line item 550 although we had to pay this up front. Is that correct? And some of it is once the project um has been started and we have state or um federal funds but until everything is under contract. I don't know that. Okay. So the feeling is that 550 will be 100% reimburseable. Correct. I would not say that it would be 100%. No. A lot of times it's 8020.

What about uh I guess my question then is did you not also indicate that under uh so under professional services you did ask about that in the finance meeting? Um that is used until the project is fully been funded and we might have to pay some bills out of that before um it's signed to a capital project. So that is where the reimburseable part would come back into. Um we just might need that in the beginning until the project is fully funded.

Okay. He also indicated I believe that some of these is that under is that under account 368 repairs and maintenance that uh certain bridges had to be repaired prior to they're getting approval for a lotment for construction. So if there is any repairs that need to be done it might not be um a total reconstruction or anything like that. So, if they can go out and repair a bridge without doing a total reconstruction, am I explaining that correctly?

Uh, so the repair piece of it, we don't always get funded for a full reconstruct on some of these projects. So, we may have to go out and do a few thousand dollars worth of maintenance to some of these structures um because they're within the county's responsibility at that point. Once we would get them under some sort of uh funding application with an 8020, then we would be able to get funding from the state or the federal level for some of us. Sound sounds redundant that you have to go out and do work and spend money to in essence bring a project up to speed so that you can have the whole project completed.

Uh well, prime example is bridge 51. Um, that one overnight had pieces falling out of it. Well, the county has to do something about that. Um, therefore, we have to go out and, you know, we plated that one. We repaired it. No federal money was allotted for that at the time. Um, so we had to pay that out of pocket until we can get some of these things federally funded, which take sometimes years to get uh fully funded. So, thank you. Hope that further clarifies. So I will also say the 591 31843 that's a one lump sum. The auditor's office will be given a sheet which I emailed that to you as well. Um that's for several bridge projects. So that's not just for one bridge. I want to say roughly 20 25 bridges that those funds will be split between. Does the motion need to be amended to remove 107 101 since the big enough?

Yes, I have a new total for that too. I have a new total for that too. Oh, okay. Um I'll I'll make the motion that we amend to remove line 107101. Second motion by Jessica, second by Dan. That would make the total 1,72,10624. Yes. Questions on the motion to amend. Roll call, please. Mr. Flanken, yes. Mr. Wy, yes. Mr. Piper, yes. Mr. Mo, yes. Mr. Okal, yes. Mr. KZ,

yes. Mr. Hughes, yes. Any questions on the request as amended? A total of 1,72,1624. Roll call. Miss Langan, yes. Miss Whitehead, yes. Miss Spiper, yes. Mo, yes. Mr. Bugout, yes. Miss Chance, yes. Mr. Hughes, yes. Thank you. Thank you, Carrie. Thank you, Carrie. And thank you for the information you sent us. All right. Motion to approve financial transfers and to amend salary ordinance with like reductions. Second motion by Jessica. Second by Dan. Roll call. Mr. Lang.

Yes. Mr. Whead. Yes. Smok. Yes. Out. Yes. Piper. Yes. Sc. Yes. Mr. Hughes. Yes. You have a backfilling report for positions that were filled to receive the report. I'll second that. Motion to receive by Eugene. Second by Jessica. Roll call. Miss Flangen. Yes. Whitehead. Yes. Smok. Yes. Yes. Spiper. Yes. Mr. Can.

Yes. We have no ordinances or resolutions or appointments or committee reports. One item of old business would be the commissary report that was presented last month and we didn't take any action. We need a motion to receive the commissary report. So second motion by Eugene, second by Dan. Any questions? Roll call, please. Miss Planken. Yes, Mr. Wyatt. Yes, Mr. Mo. Yes, Mr. Bookout. Yes, Miss Piper. Yes, Mr. KZ. Yes, Mr. Hughes. Yes.

Any other old business? New business. Do extension update.

Good morning. Um, we just want to take a moment to introduce some of our new staff and kind of give some highlights uh of what's going on in our office. So, um, we are now fully staffed both with our county employees and our Purdue employees. So, if you have not made your way down to visit Cassandra, um, she replaced Cammy in August. And so, you can come and give her a big welcome. We would appreciate that. Um, and then we do have Vicki as 4 youth development and we have Emily Cring now in our Agon Natural Resources position. So, I just wanted to kind of give you a familiar face and some updates about what we're doing um, in our office. We do have some upcoming programming that we'll share just briefly about. Um we're currently running programming uh having a lot to do with food and nutrition and food access. So we were pulling some data in Delaware County specifically is 16% um food insecure when we look at our population. Um that's about 7% higher than the national average. That's about 3% higher than the state average. So we're doing a lot right now around food access. And that's not just getting food. Um, we have great systems in place right now to get people food who are food insecure. Um, but we're really tackling some of those problems around, okay, what do I do with this food? The knowledge, the skills, and the accessibility factor in um, food storage. And so, you see programming that would be interesting. Um, let us know. We've got lots going on right now on the calendar. So, I'm going to turn it over to Vicki to talk a little bit about 4 as well. Thank you, Amanda. Um, so my name is Vicky Gasway. I think I've introduced myself up here before. Um, just a couple of updates. Uh, 4 enrollment is still open. Uh, the hard date for livestock is May 15th and then it won't be until the end of June for our static projects that go into our memorial building. Um, this year we have 20 10year 4 members. Uh, so

we've been able to offer them some different scholarships uh throughout the county. We are focusing more on college and career readiness skills um in that little bucket of 4 right now to help those kids especially our kids that are in our um 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th uh grades in our 9th and 10th year 4 members. I did get an update this morning that we already have four students enrolled in our new A Academy. Uh so we are partnering with um Delta High School is going to be our uh physical location. Monroe Central is our second location, but these are kids that can or students that can get a degree within an Agg program. Uh so they can graduate with an associates degree prior to leaving high school. Uh so I think our I think Commissioner Brand was helping with that. Um Councilman Eugene. So thank you very much for your assistance with getting that ball rolling. Um we have secured funding from Delaware County Farm Bureau. So, thank you um to those of you that serve on that board. That funding will also be able to recognize our 10-year 4 members. We give them an honor court at graduation time. We're also going to be doing a collaborative group project with agonal resource and health and human services for what's called books in the barn. So during the 4 fair, we will have local daycarees, um, preschool groups that will be able to come through, tour the the barns with our junior leaders in 4, learn about livestock, listen to some farmers speak. This year's theme is more farmtotable, and then they will go home with a book provided by the funding that Farm Bureau gave us. Um, so it's a nice hardback uh, young children's book. We also had funding from um, Farm Bureau to secure embryology. So this year I've already tackled embryology at Yorktown. Next on the schedule is Cowan, then Selma and I believe Delville. So the that is of no cost to those schools and the kids get to learn about chicken

