County Council - Regular Meeting

Motion to remove the February or April minutes from the table. So moved. Second. Motion by Dan, second by Eugene. Roll call on removing them from the table.

Mr. Flanagan.

Yes.

Mr. Whitehead. Yes. Mr. Mochel.

Yes.

Mr. Bookout. Yes. Ms. Piper. Yes. Mr. Kantz. Yes. Mr. Hughes.

Yes. It's your pleasure on the April 28th, 2026 meeting minutes.

They have already been motioned and seconded at a previous meeting. Okay. But I would like to... make a motion to adopt them, pass them, confirm them with the corrections suggested. And all of them are small, minor ones. They don't change the intent of the minutes.

Is there a second? Second. Motion by Eugene, second by Jessica. Questions, comments? Roll call, please.

Mr. Flanagan. Yes. Mr. Whitehead. Yes. Mr. Mochel. Yes. Mr. Bookout. Yes. Ms. Piper. Yes. Mr. Kantz. Yes. Mr. Hughes.

Yes. We have the minutes from May 26th. I can make a motion to approve the minutes with the corrections suggested. So moved. Second. Motion by Eugene, second by Dan. Questions? Comments? Roll call, please.

Mr. Flanagan?

Yes.

Mr. Whitehead?

Yes.

Mr. Moekel? Yes. Mr. Buchout? Yes. Ms. Piper? Yes. Mr. Kantz? Yes. Mr. Hughes?

Yes. Thank you. Moving on to the transfer and appropriation agenda.

Starting off in transfers, in county general, 149, drainage board, 104, 101, drainage board attorney, negative $436.75. 311, contractual services, positive $436.75, total transfer zero. Move to approve. Second. Motion by Jessica, second by Dan.

Oh, this is just the journey's board hired a new attorney on the first and he wanted to get they wanted to get paid out of Contractual services versus the 101 pay line So when we when I transferred the money over I wasn't exactly sure I want to leave enough in where the 101 pay line make sure that there wasn't a negative and then we just move this is the rest of the money that's going back into contractual services and That's just what was left over in the account after everything got settled.

Questions? Roll call.

Mr. Flanagan.

Yes.

Mr. Whitehead.

Yes.

Ms. Piper. Yes. Mr. Mochel.

Yes.

Mr. Bookout. Yes. Mr. Kantz. Yes. Mr. Hughes.

Yes. Thank you, Don. Hey, thank you, guys. Have a good day.

On to Appropriations. In County General, 126 Auditor, 311 Contractual Services, $220,000 for a total of $220,000. Second. Motion by Jessica, second by Dan. Mr. Carroll.

Yes, I gave you a document that has three pages on it. This is to address the systemic issue we have with Broward County concerning information flow and money. These two products here, two different suppliers, Ride Stuff and OpenGov, should address those. I recently requested $220,000. That has been reduced down to $127,586. Part of the reason that is, Ride Stuff cannot start, if we do decide to go forward with them, they can't start implementing their product until at least September 1st. So they have a lead time on deployment. So therefore, the cost doesn't start until September 1st. So total will be less than $200,000.

So what you just gave us in this worksheet, the one-time cost of 24-8, the... Licensing... why is there two lines for... one's for peripherals and one's for the actual... Yeah, over in the comments section where it says one-time cost description, it explains what those are for.

Okay.

So for peripheral devices, the time clocks, the hardware themselves, that's $24,800. Then for the setup configuration and integration components, there's a one-time cost of $36,500. Licensing then be $10,200. Hosting cost of $2,200. Total annual cost is $12,400. So that one-time fee there is $48,900. So $48,900 plus $2,400 is $7,150 for year 2026. Yeah, it should be actually $2,200 more than that. So it'd be $2,200.

23,700 for year 2026 for that. So it's my recommendation that we split this in two.

We split the Write Stuff conversation and the OpenGov OneTouch components separately. My concern, and I've expressed this before on the OpenGov piece, is timing. That we're never going to get implemented in 2026. Why should we start paying in 2026?

Well, we won't necessarily have red stuff implemented in 2026 either.

True, but we'll be starting it and getting it in by when?

We won't start until September. We're going to start July 1st.

When is the plan go live on Wrightstone?

They say it takes six months. OK.

So after the first of the year?

So in both cases, we start. We've decided today to go forward with these. They both would have the infrastructure in place and start collecting good raw data in 27. OK. but they won't be finished until the end of the first quarter.

With all the things on the list of stuff that's going on with your office, do you truly believe doing both of these projects simultaneously, adding to that list, is feasible?

Yeah, because we're going to start on the open gap immediately. We can't start on write stuff for another three months.

So that's... The answer is yes.

The answer is yes.

And this is the OpenGuf piece is the OneTouch components that we reviewed previously?

Well, all of it's really OneTouch because we're integrating systems together. That's part of what this right stuff does.

I'm of the belief that the time clock system is overdue. We need to get that moving. And if if funding that now gets that process moving. We've seen the results of a lack of time management system in this county. We've seen the potential abuse and behavior that that that occurs when you don't have a system in place like that um you guys just did a and so just to tackle the right stuff piece you guys just did a um another demo of that i think for some folks and i was hoping that we could get some feedback from others we have currently three other time systems in the county that do not integrate with our payroll system right that's correct highway 911 Sheriff's Department yeah at the jail okay so before we do anything can we could we start with someone Fred do you want to go first I actually wanted to get up and address this whole thing anyway so this actually worked out perfect so we did do a demonstration yesterday with

