County Council - Regular Meeting

Delaware County Commissioner's meeting of August the 17th. Time is now 9 o'clock. Please stand for the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the model with which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Roll call, please.

Here. Commissioner Brann. Here. Commissioner Regan.

Present. We're going to change our agenda today. So we have some busy people that need to get back to work. And first, I'd like to start with Corey Kissick.

Good morning, everyone. Corey Kissick, Emergency Management Director. Just want to give an update on the recent flooding disaster that's affecting Delaware County, countywide right now. Since Wednesday, first responders, supporting agencies, rescuers, fire departments, law enforcement conducted over 400 evacuations, rescues, check welfares, home clearing, and other emergency operations tasks throughout Delaware County. So far, it's unofficial, but they're predicting that we got over 10 inches of rain. Areas like Muncie, Yorktown, Delville, Southern Delaware County, heavily affected. We did tragically have two confirmed fatalities in reference to this incident. As of right now, where the EOC stands, we're at level three, which is enhanced monitoring operational mode. We've transitioned from the response side and officially, as of yesterday about noon, transitioned over to recovery. Working with our local and state partners to get that process rolling as quickly and efficiently as possible. As of now, we've received over 400 plus damage report surveys from the public that we're now assessing, dividing in the quadrants, and we're having a planning meeting today. Tomorrow we plan to send people out in the field to start our assessment, which Kyle Johnson, our PIO, is going to talk about after I'm finished. The town of Yorktown and the city of Muncie both issued disaster declarations, and the commissioners did as well. It went up the chain. The state issued their disaster declaration, and the president has issued his. We have opened the public assistance portion of the recovery process. I'm sorry, the state has opened the public assistance process which is PA. Most of the department heads, elected officials, county administrators, finance section chiefs, we've sent emails to and briefed them on how to start that process. If you guys have any questions on that, contact our finance section chief, Heidi Knuckles, and she can walk you through that process and help you out.

Just to be clear, public assistance is for local governments. It's a misleading name, so it's not for the public. It's for public agencies.

Yep, individual assistance is what's gonna help the people, individual assistance. Our next step is to as quickly as possible get that opened up so we can take care of our people next. That's gonna start locally and it'll end locally. Getting our operations together today and getting our people out in the field to start that preliminary damage assessment is what's gonna spin up that operations and that's what we're intending to do. We're planning to start on it tomorrow. As of right now, we encourage residents and businesses to document everything, take pictures of everything, write everything down. Sheltering, one overnight shelter remains open. It's Community Hope Church, 1968 West Main Street. We've had two shelters open in this entire time. We've had no more than 25 people checked into those. Last night, we had 15 people checked into the Community Hope Shelter. Moving forward, while floodwaters have received considerably, this disaster is still not over for us. It's not over for the county. It's not over for the city. It's not over for anyone. This is going to continue to go on for a little while. Families are returning home to damaged homes, businesses. They're assessing their losses. Before I'm finished here, I want to recognize the extraordinary cooperation we've witnessed throughout this incident. Behind all the 400 operations conducted, the evacuations, the welfare checks, the rescues, since Wednesday, from the first responders the highway departments this everybody it's it's been insane on the cooperation and teamwork that we've witnessed throughout this entire event everybody's came together everybody stepped up and also volunteers from the community itself stepped up and and we're seeing people helping people and everybody's sticking together and we want to keep keep this momentum going forward Our focus now is supporting our residents, documenting the full impact of this disaster, and pursuing every available recovery resource and helping people move forward. That's what our mission is right now. And that's all I have. Do you guys have any questions?

I know you've been over there. Have you even been home yet?

I'm at 85 hours since Tuesday.

Kyle? Kyle, please.

Kyle Johnson, Chief Information Officer. I'm going to go over some of the resources that we have made available on the county website. So if you go to delawarecounty.in.gov, the front page we've kind of hijacked, and there's all kinds of information and links for people to get to lists of resources. So number one, if you haven't already and you have flood damage, there's a form to submit flood damage that helps guide us to know where all the damage is. So when we send crews out to do the official damage assessment, they know where to go. You can also call 2-1-1 if you don't have access to a computer or don't want to use the online form, call 2-1-1. You can submit your damage over the form and we get that in the EOC. We've added a page for recovery resources. So over the weekend, we realized there was no one stop where you could see where all the resources are. So there's a recovery resource page that has a spreadsheet that has everything that's been submitted. There's also a form to submit resources. So if you know of anything that's for people recovering from the flood, fill out that form and it automatically gets added to that page so that we have a one stop. Last I checked, we had like 34 different services that are available. So share that widely so we can get as much in there as possible. Also, any updated news will go into a section right there on that page. When state and federal assistance programs are made available to the general public, all that's going to be front and center on the county website. So just visit there. Also, the emergency management and county Facebook pages, we'll get that out as soon as possible. As Corey said, we're spinning up our damage assessment. That's the next big step in the process. What we need is people. So we're reaching out to all of our local government agencies to help provide any staff they can spare starting tomorrow that we can send out to help us do the damage assessment.

You're going to train those people. There'll be a short training program and then you'll send them right out.

Is that correct? Absolutely. It's a really relatively simple process. It's only a handful of questions that you have to do for each property. It's all based on a website form that we share with them. And we'll go over with that for everybody.

So if you don't mind real quick, when we do damage assessments, Commissioner Rainey, you've been part of that. You know, we send out several groups of people to try to get it done in a fairly decent amount of time. We're requesting county resources. What I would like to say is any county office that has a couple extra people that they could send to emergency management for a day or two, please let them know. I think that's appropriate for us to do. There is a lot of damage out there that's going to need evaluating.

We're estimating between 500 and 1,000 structures that need to be looked at.

So I'm okay if you as a department head or elected official have a couple extra people that you could do away with for a day or two, send them over to emergency management.

I think that would be appropriate. Have them call the EOC, 747-7719, and we'll get their information and we'll contact them. That's everything I have. Does anybody have any questions on resources?

I've spent a lot of time with these guys over the past few days, and they're doing a tremendous job, Corey and Kyle. So I just want to thank you guys and thank all the emergency responders that have been out working on this event.

Great team.

Kyle, do we have an official flood stage number now?

I don't have it written down. It was in the 18-point something. Almost 19 feet. The previous record was about 14 feet. Yeah, it gets tricky with records because when the levees were built, but what I've seen is this is the number third highest that it got.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Corey.

Our Congress. Tell me you want to be next. You need to go back to work. Tell me Humber. Iowa.

Tommy Hummer, Delaware County Highway Department. So we're still assessing all the damages stuff. Ours are going to be different. I'm counting on the farmers and people to call in to let me know some of these damages. As we're putting signs out, we're trying to see what we have, but the water's an issue still. So we're documenting everything. We're going ahead and temporary fixing this stuff as we go.

You know how many road closures still continue?

No, I can't tell you because I'll tell you what, we actually went out this weekend and picked some up and then we had to put some back out. So we put every barricade out that we had on a sign. Plus we actually got new barricades to put out with no signage on it because we ran out. So I've heard some numbers anywhere from like 15 from the farmers to 13 and some 12. So I lean on these farmers and these landowners also to call in and give me information on these roads. And they're my best workers because they can tell me where it's at. The highway workers, the guys and gals out there have worked around the clock. They've done an A-plus job. I mean, they put themselves in a lot of jeopardy out there around the swift running waters. And everything has went good so far. But I'm really scared when this water gets down, we're going to have a lot of roads that are... The edges are gone, the sides are gone. We got culverts. We got a big culvert of 400 south that I'm trying to get the locate through so we can get that pulled out to see, determine exactly what size we need to put back in there. So there's going to be a lot of damage that we don't even know about yet.

So once the water recedes, we do know that 400 south between Proctor Road and 400 west is going to remain closed until further notice?

Yes, it will. It will remain closed because we cannot tell what size pipe goes back in there, culvert or structure, until we can find out where the gas lines are and everything like that. So that's where we're at on that. I know like out in the Proctor Road, Bell Creek area, The farmer is 84 years old, lived there his whole life, said he's never seen anything like it in his 84 years. So the waters are just crazy. With snow, we can push it off the road. This water, we can't do anything with this water. It's tricky. So that's kind of where I'm at there with that. It's putting our other stuff. We're going to be behind on some of our other stuff, our chip and seal, our fog seal, which I can let Dean talk about later. Would that be more appropriate to talk about that later? I'm going to try to get back out because we have some stuff that we've got to get done today to get some sizing. Do you guys have any questions for me or anything? Just tell everybody we said thank you and be safe. I will. And like I said, the workers have really done an A-plus job. I mean, they went above and beyond. So I appreciate you all. Thank you. Thank you for telling me.

Congresswoman Victoria Sparks likes to say a few words.