embryology. Um we are also thankful for the funding from Farm Bureau for our grand champion board. So this is a um a way to recognize those uh 4 members who have received grand champion throughout our livestock projects as well as our non- livestock projects. Um, so those will be nice reusable signs that can be used year after year. Um, this year I'm going to be offering a three-day camp over at Mounds for third through fifth graders. So that's going to be a summer camp. Uh, that opportunity we are partnering with Madison County. So it's a more regional approach. Um, Madison County kids will also be able to attend as well as the Delaware County. We will be having quality livestock care. So this is a a way for our youth to learn about proper care for their livestock. the latest um updates from our board of animal health and that's going to be offered three times here in Delaware County. But again, this regional approach that we are focusing on, there'll be over 20 opportunities for our kids to be able to have access to quality livestock care trainings. And last but not least, giving you guys um just a little bit of an update on our goat and sheep barn. I know there's been some funding that has been appropriated to bring the electrical up to date. So 4 council is still working on that. Their last update to me was that it will be fully functional and up to code um by July 1st. So I'll keep you updated on that as well. Um 4 fair this year will be July 11th through the 22nd. Just a little bit of a um change in the schedule. The horse and pony show will be first this year. So instead of it being midpoint throughout the 4 fair, it will be kicking off our 4 fair on that Saturday um before the memorial projects um go in. So and then just a little reminder, we have Delaware County Farm Festival coming up March 17th through the 18th. So hope that you can come out to that. There'll be some great um dinners. I

think Homemakers is doing lunch um one of those days. The chick chicken noodle too today two days. So, and Pork Association, I believe, is doing a pork dinner one night. Sorry, I'm looking. Thought [laughter] you would be able to give me the nod. Yes or no. Typically, we have pork association that gives us a nice pork dinner.

Um, and then we have our annual extension dinner that is March 3rd at 6 p.m. All of you are invited to that. Um, feel free to RSVP down to the extension office. That's at 6 PM at the University Christian Church. And I just wanted to introduce myself really fast. Um I'm Emily Cring. I was previously specific to J County as the Agon and natural resources educator for Purdue Extension. Um now in our more regional approach for the transformation of extension, I am focused on natural resources for the six counties in our region and I actually have an office here in Delaware County and in Blackford. Um I am a resident here in Delaware County. So it's nice to be closer to home um with my family. So, more specific to natural resources, I have some pollinator programs coming up, learning about hummingbirds, bees, and bats partnering with Ball State and um the John J. Center for Learning in J County. Um so, we're just trying to gather organizations together and be more collaborative and not silo and have all these great resources just tailored to one audience. And so, trying to be more collaborative in that way. And then um I'm also a veteran and so I was brought on by Agribility if you're familiar with um the group that works to make sure that agriculture is accessible for everyone. Um and so I'm the extension veteran farmers coordinator for um that capacity as well. And we have a state meeting coming up for any veterans or folks interested in agriculture and learning about different skills um in those endeavors. So just wanted to introduce myself and um thank you all for your time. Thank you for being here.

Welcome and thank you for your service. Thank you. Thank you.

Next item, communication center, the Motorola radio proposal. So quite some time ago, I let you know that the radio system in the 911 center needs to be replaced probably a year, year and a half ago. I've sent you all of the information about the replacement um the the the pricing the uh the proposal which was probably like 128 pages. Give you some backstory. Our current system goes into end of life in 2030. Um, one of the things that came up in finance, Eugene, just to correct what I said to you, it is not March 15th, it's March 16th. Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't know that was on a weekend. I had my date wrong. Um, so what we did is I've meeting with Motorola the past few months trying to come up with a proposal. The original price estimate that we got was a little over $2 million. Since that time, which was I think December, we have refined the pricing down to a firm proposal, got them to agree to a $420,000 discount. So, the total system cost, the system itself comes in at like 1.14 million. It's another 869,000 change in maintenance cost. So, the whole the whole project was was a little over 1.5 million. Uh they have offered us the ability to save $420,000. We signed the contract by March 16th. Reason they did that is because all of the systems are going end of life. There's an incentive to them to try to get some of these done ahead of time. I

will tell you that even if the contract is signed in March, which is my goal, this system won't come online fully for probably about two years. It's about the the length of time. I think if you remember when I first brought this up, I was going to start looking at this late 26, early 27 so that we could get it in place before end of life. Uh this this ends up saving the county right now 420,000 real dollars. Uh Motorola has not done their price increase yet. 26 obviously it averages 10 plus%. Um so by agreeing to this now we will save the county anywhere from a 420 probably to $600,000. I did approach DCRC about funding this originally. Um, I went into them with a price tag of 2 million because that's what we originally thought this was going to be.

Can I cl could we clarify that number real quick? Just I want the breakdown of the 1.5 because it I think it it needs to be clear because the system cost is 720 grand, right? That's the hardware with the 420,000. Yes. But the remaining 800 and some thousand is actually over six years for the maintenance. Yep. I'm getting I'm getting to that.

Okay. Um, so I refined my request to DCRC at their last meeting to the 7208581 which funds the initial equipment cost system integration and engineering cost. What I propose and what I'm proposing to you and I know you can't vote on it. I I need your consensus. you know, after talking to President Hughes, I I understand the county cannot give me a check for $720,000 in order to bring this to fruition. So, that's why I've requested that from BCRC. The second part of this is funding the $869,000 of change over years 2 through six. This came up in finance. Understand that these are locked in prices. If the system doesn't come online completely for two years after we sign this contract, then year two actually pushes out to year four. If that makes sense, the first the the first bill for year two which is in the proposal is a year after the system comes online. So the first year obviously the system is covered. So this budget impact wouldn't wouldn't hit the 27 and perhaps the 28 budget. Okay? Because right now we currently budget Motorola at right around $100,000 a year for annual maintenance. The year 2 cost of this is 159,221. [clears throat] Again, that's a locked in price. Um those those numbers as as we if we extended this would would continue to go up as well because they're subject to the price increases as well. So the maximum cost year two would be 59 roughly $59,000 more than I'm budgeting right now. So the maintenance cost would still be built into my budget each and every year that

move moving forward. Um so the county the county under this contract for years 2 through six would be on the hook for $869,000 and change. But understand that I currently budget right around $100,000 a year for Motorola maintenance. So even in year six, the cost is $189,000 and change for the service contract, which is only $89,000 more than I'm budgeting right now. And incrementally, if we start at 159, it goes up roughly, we'll just use round number, $8 to $10,000 a year. So that would be what the budget increase would be moving forward year after year, right? So it's more manageable and it's easier it's easier to budget numbers like that. That the issue that I have is funding the initial cost of 720,000 change, which is what I have asked DCRC for because one of the allowable expenses for DCRC is public safety. And Commissioner Henry pointed this out at the last meeting. This is not something that benefits like one town or or or one place. This actually benefits every single public safety agency and every citizen in the county. I can think of nothing better than than to spend some of that money on than something that benefits literally the entire county and visitors, responder agencies, and everything else. This is something that we have to do. And I I've been questioned a lot about why we would do it now. And and my answer is because I want to save the county $500 to $800,000, right, by doing it now. And and the other question that really came up was we're we're going we're going to replace this before the useful life of the current system is is is done. And that's technically true, but understand that this this system won't be fully up and running for at least two years.

I have a question on that. Yep. Because in this contract it says or in this proposal it says must be deliverable by 327 of 26. Yep. That's the actual that's that's the actual hardware. So So this stuff will get delivered to us. Right.