A time clock vendor, there were some questions. We currently use a robust version of a time clock system. There are a couple things that it doesn't do. The biggest one, ours does not integrate with VIP and SSI for the payroll portion of it. I think that can be worked on. The bigger issue that I want to say is this, because I'm frustrated, okay? We've been asked several times to cut our budgets year after year down to how many pencils we use. And it's frustrating as a department head, I would say this whether I was here or just to add, but the frustrating thing as a department head is that every meeting it seems like so far this year, the auditor's office has come in and requested more money for consulting or for equipment or for whatever the case may be. And it gets frustrating to see these when we're told to budget our stuff down to the number of pencils we use every year. I sent you guys all an email. We need to get back to the basics because we have an OpenGov currently and it's not even turned on to enter our budget stuff into yet. That gives me a lot of anxiety about adding more stuff to OpenGov that potentially isn't going to get used to the level that it needs to get used to. I'm also going to bring up to you that we were told last year that OpenGov would completely calculate benefit costs. Well, I'm going to come to you in July because we've already spent our entire benefit allotment in dental and vision as of now. It's actually overspent. I didn't know that until we printed our own report. The Auditor's Office never told us it was overspent, and if we hadn't done the bi-weekly printing of a report I never would have known I have no problem with moving forward with technology and with stuff to make people's job easier we do that too okay what my anxiety is is that we currently have open gov it's not even turned on so we can enter our budget stuff yet and they're due by July 1st that's embarrassing okay and now and now we want to add more stuff we're not even utilizing the stuff that we have currently So yes, as a department head, especially coming up to budget time when I have to have my budget prepared, I'm told that, you know, we can't do raises and we can't do this and we can't do this. And there's a whole memo about this. And then I see the council agenda today and there's $220,000 being requested for more stuff. That's frustrating. Okay. So I don't claim to know what Ed needs or doesn't need, just like he doesn't claim to know what I need or don't need. But I also know that when most departments start a project, before they ask for more money to add to it, they finish what's done already. And I don't feel like we do that. I feel like we just dump continuous money into consultants and more programming and everything else while everybody else in the county is told to hold their line on everything that they spend. And it's frustrating to me.

I appreciate the sentiment, Fred. Quick question, though, relative to the actual time clock system. Any concerns, any feedback?

I have no concerns about the time clock system. One of the things that came up yesterday, full transparency, there are options for this for a fingerprint reader. Several of the people that were there That's not going to work for us. It may work for some departments. But aside from that, there are still safeguards in place, just like there are with the current system that we're using, which we're going to have to maintain probably for three years anyway, just to maintain the data. That was one of the recommendations. And it's already in my budget, so it's not a big deal. There has to be a structured approach for everything that we do. And it seems lately, since the whole fiasco that happened, we're grasping at straws and we're trying to fix stuff in lightning pace and not sitting down and actually coming up with a plan with the departments that use stuff. I mean, I didn't get invited to this meeting until I pointed out to the commissioner that I had heard about this meeting. Okay.

At the Right Stuff meeting?

Yes. I was never even invited to it. I had to reach out to Commissioner Brand and basically say, I have begged to be a part of this stuff to try to help, and I wasn't even invited to the meeting. Thanks.

Thank you.

Carrie Dye, County Highway. Talking to talking about right stuff um i was not involved with that um we currently have a time clock system and i think that if we are switching time clock systems our department should have been aware of that thank you the meeting wasn't recorded it's out on youtube just a point

Jeff Stanley, Chief Deputy Sheriff's Office.

Our only concern is if using the right stuff. We have a program that we use currently for the merit side and the jail side, and it pretty much does everything that the right stuff does. There were Parts of the right stuff that I think would be beneficial, especially being able to load everything directly into the VIP if it's gonna make the auditor's office that little bit easier, I'm okay with that. It's just gonna take a little learning for all of us. My only concern is the cost. We've been using our vendor now for probably about seven years now. We know it, the officers know it, the deputies know it, the administration knows it. And looking at the cost of this new service, It may be a couple thousand dollars more, and all of our contracts continue to go up. So we've got a lot of stuff that we've got to look at currently in the jail and the sheriff's office. So my issue is just the cost of what we're currently using.

Thank you. If I may ask questions. Is your system compatible with the VIP system the county currently uses? I do not believe so. All right. I heard 911 director say the same thing. Could the highway, would you comment on it? Is it compatible with the system? Okay. All right. Now my question is to the auditor's office. Does that mean that that information has to get entered a second time? Yes.

That's correct.

Okay. Okay. I've got a question. So you indicated that you're under contract currently?

It's an annual contract.

Annual contract.

Yeah.

Good morning, Council. Stephen Brand from the Delaware County Commissioner's Office. I was in the Right Stuff meeting yesterday. I've dealt with a lot of complex and far more expensive payroll systems in my career. What's unique about this one is it seems to be more customized towards municipalities and county government. It will produce audit trails automatically for the State Board of Accounts and other entities. My opinion is it will greatly reduce the administrative burden in the auditor's office and it will simplify many of the transactions where we have paper copies today that have a chain of custody that travel from desk to desk. You know, there's no real-time tracking in that. The attendance would be real-time tracked. Supervisors would get daily flag reports that they could clear up immediately. Employees would have access to the portal. They could look at their online PTO balances. They could look at their schedule. They can request overtime. They can request, you know, a myriad of things. They could customize this thing with drop-down menus to basically... meet anything they want to do. So from that perspective, I would not have any concern with the right stuff system being implemented at the county.

Mr. Grand, at your previous position, do you know what we used at the sanitary district?

Workday. Workday. Yeah, it was part of New World.

Much more expensive systems. Much more expensive.

Just like UKG, Paychex, ADP, you know, all those are great systems, but they're also extremely expensive. And I don't know that they have the auto-generated reports for the State Board of Accounts. In fact, the guy yesterday said he referenced a few of those and said that, you know, right stuff is the first of its kind to do these kind of transactions for the auditor's office automatically.

So outside of just even the safety net, so to speak, the tracking of time, I could envision at least a reduction in overtime spend. I could see cost savings just from an FTE perspective on people's time not having to deal with payroll as much as they do today, things of that nature. The comp time payouts we end up accepting and paying out potentially, you know, that are basically just written on paper, you know, and we have paid out before without any meaningful way to audit any information. The $37,000 a year would be, in my opinion, would be mostly offset by some of those gains with a properly implemented, fully countywide time clock system.