Thank you so much, and thank you for being here. It's an unprecedented, very serious situation, and you have really great people doing things. I'll tell you that your team and how you update the website and try to stay in touch is really amazing, and I appreciate you being here. I saw you on Friday here. You were all on the ground. I think when we reach another step, next step, and we really need to deal with remediation, I want to give you a quick update, but I also want to maybe give you some see what I've seen in my other counties happening and what really the problems are. I drove around a little bit. I went to Yorktown, Muncie, and I went to really some of these affected individuals. And it's really devastating for some of these families. And some of them do have friends and family help. Some of them don't have too many. So we need to figure out how we can get on the ground before all of the other federal and other things happening and how we can truly help some of these people to be able to clean up and get some resources. so you tell me what is the best way to do I know that in Hamilton County they got one organizations kind of to coordinate all of that to specifically so where volunteer needs what is you know where what kind of other supplies people need so and they actually have too many things so they said like if your other counties need Delaware medicine we you know they even the taking supplies would be happy to share so if you tell me who's coordinated i'm a little bit disappointed that red cross is not as engaged here so i'm going to follow up with them i've seen them you know in hamilton county but actually i haven't seen them in madison and delaware county so they need to be more on the ground so i'm going to follow up with them personally but i think if you let me know and identify which organization doing that because people truly need like on the ground help and maybe you know we have a phone numbers like 211 and other phone numbers and websites a lot of these people can barely keep up just figuring out what to do they don't have time call websites so we really need to have if you have some volunteers to go and really see what the help they need because a lot of them don't even have you know time with thinking how they can get to have that um as from the federal level um I've been working very closely with the governor's office and the president and I talked to him personally and we did emergency declarations. The state did application Friday night and Saturday morning the president already got it approved. But this is only just step one. It only allows for FEMA to come and help with evacuation, truly like emergency response. You know, the next step is the disaster declaration. And I'm working right now in the state. I suggested the state to go expedited route, and the state is. They actually was planning to do it today, but FEMA wants to fly around. They're coming here. I think FEMA is coming in some communities here, too, and just assess what's happening on the ground. I actually will send my team if I cannot be myself. You know, as you know, FEMA hasn't been, haven't had the best track record, but I talked to our new secretary of the serve in the house with him today and I texted him at 6 a.m. and he responded at 6 or 2 a.m. Okay, so he's pretty good, you know, and he says, well, let me know. Listen, he will be on top of his agency too. And I want to make sure that we, as much as we can at the federal level, try to push it. But I will try to do this application this week, and I'm working on the ladder, and I actually gather a lot of pictures from a variety of communities in my district. It's not just my district. There are some other areas of Indiana, too, but my district really significantly got affected. It was flooding. We had tornadoes and other things happening throughout the state, unfortunately. you know but I'm going to submit a lot over some pictures and I'm gonna try to move this issue so we can actually get it as arm as soon as possible and I hope we can get it done because that's where the FEMA funds can be actually used if people don't have insurances you know if people need some other help to actual way for specifically help individuals so you need to have major disaster declaration that's the the part of it and takes a little bit paperwork and that's what stayed but we're going expedited right we'll try to move that paperwork this week so it gets moving you know and then we'll figure out but it's important for the counties to provide this assessment and you have a great team i'll tell you they have the best jazz they go there and he you know you know they already emergency management already assessed what potential areas are they're going to plan to go on the ground and help some people to do some of these estimates because these people struggling to survive not worrying about estimates of what to do you know and this is really really bad and what I've seen and I've just seen probably just a little bit of it but you know it's really bad so um you know in any way I know that you know I've been you're amazing I work with you a lot and you tell me you keep me posted if we need to help if we need to state state been also well aware on the ground every time we need something I tag them You guys text me, I text them, they respond right away because sometimes it's an urgency situation and that's how we need to work. You let me know what is the best way, how we can help, but I think that right now just go assess what are the urgent needs of some of these people to do that and assess as fast as you can. I know that it's difficult, but at least bulk assessment of what are the potential damages for infrastructure, but also for individuals. and try to get it together this information sooner than later it would be great if we can do it this month's i think it will help the states to see the whole picture and what they need to really request from fema and uh... i'll work closely with president and i was at the federal level to make sure that we can try to get that major disaster declaration for the state of indiana uh... you know and but i think for the community also have like one point the person you know i know that you are emergency management department works very hard, but they also need help. They need to deal with other things too. So like to deal with maybe help with volunteer coordination, any help, and if needed to engage other communities, because truly we have a lot of people in communities that really don't have the money here to really to deal with this issue, truly. So this is community very adversely affected. You know, I was in Yorktown and Muncie and it's, you know, these people do need help badly. So you keep me posted. I'll do my best. You know, I'll stay in touch. My office, we have office here, but also have my DC team working with us and everyone and personally you know I'll be here I'll try to be back I try to head between all of these counties I'm going to go south right now but thank you for having me and truly thank you for what you're doing because I've seen here I've seen how you are you've been 24-7 and truly care about people in your communities so that's important and you have a lot of good people helping each other but some of these people people need to be helped and And we need to be shown what resources and where they need to go. So I told some of these people, I'll be back. And, you know, I'm a former auditor, so I check how my agencies are doing. So I'll make sure if I can, when FEMA comes and is like, I'll make sure that I'll come and they're doing what they promised. And we all have to do that. But I appreciate and appreciate having me here and happy answering any questions if you have.

If you can text me the contact information in Hamilton County where they say they have additional supplies.

Yeah, they have one coordinated number, which is nice, and that's why it's good. They designated one person so that way they actually have even access of staff. So they told me if you need help, you know, let us know. So I'll have your, for right now, designated coordinators to you. That's fine. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

I just want to say for the public, the Congresswoman's been texting us all weekend during this whole thing, all week and all weekend, so I appreciate you staying on top of this and helping us with anything you can.

I know it's a crisis and we'll get out, we'll together, and really, and I would just And I go on the ground and see what's happening. People, truly, they have a serious problem there. These houses are flooded. A lot of these people don't have help, don't have ability. And some are older people and have no ability to clean up and have no help. And a lot of their neighbors are also not there. So I think if we can help, I know we dealt with emergencies a lot. But now, like, help, at least bring some supply and help to assess what help you need and how to do it. Because most of them cannot afford anything, to be honest with you.

The neighbors help you.

Yeah, they just rely, and I have some old man, he says he just goes, sleeps with his friend on his floor because he doesn't, him and his mom don't have a place to sleep. You know, there are other people sleeping campers, some other people, good that they have some relatives, but not everyone does. So I think that's something that we need to really see, figure it out, at least in the short term, what to do and then how to do it and how these places to rebuild. And that's something that hopefully we can step up at the federal level to help. But thank you.

We appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you.

Appreciate you being here. Thank you.

Could we do one more thing here too? Our communications tower was flooded during this flood also, and so it's had damage. I'd like Director Cummings just to give us an update on that situation too, please.

So when I spoke to you at the emergency meeting last week, I didn't have a full grasp of what we were dealing with. It was very early in its infancy. I provided you with a timeline by email. I also provided you with a report about the Samson Tower itself and what it's going to take to fix it. We were notified early, early in the morning that by our radio technician that he had received alarms at the tower site, which was a power issue. He assumed it was underwater. He relayed to the dispatchers at that point that we were going to lose the whole site. That is what was relayed to responders in the field by people that don't fully understand how the radio system works. We did lose VHF capability, which is for paging and Tony fire departments that's still not completely operational it's about 90% they're waiting for an intended to arrive, they did get equipment moved up to the delta site. The end of last week and this weekend so that should be up shortly, we did not have a redundant backup for the vhf system. So on the 800 system, which is where the majority of Muncie PD, the sheriff's department and fire departments communicate that has a redundancy built into it, where it switches to other towers in a system. Currently, the 800 system never went down. It operated as it should. We are experiencing some intermittent problems with portable coverage. We don't have the same portable radio coverage now without the Samson Tower. That should be dramatically improved when the Delta Tower is brought online, which is in process right now. Mobile radio coverage is fairly good throughout the county. Moving forward, after meeting with Motorola last week, with Commissioner Henry and Motorola, the plan moving forward is to install the equipment at the Delta site for VHF. And when the Samson Tower is brought back online, we will have a redundant backup in Delta for VHF. One of the things over the course of the last several years is it was always thought that VHF was going to go out. So it wasn't replaced as equipment aged out. And so moving forward, I think you're going to see a renewed push to move forward and keep VHF. Currently the status of the Samson Tower site, the building and the equipment is mostly destroyed. They were able to salvage a few pieces of equipment. Moving forward, Motorola is working on a proposal right now, Mr. Henry is part of the meeting, to build an elevated structure up there for the components. The preliminary cost estimate is about $2.5 million to completely level and fix that site. The state is also involved. The state owns equipment that was in the Samson site. They will be installing equipment in the Delta site as well. That will eventually probably be added to the safety network. It's another antenna so that we can have that redundancy. We will be working with the state to identify what equipment is actually theirs and what is ours. I can tell you that we invested last year in two new repeaters, which is basically paths into the tower. We owned those. Those were destroyed. We will have to replace those as well. When the Delta Tower comes back on site in the interim, it will only have five talk paths, which is what the state provides for repeaters. It will not have the two that we invested in last year until we can get those up and running again. Obviously, that's a cost, and that's... So you're going to continue to see, for public safety agencies, you will continue to hear what we call the busy bunks, because right now, as it stands, we are competing with everybody else in the system. The Samson Tower was one of the busiest towers in the entire state system. And so once the Delta site comes online, that will become one of the busiest towers as well because of its geographic location. So this is going to be a long and complex process. We're hoping to have the VHF stuff back up in the next couple days. It depends when the equipment arrives. And then we have to move forward with actually rebuilding the Samson Tower and getting all the equipment back up there that we need to operate.