It will get it will get staged up in our radio room and when when they start to actually put this together it will be staged up there. It will be tested. Um but it you we are currently because we have the firm proposal in hand which you guys all have a copy of. Um they have put us in the production schedule we will call it and I I know that our radio technician looked at it the other day and it was just shy of two years I think is what he told me of where they have us currently scheduled. Not saying that can't move up [clears throat] because everybody I mean everything changes and if you know a project drops out then maybe we would move up but um two years is a is a fairly safe number for me to say. So in the current payment terms listed in here, there's 25% of the contract due upon execution, 60% upon shipment of the equipment, which for staging, which would be that's about, you know, that's 85% of the cost would be due basically up front

and the county doesn't do that. And so that's the one thing that Motorola has to change in the contract and they know that. Um my guess is what Motorola will do is is request the whole amount. Okay. There's also language in here about inflation and CPI and percentage changes above CPI which is typical contractual language consumer price index greater than 3% they have the right to increase the future maintenance prices. So while right now it may jump from year 2 from 159 to 166 they do reserve the right currently from a language perspective to increase it more

and historically that has never happened. you have to sign. I can't speak to what's going to happen six or eight years from now. I I can't No, I know. But this is part of the negotiation of this contract needs to be taken into account. That's correct. Whoever is doing that, either the commissioners or whomever. It's actually me, right? Because, you know, they could go from 3% to eight to whatever. So again, that you're budgeting $100,000 a year for maintenance currently. Year two, whenever that is, goes up to another 60 grand and then subsequently each year um by say 10 grand, you know, roughly per year.

It is a little different, but yeah. Right. And by the year six could be closer to $200,000 a year. just to for clarity sake on what I just noticed having read this at a at a glance um relative to the 720,000 for the equipment I know we've talked about you know the give back that you've been doing is there an opportunity to simply budget for the 720 grand over the course of say three years to cover that cost

glad you brought that because attached to your proposal is a proposed lease purchase agreement um that goes three, five, and seven years. Now, I did talk to the treasurer um who I don't [music] have a lease where where where it was attached to the email in that same PDF. Nope, there were three different PDF or there three different attachments on the email. I'm sorry.

So, there is a proposed lease agreement for the 720,000 that breaks it out over three, five, and seven years. Um, if we went seven years be $123,587.14 a year. Here's my issue with that. And again, being financially responsible, that's an extra $145,000 that we would pay on top of cost of the system, which was one of the reasons I went to DCRC to try to get the funding for that system, so that we could pay for it and save $150,000. Now, that's the only way that we could do this, then I obviously support it because either way, this is something that it's it's not a it's not a want, it's a need. [music] So, I'm open.

It's a need in three years. It's not a need today. Well, it's actually it would actually be a need next year in order to to have our system up and running before it goes on to life. I I got lucky in that Motorola was willing to offer an incentive for us to do this a little bit earlier to to it helps them as well, but it also helps us cuz I pushed back on the $2 million cost per car. So, they're willing to lease this at a 4.6% rate um for three years at 263K a year.

Correct. Or 4.78% at 1235714. Now did I did talk to the treasurer connected me with a local bank who who actually came in about $4,000 higher on a sevenyear plan. Would like the ability I wouldn't see us needing to do seven years. If if if you can budget out of that, you know, roughly 300k, you could cover it in three. Well, that but that's not up to me. I don't I don't control my budget. I could put I can put $300,000 a year in, add it to my budget, right? We could pull it out and allocate it for this potentially. But from where? From the three giving back.

It would be Well, luckily, historically, I've I've given over $200,000 a year back because I operate under the premise that if I don't spend it, I'll give it back to you. I mean, it's all hypothetical. I just last year it was over $300,000, which is the conversation I had with President Hughes. I I I was able to turn back in over 300,000. But understand some of that was health insurance costs because I didn't have employees and there there was a ton of stuff there. Right. Sure.

We didn't have towers fail. So even out of that even out of the line that Motorola gets paid out of and there was I think somebody said $44,000 I think it was Eugene said that at the finance meeting there was $44,000 that was was given back. Well that's good because that means we didn't have towers and stuff to have to repair stuff. Right. Do you know how much we are at with what the city is paying for their portion of the agreement on 911? It was slated at uh million a year, but it's supposed to go up like $25,000 a year. Yeah. So, are we collecting that additional money currently? So, we're probably at about

one. We should be at 1 million50,000 I believe because we're in year three, I believe. Because to your the point you made before as president of 911, I've heard a couple different I've asked a couple different times about the fact that this does benefit the entire county and the towns associated with it. And I know that they're not equipped to pay for something like this. However, they're also supposed to be contributing to like the city does to to the 911 services and

and I would I would agree with that as far as the actual services. The county has a duty and an obligation to provide the equipment Regardless, we we have to have the ability to communicate regardless of if if all the small towns dropped off tomorrow or month, we still have to have the radio system in place. That that's a county obligation. It's not it's not something we could bill for our actual services. We've had that discussion multiple times. Sure, I am a proponent of that's an operational cost. That's what correct. This is this is part of that. But this is a capital project. This is the This is a capital project that pertains to how we operate.

I get it. I'm just saying like they they currently may not be contributing to that to that factor. And again, it's just coming back down to revenue and and trying to you know make sure everybody's contributing their share to this uh significant cost that you know to manage that. Yes, it is by purview our responsibility to provide it. But anyway, so those are just some outline details that I think need to be resolved um or discussed because again if we can budget for the money and keep it I mean DCRC is an economic development arm. I'm not really funding much economic development from from what I can tell mostly debt payments and other things.

And this isn't out of the realm of realm of stuff that they fund. I mean Mr. book out. Yeah, I know the precedent has been set. Cars and I I understand. Yeah, I get it. It's just that, you know, again, if you look at all of our economic development dollars, very little, very little is not going back to cover operational costs for the county. I would agree with that 100%. I mean, I had a conversation with Commissioner Bran the other day. of all the of all the edit dollars that the county pulls in that should be going for economic development, the majority of the money goes to offset the county general budget because the county general budget can't support what what we do every day. Right. Right. So I I I I I understand that. Yeah.

And and the good thing about DCRC, that's why I mentioned Brad was that there have been several cases in the past where DCRC has funded public safety related needs because the county can't absorb it. You know, one of the one of the biggest things, Phil, Bill can correct me if I'm wrong, you can't hand me a check for $720,000, right? You don't you don't have it, right? I I I used the analogy the other day. If I handed you $300,000 at the end of 2025 that I didn't spend, then theoretically the conversation that we had is I should be able to come to you right now with an appropriation request of $300,000 because that money was never included in the budget presentation or anything because you didn't know that you were getting any of it back. But the but the money maybe exists on paper, but you can't put your hands on the cash. That's the part that I don't understand, right? Is it was that if if I turn money back at the end of the year that I don't spend and you haven't incorporated that into your budgets or your or your budget projections or anything else because you don't know what I'm turning back, that 300,000 should theoretically be available to be to be used for something like this. That's the broader discussion you and I had on the phone the other day. I'm a huge proponent of taking money at the end of the year that has not been included in a budget revenue and budget projection and putting it into a capital reserve fund so that when stuff like this comes up, we have the money.

I thought we did calculate at budget time. Nope. Because I didn't give you any givebacks. The only thing that's calculated into the budget is if I give you a give back during budgeting. Nothing that I gave you was done in a give back. It was all done in unspent funds at the end of the year. So that was never taken into any any of your budget predictions because you don't I could have spent every dime of that. So you can't count. Only thing that you can count on is when give backs are given to you during budget time.

