Redevelopment Commission - Regular Meeting

Mary.

Can you turn it on, Cindy?

Thank you.

Let me look at what Dave says. Dave will be here in a couple minutes, but I'm going to go ahead and start.

We only need three, right?

Yeah, we have a corner. Good morning, everybody. I'd like to open the meeting for the Hancock County Redevelopment Commission. Today is September 10th. So the first item on the agenda is always to approve the minutes from the last meeting.

Make a motion to approve the minutes for Cindy. Is it August 6th? Was that the last meeting? Yes. Okay. For August 6th. Second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, the same. Thank you. Minutes are passed. And our lovely Dr. Parker is first item on the list today, here to give us some money.

Don't put him in a panty. Oh, they forgot the checkbook, I think.

Wonderful. Thank you so much for this opportunity to present to you and make this request. I do want to introduce several folks that are with us today. Sharing in the presentation is going to be Greg Elkins, our Chief Financial So I'll get through the presentation, and then what questions you have, he and I will tag-team if that's okay. Our board president, Shannon Walls, is here, as well as board member Chad Gray. Our assistant superintendent on the right is Chris Smedley. Our high school principal, Brooke Tharp, and long-time Mount Vernon student and teacher and now administrator. Maria Bond, our director of community relations and her Kenzie Moore, and then to the left is Renee Oldham, the Executive Director of our Education Foundation. Very good.

Is the school open today?

Yeah.

The kids are running it. The kids are running it.