Thank you.

Just to be clear, so I think there was some confusion about it going clear down. The 800 megahertz system, I was trying to think back, and Mike, you was around too, when all that 800 first started, I think it may have went down a time or two when it was new, but it hasn't really went down since then, since the state got all their equipment up and running it. And we've had problems like this where the towers went down and it's went to the state system. And is communication the best it can be? No. But it's still, you can still communicate. Is there some problems with portables? Yeah, there's some problems with portables, especially if you get in a basement or get in a building that's all steel. Sometimes you have trouble getting out with the portable, but the Samson Tower always took care of all that stuff.

Yeah, so I misspoke at the emergency meeting. Like I said, I didn't have a full understanding. Understand that the everyday dispatch staff don't have a full understanding of how the radio system works. And so when I was hearing that the system went down and all that stuff, you know, that's false. I don't blame the people that thought that because that's what they were told by the dispatchers because that was what was relayed to them was that this tower site was going down and they were going to lose everything. That's not true. There is a redundant backup system. Our Samson Tower was part of the state system. The state had repeaters there, and it's used by people throughout the state, depending on where they're traveling through. We didn't lose the functionality or we didn't lose the ability to transmit on 800 because it's a repeated system through all the towers in the area. Hartford City, I know there's one in Anderson. The problem that you run into is when you take out our main tower, It affects portable radio coverage because portable radios are 5 watts. They have to be able to hit a tower in order to transmit on that repeated system. Depending on where you are, you can stand downtown in the city and you may not be able to transmit on a portable. Transmit on a mobile because they're more powerful and they receive better. We're going to continue to have portable coverage issues for the foreseeable future. You should still be able to communicate. We never lost the ability to communicate with fire departments. One of the things I explain to people, we have a system called Active 911 Notifications. It's a notification system that... relays the call to people's cell phones out on the road, okay? We never lost connectivity with our MDTs or our iPads or anything like that. What we lost the ability to do was actually tone and set off pagers and stuff like that. The majority of the fire departments in the county, including Muncie, do not operate on a pager system anymore where you wear a pager on your hip. They have pagers in the stations that alert them to a call, all right? But They weren't getting those. However, as long as their radio system's up and our radio system's up, they can still hear us. They just have to monitor us all the time. They're still going to have issues with portable coverage. They know that. It's a problem that we don't have any control over. The only control that we have, talking to Commissioner Henry, when this is all said and done, we will probably put the Delta Tower into the state repeated site so that in the event I'm still alive in 100 years and we have another flood, it will have redundancy. The biggest thing that people don't understand, and this is a conversation that we had the other day, That tower site's been there for decades. It's never been an issue, right? Nobody ever thought it would be an issue because of where it was and how it was located. Unfortunately, there's a lot of stuff that's happened in the community the last few days that nobody ever thought would happen. We're the victim of that as well. So moving forward, we can create a full redundancy plan, but it's going to cost millions and millions of dollars. That was what I put into the report that I gave you guys. There's always vulnerabilities in a system. Unfortunately, it takes decades sometimes to figure them out. And that's what happened here. So like I said, I misspoke at the emergency meeting. Those responders were actually told that the system was going down. of no fault of their own, that's what was relayed to their people. And I had a hard time with that because in my mind, the way my mind works and the way the radio system works, I knew that not to be true. But they had limited information and they don't fully understand how the radio system works. So there was some miscommunication going on. Right? Moving forward, we will work very hard so that doesn't happen. But radio systems in general are not something that the everyday dispatcher needs to understand how it works.

So we had that meeting with Motorola and Motorola's engineers and everybody on Friday, right? Thursday or Friday. Thursday or Friday at 1. I think it was Friday.

It was Thursday. It was Thursday? It was Thursday.

Okay. Anyhow, so we had that meeting. No, it was Friday. We had that meeting. And at that point, we was hoping the paging system was going to get up later that evening. Friday evening. And that didn't happen. There was some other issues hooking up that Delta Tower. So that didn't happen. As part of that paging system, the storm sirens currently are not operational. They're not operational. so we felt like they may we may be able to he may be able to fix some of those that were closer but that that never happened either so right now the storm sirens aren't operational so make sure you have um an app on your phone or a weather radio or some other way to let you know that in the event we get severe weather which we're not supposed to in the next couple days but let's

As soon as the equipment's here and the antenna's here to put on the Delta Tower, the VHF system will be back up, the sirens will be able to be set off. Operationally, yes.

Again... That should happen this week.

Yes, it should.

Yes.

Thanks for the update, and we know that spring will be here, so we have to build something very sturdy, because we know that this weather is changing.

Well, this is when it's going to come down, as we talked about, this is when it's going to come down to our federal partners, the Congresswoman, the President's office, FEMA, and to some degree the state, because the state has some... play in this as well. We can't let this Samson Tower be down for the next year. This is something that we have to move forward with. I spoke to Commissioner Henry. We've authorized $45,000 cost for this VHF thing. Figure out how to pay for it later, but we have to get that system back up and running, not only for the fire department, tornado sirens and everything else. but we need to identify how we're going to, how we're going to do this because it's, it's something that has to happen and fairly quickly.

And the other thing that keeps coming up with that is insurance. So we need to, and I think our insurance companies are a, have you talked to them?

I have. And they, they verified that that asset is covered in some limited liability by the, by the plan. And we have a call with them later this week to talk about a couple of things, including that.

Yeah. Okay, I will keep you updated. If you have any questions about the stuff I sent you on Saturday, just reach out and let me know. But that should give you a full synopsis of what happened. Thank you.

Thanks for all your work. Now we'll go up to the public hearing that we were scheduled to have first. And it's an Ordinance 2026-13, an ordinance to amend an ordinance regulating traffic on certain public streets in Delaware County. So do I have anybody like to speak in favor?

I could just clarify real quickly, at our last meeting this was introduced and the entire ordinance was read. But to be clear, all those things have been done except for item F, which is Walnut Street South, which is Old 3 South and Fusen Road. This is only to put in a four-way stop there. It's already a two-way stop as Fusen goes, but Walnut is through traffic. Traffic does not stop. So this is only for the Fuson Road and Walnut Street, Old 3 South. Four-way stop.

Anybody against? I can't believe it.

Dean, do you have anything to say about that?

Basically the reason this all came about was we had a couple of call-ins from the community. Whenever we went to actually look at the crash data for that site, there's been 26 accidents within the last five years, which when you kind of start looking through some of the traffic, basically how traffic different traffic things are thought through is that's too many. If it's five accidents within one year or six accidents within the last three, that warrants a four-way stop. So based on that, and then just kind of a common sense approach to it, we believe that a four-way stop is warranted there.

Thank you. No one's speaking.

I make a motion to close the public hearing.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Brand. Yes. Commissioner Reagan.

Yes. Thank you. Now we can go to appointments.

Health.

Yeah, so I attended the last Board of Health meeting knowing that they were going to take up the business of replacing Dr. Dowell, who resigned after many years of good service to the Board of Health. And there were three names submitted as letters of interest. This has to be a Republican, and it needs to be a doctor, a medical doctor. So the Board of Health Pushed forward two of the nominees out of the three that showed interest. One of the nominees pushed forward by the Board of Health was Dr. Jeffrey Ulrich. He is a neurologist. And Dr. Hal Dixon, he is a neurologist. So those are the two nominees out of the three that showed interest that the Board of Health pushed forward to the Board of Commissioners for consideration.

I do not know either gentleman. I don't know either of you.

I know of them. I don't know them personally. There were many good recommendations or many things NICE said about them at the meeting. The new chief health officer knew them both well, said either one would serve in good order. I would make a motion to appoint Dr. Jeffrey Ulrich, the urologist, to the Board of Health as the Republican nominee to replace Dr. Dowell. Second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Brand. Yes.

Commissioner Reagan.

Yes.