When we when we go through our budget, we are always operating on estimates. Estimates of revenue because we don't have our revenue figures yet. estimates on what will be spent for the remainder of the year. So, we we do take into account, we don't we don't have a number, right? We don't have the $300,000, but we have our best guess as to where we're going to be at the end of the year. I agree. That and that's when when the money is not spent, uh it isn't it isn't segregated to your department or

Oh, I get that. I get that. It it all goes back into the into the general general fund. And you you you mentioned um that we can't write you a check for $720,000. I think this should be clarified. We have an unallocated balance that we maintain in our general fund. We try to be around $6 million because that's the amount that we need to have on hand so we don't have to borrow in anticipation of the next time we get a a property tax settlement. Just today we've reduced that to where now our unallocated general fund balance is now about 5,800,000. So we're already below our target and it's February.

So I have a question about that. because I I may have gotten some of this information. My understanding my understanding was that when the when the finance got their got their report that we were actually sitting at about 10 and a half million I so I want to clarify that right now. I I it should be clarified. Let me explain something. So December 31st if you looked at our general fund cash balance it was it was $11 million. let's call it. That's like looking at your checkbook the day after payday. We just gotten our December settlement, right?

So, if you look at your check back the day after payday, you think, I'm rich. Look at all this money in there. But then you got to pay the rent and you got to pay your utilities and you got to buy groceries and you got to make your car payment and you're not going to get another settlement check until June. So we don't have $11 million. We've also appropriated monies that have to be spent from January through May. So cash balance is different than our unallocated general fund balance. We can only look at that unallocated amount and operate out of that. Everything else is spoken for already. So, even even the 2025 budget at the end of the year, I'll use my number because I know it's over $300,000 that goes into an unallocated.

No, maybe or maybe we've when we go through our budget, maybe we've said, you know what, we're probably not going to spend everything this year. We'll have some of that left. So, we'll take that into account in Okay. what we're going to spend in 2026. I thought that's what was what the give backs were for during time.

The give backs have a a specific purpose in in reducing the amount that going against our maximum levy. They have a specific purpose, but we know that there's more than that coming back. We know that every year. We don't know the exact amount, but again, we don't have our lit income yet. We don't have our approved max levy. Our max levy, as it turned out in this last budget order, is $700,000 less than than we had advertised for because they took some of our general fund and put it over into Bridge. Different story. But the point is that that the the accurate assessment of where we are is we don't have extra money to spend. And I I voted against an appropriation I know we have to make for that very purpose. Just to make the point that this is only February and we're already at 5 million8. We can't go much lower and and still avoid having to borrow money, correct, to stay afloat.

I guess what I'm looking for from the council is a is is a consensus that you approve the second part of my plan, which is to budget for the 800 and somehat thousands over the course of my budget cycles, payments. No different than most the contracts that we see, right? They most of them go up a little bit every year and your current contract already does that. So up every year I I don't have a problem with that portion and but I agree with with Bill. We can't afford that 700,000 number right now and that's that's me. That's what and he said that coming in. Mr. That's what the I was asked to come and have you say was that you can't afford it. I think that's that's a

for clarification for [clears throat] most the radio systems that they quote end up live because Motorola has a great lobby. How often are they doing that on an average? Often. I I know. I didn't know if you had a year. No. No. It's when they say it's going on to life, they stop supporting. If it dies the day after they've stopped it, we're done. Yeah. I mean, and and Bruce summed it up for me perfectly. He's like, you know, maybe for the first year we could scrge for parts and find some parts somewhere. He said, but do you really want your whole radio system relying on the fact that I can go on Amazon and find a part that I need? Absolutely not. The good thing is if our system goes down currently or in this new system, that's what we pay for.

How old is the current system?

Uh, it's 14 or 15 years old. The average life cycle is 12 to 15 years. So, they've actually starts this one out a little bit longer um than they normally do. And I obviously have read this proposal at Nauseium. So, I understand that this system has a lot more features than we currently have. So, they're definitely making some progress in technology. It's one of those capital expenses. You know, my other one, like I told you over a year ago, is the phone system. Thankfully, they have not said that they're going into life with phone system. I'm hoping it goes a little bit longer than than this system. That's another system that we will have to replace. Good thing was versus this system, there's no grant grant opportunities for the radio system itself. There are for like portables, mobiles, and stuff like that. The good thing with the last time the phone system was replaced was there was a state funded grant program that paid for the majority of the phone system. So, it saved the county a ton of fun. And I'm hoping when it comes time to replace the phone system, that's something that's offered. Obviously, we we reply to That's as everybody knows grants are not guaranteed. This is this is a system that is not even eligible for a grant program. It's it's not it's not end user based. So, I think this has been a good conversation for everyone to understand where money is and who has what. Um, as you and I talked, um, Indiana code allows for the DCRC to pay for funding for emergency services, and that has historically happened, not just in the short past, but over a few decades. Um, they've approved money for it crimes unit. When there's additional money that's needed for something, that body's been asked to pay for that. Funded sheriff's department vehicles multiple

times, a lot of vehicles. Uh they funded town police cars. Uh they funded fire trucks even 15 years ago. They funded radios for all the town police cars. Uh they funded tornado air warning sirens that we have in our our county. They funded funding for the highway department has been the recipient for equipment um for extra things. This body doesn't have money to we don't have the balance to do. DCRC has helped do that in the past. I think your request was well placed with that body. I agree with Jessica. I don't have a problem with the $800,000 maintenance over some time. Um I've not watched the last DCRC meeting. Can you share with us what there

I'm not going to speak for Commissioner Bran. Um he is here. He can speak for himself. Um you know, he had some questions. One of his concerns was he wanted the council to say we we don't have the ability to fund this right now. Right. I I think that's a fair statement. I think the other question that came up from the commissioner side um in talking to him and commissioner Henry was there needs to be a plan and a consensus moving forward because if the commissioners sign this contract we are locked into this. Right.

Right. I we we have to pay what what we are contractually obligated to. I would not feel comfortable going to commissioners and asking them to sign a contract without consensus from this body that they support the plan moving forward for how to pay for this. That's that's obviously a huge thing. Am I hitting that, Stephen? I I I I He's here so I don't obviously I don't need to speak for him. So good morning. Steven Bran, Delaware County Commissioner's Office and Delaware County Redevelopment Commission. So Fred summed it up pretty well. Um there was a discussion about whether the council could budget for this appropriately. I think Councilman Can brought that up and Fred's right. He can't predict how much money will be returned to the county general each year. I do believe that this proposal would get a more broad support from the redevelopment commission if there was an agreement to help refund the the tiff dollars. So whatever money is left over out of Fred's budget at the end of the year, make it up say 78,000 one year, 115 the next, if that could go back and refund that tiff. I do believe that taking advantage of a an assumed cost savings today is probably smart for the county. Um if you want to do a uh time value of money calculation uh or a net present value of cash calculation did I understand the interest rate right on the lease to be 4.65%.