Yeah, the fact that it's integrated to VIP, I can't quantify it. We could probably sit down with a work group and put that together, but your point about tracking all these PTOs, comp times, flex times, whatever it is, that can all be put in this drop-down menu. When the employee puts in a request, they can select from the drop-down menu which type of time they're requesting, FMLA or other, and the system automatically tracks that. To your point, it would also save the Human Resources Department time and the department heads time tracking FMLA today. It would also hold us accountable to the Fair Labor Standard Act rules because those rules can be built into the system, and it won't allow you to step outside those boundaries.

Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah.

So back to my original point, you know, Ed's office is in the middle of payroll dual sign-off process improvement, PO process. I know we should continue to fight these credit card claims issues. It sounds like there's been a significant progress with some of that, but still working through that component. Ed, I think you even brought up a travel expense report, you know, idea or trying to implement something. Again, back to this time clock system, in my opinion, has got to be one of the higher priorities. From that perspective, and I wasn't impressed with the OpenGov push to try to do that now, I think it's going to call you know from a project management perspective be a real burden um to getting that done and trying to get that done by the end of the year so it's my opinion that we should split these up that we should go forward with the time management component delay the one touch initiative to 2027 where we can you know reassess by after budget primarily where you know all these projects are so I'm making a motion to amend the agreement or the appropriation request to the seventy three thousand seven hundred just for the time clock the right stuff system and delaying or tabling the open code component.

So you want to amend the request to the 73,700. Then the other part of that could be brought back as a later request. Correct. OK, we have a motion to amend the request to $73,700 for the purpose of funding the Right Stuff project.

I'll second.

Second by Jessica. Any questions on the amendment? Roll call on the amendment.

Mr. Flanagan.

Yes.

Mr. Whitehead.

Yes.

Miss Piper? Yes. Mr. Mockel?

Yes.

Mr. Bookout? Yes. Mr. Cance? Yes. Mr. Hughes?

Yes. Okay, the amended request is for $73,700. Any further discussion on that? Okay, roll call to approve the additional appropriation of $73,700. Mr. Flanagan? Yes.

Mr. Whitehead?

Yes.

Ms. Piper? Yes. Mr. Mochel? Yes. Mr. Bookout? Yes. Mr. Kantz?

Yes.

Mr. Hughes? Yes.

I'd like to go on the record by saying that What we're doing now is reactionary to what the issue is before us. And by the vote and how you decide to move forward, we're not proactive in fixing the problems that we have to ask timidly throughout the county. So when that occurs, I just want you to make sure that I present it to you and you decide not to move forward with it. Understand? Okay, thank you.

Elizabeth?

Moving outside of county general, 1131 218 sales disclosure, 392 education certification schooling, 2,305 for a total of 2,305. Is this approved? Second. Motion by Jessica, second by Dan. Good morning.

Good morning. Sherry Chapin, Chief Deputy Assessor. This is just from our self-disclosure fund. We're appropriating for our conference that's coming up so we can have some continuing education.

Questions? How many people is this for?

Three people.

And what's the time frame? How many days? It is Tuesday to Friday. And where is this being held, please?

I can't hear you.

I'm sorry, where is it being held?

This one is in Fort Wayne.

And is this mandatory training?

Well, if we want to keep our hours to hold our levels, yes, it is.

Thank you.

Other questions? Roll call, please.

Mr. Flanagan?

Yes.

Mr. Whitehead?

Yes.

Ms. Piper? Yes. Mr. Mochel? Yes. Mr. Bookout? Yes. Mr. Cance? Yes. Mr. Hughes?

Yes. Elizabeth? Yes.

8147, Pub Health Preparedness. 240, Other Supplies. 14,536. 536, Equipment. 5,464 for a total of 20,000. Is this approved? Second. Motion by Jagger, second by Dan. Point gained.

Good morning, Council. Jamie Bain, Health Department Administrator. This is our Public Health Emergency Preparedness Grant that we've received annually. A total of $20,000 this year. Actually, this is the 2025-2026 portion expiring on June 30th. We'll be spending that money to purchase stop the bleed kits that we'll distribute to primarily local schools, but some other agencies as well. And the remainder of the money will go to reimburse us for the cost of a mini split system that was installed in our vaccine refrigerator storage room.

Questions? Yeah, I just have one comment and then a question for Elizabeth or Whitney. I fully support what Jamie and the Health Department are doing here. Thank you for that. My question is, this being a grant, have we received the money? Will we run this into the red and then wait for the reimbursement? Just explain that to me, please.

Yes, it'll go in the red first. It is a fully reimbursable fund, so it doesn't have money yet, but it will.

And we're all right approving it now. Okay. That's all I needed, Ms. President. Thank you.

Other questions? Roll call, please.

Mr. Flanagan. Yes. Mr. Whitehead. Yes. Ms. Piper. Yes. Mr. Merkel. Yes. Mr. Bookout. Yes. Mr. Kantz.

Yes.

Mr. Hughes.

Yes.

Motion to approve financial transfers into a men's salary ordinance with life reductions.

Second. Motion by Jessica, second by Dan. Roll call, please.

Mr. Flanagan. Yes. Mr. Whitehead. Yes. Mr. Mochel. Yes. Mr. Cookout. Yes. Ms. Piper. Yes. Mr. Cance. Yes. Mr. Hughes.

Yes. Did we have a backfilling report?

Yes, I'll make the motion to receive the backfilling report.

I'll second. Motion by Jessica, second by Dan. Roll call to receive the back-to-run report.

Mr. Flanagan? Yes. Mr. Whitehead? Yes. Mr. Mogul? Yes. Mr. Buchanan? Yes. Ms. Piper? Yes. Mr. Camps? Yes. Mr. Hughes?