And then the second piece of business that they discussed, we've had a Democrat opening since I think I brought it up January 6th of 2025. And then we had one person show interest, same date, January 6th of 2026. That name's been in front of the board for a while. That person by the state code is not technically, doesn't meet the qualifications. So the board of health took a task by their September meeting to come up with nominations. And the way the state code reads is the board has to put forth nominees to the executive of the largest city if you have a county population of under 200,000, which Delaware County does. So that would be the mayor's recommendation. And the mayor should push forward three names to the Board of Commissioners to be considered. So this board still waits on the Board of Health to push names to the city executive, which is the mayor of Muncie, so that he can push forward three names to this board. So they did take up that business. They did discuss it openly. And the board chair asked the board members to have something by their September meeting.

The fair board in your packet was a letter from Andrew Abelsman, who's been here in the community working, and his passion for the fair. He was a 10-year 4-H member and a very qualified young man. I would like to suggest we place him on the fair board. We only have one opening right now. He's willing to step in and even move up the ladder for an office there.

I don't know, Mr. Bousman. I did try to check to see if anybody knew. All good feedback. Didn't have anyone say anything negative. I do want to note that the fair board, or at least this board, also like to take volunteers that have been volunteering for a while and put them on the board. I don't know that Mr. Bousman has necessarily volunteered directly on the board, but in my opinion, his tenures of service as a 4-H member replaces that. So I believe he knows what he's getting into, and this is a very active working board. You work when you're on the fair board.

Yes. It's just not two weeks of fair. It's year-round.

So did you make that a motion?

I'll make a motion to appoint Andrew Bousman to the fair board. I'll second it.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Brand. Yes. Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Riggins.

Yes, thank you. Anything on the table business that we would like to pull off?

I'd like to remove the meeting minutes for the July 6 meeting from the table.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Brannan? Yes. Commissioner Chandler? Yes. Commissioner Regan? Yes. Make a motion to approve the meeting minutes of July 6 as amended. Second.

Roll call please.

Commissioner Brand. Yes.

Commissioner Henry.

Yes. Commissioner Regan.

Yes.

Make a motion to remove the commissioner meeting minutes from July 20th from the table. Second.

Roll call please.

Commissioner Brand. Yes. Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Regan. Yes. I'd like to make a motion to approve the meeting minutes from July 20th as amended. Second.

Roll call please.

Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Brand.

Yes.

Commissioner Regan. Yes.

Make a motion to remove the soil and water conservation funding request from the table.

Second. Roll call, please.

Commissioner Brand. Yes. Commissioner Henry.

Yes. Commissioner Reagan.

Yes.

So they came to our first meeting in August and they asked for, I believe it was $25,000, is that correct? And the question came up amongst us where the funding had come from. Jenna did a good job of tracking down So for the years of 24, let's see, they received two payments in 24 and two payments in 25. Each year, one payment was made from stormwater and one payment was made from the commissioner's budget. Each of those were $25,000 for a total of $50,000. So that's the history.

I know at one time we were one of the only counties not supporting oil and water. It's kind of embarrassing, so I'm glad we're able to give them something. We do a lot of work around here for drainage.

So we would need to, if we're going to fund this, we would need to make a motion today to fund half of it from the commissioners, and then it would have to go on the next stormwater board agenda, which I would assume would be the third Monday in September.

I don't think we have it listed, but we need one.

Pardon, we don't have one?

I don't know if we have one. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Yeah, today would be unsafe housing. Yeah, the first, which is September 8th.

September 8th. We took that out. Was it edit?

When my name? It looks like. There was actually an account, soil and water.

One time in our budget.

Yeah, under the 1000 series, 180. Looks like part of that was taken from there. And then the other came from the stormwater board. So I don't know if that fund still exists. Second time. For 25, it came from 1197-90300. Oh, that's stormwater. Sorry, that's stormwater. In 25, it came from the 1000 Series Fund 390. Came from 380 in 24 and 390 in 25.

What's your pleasure this year?

I guess we need to verify if those funds exist.

And then it used to be named soil and water and then the auditor's office redid the what the chart of accounts and it got renamed to other services and charges. So that's what the 380 390 is.

And there's currently budgeted money in that. You know how much?

There's currently $21,000 in it.

So we'll need to table this again, in my opinion. I believe we should fund it, but we need to find the funding. And then the other half will have to be sent to the stormwater board meeting. Unless you guys have an idea for a different fund to take. That's fine. No, I'm good. Okay. Make a motion to table the stormwater conservation again.

We'll call, please.

Commissioner Brand? Yes. Commissioner Henry? Yes. Commissioner Reagan?

Yes. Okay. Approval of the August 3rd minutes.

I have not read them.

You want to table them?

I'd make a motion to table them.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Henry? Yes. Commissioner Brand? Yes. Commissioner Reagan?

Yes. Okay, presentations. Mr. Moss from the Tobacco Coalition.

Good morning, commissioners. Jordan Moss with Little Red Door Cancer Agency and Tobacco Free Coalition of Delaware County. We are trying to keep it simple this week with everything else that's going on. So we proposed a Amendment to our tobacco-free policy, it doesn't really change anything. It's more of a clarification. This is for ENDS products specifically. It stands for Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems. This is already a federal FDA policy. So we are just looking to add it to our amendment as the tobacco landscape changes just for businesses, organizations around town to help with clarification on what they need to be enforcing. So it's really simple. We would help with signage and stuff like that. We're kind of already doing that. But again, we're getting into a lot of confusion on what our tobacco policy covers. So happy to open it up to questions.

Can you be specific about the language you want to clarify?

Yeah, so the language specifically, basically we're just adding a new definition and it's on the ENDS products individually. This is to help classify the tobacco policies ENDS are classified as tobacco products, even though many of them are marketed as nicotine only. And then we did work in some other verbiage there as well, which that is up for discussion on your guys and we did include marijuana and stuff like that as well just as a precautionary for future um future protections uh so we'll see what that happens if indiana ever legalizes it but um while we're changing the ends Because most products, not most, some products, even if they are marketed as marijuana or anything like that, they do also often contain nicotine. It's an easy swap out. It's an easy additive for all of them. So just trying to make sure we're covering all of our bases with those kinds of products. Did that answer?

Yeah, so you basically want to add marijuana and cannabis definition into the tobacco ordinance.

That is literally two words. The rest of it is all about nicotine, electronic nicotine delivery systems.

So one of your first comments was you wanted to clarify it so that you could make it so that businesses and venues could enforce it.

There's just a lot of confusion. They're already supposed to be enforcing it because it is an FDA policy. But when we go in and talk to them, they're like, well, we don't really, we're not really sure about this. So then I have to pull up the FDA's website and prove to them this is how it works out. And so it's just a clarifying factor so that everyone understands where the line is on what they're supposed to be enforcing in their restaurants, bars, places of business in general for employers.

So our current ordinance doesn't allow vaping or smoking or anything like that inside. Correct.

But many people, typically users, will argue with their employers saying this isn't a tobacco product because the packaging says it's a tobacco-free product, nicotine only. FDA has classified nicotine products in specifically as tobacco products. So that's where it all overlaps, all of it. So they're making inside using that gap or whatever in the language. Yeah. Gotcha. Yep. So it doesn't actually officially change any of our policies. We're just looking for clarification for easier help within the community. I appreciate the clarification.

President Reagan, I know that you spoke with Mr. Moss.

Before today.

It was many months ago.

Yeah, I used to attend meetings also, and I've just not been able to go to the meetings.

Oh, I thought you guys spoke recently. Briefly. Since you sent this, I sent an email back and said, hey, the commissioners didn't want to add it to the agenda. Yes. And you said, hey, I'm going to connect with Commissioner Riggin. Did you connect with Commissioner Riggin? Yes, I connected with her and just sent her a brief little, here's what it was.

I think I told him to talk to Jenna. I don't know. I've slept since then. But it's on today. Explain, I don't know.

I think that you initially thought that this was something else, so you had told Commissioner Brand not to put it on the agenda, and then Jordan reached out to you separately, and he kind of explained what it was, and you said that it was just a misunderstanding to go ahead and put it on the agenda.

No.

That's what happened.

So are you in favor of adding this language?

I don't have a copy of it today, but, you know.

I've not received any complaints from any citizens, businesses. I've not received anything other than now we have this.

I believe in Jordan, so I'd be in favor of her.

the entire statement or just the highlighted part about the marijuana? Because that entire statement's different.

That entire statement is a brand new ad. I just highlighted the marijuana because that's not something that we had talked about previously, but it's something we're interested in adding. So if that is an issue for you guys, that little highlighted three words could be stricken and we could still add the ENDS policy. We hope that's not where it goes, but I was trying to make it easy for clarification on what we were looking for.

And we can table it too.

I mean, I'm not a marijuana guy. I hope it never gets legalized. Medical marijuana for comfort and those things, that's one thing. But legalizing marijuana, I don't think that it should happen. Adding that clarification into whatever we have might be useful. But, you know, I don't know about changing the entire statement.