For three years

so assuming okay 4.66% so uh to calculate time value of money you would take the the present value and you would take a one plus the interest rate 4.66% 66% times the period. And that would give you your future value of money. So, a net present value of cash calculation. And on a $400,000, it's a pretty simple math uh equation. That's about $58,500 that you would that you would assume over a three-year period. So, the lease doesn't make any sense, right? From a net present value of cash calculation, assuming that number is uh you know, 900,000. I only choose that because the number was thrown out at 300,000 a year. comes back out of 911 budget in for three years 900,000 you're talking about um maybe $130,000 of additional interest over that time. So if you're looking at it from a business perspective and you're calculating the time value of money, you want to do it now. So Councilman Book Outright, the the TIFF allocation areas have money. um we went back and and looked and we understand that there's about $2 million worth of additional obligations that were committed by the redevelopment commission on top of the debt service. So now we have a pretty good idea of where our money is. The money's there to pay for this. We could take it out of various successful tiffs like the two Magnus, um the Fountain Square tiff is now coming into its own um Morrison Road and a few others. But again, I believe the redevelopment commission on only one would have a more broad support because this got tabled three to two. So it's very narrow right now. Uh if there was an agreement from council that any unspent monies out of 911 could be given back to the to the DCRC.

I'm not sure what the mechanism for that would be. Yeah, I I I believe it's legal. And then your your attorney and uh the DCR Not anymore. [laughter] It's not illegal anymore. I'm not an attorney anymore. No, no, no. I said you're you're attorney. Sorry, Mr. Hughes. Yeah. Uh he he can validate that, but I do know that there have been some other transactions that uh commit money from one place and and they're able to refund them back. the Creed Board and the and the DCRC handled one of those transactions here recently.

And I will say the last time that this was funded when it was replaced 12 or however many years ago, it was paid for out of the commissioner center. It again was not paid by the county because the county was poor, right? I don't think the poor part has changed based on what I've heard today. When I went to DCRC, I it was based on my knowledge that that this was a public safety and it wasn't it wasn't an okay expense. Um, and I have the desire to save the county a ton of money, which is why I negotiated with more than I did to make it so that we were saving money in the I think this is the best the best deal forward. But I did need your buy in on the fact you'll support the maintenance contract because I can't go to the commission and sign this contract. I can't.

Well, and likewise the council can't appropriate money in years 2, three, four, five, and six at this point. But if there is a if the county signs an agreement, then that the council has a legal obligation to fund it. Correct. So, but you're going to it's going to come from your budget. Yes, it will be

from the budget incorporated in my budget. It's not something but I think it's very doable to incorporate this into a budget year over year, which is if we had paid for all this up front when I first went to DCRC, this was like going to be an upfront thing. So, it was going to be like $2 million or in this case $1.5 million. It's it's a lot more feasible to pay for it this way because the county ends up having a buy in of almost $900,000 to the system. I mean, I I be frank because I've told you this to your face already, which is I don't agree with Motorola trying to handcuff us on a time frame in the first quarter of 2026 because it's to their benefit for us to sign an agreement so they can lock it in for the year. That's that's their upside.

It's actually not. It is. It's their sales organization. it is of their benefit for us to be locked in that we still have three years of life plus on the agreement. We may be saving this money today. We could be saving the money tomorrow. There's no guarantee of either or. So, and I'm not discounting what you've done. I'm just saying like sales of sales and this is a this is a we're going to try to pitch this to you to get you locked in because it's to their benefit to do that. It may be to our benefit too long term, but from a negotiation standpoint, there's still opportunity. So, have you ever negotiated with Motorola? And understand, I've negotiated hundreds of contracts in my time. Okay.

With a with a monopoly that literally the public safety industry says, I don't like this company because they compete with us, so we're just going to buy them. We can argue that that's hypothetical, but nonetheless, there there's still potential opportunities. So, and again, I'm not I'm not saying we're right or wrong. I'm just saying that there is still potential. And if we need to expend the money or if DCRC plans to spend the money today or tomorrow, I don't know the answer to that. I don't feel like it's a an emergency just because they're making it an emergency. So, that's where I am with it. If that 420 grand is on the table, that 420 grand is on the table from now until the end of the year as far as I'm concerned. That's not true.

It it could be. So that's why I'm not super comfortable with with where we are. I I we've had this conversation and I will tell you the same thing. There is no incentive for Motorola to offer this incentive again. There's not because they did it to try to get us off the table. Yeah, I get it. Right. But but I am not in a position to stand here and tell you that I'm comfortable with that because I don't want to lose half a million dollars.

Yeah. because of because because and I told you this on the phone because you feel rushed. This wasn't a rush job. I actually expected this to take much longer. I was shocked when they offered what they offer because there is no incentive to them as a company keep doing this because they're going to make the money regardless. It's a monopoly. This is the only system that can be used in the state. Can't go to another radio manufacturer. Who negotiates the actual discount? It says Indiana state contract. There's an IND because because so the pricing is set by the state on certain things. Absolutely. Oh, so all this hardware the initial cost is actually from a state contract.

That's my understanding. The the initial cost the discount has nothing to do with the state contract. The pricing of the system itself does. They offered us the discount to try to get us to do this before everybody else in the country is trying to do it.

Yeah. I mean, again, and I feel bad that you have to be the one to negotiate this. I think our county should have a purchasing department that actually deals with this kind of thing, but you know, that's another story. But, so to summarize where we are, I sense there's no appetite on the council to try to come up with $720,000 from from our general fund budget. a sense that we think it would be appropriate for DCRC to take a look at that and see if they could not fund that with some maybe discussion about whether or not the council could reimburse that in the future. And we understand that if the commissioners enter into this this agreement, the council would expect uh maintenance fees in successive 911 budgets along the lines of what what Fred has present. Is that is that where we are?

Yes. We're not going to take a formal vote. I don't think there isn't any anything to vote on. Have I misrepresented anyone's views on where we are? Yeah. Is that satisfactory, Fred? That's what I needed was Yeah, that's what I needed. So, and and I will clarify if this body agrees to return the whatever money's left out of Fred's budget to reimburse it, I will change my vote on the redevelopment commission. I mainly voted no because I didn't want to tie you guys obligate you guys to something by us approving it and then you guys the fiscal body hadn't approved it yet. So that that's the main reason I voted no

and again I just I just would question a mechanism and we can have that discussion. Yep. Thank you. Thanks for your work for it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you both. President Hughes, may I make one short comment? You may. I know that the amount that Fred has rattled off of givebacks over the past few years has seemed quite large and I would task both Fred and [music] the council at the next budget to work hard to reduce that number so that way there is not an overbudgeted amount that is near that. Thank you. That that would apply to other offices in

Absolutely. I will say in Fred's defense, we've had this discussion on the side that a lot of his stuff is in case in case a tower goes down or in case whatever when it doesn't go down, he's got spare money, so he reverses it. He has to be prepared for worst case scenario. Now, could he tighten his belt a little? Maybe. I'm not disagreeing with that, but so I will say Fred and I have had discussion about that. Good points. Moving on, elected officials and department heads. Treasure Pulp. [cough and clears throat] Good morning. Um Brad Pulk, County Treasurer. Um, just to bring to your attention, um, last week on a call with Stacy of the State Board of Accounts, um, we were talking with her about monies that were carrying on the books, um, from the incumbrances from 2024, some other funds. Um, we were asking her on ways to fix that. um she suggested um said that we would need to bring it to your attention, get approval from the council um is to do a negative quitus. Um with me today I have my bookkeeping team uh Mary Murphy and Lorina Wright um and they can explain a little more and in detail and also to answer any questions that you have. So, I'll kind of let them take over.