Yes. We have no ordinances and resolutions. Under appointments and committee reports, I want to advise the council that... We will need to appoint our representative to the Municipal Unit Strategic Task Force, the MUST committee, that will be convened with the representatives from the cities, the city and the towns in order to consider a new structure for local income tax. Even though that can't take place until effective 2029 under current legislation, we are mandated to organize the committee this year. So what I would like to do is have you consider who would be willing to be the council's representative and the coordinator for the must committee, and then we'll make that appointment at the July meeting. There's quite a bit of information that AIC has put out regarding the MUS committee. And between now and then, as you're considering whether you would like to be considered to be the representative, I encourage you to read up on the very important functions of that task force. Any questions or comments on that? Just one comment.

there'll be open meetings and so others from council will be able to participate in those meetings even if we're not the designated voting representative for this must committee and everything in the must committee that's discussed or voted on is still non-binding the county councils currently will still be the um deciding factor of whatever the must committee recommends they will be the ones that have to approve it from a local income tax breakdown perspective so um and then since we're on this topic i'll just quickly uh the email i sent out um yesterday relative to our updates from policy analytics and then soon to be from baker tilley on our comprehensive financial plan uh as part of the policy analytics piece we did receive a lit calculator that is very granular, completely granular in terms of how we can help determine and manage the local income tax breakdown conversation when it comes with the must committee. And so I think we have the tools now to start to do that. I do believe it's still AIC's recommendation to not meet as a must committee yet or not call that group together yet.

Their recommendation was after a certain date in August, after August 1, until they had time to compile some more information to distribute to the counties and council and municipalities, whoever wants their information.

I do think we might want to consider communicating out to all of the taxing units and those that would need to participate in that must that we would be looking to do that sometime in August. So maybe next month when we determine who's going to lead that, then they can help do that.

Now, pardon me, AIC was also working on a flip calculator of sorts that auditors were all going to get access to within a week after our state wanted a call.

I believe that's the exact same calculator we have. Only ours actually is more granular than the one that the AIC will get. I spoke to somebody at the State Delegate Convention from a different county who says, well, they were annoyed that only the auditor gets it. that it we were told by jason that you know ours actually has all of the non-municipal entities broken down in there which which is a little bit more granular than what the generic one would be it's probably the same they probably created it for you they did yeah

The policy analytics has been extremely helpful in helping us work through this.

Yeah. And then Bill and I did discuss briefly in calling a special meeting for all of us to get the presentation by policy analytics to review the data so everybody can fully understand what we have from a revenue perspective for 26 and 27 and beyond. And then also this lit component. and review that and maybe then even combine that with a final comprehensive financial plan with Baker Tilly. So we'll look at that once we know timing.

We might try to think about that meeting either in the latter part of July or possibly the first half of August. So if you have dates and times that you would not be available for a special meeting, please let me know. Okay.

Mr. President, I do have a comment on the appointments. I believe I roll off of the CCA in July, so I think we'll have two appointments to make for that board this summer. What are the requirements for that? Right now, it's Marianne and myself, and we're both Republicans. We're representing it as a politically balanced board.

Your term expires at the end of July. So if we make that announcement now, we have to wait until August to fill those seats? Is that for our rules?

I believe so, yes. So we need to follow the rule in terms of posting those appointments and the requirements and set a deadline to have Individuals who are interested submit expressions of that interest to the auditor's office. And then we'll plan on making those appointments at the August meeting.

OK. Can I cover one other committee? Yes, please. The IT committee. A small group of us met with Ryan Stultz, our IT leader, to review the IT budget for 2027, or at least discuss the strategy for 2027. Some things did come out of that meeting, just to kind of outline. It looks like we're going to you know, the decision has already been made that we will not transition to Google Workspace. At this point, we will look at budgeting for a phased migration from our Microsoft Exchange to Microsoft Office 365 and going in that direction. So we're putting Ryan's helping us put together some numbers for that. It really comes down to the Quartz and the Odyssey software does not work within the Google space. It is a requirement that there is Office installed on every computer, which we knew initially, but Google did spend the effort to come here and confirm that with us. They came on site and went through all of the details on that. And so we're going to be working towards that migration plan for Office 365. Kyle's getting ready to launch the website. We've had a little bit of a hiccup with our current domain, the co.delaware.in.gov. Apparently nobody has access to that domain and we can't change it. So we can't move it. We can't forward it to our soon-to-be new domain of delawarecounty.in.gov. So we will, I think Kyle's plans to launch the new website under the new domain. He's working towards trying to get Core or somebody to be able to get us access to move that. I don't know if that's a good question. Maybe we should ask Kyle that.

Okay. Okay.

He's listening. So that's huge. And thank you to everybody who's participated in that. I think it's going to be a huge benefit to our citizens when that site is live. The ease of use, the ability, the function of it is going to be outstanding. So that's probably about it for that. Thank you.

Any other committee reports? Moving on, old business, we have heard the report from Trader Polk. Any other new business, Delaware County Airport Authority, requested to be on our agenda.

We do not have a representative available.

I was going to say, did he send that email to all of us? What his issue was? He's not on board. Almost.

I want to discuss anything.

I just sent it to you.

Yeah, and there was some confusion. I did get a note this morning, too, that maybe they thought they were going to ask for a different audience, so we'll have to get back to them.

Okay.

Okay, elected officials and department heads.

Good morning. Josh Jarvis, Delaware County Human Resources. I'm putting in my resignation. I made it effective. Yesterday, my last day with Delaware County will be July 10th. I'm just going to read just a short resignation here. I just want to express my sincere appreciation for the opportunities I've had during my time here. I am truly grateful for the support, guidance, and trust you and the team have provided. My experience with the organization has contributed greatly to my professional growth, and I have valued being part of such a dedicated and collaborative environment. Um, there's more in there, but I just, I want to just kind of touch on, I, I have not been looking for any employment outside of here at all.