I'm not in favor of changing the statement. Like I said, we've not received any complaints. I've not personally received any complaints from anybody about electronic usage.

A lot of people probably don't even know we have this.

What would you like to do?

I believe in the young man, his work. I would like to introduce a bit of changes.

This would be for either adoption or not adoption, right?

That's the way I see it, yeah.

Do you want to make a motion?

Do you have a preference?

I'm not going to make a motion to approve it.

If there's no motion at all, then the request dies.

So I'll go ahead and add one more note. So MRF6 is one example of issues that they've had when they were becoming popular and they started having explosions because of their factory. They had to do an overnight policy when this So that was before the federal government had actually approved these as tobacco products. But that's the kind of stuff people are making rash decisions. They're trying to do random enforcement instead of looking at what all policies there are. Most people just go to Delaware County. So I don't know if you guys would hear many of these complaints. Most of them are considered internal because they're seeing them as a workplace safety kind of thing. So that was back from... maybe 2019. So it was, it was years ago, but at MERS six at MERS six.

Yes. I'll be there tomorrow at one o'clock for a separate meeting. I'll ask. Yeah. They have the same ownership and the same leadership.

So yeah, I think the person I spoke with has moved on. Uh, I worked more with like HR side. Um, but yeah, they have a, they have a strict policy in place on vaping just because of the machinery they have. If one tiny explosion goes off in your pocket, it, what's in the whole building up so they had to do an overnight thing like i said back in 2019 ish so i'll ask appreciate that information yeah absolutely thank you thanks for coming yep hey the priest ford bridge mr cook here please

Good morning. Thank you guys for giving me a few minutes to talk. This is a project I've been working on for the last three years with Angie Moyer. She recently retired and then Dean's been helping me. He's been a huge help just to even set this meeting up. We've been back and forth. My – hopefully you received the packets that Dean sent you over. Yes. I'm projecting like – I know 10 years ago there was a Star Press article out that said that they were worried. Mr. Henley even said he was worried someone would get killed on the bridge. And that was 10 years ago. And Miss Moyer said she wished someone would take it. So that's how this came about is that I saw that and I contacted Andrew Moyer. I said, hey, I want the bridge. You know, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a visionary. I've had several other businesses. And I said, I want to do something special with it. So I lived in North Carolina and now I live in Columbus, Ohio. And if you go travel everywhere, you see that they do different things with different buildings and different things. And like in Missouri, they have the Rock Little Bridge, and they've done exactly what I'm proposing to do. And instead of being a liability, you guys, I want to turn it into something and restore it. It's the second oldest Camelback Trust Bridge, and it's just sitting there deteriorating. And it was bypassed 20 years ago. And it just continues. People continue to jump off of it. I had family members tell me this year that they saw people swinging and jumping off of it. And, you know, someone broke their back 10 years ago. And now the only thing that's been put up is two little signs and some caution tape around it. so i'm proposing a five phase stage not doing it all at once but doing it separately like securing it and then working with you guys on zoning insurances things like that to make sure no one gets hurt and then using it like i'm going to do benefits 10 of net revenue doing historical days where everybody can come you know it's not just going to be a public thing and then also i want to do something for like uh people who are not as fluent because i know down the road they have a wedding venue that's six thousand dollars a day and you get nothing from it so i was born and raised in muncie i live somewhere else now but i would love to see this bridge turned into something better than this now you know i was very impressed with your four or five pages that you sent us but um i'm just um you don't really own any land around it yet i mean is that your vision to the the vision would be i'm sure this i wanted to see the zoning rights i looked to see where the property i couldn't find it but i'm sure that the property beside it doesn't own all the way up to the dead end road yeah And I wanted to work with you, knowing that the city owns a lot of this land. Because the bridge doesn't just stop. That road went all the way through the bridge and on. And I'm not trying to change it into something huge or anything, just a little area for parking. And then to use that dead-end road, it's not being utilized now.

Yeah, I believe we own a lot of property right away on the southwest corner.

I tried to visit yesterday, but unfortunately, yeah.

It's a very, I think.

There are many landowners there.

Yeah, there's a few sections of that we don't know.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not looking for a couple acres or anything like that. I'm just looking for a little, you know, gravel parking lot and making updates from there. I mean, the first phase is just secure it. I mean, I'm looking out for the citizens. It's been 10 years since those comments came out, and all there was was two little signs.

There's a few sections of that bridge we don't own.

Yeah, the county doesn't own all that bridge and the land that it sits on.

They don't own the road anymore? You guys sold the road off?

No.

I only saw the outside.

I don't believe so. It didn't look like it. Not all of it. We have portions of it, but not all of it.

Dean and Angie and I went back with NDOT and everyone trying to figure out. It's kind of something you've got to think outside the box, and that's what I'm good at. There are several bridges that the inspections are supposed to be every two years, and we're going on four and a half for this bridge. I mean, it's just a liability for you guys. It's where I produce revenue going forward and keeping people safe, citizens safe.

Yeah, I'll be honest. We need to do something with it.

I don't disagree at all with you. The problem is we don't own some of it. You're going to have to get – are you familiar with Beacon at all?

Um, he's welcome to come to our office and we can walk him through that. Uh, look up the property owners for him.

I mean, that would be, if you could obtain a right to purchase something, some, some of that property off of those other property owners, and then maybe come back, and I don't even know. I'm guessing we're probably talking about RFPs and everything, but, I mean, the first, really the first part of it is we don't own it all, so you're going to have to get rights to those small areas that we don't own.

Where would I get, like, where could I get the information from you for what you do in our office? Auditor's office.

Auditor's office.

Just come to our office after the meeting and give me that time to look for it.

Do I hear a motion to table this?

I'll make a motion. We table it. I'll second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Henry? Yes. Commissioner Brand? Yes. Commissioner Reagan?

Yes.

I won't say I like the plan. I like the idea. I think it's great. I just can't do it yet.

I knew there was going to be more to zoning, and Dean and I talked about a lot of stuff. He's been great. Just thank you for everything.

Of course, they'd be in the flood.

Yeah, but thank you for your time. Thank you.

Okay, mowing beds.

Put together this spreadsheet for your review. Outlining all of the different as needed items that were in the RFP so that you guys can see the three different companies and what the comparison was for each of those items.

So to remind the public, the purpose of this was to try to come up with an on-call mowing service that the county or the health department commissioner designees, county engineer, building commissioner, could call on to clear properties that aren't being mowed and maintained. That was the primary purpose. As we walked through this process, we added some debris removal and a few other things, so it's a pretty comprehensive process. Some of it was a little bit confusing, I admit, since we got the responses. But the matrix that was put together, very handy. You can see as I've highlighted here, the company all the way on the right, which happens to be Smith Family Services, has the lowest amount on all but four items. So it was Bailey's Landscape, All Seasons Landscape and Smith Family Services. Bailey's was the lowest on the brush cutting crew at $125 an hour versus $175 and $200. And then All Seasons Landscape was the lowest on vegetation, debris removal, dump and disposal fee and emergency response surcharge. However, the primary purpose, if it's going to be mowing and trying to get these properties where a neighbor complains that the weeds are high and somebody's not mowing, we've noticed them, they're not doing it. So we do an on-call and we call somebody in and then we lean the property. It looks like Smith Family Services is the lowest. But Danielle, to be clear, when we opened these bids, there was also one for a roofing company.

There was.

But it was not for this, right? Correct. What was it for?

It appeared to be for the roofing RFP that had not been issued yet.

So we had a roofing company respond to an RFP that hadn't been issued yet?

Correct.

Okay. We'll look into that later. So, that's the overview.

Well, what's your pleasure.

Based on the response and what's been highlighted, it looks like Smith family is the best for what we intend. Probably the lion's share of this ordinance will be done for. I'd make a motion to approve Smith family services for on-call second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Moran. Yes. Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Reagan.

Yes. Thank you. Mr. Chambers.

Don Chambers, Superintendent of Maintenance, Delaware County Buildings. First thing I'm here to talk about is I was asked by the commissioners about checking out a floor scrubber. I've got two different quotes. One from Phillip Professional. This is a 32 inch right on scrubber. It's $17,865.87. And then also there's a tornado scrubber that's $18,999. I've looked up both of them on the tenant company that seems to be a better sweeper, a better model. Very little problems with these models. They're probably about a four out of five recommendation. Have you talked to any companies that have used either one of these or anybody that... Yeah, this one here is the Tornado Scrubbers through T&M, or T&H Sweeper. And this Philippe Professional, that's through... I was given that number from Muncie Paper Products. that's the ones who we use for our paper products and stuff and our housekeeping stuff. She let me have their number direct the company so she wouldn't be the middle man. That guy, of course, every company is going to badmouth another company. So but I did my own research and looked at tornadoes got like three and a half rating, where the tenant rating is like 4.5. So

So the Tornado is a Tenant product?