Hi, my name is Lorina. Um, in 2024 when they started the encumbrance, um, they encumbered a certain amount of money. We didn't know the system that well to and how we did it. So, in the system, it's saying that Well, I have to carry it on the bank wreck and it's it's $313,000. So that guy, but I can't can't explain it how the stuff is done in the system. It's just a system thing. It's the but the $313,000 is showing that it can be ready available to be used when it is not. It is a a system a an error quias error that needs to be fixed so that in situations like that where you're looking for the money and you think you have this money it's not there to be spent. And so, um, when I called the state board of accounts, they wanted, um, us to present it so that we can get all these things cleaned up that I've been carrying for three years. So, this is money from three years ago. Um, that's already, you know, three years ago, but it will come out of 10,000. That's the only account that I can do a negative quitus fund, 100, I'm sorry. So these are these funds were encumbered but never spent.

There's some there are some that was encumbered in 24 but spent in 25. So the system thinks that it was 24 but it wasn't. It was 25. And there's some money that was spent $66,9645 that was encumbered in 20 and 2024 that was never spent and wasn't deleted out of the system as not being spent. So the $341,19.11 is stating that I need that money back in the bank. I I have to carry it as a positive which means there's it's saying that that money is missing. The 66,000 I have to subtract or take away which means that that money was never spent. There's a $22,174.32 check from 2023 that was double voided that I'm having to carry. There was a $1,25526 that I had to fix that BIP helped me fix, but I ended up having to car. All these are it's not in our system as having to be carried. Our system is imbalance. Shows system imbalance together. This is bank only. This is saying the bank does not have this money or the bank has this too much money. And um I have everything that I have uh that you can look at and how I figured out how much money it was, what they didn't spend, what was spent. Um it took me like five months and I've been carrying it ever since. And I want it cleaned up in case I get

sick. The person that comes after me is not going to understand all this. You know, it's not going to it's I just want to get it all cleaned up in case something I in case I get sick. You're you're assuming that we all understand it. [laughter] True. Let me ask our council. Is this something that we should have a formal resolution so that we have a piece of paper in front of us with these numbers

and a little better explanation as to what would that would that be appropriate Bradford if you would work with with our council put together a resolution? I'm just not with exhibits or Yeah. I I think um he'll make up for it. I can work with council to to develop a resolution. Um we can go into detail as far as copies of everything here. Obviously, you see how thick that is. Um I doubt that you want that in the resolution, but we can we can kind of shrink it down and put we just have it in summary form. We can do a summary of it. Yeah,

touch base with me and we'll put something together and make sure that you're comfortable that it conveys the right meaning and we can bring it back to the council. Sounds good. All right. Questions from council. Thank you for your effort. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Sure. [clears throat] Sorry. All right. Thank you. You did [laughter] fine. Hey everybody other [clears throat] Excuse me. Kylen.

Hello. Good morning, council. Kylen Swackmer, Planning Commission. I just wanted to provide you with a brief um financial summary recap of 2025. Um the county building commissioner issued a total of 835 permits in 2025. This was for a number of projects. Um 288 total projects. Um his inspections that he completed totaled 1,574 inspections. Total permit fees collected by the office were $151,000. 51 or one sorry 151,519. 90% of that goes back into county general fund. So that was $135,945.98. Um we have 532 total contractors registered with our office to do work in the county. Um, the total contractor registration fees collected were 42,750. 100% of that goes back into the county general fund. So, total building commissioner fees that went to um or total building commissioner fees collected that went to county general were $178,695.98. um our different committees in our office, we heard a total of 120 cases. Our BZA heard 65 cases and collected a total um application fee amount of 16,700. Our plan commission heard 32 cases. Our plat and subdivision committees heard 22 cases and our village review

committee heard one. Those total application fees are $10,435. Um, for a total of application fees that did go 100% back to county or into county general, $27,135. As far as um us being the MO in 2025, we were able to distribute $3.5 million in federal funds. Um, this went for local road bridg brbridge bridge projects in Muny, Delaware County. Um, as the MO, we received $516,955.3 in MO federal reimbursements uh for salaries, expenses, and planning activities. The county general fund received reimbursements from that pot totaling $377,3684 cents. So for 2025, our total county general um deposits were $583,199 82 cents. Um I did just want to highlight a couple special projects that our office did during 2025. Um, we updated the county flood plane ordinance to comply with the National Flood Insurance Program. We developed and implemented a Delaware County pond ordinance maintenance or pond management ordinance. We collaborated with the commissioners to form an ADA committee and we updated the Delaware County ADA's transition plan. And we also collaborated with ECRPD on the safe streets and roads for all federally funded grant program. um to develop a regional transportation safety action plan. Last time I was in here, there were a few questions on the unsafe building. Um so Tom Fouch, County Building Commissioner, is here to answer some

questions and give you a brief overview of that. Um and then I did also just want to announce and I gave you a handout that INDOT is having a public meeting. This is tomorrow, um Wednesday, February 25th, um 6:00 p. M at Cowan Junior Senior High School. This is to discuss um two road projects that are being proposed in Delaware County. Um the projects are State Road 3 and County Road 700 South and also the intersection of State Road 67 and County Road 400 South. Um that will also be live streamed. So there is a um website on there where you can register to listen to that live streamed and that will be posted on INDOT's website after the presentation as well. And I'll set some of those out on the table for anybody in the public that wants to grab that information.

Any questions for Kylen? Thank you for this. This this report you've given is super helpful and you and your team I think Okay. Thank you. Great. Um I'll turn it over to Tom Fouch, um county building commissioner to tell you a little bit about the unsafe housing and how that works.

Good morning. Uh unsafe housing wise. So, of course, we work on a very limited budget um as to what we do in uh last year of 2025. On on my records, we um we had 35 plus structures that needed to come down. um we don't have the budget to tear down 35 structures. So we my goal is always to try to prioritize which ones need to come down. Last year our biggest one that really set us back budget-wise, [clears throat] excuse me, was the uh the old nursing home out on Burlington. Um the county we ended up taking that one down. We actually did really well budget-wise on that. Um I always take bids for all our projects. Um, I there there is a certain amount if I feel like a project's going to come under um a lower price to be tore down. I'm not required to get p uh any kind of bids on those, but I've just made it a priority. Every project that I put out there has to have at least three bids come in, no matter what. uh the contractor that was low bidder on that one. Um after going back uh with him and negotiating with him, he actually knocked his price down another $20,000, I'm sorry, 20% uh to allow us to save more money on that one out there, which was a big plus. um [clears throat] the the way that we kind of do things when it comes to unsafe housing and and um structures that of course have been abandoned and are uninhabitable. Um I'll go out uh look at the look at the structure. Um first thing I do when I come back in is I'll check the tax records to see if um if they're paying their taxes or they're not. At that point, then we send

out a letter to whoever the current deed holder is on that property. Um, we give them so many days to respond to the letter to get back with us. Uh, because my goal is always to if I can if I can get the deed holder to respond to me, my goal is to work with them to get them to clean up their mess. Um, with saying that, with the 35 projects that we had last year on the books, I'm was very pleased that out of 35, I had 13 projects where I was able to get property owners to clean up their own mess, which these are things that you guys don't see during budget time either. But that was a savings of nearly $200,000 to the county by me being able to work with property owners and help them. Uh some of them I actually helped them uh get in contact with certain people to sell their properties to maybe farmers who were interested. Uh we had one lady who actually ended up donating she had two structures that needed to be tore down. She actually ended up donating her whole entire property to a farmer uh and the farmer came and he took responsibility for everything and paid for everything. also had two two other projects where I was able to get um get the current deed holder in contact with somebody who might be interested in buying their property to actually rehab that and we had two of those which was probably another savings of another 30 to $40,000 to the county by us not having to tear those down. So, there's way more than 35 properties out there that need to be tore down uh that are um in in really bad shape and things like that, but um I just try to take the re I try to take the aspect of just being diligent about what I do, try to save the county money and um work within the budget that we have. If we can only

if we only get a few of them down every year, that's the only money we have to work with. That's what we do. So, but uh I like I said, I was very pleased last year with the fact that uh out of all those how many I was able to um get the current deed holders to actually take responsibility for what they owned and get those removed. So, thanks for the work. Tom, quick question. like on the Burlington property which was a business, right, that burned down. Are are we not able to get recouped for or reimbured for for having to tear down if like from insurance or other things?