The company reached out to me a few years ago, reached out to me, uh, a few, few months ago and maybe an offer I counter offered and I'm silly to not take this full transparency. So, um, it is a, substantial growth in my career not just uh professionally but financially so i'm very happy guys i mean that i had no intention of leaving i hope that maybe one day we can work together in the future but right now from my wife and our children i cannot pass this up so

Josh, I want to express my complete displeasure with that announcement, but thank you for your work. It's been great to work alongside you on some of these things. I think you've done an outstanding job with bringing some professionalism and some you know, guidance to the county HR department. And, you know, helping Lee along the way, too, really, I think was, you know, you've done a really great job being a mentor to that. And so, appreciate all the work that you've done. And we're very sad to see you go.

Appreciate that. And I really have enjoyed it, guys. I mean, I was not, I have not looked for anything. And I know that just God's honest truth, they found me. So... Just something I think I need to do for my family. But I am here for the next three weeks physically. And any loose ends I need to tie up outside of that, I talk to Commissioner Brand and the other ones as well. I'm here to help. Any Zoom calls or whatever, I need to help tie up on any loose ends. I'm here for you guys. The only difference is I'm driving 40 minutes west instead of 30 minutes east. I'm still here. All right. Thanks, Josh. Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. Thank you, Josh.

I appreciate it.

Kyleen?

Good morning. Kyleen Swackhammer from the Planning Commission. I just wanted to provide the council with an update on the status of the county comprehensive zoning ordinance update. So we've been working on this for a while. And at the end of last year, we released an RFP to seek out a firm to help with this process. We received five submittals on that. We have scored and chosen a consultant to help with that process. And that process is scheduled to begin in July. So July 6th is kind of our set kickoff date for this project. The firm that was chosen is American Structure Point and they will actually be at the commissioners meeting on July 6th. They will be here that entire day to work with me in my office. They will be here that entire day to meet with any stakeholders. or elected officials that would like to schedule a meeting with them, so you all are invited to that. If you would like to schedule a time to meet with myself and them on the 6th, feel free to reach out, or any other time we can get that scheduled as well. Because this is definitely going to be a process, it's going to be a long process, the estimated time period is about 14 months. So we're going to need a lot of community input. We're gonna need a lot of stakeholder input. So I'm starting out by asking for that from you all. Let's see. As you know, the comprehensive zoning ordinance covers a lot of things, both commercial development and residential development. It is kind of the backbone to what our office does as far as regulating permitted uses, setbacks, landscaping. commercial projects that goes over ingress egress lighting signage all kinds of things parking facades bike pedestrian amenities with our residential development setbacks are regulated permitted uses are regulated accessory structures types of dwellings all of those good things Our goal in doing this is to make our document more user friendly, easy for everyone to understand and comprehend, less interpretation and more regulations set out. Let's see, we have a lot of people that we want to modernize our zoning ordinance so that it kind of reflects the needs and lifestyles of our communities today as they were not that way when our original ordinance was enacted in 1973. um we want to eliminate obstacles to development um when possible and kind of adjust our adjust our intentions to reflect current planning practices so this is a big thing for us to undertake i'm excited been talking about it for a couple of years now so please reach out to me with any comments questions input um etc we're going to need a lot of group groups put together we're going to need a lot of subgroups we're going to need a lot of input on this so

Hey, Kelly. When was the last update?

Well, it was enacted in 1973, and there's been several amendments over the years, and all of those are kind of listed in the back of the book. But this is the first complete update to the entire document.

And are you basically starting from scratch? Are you starting from scratch, or are you just going to be... I mean, using that as the foundation, like what's the process actually look like?

I think it will be more like starting from scratch because we want to kind of even change the layout of how our ordinance is set up. We currently have the comprehensive zoning ordinance, and then we have a separate document, which is the subdivision ordinance. So we're gonna combine those two into one document. And we currently have a lot of references back and forth. So you've gotta follow this, but you've also gotta follow Article 31, Section 5BA2, and you've also got to follow this if you're a gas station and you have to follow this. So a lot of the condensing it into easier sections, things like that. Obviously, it's not completely starting from scratch because a lot of your topics and sections are going to be the same. We are just kind of reexamining the regulations to make sure that they still fit the needs of the community now.

Is it actually going to be output as an actual physical book, or is it going to be online, like a digital?

Both, yeah.

As an easily searchable, easily referenced type of thing?

Yes. But yeah, it will also be a physical book. It's our binder we carry everywhere.

The more modern trend is rather than just calling a zoning ordinance to have a unified development ordinance, a UDO. I think that's what you should be moving towards.

Yes, we have discussed that prior to sending out the RFP. We've looked into that, and the RFP was for a UDO.

Excellent. The other comment I would have was just based on the advertising in the Star Press last week for your next BZA meeting. You have 15 or more cases.

Yes.

And I think we're to the point where it would be productive to consider minor variance requests maybe setbacks that type of thing to have a hearing officer process rather than have to wait a full month and risk not having a quorum at your at your bza meeting that would expedite the that type of request and i think that ought to be considered yes thank you

Other questions or comments? The consultant that you'll be using, how are they being paid?

So we have been approved through our office to use federal planning funds for this project. So 80% of the fees that will be paid to the consulting firm will be reimbursed by federal planning funds. The 20% I am applying for several grants to be able to put towards that 20%. And I believe the divided out because we're also doing the cities as well. So divided out the package we want to go with. The fee for each jurisdiction. would be $16,892.50. So that is the balance that I am applying for grants for. Other than that, we will look at planning funds through our office and through the both jurisdictions.