No, the Tornado is just its own product. This Tenant product is this green from the Phillippe Professional. It's an IPC by Tenant.

Okay.

What about the Powerfly model? What's that? What about the walk behind? The power flight.

The blue one in the back. The 20-inch power flight is basically $3,999, $4,000. 16 gallon I mean I'm I'm finding that too, but it's not gonna be something we can take to the fairgrounds, so There's a need to take it to the fairgrounds well I was asked to look for one to take to the fairgrounds also for all three buildings I

You know what the purpose of that was? To help clean the floors out there.

Yeah, when we have, after 4-H moves out, it would be nice to have something like that. We've used the street sweeper. I don't know if the street sweeper got out there this year.

I don't know if it would fit such a street sweeper.

Is this something we want to have gone cleaning up after 4-H had moved out?

Well, that was...

You mean like the straw and the animal mess and stuff like that?

We take care of the straw, but then just getting down to the... Yeah. Maybe in Heartland Hall or something like that. Right, right. It would mostly be... In the wintertime, these floors get mopped with a mop. So this would be saving time and effort.

I don't disagree having it up here. I'm just questioning going out there cleaning.

Well, it'd be nice to go out to the Memorial Building with the heartland, you know, because they also mop by hand.

The primary purpose of this is for the county building to do the hallways and pick up water if we get...

Yes, mainly for this building here.

How many inches did you have the other day?

What's that?

How many inches of water did you have the other day?

The one time I came in here on a Saturday, we had three inches of water in the basement.

Yeah.

What's your recommendation?

Well, for the cheaper model, the basically $4,000 model, the block behind scrubber, I'd be perfectly fine with that. It's going to save a lot of money versus $19,000. Right.

So the walk-behind is a 20-inch. It's still self-propelled. It's electric. It plugs in, right? There's not a separate charger. It just plugs in. And if we did decide to purchase this, we could take it out of the edit. Well, so we've exhausted the maintenance and repair budget for both the county building and the Justice Center, I believe, this year. So if we did want to purchase this, we'd need to take it from 12 capital projects.

Don, which one would you like?

If it's just going to be for this building here, I don't see why we need to spend a bunch of money and just get the one that's a 20 inch walk behind scrubber for $4,000. I don't see spending $18,000 when we can just spend $4,000 and do the same exact job.

I don't think we need to ride on. So what Don's saying, and I don't disagree, the power flight model PS530 dash w22 dash uc says it's a 20 inch powered walk behind scrubber for four thousand nine hundred ninety nine dollars and we would still need to look at uh their contract with their purchase agreement that one is self-propelled yes versus the other one that's not that's right um i'd make a motion to purchase the uh the one you just spoke about a second roll call please

Commissioner Henry? Yes. Commissioner Brand? Yes.

Commissioner Reagan?

Yes.

Again, out of edit 12, and then we need to look at the purchase agreement for that.

Okay, now the alarm systems.

Yes, this here is for the Delaware County Jail. They cannot install the monitoring system at the jail yet due to the fact of having a... a ground fault alarm on the system. This quotes for $1,654.95. They have to fix this before they can install the monitoring system on the building. That's of course going to be using our lift to get to the, I think they narrowed it down, but it's going to be down in one of the jail cells.

This is to continue troubleshooting the ground fault, right? Yes. By Corson, 1,654.95. We have to do it. Again, edit 12. Make a motion to approve out of edit 12. Second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Brown. Yes. Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Reagan. Yes. Thanks, Don. Yep.

Thank you very much. Okay. Now, Mr. Saltz.

I'm Ryan Stoltz, IT supervisor, and I am here about Microsoft 365 funding for next year. We are looking obviously to move over to that platform by next year. We will start some migration this year, but we are looking to have the majority of it paid for next year through commissioners. which is going to be about $235,000 that we need to earmark. It should not actually cost that much because as we add people, the things will be prorated, all the licenses will be prorated. So it should actually be less than that, but I've just given the full amount just to ensure that we don't have any overages or anything like that.

So the IT committees met on this a number of times. If you recall, we had talked about going to Google. There was a lot of consternation about that. Everybody came back around to going with 365. The $235,000 would be a not to exceed. We would take it out of edit number 10 for 2027 with the understanding that this would go into the departmental budgets based on users for 2028. So for the 2027 budget season, budget for 28, it would go in the individual budgets. This was a unanimous recommendation from the IT committee.

Yes, and also just to clarify, there's about 106 right now mailboxes that we're paying for, which we don't pay the full Microsoft 365 price, but We are looking to reduce some of those. We're getting ready to start an audit with each office so we can look at, do we need it to be a mailbox? As an example, I know for instance, the prosecutors, they do have a several that they have to have because they're mandated by the state. But then there's also several in other offices that I believe were just set up that way, but could be groups where we don't have to pay for it. So that's also kind of the goal is to be able to reduce and be able to tell each office, 2028, this is how much it's gonna cost for you to have 365.

Kind of like our phone audit. Correct. Thank you. It's a pleasure.

Make a motion to approve up to $235,000 out of edit number 10, which is our IT infrastructure.

Are you in favor? Yeah. I'll second it.

Roll call, please.

Mr. Henry? Yes. Mr. Brand? Yes. Mr. Riggin?

Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Bridge number five is Thomas.

This is a cost proposal to do a hydraulic study and the permitting associated with replacing bridge number five with an aluminum structure. So this is just the initial phase. Basically, it would tell us what size structure we're able to use and if we're able to basically use this aluminum box in place of the bridge. The cost of this proposal would be $42,971. It includes a survey. a hydraulic analysis of the immediate area surrounding the bridge along with permitting that we would need to actually do the construction work. This is not any of the construction or materials for that bridge. This is purely just the engineering costs for the up-front piece of it. And this would be, providing you guys approve this, would be paid for out of the cumulative bridge fund.

And if this is successful, it would take this bridge off of our bridge inventory?

So there's two options with this. One, the structure is determined that we can't go smaller, and then it would remain on our bridge inventory, but we would still replace it. The other option is that we can downsize it enough to where it is not on our bridge inventory. And that is part of what this is going to tell us, is if we can downsize it and get this one off of our bridge inventory.

And this is with GAI Consultants, is that right?

Correct, yes.

They're the ones working with you on our wooden bridges?

Yep, that's what they've kind of taken a little bit of a lead on. So in this bridge is 850 North.

It's a timber slab bridge, right?

Correct, yep. 850 North over Finley Maynard Ditch.

And it was kind of confusing this other APEX. They're working with them.

They'll be a subcontractor for GAI. They'll actually do the survey work and gather all the data that GAI uses for their hydraulic analysis.

This would be great news to reduce that bridge.

It's kind of a new approach to this. Bridges like this can cost well over a million dollars. We're attempting to do something cheaper at more of a local level. So if this works, some of our smaller bridges we can hopefully take the same approach to and save money long term.

So if this is successful, the engineering study, and we can go with an aluminum box structure, we're still looking at close to $300,000 to do that. Correct. And that money would come from?

That will also come from cumulative bridge.

Because it's all local funds.

Correct, yes.

Which is less than what we would spend matching in an 80-20 for?

Depending on the cost of the bridge. Obviously, if the bridge was under a million dollars, which I don't believe it would be. It wouldn't be less. Yeah.

It's a great idea. I'll make a motion we approve. I agree. It's a great idea. I'll second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Graham. Yes. Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Reagan.

Yes. Thank you very much. Okay, Lee. Yes, there she is.

Thank you. Lee Royal Human Resources. This morning I'm asking for the approval of the handbook amendments. Those were sections 2.23.7 and 2.23.8.5 regarding the premium deductions for a final paycheck. I think you have those in front of you. This just states that the full insurance premiums would be deducted on a final paycheck for the coverage.

And then we also had several employees came to us about a clarification on using some time that was left over in their 195-hour bank by the end of the year. And so we wanted to make sure we clarified that so that everyone wasn't trying to burn that entire amount of time before December 31st. So if you look at 6.10.3.1, we also made a slight clarification to that.

So there's 2.23.7 final paycheck. There's also one to 2.23.8.5 health insurance, and also one to 6.10.3.1. Yes, correct. And that one says that PTO may be used in minimum units of two-hour increments. Was there a discussion about making that more flexible for the employee to go to one-hour increments? We have not gotten to that.

The only amendment was just the anything exceeding 195 hours.

Only that clarification. Correct. And this came up because of real use cases that we were experiencing. Yes, we were having questions about that. This is clarification.

I'll make a question. We approve the changes.

I'll second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Brand. Yes. Commissioner Reagan.

Yes. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ordinances for second reading, Ordinance 2026-11. An ordinance for the adjustment of pay periods for the year 2027 in Delaware County.

I believe we have some feedback from the auditor's office on this.