Elementary kids have been there for a half hour. So I do have a few slides. I provided you copies of those slides. I can get through them in about 15 minutes pretty easily. I will go through some things quickly. I'm happy to answer any questions or happy to entertain any questions you have after this or in the future. So I just want you to know we're available for any questions you may have. So today we're going to talk about three separate yet related problems. First of all, we are underfunded. Secondly, we all understand the impacts of Senate Enrolled Act 1, increasing our operating levy. But the thing we're going to spend even more time talking about today is the compounded problem number three, and that is something we weren't expecting. SEA 1 requires a 70 cent debt service rate in order to bond under the petition remonstrance possibility. So as you can see, this bar graph demonstrates how we are funded. When you look at tuition and operations levy, not the referendum, tuition is blue, operations levy is orange. We are third from the bottom. center grove and brownsburg are lower than us and you can see the yellow dots the yellow dots represents growth of all the schools we actually have the most proportional growth of all of these central indians If we did add operating referenda to this, we would still be very low and all the schools that have operating referenda like we do would still be to our left. So we wanted to let you know. And that's historically something that we have seen. WHICH WHEN I TAKE YOU TO THIS WHICH WHEN I TAKE YOU TO THIS SLIDE, THAT'S THE GROSS PROPERTY SLIDE, THAT'S THE GROSS PROPERTY TAX FOR OPERATIONS. TAX FOR OPERATIONS. THAT EXCLUDES LIT. THAT EXCLUDES LIT. SO THIS IS JUST GROSS PROPERTY SO THIS IS JUST GROSS PROPERTY TAX FOR OPERATIONS. TAX FOR OPERATIONS. WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE NUMBER OF WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS, WE HAVE THIS PRE-K and then the levy we get, and then you'll see our net after the deductions, and then our tax cap impact. Mount Vernon is getting $824 per student. The other county schools are exceeding $1,000 per student. This represents the new parcels, new residential parcels in Mount Vernon schools of Vernon and Buck Creek Township. The gold represents the market value change, so reassessment. And the black part of that represents basically new rooftops. And the reason this is important is because many of the rules that the state legislature has enacted just clumps all growth as growth. So all the school districts that are just AV is growing just through reassessment. And those that are growing through additional rooftop tops are treated the same. We've had our MLGQ held down to 4% for the last three years, even though 40% of our growth is new houses. Yes, we have had a lot of conversations with our legislators hoping that they take action to support growing schools because there's... And this is our growing school. As a matter of fact, Maria's intern is in this photo, Kinsey Moore. She was one of the senators at the day of AI in Boston last summer. But this represents growth since I have been at Mount Vernon, love Mount Vernon. We have grown over 1,000 students. And our families are choosing Mount Vernon. They're moving in. They're asking to be a part of Mount Vernon. That is part of school choice. This tells a very good picture and starts dialing into why we have a problem or some concern. The top line on this bar graph is our projected enrollment. Well, basically it's our accurate enrollment with a solid line. The dashed line is projected based on a moderate statistical model. We have four statistical models. This is the moderate one. So we are projected to continue to grow it only makes sense The orange is our elementary levels the red is our middle level the purple is the high school level You can see that the middle and elementary levels went down in 2025 That's just because we added a new level the intermediate school When we did that and we added capacity pre-k through grade eight. That should last us several years. As a matter of fact, we project, if we trend with the moderate growth projection, that we should have enough room in those schools through 2032, 34, somewhere around that age. As you can see, the high school, as of last count, was 1,589 students. They are projected to grow to 1,800 50 students in 2029. That is the capacity of that facility. It's a wonderful, beautiful facility that hasn't been touched since 2007, when the enrollment was just a little over 1,000. That building's also expected to grow another 500 students or less. This was as of last April the developments in Vernon and Buck Creek Township and as of last April we had exactly 50 developments that were either under construction, approved, or proposed. I believe that number is larger and we're getting that revised hopefully in the next month. But as of last April, these 50 developments were bringing 9,000 rooftops and over 3,000 students to us. Not at the same time. But that is that type of growth we are experiencing. We are experiencing housing growth, significant housing growth. When you look at TIF in Vernon and Buck Creek Township, most of it of course is in Buck Creek Township, you can see that the percentage of our certified net assessed valuation was 6% and now it's grown to 25%. So 25% of our CNAV is captured in a TIF. If you look at just the last four years with next year's projection, the certified net assessed valuation within a TIF within Buck Creek and Vernon Township has grown from $400 million to $1.3 billion in just four years. That's over a 2% growth, 200% growth. This is just a map from Beacon. I just wanted to share the nine townships in Hancock County. As you can see, Vernon Township and Buck Creek Township is Mount Vernon, and the largest amount of TIFs are in our two townships. Of course, there are several other TIFs in Central State, but I wanted to share that there is a large amount of allocated areas in Buck Creek Township. And that's what we're hoping to get some support from, please. Now, let's talk about something I shared with you about our third problem. This is Mount Vernon's debt service rate from 2009 through 2026 and what we project through to 2032. Of course, this changes when the state legislature changes things. Our debt service rate should have gone down even more. It would have gone down significantly more had it not been for SEA 1. But our debt service rate did have a spike at $2 in 2012. We've held it to $1.18. That was intentional before our operating referendum, and then we started dropping it after that. That was our plan. If we passed the operating referendum, we'd be able to drop our debt service rate. That has dropped from $1.18 in 2023 to 79 cents in 2026. Again, I want to share with you that it gets below 70 cents in 2032. That's an important thing for all of us to hold in our mind because I'm going to show you something I showed you once already, and that is this slide. You look at the high school, the high school reaches capacity in 2029. We can't bond anything without capacity. a capital referendum by law, an unexpected law, until likely 2032. So that's why we're asking for this level renovation to help us add some space and give us a little breathing room. I do have a short video of the high school. It's a minute and 11 seconds, and I hope you'll indulge me. I'm almost finished. Can you guys see that okay?

I know. This was good.

So again, The last time our high school had space added was 2010, 2007. At that time, the enrollment was 1,088. There are 500 more students than that right now. It does have more capacity. I think one of the interesting things to know is even if we don't grow as a district, the classes in the middle grades are large enough that the high school is going to grow 200 students, even if those cohorts don't grow. So it's very clear that we have taken care of grades pre-K to add capacity for the next several years next to look to the high school and SEA 1 has not only are we an indirect economic driver we believe that schools are an important part of people wanting to live in Hancock County we have four great schools I think we're our county has the four best schools of any county surrounding And we're very proud of that and we work really well together. But Mount Vernon is also a direct economic driver. We have 699 employees working at least 180 days a year. Of those 699, 441 are employees that live in Hancock County. So we can give you those numbers very quickly. We pay those 441 employees an excess of $28 million in salary and benefits on an annual basis. Under the heart of our schools, we have a high retention rate. We want to be able to keep the quality that we have and keep moving forward. And then our ask is, we're asking for dollars already generated in the Buck Creek tips, and we do believe schools are a part of the economic infrastructure. and ask for your consideration for that. We did leave you with some appendices, extra slides that you can review on your own. I'm gonna ask Mr. Elkins to come on up with me now if you have questions right now. But I want you to know that he and I are both available to you at any time for any questions that you may have. And I would like to come back in November to answer any questions you might have at that time.