And so as you move forward with this project, I'm going to assume that it's already what I'm going to call more of a baseline. In other words, there's already established these different ordinances, if you will, so that if somebody comes in and says, okay, so I'm going to put in a gas station, there's already something on the books somewhere. Does this consultant, do they have access to that? So you're

Oh, yes, yes. Our current one, they have researched our current one. It was available to everyone when we put out the RFP as well. And that will be part of a big part of their beginning process is examining what we currently have. We've put together documentation of the past five years, of all the BZA cases we have heard, of all the rezonings that we have heard, and that's going to be part of their examination process as to what are we seeing currently, what issues are we seeing currently with ours now, what variances are repeatedly asked for and approved, things like that. So, yes.

So anybody that has gas stations as an example, once a new ordinance is passed, will they have to update or will they be grandfathered?

It will be anything prior to a new one being adopted will be what we call legally non-conforming and will stay as is. Any new development then would have to follow the updated version.

And so, again, if a gas station has a current owner, they sell it, will the new owner have to update?

Not if there is no lapse in the use and not if they are using that for the exact same purpose.

Thank you. Colleen, forgive me if I missed this. What is the date to have all this completed by?

Well, there's kind of an estimated timeline of about 14 months. So we're gonna start July 6th. So there was a big window of it could take anywhere from 12 to 16 months. So we're kind of estimating around 14 months. And then the contract is currently being negotiated. The county attorneys are reviewing the contract as well as the DMMPC attorneys are currently reviewing the contract. So we are hoping, obviously, to have that in place then before the January or July 6th kickoff date.

And there will be multiple opportunities for public input, which I think is very important.

Yes, we will have several public meetings over the period. Our office will be open to public input at any time. I already have a compiled distribution list of all the people I've talked to over the past couple years about things in the zoning ordinance that said, hey, put me on the list. When you guys do this, I want to be notified of everything. Every meeting to, you know, just updates at any time will be welcome. But yeah, there will be several formal public meetings for specifically this.

Other questions? Thank you, Kylie.

Okay, thank you.

Other elected officials and department heads?

Mr. President, before we move on, since one elected official or one department head has already spoke about dental and vision, can I have another department speak on that issue? Certainly. Can the auditor's office update us on what is happening with dental and vision, please?

So I haven't reached out to the State Board of Accounts yet, but I did want to get an understanding of what you guys would prefer us to advise department heads since every single one of them is going to have to come for a transfer in their 100 series to their dental and their vision.

Due to?

Due to the change in the health insurance after budget last year.

Okay, so the calculations that were used in the Open Gov initially were not correct, or they got changed.

They were correct. They just got changed afterwards. It reduced the amount of health insurance, but dental and vision costs did go up.

Okay.

If I may add to that, I know in our budget, when I look at it, we have plenty extra. I mean, the dental and the vision is such a minor amount. And then, too, the excess in the health is more. So I think that will be the case with most departments. I can't speak for everyone. I don't look at each individual budget. But I think that will be the case overall. so We were thinking if we can legally like have all the departments send their shortage amount like how much they would want to transfer Instead of each department coming up and saying hey, I need to transfer Yeah, we thought maybe it might be legal I guess to put it all together, you know, maybe maybe read them individually, but somehow vote and As a single unit, yeah. That was our thoughts, ideas.

The departments were given those numbers to use in their budget in the first place. So we're recalculating those amounts.

Correct.

So if we could do that in one step rather than having each department, that would make sense to me, depending on what...

I prefer that.

That also, so when we discussed this morning, most of the health insurance lines in the expense report are like 12% or less in every department when they should be at 25% or more. So that's through May 31st. So the guidance is to pull it from the health insurance to cover your overages and vision and dental.

Yes.

Okay.

For each department. Rather than having each department calculate their own

At this point, they would have to. Just because we're so far in the year, I don't know initially what the cost would be.

But can the auditor's office give them guidance as to how they should be looking at this? Yes.

I think it'd be best for each department to turn in what they show and for the budget girls to review it before it actually came to a meeting to be voted on, just like budget is basically. I mean, I think just like mine, ours, sorry, we can look at it. We can see what we're short in versus long in.

They submit them all and they all come to us as one. We'll just do one approval.

I'm sorry, have them put it all together as one.

I just put a list in the record that we have covered it.

But if they found anything in the review, I keep hitting that, I'm sorry. If they found anything in the review, then they could, you know, give that feedback back to the department and say, hey, we showed this, and they could discuss it with them and then, like, resubmit if needed or make changes, et cetera.

Okay. And that budget will cover the rest of the year?

The transfer? The transfer. I mean, judging by the health insurance unders, how much under, we should have no issues. As in the transfer should cover it? Yeah.

Yeah.

Go ahead. Chuck Zimmers, Delaware County High Tech Crimes Unit Director. I just don't adjust mine. When the new numbers came out, I'm on a fixed budget. I jealously guard my money. I've already moved it as soon as I got the new numbers.

i was glad to have some extra do not submit yours yes do please do not touch it thank you thank you fred i guess i'm a little confused when did the new numbers become known because it was never communicated to department heads and like i said i wouldn't know it until i printed my budget current and saw that i was significantly over in the line So I also don't know what to ask for to transfer because we don't have anything to do with benefits at all. We don't, we don't figure those out. They were, we were told specifically last year that they were going to be entered by open gov. So the only reason I know there's a problem is because I printed the report and looked at it. So what rates do we use when we do transfers?

That's the auditor's office will give each department guidance on

Well, she just said that we're going to look in our budgets and figure out how much we need to transfer. I have no idea.

I've already figured mine, but I believe there was a resolution passed after budget last year that brought the health insurance amounts to...

It was, yes.

I don't think I'm the only department head that doesn't know what the rates are, so...

I'd ask the auditor's office to take the initiative to contact all department head selected officials and tell them what they need to do and give them guidance on what the numbers should look like. Yes?

In the DC general forms, is that what you're referring to? Good idea.

Okay, great. Public comments.

Mr. President, may I ask one follow-up on this? Yes. How soon do we need to act on this? Is this something we need to do next month, or can we wait until August, or what's time?