Yeah. This came up primarily last year, because we had an issue with the 27 pays. And the reason I was really behind this, because of all the business I've been involved with, paid by . And it was much easier for me and for the employees to operate that way. But after digging into more of how we operate in government and how we fund it, et cetera, I've talked to a lot of department heads which had a lot of good concerns and reasons why it would make it difficult. I've talked to the supplier of the time clock system. I've actually talked to some other auditors in other counties to see if they've had any experience. All the feedback I've received has been negative and not supporting the 24 paper because of the timing of which the pay periods end within the month. And it really comes down to the Department of Labor and the trying to track the overtime. That's a major issue when you come to trying to through the overtime, especially departments, you know, EMS and 911, those type of departments, it's very hard to track, so it would create a lot of issues within our office, and we discussed it internally of how to track it, and it would actually create a lot more work and chances for errors, because some things we'd practically do manually to figure it out. So, in my opinion, I think we should stick with what we've got and make sure that when the 27 paper comes up that we set up our system to track that. Our payroll system will do that.

I think the issue previously was it wasn't comprehended during budget season, right? So that's what we'll have to look out for. Make a motion to reject ordinance number 2026-011.

Second. Roll call.

Commissioner Brown. Yes. Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Reagan.

Yes. All right. Ordinance number 2026012, an ordinance to amend Title V, Chapter 14 of the Delaware County Code regulating activities within public railway permits.

So this started a while back. We had contractors that would come out and get a permit and then work in areas where they weren't allowed to. Like in the road, they made road cuts. We've had to have some tough conversations with our contractors about repairing the roads right after we would pay. So this turned into a mailbox discussion, which was not the original intent. So this cleans out the mailbox stuff and just talks about the roadway use permit, not necessarily the right-of-way or the side ditches. Did I capture that properly?

Motion to adopt.

I'll second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Brown. Yes. Commissioner Reagan.

Yes. Thank you. And the ordinance number 202613 is up here.

Commissioner Brand did make note of this in the public hearing, but just to clarify, this is updated from the introduced version to just at the section that was the current issue for the all-way stop on Puget and Walnut.

Yes, we did clean it up. Thank you.

Make a motion to approve.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Brand? Yes. Commissioner Henry? Yes. Commissioner Regan?

Yes. Thank you. Ordinance number 2026-14, ordinance to vacate an unimproved section of 2nd Street in the county of Delaware County.

So this is about Mount Pleasant Township. This went through Planning Commission, which is a public hearing. We had a public meeting the last time. Didn't hear any objections. I make a motion we adopt this ordinance. I'll second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Brand. Yes. Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Regan.

Yes. Thank you. And we do not have the 2026-15 ordinance today.

We have what Nathan Brown sent, I believe, but Commissioner Henry and I received a message earlier from Building Commissioner Tom Fouch asking us to consider tabling this. He would like to have some further discussion. There was some feedback from the health department that was integrated, and he would like to have some discussion. So I think we should honor that request. I agree, yeah.

I'll make a motion to table.

I'll second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Henry? Yes. Commissioner Brand? Yes. Commissioner Regan?

Yes. Thank you. Okay. Under old business, anything that we need to... Yeah, just a quick update on the township annual reports.

We're still waiting on Perry Township. As far as I know, I don't believe they've submitted their annual report. As far as standards and guidelines, Brooke Struble did issue us a memo on guidelines for income standards, and in summary... The code requires that the standards be proposed by the township trustee, which means they can be different for different townships, adopted by the township board, and then filed with the board of county commissioners. So based on this memo, we don't have purview to accept or reject. So they have the ability to take the state guidelines, and if their township board approves, they can adopt whatever guidelines they want. So we'll be removing that from the old business based on that memo. Junk vehicles, I propose that we also remove this. I mean, it's been on there 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. This is the 10th meeting where we've talked about it, and we're not moving on it. So I propose that we remove it from old business. I don't want to. Okay. Leave it on there. All right. We need to get it done. I don't disagree.

Just leave it there.

So in order to get it done, we have to provide feedback or have a meeting or do something.

Like a public hearing?

No, I don't think that's necessary.

If we're going to do a meeting on the weed ordinance, it's the same departments affected.

Let's do them both at the same time, and we'll meet on it. Okay.

We'll schedule that.

You schedule it?

Yep. All right. The 2815 South Monroe, I believe, Brooke Struble's looking at ownership stuff there. The cluster closure of County Road 312 East, Nick Markwell. I don't know what the status of that one is.

So all of the properties, the next three properties, the Monroe 312 and 8th Street, and then all of the Muncie Land Bank, all of that should be on the next agenda. We were trying to do them all together. We had a lot of legal descriptions that we had some issues getting that we have to put in our notices that we publish and to try to not cut them up into three different meetings. We are trying to put them all at the same time. So those should be ready for your September 8th meeting.

Is Proud Street, was it 412 South Proud Street?

I think that's also on there. I think all property is on the 8th. As long as we can finalize all those notices, I think Emily was finishing up the legal descriptions on the ones we had trouble with.

Okay. The travel policy, we talked about that in the staff meeting, which is the second Monday of every month. The commissioners get their department heads and staff together. There was some feedback in the meeting to simplify it a little bit. Since that meeting, I've had no additional feedback. So I will work on simplifying that based on the feedback in the staff meeting and get it recirculated. The ADA agenda compliance, I believe our agenda is compliant as it stands right now with exception of I think the county seal in the upper left-hand corner. I think underneath the county seal, we need to put the words official seal or county seal or something like that. So if somebody's using an application that can read the agenda and they're reading images, it tells them what it is. Other than that, I believe that the agenda that's in front of us today meets the current standard. However, there's a new standard for 2027 that we probably ought to go ahead and work towards doing now. I don't believe there's any harm in adopting that new standard, so we should work towards that new standard.

Settlement fund.

The opioid settlement fund, still looking for feedback. Maybe we should meet with the towns. I know Yorktown, Selma, and a few others have said, hey, we don't have a plan or anything we can do with our restricted funds, and we should probably have a meeting with the towns to talk about if they want to join with the county in doing something countywide for the restricted funds.

We are also working on an ordinance for the commissioners to look at, to implement a plan for that.

Okay. And the roof RFP that was issued, I think we can probably take that off old business because it'll come up. Bed openings are they for the 8th, September 8th? And then the boiler replacement... Don Chambers brought that to us a couple meetings ago. It's going to be expensive, more than $250,000, more than likely, so we're going to have it designed. I believe Resolve Tech's going to design it. We'll pay them for the design and engineering because their design will be shared via RFP with our competitors, and once that RFP's issued, we'll see on a future agenda where we'll take a look at that. I think that's it for old business.

I would like to entertain an idea for a break for about ten minutes.

Okay. I'll make a motion we recess for a quarter to two.

Please.

All right. I'll second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Brand? Yes. Commissioner Emery? Yes. Commissioner Regan?

Yes. Thank you. County Commissioners meeting of August the 17th it's now 11 10 45 and we are getting ready for our department hits and elected officials morning commissioners veteran service officer Brian Wilson I wanted to let the veteran households know that a military family relief fund

has done a special application for disaster flood emergencies. If you're in a Legion Air, the American Legion also has disaster relief. Just get a hold of our office at 765-747-7810. We can assist you with those applications if you're in need at this time. I'd like to welcome Mr. Nate Jones. He has a couple words to say for our office as well.

Good morning, Commissioners. Thank you for having us. I just wanted to let everybody know that this month, well, this coming up month, September 15th, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., we'll be having our annual stand-down. This is where we help veterans in the community with services, any type of... things that they may need on a day-to-day basis, whether that be medical, clothing, food, things of that nature. We try to bring everybody in, all in one building, to allow these veterans to come through and get the services that they need. I did leave one of these brochures in each one of y'all's mailboxes. If everybody could please just get the word out to the community, we would greatly appreciate it.

Do you still have room for some other vendors?

Yes. And actually, I'm glad you brought that up. We actually do have some room for some vendors. And primarily what we're looking for right now is employers. We'd love to have some manufacturing type of employers or anybody in the community that's hiring in that kind of realm of area. And we'd love to have them. And if anybody has any ideas or suggestions, we'd be glad to take them.

And the hours again, please.

It'll be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. September 15th, and it's going to be held at the Delaware County Fairgrounds Heartland Hall building.

And it is for veterans, and Mr. Henry is still flipping burgers.

Yeah, well, and actually Mr. Henry is going to be our guest speaker this year to speak for us. I think he spoke at the first one I did, I know, and so I'd be glad to have him do this one as well.

you put a hard copy in our mailboxes. Can you email that to me and then I'll distribute it to the Muncie Manufacturing Alliance group? There's about 80 manufacturers in Delaware County that belong in that group.

Yes, sir. We greatly appreciate that.

And what you would want is them to set up a table there.