Well, so um once uh once we take the so we have an unsafe hearing um whenever I need to schedule those, I schedule those before the commissioners. If the commissioners grant me to tear something down, then uh that's when I'll put out the uh bid forms to bid on that. Um they have so many days to start the project, contractors are required to be registered with our office to be able to do that work. Um and so once they get it tore down, of course, they submit their invoice to us. uh we'll get it to the commissioner's office and at at that time the commissioner's office or our office will also file a lean then against that property of the amount of that was paid out. Uh yes, we do our very best to try to recoup that. We've been able. It's uh a lot of times what'll happen is if we tear it down and it has a lean on it, if it goes through the tax sale twice, then it goes to the deed sale. And then with the deed sale, I believe that all those things are wiped off and we can't recoup. Um,

okay. I tried to look at those two. Uh, I've only had a couple times where I've been asked to to remove the leans. Uh, and to me it made sense to remove them because keeping them on there, nobody was going to buy it. Taking them off of there, somebody bought it and built a new house. Now we've got new revenue coming in for that house that was built on that property. Was that ruled an arson? Uh, I believe. Well, I'm not 100% sure. I just know that a guy drove his car into the front door and his car blew up and caught the building on fire. So, um I and I'm not sure where we're at either because we we've been talking I know that I talked with the commissioners to I felt that legally we should go after them anyway. There's got to be insurance money out there somewhere. Exactly.

Uh for the for that one that took place. So, um the state that that home was I think getting paid by the state for occupants of that home. Yeah. Okay. I think it's important, Tom, what you're doing for everybody to understand. If there's a blighted structure next door to you across the street, it's affecting your property values. And so, what you're doing by cleaning that stuff up is maintaining the surrounding property values in those areas. So, thank you for that.

Yeah, we're trying our best. Like I said, I mean, with a very, very, very limited budget, you know, uh we're doing everything that we can. um you know on the zoning part of it being the zoning administrator I mean some of the issues that were already you guys have talked about you know you've had to dip into funds already for and you're only into February we're only into February and my my office has already sent out almost 200 letters already on issues that are zoning violations within Delaware County already into February you know so um but again I I never take the aspect with anybody that lives within Delaware counties that you we're going to nail you to the cross or anything like that. We make it a goal to try to do our best to work with you. If you've got show me that you're going to work on this, show me that you're going to make an effort and I'm going to work with you uh to help you get get things completed. So,

thank you for doing that. And just in my previous role, I worked with you doing that. I can vouch 100% that this this body, the general public doesn't understand what you do when you go in and try to find other alternative solutions that are not costing this body. So, it's good. Thank you for that. Thanks for telling everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions? Thank you so much. Thank you,

Mr. Brand. Hey, Council Steven Brand, Delaware County Commissioner's Office. Just wanted to provide you a quick update on the ongoing continuous improvement cost savings activities that uh coming out of the commissioner's office. As you recall, during budget season, the commissioner's office identified about $2 million worth of a combination of true cost savings, which will be year-over-year savings, and some additional cost avoidances for 2025. Some of those will come to fruition this year. Um, in front of you, I gave you two copies. One is uh one copy is for the justice center, the other is for the county building. They are a free energy assessment from American Electric Power. Uh we entered into a strategic energy management agreement with them last year and through some very simple uh behavioral and operational changes as it relates to power factor correction and managing our capacitors. We saved about 100,000 kilowatt hours last year uh equating a pretty good amount of money. Uh, from that we also got about $2,500 worth of incentives or reimbursements from Clear Result, who was contracted by A. Again, no money out of our pocket, just some simple behavioral changes. What those reports in front of you represent are some uh incremental opportunities. It will require us spending a little bit of money. Uh, the commissioners are going to probably do that out of edit and not come and ask the council uh for any additional funds. Couple other things that we're working on for this year. Uh USI is our uh liability property risk management insurer. Uh you may have watched the last commissioner meeting. Uh we entered into or agreed to enter into an agreement with them. Their new contract will be in front of us on Monday. Uh that should bring some incremental cost reductions and a true cost avoidance. So Travelers is the current underwriter until March 1st and they came in with about a 16% increase. uh instead we put it out on the market and uh USI came

back with a combination of CHUB and Apex that represents a cost reduction. We're also switching from a to a fee basis for USI. So we're not switching brokers or agents of record. We're switching to a flat fee away from a commission based on premiums. So our premiums are going down and our fee that is uh will be a flat fee will be much less than what the commissionbased fee was before. Um, since then, uh, travelers learned that they were going to lose the business and they've come back and said, "Hey, can we, uh, can we offer a an an idea here?" So, back to my saying is, you know, every comp every purchase service should be comp quoted competitively on a regular basis. It improves quality and reduces cost, and it's brought travelers to the table. We'll have to see what they offer. Uh, we've also met this year, the sheriff's department and the commissioner's department met with Quality uh, correctional care. They're the company that provides medical services at the jail. Uh we got a 2025 report out of them and before the meeting we told them we would like to understand cost reduction ideas and efficiency gains. They came to the table with a lot of ideas. I've had one follow-up call with uh their uh consultant I guess I should say out of Arkansas uh as it relates to pharmacy benefit managers and the prescription costs. I think there are some big opportunities there. Give you an example. Uh if we take an inmate in and we we take them through intake and they have meds that have to be distributed. They might have a blister pack of 10 10 uh you know doses for example, but then they get discharged in 3 days. Those remaining seven doses have to go in the trash because they were they were paid for and they were specific to that patient, that inmate and they have to go somewhere else. So Indiana law does provide the opportunity to uh reallocate or return certain medications to the pharmacy. So we're working on some ideas