Well, we thought we had time, but Fred is already saying he's in the negative, so we're probably going to have to get on this as soon as possible so that we can get these put in.

Next month, we need to have this read. Okay. Thank you, Mr. President.

Okay. Anyone who didn't sign up wish to speak?

Melanie Marshall, Delaware County Fair Board. I'm just here to promote our fair, to thank the county council for all their support over the years when we come with our budget. Our 4-H fair starts on July the 11th. with their judgings and events. And then our carnival will start on Tuesday, July the 21st. Some of our grandstand activities start on Sunday, July 19th. We'll have all the normal 4-H activities. We have a full lineup of grandstand events, pretty similar as previous years. We've got South Stage Entertainment that's free every evening. A lot of local bands and a lot of them that you've heard before. Heartland Hall will have our typical vendors that we have and of course last but not least we'll have all the wonderful food vendors so there should be something for everyone at our Delaware County Fair and we hope that you will all come out and join us and our programs are not ready they're at the printer but when they are ready we'll bring some down here to the county building so they can be accessible So, but once again, thank you all. And if you have any questions, you can reach out to any fair board member or call the fair office. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Comments from council. I got one more.

On this topic, relative to the vision and dental, I ran a report, well, my friend called and ran a report, that tried to identify what's been overspent 75% or more as of May 31st in the expense report line items and what hasn't been spent at all. And really, it was just a touch base to see, you know, is there any major red flags. There was the health insurance and the vision and dental, but there's also the workers' comp. no workers comp except for one there was one department that had some workers comp taken out but all the rest of it is in the commissioners budget still even though there's a workers comp line item for everybody so do we know what's happening with that if something has been decided on that I have not been included in those conversations I know Ed has brought it up a couple times but we In terms of like, so like if somebody submits this workers' comp claim and it's not being allocated to the department currently.

I think for budget next year, everyone should try to include claim cost on top of their workers' comp that's automatically being calculated, but I wasn't here to make that decision.

Okay, so they did break down the lines and people have budgeted.

Yes.

The commissioners are at about 90-something percent of workers' comp spent, so their budget line is going to be significantly over. So we need to move that money. I guess my question is, we don't plan to reallocate those dollars from the commissioner's budget into those individual departments. That's question number one, right? So what we've already allocated out of the commissioner line is spent. We're not going to move it, right?

For this year?

Correct.

Not that I'm aware of.

Okay. And then subsequently, any additional claims for the remainder of the year, are they going to be allocated by the department, or are they all just going to come out of that single bucket?

I would say they're going to come out of a single bucket if it's not being moved.

Okay. So then we have to move workers' comp money into the commissioner's budget again for the remainder of the year.

I don't know. You just lost me because I thought you were saying the opposite of what you just ended up saying.

No, I'm saying, ideally, we're allocating workers' comp to the budget line that it belongs in the department.

For the premium, yes.

For the premium.

Not for the claims. The claims money, there's not, no one budgeted extra. They only budgeted the premium amount.

Okay. You really can't budget claims to an individual department. Right.

But the premiums have not been removed. at the department level either. There's $0 spent out of all workers' comp lines, except maybe highway.

Is that correct, Elizabeth?

I'm not sure that goes through claims. It doesn't come through us.

So in this report that I ran, accounts with 0% of their budget used, nearly every department came back with a workers' comp line that has had $0 taken out through May 31. So that's where it registered. So we have an anomaly, I guess, is the point.

My question is, the commissioners get the bill, correct? So I thought they were supposed to be sending it to the department, say, hey, this is your cost, and then them filling out the claim. That's how I understood it was supposed to happen.

Carrie?

Hi, Carrie, County Highway. So last year at budget time, the auditor's office gave me an amount that I needed to put in for a worker's comp. And I expressed then, I roughly need about $100,000 additional to pay my claims. So my budget was, we added the $100,000 to it. Monthly, I get something from Jenna that states what my amount is that I pay. so county highway is paying their claims portion i believe they are the only department that is now on the premium normally that was built out for six months to highway dcc health department anybody that was outside of county general but last year with you guys putting into effect that each department should pay for that I think it's going to have to be reallocated from the commissioner's budget for the departments to pay. That's just my opinion, how I see it.

I don't really know what the process of the answer is. I just noticed that it's not right. So Commissioner Brand and your team can try to work through this with them? You're going to be coming for an appropriation or a transfer of workers' comp money because you're at 96% or more.

Yeah, so Stephen Brand, Delaware County Commissioner's Office, you just made the comment that we're going to come. So there's already been two transfers and one appropriation into the commissioner's budget. As Carrie said last year, it was decided that each department would carry their own budgets for a lot of line items, including workers' comp. And the premiums were put in there, but no premiums have come out. The commissioners have paid all the premiums and all of the claims with exception of the highway department. So it's my opinion that the departments that have money in their workers comp budget should be transferred into the commissioner's budget to replenish the commissioner's budget at the appropriate rate based on progress year to date. You can do the days or however you want to appropriate it. and then it's handled how you guys wanted to handle it at budget time last year, that the premium should come out of each department each month so that it's not all coming out of the commissioner's budget. If this body wants to change that and not drive these department-specific costs back to the individual departments, then we need to put all the money back in the commissioner's budget. But the goal of this body last year was to have each department pay for their department-specific costs so that each department could... understand their budget and be responsible for their own budget. So there's already been two transfers and an appropriation.

Which do you prefer?

I prefer each department pay for it. That which gets measured gets improved. So if I'm in a department and somebody else is responsible for my budget, I'm probably not paying as much attention to it as I probably should. And I'm not saying that people aren't paying attention. But if it's not in their budget, then it's not on their radar. So that was part of the goal was to drive these costs back to each department.

So each department is not billed for their workers' comp. We only get one bill.