Yes. So in essence, what we do is we organize them to where when they go through the line, they get an opportunity for health. Then they get an opportunity for maybe mental health services. Then they get an opportunity for job employment. So we try to... Just, you know, bring them through the train of vendors that we have and allow them an opportunity at each spot.

Yeah, very good. Appreciate all your work on that.

Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you guys. Yep, thank you guys.

Any other departments? Okay.

Yeah, we got one. Yeah, good morning. Tony Skinner, Delaware County Sheriff. I just wanted to take this opportunity in a public meeting to thank our employees, our deputies, and our correctional staff for the hard work and really going above and beyond what they did last week. For us, the hectic week didn't start on Tuesday or Wednesday. It started on Sunday. We had a stabbing on the White River Sunday afternoon that we went. all hands on deck on and then later that night we had a we assisted DelVal with a standoff that turned into a nine hour SWAT call that had shots fired and then of course the flooding our employees were heroic last week and they were fabulous so I want to take this opportunity publicly to thank all of them for their hard work. And over 30 years of law enforcement work, last week was by far the most hectic and overwhelming week of my entire career. Wednesday and Thursday alone was just, it was crazy. And then, you know, the work that we put in, Up on Gregory Road, my heart goes out to the Morey family. You know, the incident over on Bell Creek Road, I want to give a special shout out to the Department of Natural Resources, the Muncie Fire Department, the Yorktown Fire Department for all their professionalism and assistance last week. So just publicly to thank our people for their hard work. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Payment of claims of $4,921,279.13.

I believe there's a correction. I think there was a voided payment of $350.44. That would make that total $4,920,928.69. Does everybody agree with that number? Does anybody disagree with the number? Okay.

Tanya Dunsmore, Chief Deputy Auditor. I believe she adjusted for that amount on the actual expenditure sheet and removed it, but you will find another expenditure sheet where it was replaced. So therefore that amount is in the grand total that has been put on the agenda.

So the correct amount is $4,921,279.13.

that's my understanding because that's what we went over before she even sent the agenda or sent the app i'm sorry sent the numbers for the agenda okay I told her to show it subtracted from the one and then it should have said seed next expenditure sheet and then it was added in because I told her that you go through and you add up each one of those.

So we've got the amount correct. Some of the claims that were paid out this time, we had some latency. I don't know if it was in billing or payment. So with Quality Correctional Care, Patel, RX at the Justice Center in the jail, three months of bills there, $224,052.06. We paid out of edit to the Youth Opportunity Center. Their regular payment of $54,166.65. The IRACS, I-R-A-C-S, $75,000 payment that was previously approved in this meeting came out of it. CUME Bridge for four different bridges, I think it was 20, 30, 103, and 502, $41,596.35. Our highway local roads and streets total $406,854.46. So great job to the whole highway department for all the work that's getting done out there improving our roads. Reassessment out of the assessor's office for PSC $35,772.91. Local income tax came in, certified shares, public safety, and edit. So for all units and certified shares, $1,502,709.92. Public safety, that just goes to the towns, the city of Muncie and Delaware County. It doesn't go to all the other taxing units. $626,129.17. an edit economic development income tax that just goes to Muncie and Delaware County one million one thousand eight hundred and six dollars and sixty seven cents wheel tax that was for the towns the city and the county two hundred twenty one thousand six hundred sixty four dollars and fifty three cents there were credit card claims in there thirteen thousand nine hundred and sixty seven dollars and 63 cents of which, according to the tracker, we had one, two, three, four departments didn't submit substantiation. I will say that it's getting better. That's a much lower number than when I first came into office. I think, you know, when we would look at credit card claims on a regular basis, they'd be $45,000. So two things are probably happening. We're getting the credit card charges into the claims process, which is where they should be to the extent that we're able to get them there. And I just think people are spending less because of the attention on the credit cards. And then that's it. Those are all my clarifications.

I did notice that I was in here yesterday kind of fast, but I don't think the claims were up here yesterday.

When I got here a little after 6 o'clock this morning, they were on the round table.

Were they? Okay.

Well, I missed them then. I didn't move them over the weekend.

Well, I missed them. I just didn't see them. But I did notice this morning that some dog food didn't get paid since January, February, March, April. And so I would think the people would be calling, but, you know, anyway. So motion for the $4 million.

Make a motion to approve the claims of $4,921,279.13. Second. Roll call, please. Commissioner Bram. Yes. Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Reagan.

Yes.

Payment of credit cards of $13,967.63. Motion to pay. I'll second. Roll call, please. Commissioner Henry? Yes. Commissioner Brand? No. Commissioner Regan?

Yes. Payment of ARP claims of $6,500. Motion to approve.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Henry? Yes. Commissioner Brand? Yes. Commissioner Regan?

Yes. Payment of payroll of August the 12th, $1,052,356.05. Motion to approve. Second. Oh, please.

Commissioner Bryan. Yes. Commissioner Henry. Yes. Commissioner Reagan.

Yes. Now it's time for the public that wishes to speak. You have three minutes, and I think the first one we have is Yenser of Muncie. Pass. Thank you. Brandon Cook. Okay. And Coy Cook and your old... That's it.

Well...

Oh, you're at the top. I'm sorry. Yes, please do.

I just had a question about the Board of Health appointment that the mayor is going to have to approve or send on or whatever he does. Does he want to have a city resident as the Democratic appointee, the doctor that you're looking for, or can it be anyone from the county?

It can be a county resident.

And he doesn't favor city residents?

I didn't say that. I said it can be a county resident.

Can be a county resident. OK, thank you.

OK. Then Commissioner Brand.

ADA training has been sent out so for employees make sure you're looking through that it's a slide deck it doesn't take very long you basically have to review the slide deck and then at the end click and register that you that you've completed it on August 18th which is tomorrow at 4 o'clock in this room there will be a municipal Unified Strategic Task Force meeting. It's a public meeting for local income tax, so you should attend that. The commissioner, I'm sorry, Councilman Kantz is leading that, and he will have with him, according to the law, the financial officer for each of the towns and the city. So it'll be the controller for the city that's voting, not the mayor. It'll be the clerk for Yorktown that would be voting, not the town manager. But to be clear, there's no vote tomorrow. Baker Tilley will be here, policy analytics to explain the new wall and get everybody up to speed. But there is no vote tomorrow. It's more of an exploratory informational session. Again, 4 o'clock tomorrow in this room. Just be careful out there with these recovery efforts. Be careful of scammers and people trying to take advantage of the situation. We need a lot of help, and I'm not being critical of people that come from out of town, but just be careful. They prey on people in times of desperation. They prey on people that are... not thinking clearly during these times. Elderly people, make sure that we're paying attention. We don't want anybody being taken advantage of. But if you do believe you're taken advantage of, you can contact the state, which is the Attorney General's office, and report those things, and we'll follow up on it. I'd reported earlier in an earlier meeting that the Muncie Sanitary District was working to map the underground structures at the fairgrounds. They're making good progress on that, but obviously with what's going on this week, they've slowed down. I did talk to Tom Noble. He said that'll be pushed to the end of the season so everybody can get through all the things that they need to do during good weather, that that work out there can be done when it's cold. So that work will continue, but it's been... but it's been pushed off. And just, you know, my appreciation sort of been stated a couple times for everybody coming together. As I went around the county, I saw everybody working together to try to help make things better. And, you know, the folks that lost their lives in our county, I would personally like to take a moment of silence if that's okay with everybody. Thank you. That's all, President Riggins.

Mr. Henry?

Yeah, with that being said, we're really needing cleaning supplies, water, buckets, mops, bleach. We need those kind of things, but we need an organization to facilitate that, both collect and hand that stuff out. And it really should be closer to the south side of town. So if anybody knows an organization or has an organization that's willing to collect some of those things that may be needed and get those sent out to people or let people come pick it up, please get a hold of myself or EMA Director Corey Kissick and we'll try to get that set up. I know Hamilton County has some a large amount of supplies that they're willing to get rid of some of their stuff. So, again, if anyone's willing to do that, please get a hold of me or EMA Director Corey Kissick, and we'll try to get something going with that. Thank you.

Thank you. I was so proud of our community, how everybody did step up, and how Grace Baptist, they were the first church to open up, and now things have been moved over to Community of Hope over there at the College Avenue and West Main Street. And they are cooking and having people, they need some blankets and towels, but they're doing the cooking there. So you could drop off your flour and sugar. They will not accept, I'm sure, homemade food, but they will be cooking there. So I have a number of 765-203-1047. That is the line, but... I think I heard there were three families or three people staying there, and I don't know how long they're going to be open. They'll need it, but we appreciate everybody just stepping forward and helping your neighbor because that's what we have to do. With that said, I'll entertain a motion.

Motion to recess. Second.

Roll call, please.

Mr. Henry? Yes. Mr. Brand?

Yes. Mr. Reagan?

Yes.