there. So I really I think there's a good opportunity to achieve some cost savings through quality correctional care at the jail. Um phones, I talked a lot about phones during the budget and last year. Uh it was one of the things on my open issues list. I didn't have the time. Councilman Kz took it on and we identified there are 471 phones in the county. Um, a lot of them you'll find in desk drawers and file cabinets and in offices that are unused. Um, there was an audit completed that looked back the last 5 months. There were 101 phones identified over that 5-month period that either didn't have a dial tone or had less than 10 minutes of usage. So, we put out a survey about two and a half weeks ago asking people, hey, these are the 101 phones. tell us if you can use them. Long story short, 75 phones are going to be disabled. They won't have a dial tone. And I sent a follow-up note letting all the department heads and elected officials know that. Also saying that if we if we turned on a phone uh inadvertently uh and you need it, it can be turned back on very quickly. I know some of the phones are seasonal like in the election office for example. Um so those can be switched on when they're needed and switched back off. We don't have to pay for them. So that should bring a decent amount of savings. And that's just round one to get those 75 phones turned down. I really believe that there's a bigger opportunity to go after more phones with the next round of of ideas that are coming forward. Uh also as it relates to utilities, um the fairgrounds struggles to pay their utilities. The fairgrounds doesn't have a lot of money. um and working with the Muny Sanitary District uh to get the fair grounds on a not for-profit tariff rate and maybe look back a couple years and hopefully get a refund from the LC sanitary district. So, that's another thing we're looking at. Um in our monthly staff meeting with the department heads that uh report to the commissioners. Uh we've talked a lot about time clocks and getting time clocks implemented. The other

commissioners are in favor of it as well. I do believe that that will bring a level of accountability and improve efficiency and uh improve those important public services that are already coming to uh the citizens of Delaware County. I think we do a good job with those. And then there's one more thing I think Carrie and the highway department do a really good job with it. There are some uh fuel tax credits that can be gone after, but I think the highway department might be the only one that's doing that. we could look at it through the sheriff's department and some others to try to bring some of those things back. So, that's real high level about a half a dozen things we're working on. I think uh right now we're working on about 15 active uh continuous improvement cost reduction activities.

Thank you. Yeah questions.

Thank you very much. You're welcome. Any other department heads or elected officials? [laughter] Being none public comment history Rick Yenser, newsman, author. I'm glad this government recognizes the right to free speech and press that is not being afforded by a lot of government or anybody else these days. Uh I glad that you pointed out that you do have a $6 million cash balance. Uh that's our money, the taxpayers's money. And I hope you use it wisely because again uh all I see out of government these days is everybody lining up wanting money. whether it's government, education, charity, or others. And I'm glad some of you realize that economic development money needs to be spent on jobs and business and industry. A couple of you have worked in that over the years, and you know that that's going to bring more money to government and schools. It's not going to be housing. It's not going to be charity. It's going to be jobs and new business and industry. And I do want to recognize the county for doing a couple things about that lately that hasn't really been reported since we don't have a paper and nobody listens to the radio. Uh Muny Power Products had a an economic development agreement some time ago when they built their warehouse out at Park One by the interstate. Uh they just undertook an $18 million expansion to bring one of their manufacturing plants back to Muny. And I think some of you might know the history of Mudy Power of hydraulic pumps,

drivetrains, and everything else that works in an engine. Uh those 80 jobs from an old plant over in Fairmont are going to come back here this year. And that's going to be probably the biggest development we have seen in some time because again, government isn't spending money like they should on bringing business and industry here. Uh the other thing that I recognized the county did, which the city didn't, uh a Canadian manufacturer came down here about a year ago, and they opened up one of the old shops, one of the second, uh industries of Chevy down on Council Street. They brought machines in um and the city wanted to make them borrow money. Well, the county gave them money because the counties got a lot of money. They got tip about 25 million. You get several million in economic development income tax and that's going to create a big economic boost too because I can't sit here or I'm not going to stand here and tell you what others have done with economic development. You know what you're doing with economic development and you still need to bring more business and industry here. We've got way too many properties. The biggest employers in town don't pay property. You've got a scad of of not for profits. I just heard hear about tariffs for uh paying or not paying taxes or utilities at all. You need to bring taxpaying people here, taxpaying businesses. And until I fade into history, I'm still going to tell that story that you need to do by the people. Thank you.

Thank you. No one else has signed up. if there's anyone else who wishes to speak to the council. Seeing none comments from the council. Uh I have a probably should have put this on our committee update, but just a little bit about the IT committee um meeting. So we have dropped from an IT department. We're we're at four people um where we were at seven before. Uh and so Ryan uh who is now leading that department is working through trying to get helped us support um hired some interns uh as part of that project and that is to help with the ticket volumes that that are going on currently. He's trying to manage everything, get our our network of systems engineer uh up to speed, but at the same time managing, you know, daily desktop tickets, 220 tickets have been completed since the beginning of the year. That was as of a couple weeks ago. And after the little email snafu I think we had the other day, there's probably another hundred sitting out there for him. Um the we discussed you know about the target team size being that six or seven at a minimum. There was discussion about needing you know somebody with some cyber security experience. uh Chester Kendrick who is serving on our IT committee who is uh in that field and is a a professor um with the University of Arizona I believe um has been providing us some guidance relative to that. Um so there's a lot of ongoing work and and Ryan's doing his best to to keep up. Um, so I just ask for, you know, from a employee and staff perspective that everybody gives him some grace as he

continues to work through some of that. Um, Kyle's in the room, but just real quick, so the website migration project has started. There's a kickoff meeting getting going and a and a timeline being established. That was a necessity from the state to meet um some of the regulations that are coming out at a federal level actually for um accessibility of of our website. And so there's going to be a complete revamp of of our website and a consolidation taking the court's individual website and the sheriff's individual website and rolling it into our uh broader, you know, Delaware County site. And so there's some work being done on that. Um, we talked a little bit about CJ's compliance, which is what the courts have been working on. Judge Mayor is on our committee and he's working on a checklist to uh to help us with with trying to work towards CJ's compliance from an IT perspective as well. So just at a high level, there's a lot going on with uh with that. Appreciate all your efforts. Other comments from the council? I'd like to comment if I could. Um, and just really get it off my chest. Uh, the radio and radio contract with Motorola. I fully understand uh the complexity of that and um I do want to thank the commissioners for uh stepping up and helping with that. My comment is that uh I really am not in favor of giving back at this particular point in time. I think that is not a prudent thing and I'm disappointed that the commissioners have asked for that to be the case. I know in in a business that I ran several years ago, uh we could project

what our food costs might be for the year. we could project what our payroll might be for the year. And uh but really at the end of the day, my comment is what are we going to have left over if anything after all of these bills are paid or not paid? And uh my thinking is that uh if we have monies left over meaning we take into consideration gift givebacks. Uh then I think we can talk about uh releasing some of those funds to help pay back uh some of this money uh that the DCRC is uh putting up front force. Hopefully they'll continue uh they'll do that. But if we haven't, at the end of the day, if we can't make the budget ends meet, I really don't see how it's prudent to talk about giving money back off of one particular uh office when in fact as a whole uh we can't make ends meet. And uh so uh you know I guess my hopes is that uh the redevelopment commission might rethink their request and uh that we might also uh think about our commitment. Thank you. Other comments? Reminder to the council, uh, we will have an executive session following this for council members and their council only. Our next regular meeting is Tuesday, March 31st at 9:00 a.m. That's one week later than usual. Apparently, some people go, places on spring break.

I don't know what that's all about. [laughter] With that, meetings adjourned or I'll take it. Motion to I'll move to adjurnn. Second. Motion to adjourn. Second by Jessica, second by Dan. Roll call. Mr. Langan. Yes. Mr. Wy. Yes. Smoke. Yes. M. Bookout? Yes. M. Piper? Yes. Scans? Yes. Hughes? Yes.