For the claims. So the premiums were allocated by OpenGov. That's what was communicated last year, that OpenGov would calculate it, and the premiums would go into each department, and each department would pay their fair share of premiums each month.

Does each department get billed on a monthly basis?

No, each department doesn't get billed. That would be some sort of a function inside the auditor's office. I know the auditor isn't here today.

Each month they'd have to take the bill, the one bill that comes, and break it down by department and then charge each department. That seems like a lot of paperwork.

And the backside of that that I was listening to some of the department heads is that now if they have too much money in their budget, now you're requesting that money come back to you versus if you were to get the money in the first place and then you allocate it as needed. If there is excess, you would already have it by not following that.

No, I think you're tracking. So my comment was all the premiums have come out of the commissioner's budget this year so far, even though the premiums were budgeted in each department, not just the commissioner's budget. But the premiums have only been paid out of the commissioner's budget. So we've had to do two transfers and an appropriation to keep that line item from going into the red. So departments have money in their workers' comp line that hasn't been spent for premiums.

So it's fair to assume that, based on what Elizabeth said, this was enacted. But unlike payroll where the insurance comes out of their paycheck, this is a situation where there actually has to be a manual process in which that premium bill that comes has to be broken down by department. We've never done that. That's the gap. So if it's a $100,000 bill and each department's supposed to get, what do we base that on anyway? Would the premium breakdown be by size of the department? How is that even?

It was broken down by code per employee.

Code per, which means what?

Like a certain rate per code.

Oh, the employee code. I see. And we don't have a table that we're working from that says, here's our 600 employees and their codes, and here's what every department should be paying per se.

But OpenGov did that. Nobody did that calculation manually, correct?

OpenGov did it.

OpenGov did it and put it in each department's budget. You know, this isn't new news. We talked about this last year. No, I know.

I'm just trying to get to the root.

trying to get it handled.

There's a missing component here, which is you don't know where to allocate that money currently.

Yes.

But OpenGov does, theoretically.

Theoretically, yes.

You just were never told to do it. Yes. Basically.

To Mr. Hughes' point, maybe the short-term corrective action is move all that money out of the departments back into the commissioner line, go ahead and pay it out, and if this body wants the costs driven back to the departments between now and the next budget, let's put a corrective action in place so that it can be properly handled if that's what you guys want to do.

I mean, it seems like the easiest path for 2026, I guess. Yes. Okay. Okay.

It matters not to me, but again, if the departments aren't seeing all the costs in their budget, they're not motivated to manage them, and departments can manage workers' comp.

Yes, if we want to manage workers' comp claims as closely as humanly possible. It's part of the cost savings attempts that we're trying to do going forward.

And as I stood at this podium last year during budget time, there's no way to anticipate the claims. Claims can resurrect from three years ago, for an example. These things are realities of our system, whether we like it or not. Those are the laws, and it's perfectly well within the law for those types of things to happen. So the claims are almost impossible to budget for. But the premiums are pretty straightforward and that's why the decision was made to put the premiums in the department's budgets.

Alright, so the assumption then for budget season is that OpenGov will calculate that workers' comp premium Again, and we have to initiate, or you all have to initiate a strategy with which to actually get those premiums pulled from each one of those departments. Okay, thank you.

But in the meantime, we could ask the auditor's office to design a transfer of all those individual department budgets into the commissioners.

Yes.

Except highway.

Yes, exactly.

or anyone else has already moved that money well exact in what you do there I don't blame them but I don't think there is a I didn't see them right it happened is which only tell you right and again

Let's start with county general.

Similar question, but more general. When are we going to get all these numbers? I mean, budgets are due seven, eight days. I don't have any health insurance, any numbers that's going to be in OpenGov. Any updates?

Yes, I am putting in permissions now so that everybody can have access to it, and I'm going to send out the email when everybody's permissions are in there. We just finished payout for settlement yesterday, so we just haven't done that yet. We were talking about extending the deadline just a couple days since we were way behind. The only deadline that everybody needed to meet right now was the Form 144s. We're going to extend the other one across the budget.

Do you know when you'll be sending out the notification to the departments?

Probably by the end of the day. That is my goal.

Unless you're a procrastinator, you should have already been started as a department if your department's bigger than me.

You're just talking about the inputs, right?

Yeah. I mean, just email me percentages. I can match. Well, you shouldn't need those, right?

Well, you shouldn't, but if OpenGov isn't ready... Oh, I got you.

That could be used for pay increases if that became a possibility. Policy analytics... thinks that our tax cap loss may not be as large as it has been. That's a very difficult assumption to make because we don't even have the final figure from DLGF on this year's tax cap loss, let alone what next year's will look like. For those departments who are not including any pay raises, be aware that we will put money in the county council budget that could be used for that purpose in the event that that is a possibility. Second item, the gasoline tax holiday that we're all enjoying with some of the lowest gasoline pump prices in the country comes at the cost of tax revenue to the state, which eventually goes to our highway department. The governor has said that local units would be made whole But that hasn't been done yet. And the advice is that we're going to start seeing shortfalls in monthly distributions by reason of the lack of use tax and excise tax on gasoline. So just be aware of that. Hopefully the governor will make that right, but we don't have that in stone at this point. The third item I have, Dr. Michael Hicks has an article entitled, Bronze Incoherent Tax Plan. I recommend it for your reading. You may not agree with it, but I think there are some interesting things to think about and perhaps be in communication with our legislators as they once again revisit property tax reform.

Any other questions or comments?

Next meeting is Tuesday, July 28, and we will be scheduling that special meeting to discuss revenue forecasts. Entertain a motion to adjourn. Second. Motion by Jessica, second by Dan, and we'll try a roll call this time.

Mr. Flanagan? Yes. Mr. Whitehead? Yes. Mr. Mochel?

Yes.

Mr. Bookout? Yes. Ms. Piper? Yes. Mr. Kantz? Yes. Mr. Hughes?

Yes. Meeting adjourned.