Well, first let's start with some generalities. Unfortunately or fortunately, I don't know, the last 20 years I've been involved in education in Hancock County. I'm very familiar with Mount Vernon. I was president of the Greenfield Central School Board at the in about 2011 when you guys took your debt service over the top and put the school corporation into a bad way. Unfortunately back then, capacity wasn't what they were building, they were building other things. But, and so it's really taken you that long to get your debt service back to a level. Now the state's set a bar on the level and it's really screwed you guys on being able to bond now. And so, and I'm saying this, that you've done a really good job since then trying to get yourself to a point that you can do stuff yourself. And what I'd never liked about the system was no matter what the school says, the towns don't care. They could add 100,000 homes in a year and never once tell the school they're adding one home. They could add 10,000 students to the school system, and it doesn't matter to them at all. So they don't dream of any future capacity. They don't dream of helping the, you know what I mean? There's not one thought. There wasn't a thought back then of Greenfield when they were expanding, and even when they're expanding now, there wasn't a thought. There's not a thought, in my opinion, from McCordsville or Fortville, of how many new subdivisions they put in, how many new people they bring into the community. You're just required to take whatever they have and then try to figure out how to handle what they have. And it doesn't happen overnight. It takes years to build schools. It takes time. So... You know, I personally don't feel, I feel like the Redevelopment Commission, if we didn't have Mount Comfort at all, okay, it would be a much worse scenario than now. Because I don't really feel that McCordsville is adding 5,000 new residences over the next few years because of Walmart or Amazon. You know what I mean? Because of needing this capacity for workers. I don't feel myself that the that the people moving into that area are all working in Mount Comfort. But we do have an option to capture money from the TIF area to support your school system that we don't have to support Eastern and New Pal and stuff like that because of geographic location and stuff like that. So, you know, I feel like it's a good thing that we have the Redevelopment Commission, the TIF districts, and we do have the expansion of the TIF districts. And even yesterday, we moved another step forward to bringing a few more millions of dollars to the table for the school because we don't capture personal property tax. And we're one of the only TIF districts in the state that doesn't do that. So directly, you're going to benefit from what we are working with Walmart right now. But it's not going to solve this issue. SB1 is going to kick everybody's butt. We're hoping, Greg and everybody's hoping that there is an SB2 coming up that might change some of these numbers, might help you guys. For me personally, I need to know the timelines of the peaks you know what I mean because We we talk in year or two ahead when we talk here When the commissioners talk about where the money goes and what the projects are being done and stuff like that We've got to know as soon as possible how we can move move things in you know and I And so it's a very good thing you're bringing everything to us right now. I know your peak is not too far off. Did they even have a debt service cap before SB1?

Yes, it was 80 cents, and we hit it this year.

Okay, so you were going to be online, yeah.

But that's like turning a battleship. I know. So when we hit that mark, the rules changed again in the meantime, and so now we're at the new threshold.

When you say you've talked to your legislators, have you talked to them about that too, about bringing that up? Even if we help you in the future expand the high school, I'm glad to hear that you know we're the, where the population densities are. When we expanded, we had kindergarten through fourth grade that was gonna crush us when we got to high school. We had four times as many kids. So we were dealing with a wave coming in like 10 years that we couldn't handle. And so that's when Greenfield had to expand and create a new junior high, add more buildings. But when people think about expanding school systems, the first they say, oh, you need to build another elementary. Well, people moving into the community aren't always going to be, everybody's not going to be brand new children. You know what I mean? You have to know your population and where the things are going to be. It is... It is good for me to hear you say that you have the capacity at the lower grades, you think, for a while. So you're not looking at creating more locations, you know, around and things like that, because for us that was a hard thing to do. Okay, if we put another school somewhere, then how is it going to affect all the other places? Where are we going to put it? You know, all that kind of stuff.

What's your timeline? I mean, you said coming back in November to ask questions, but what's your project timeline to hit your 20th?

To do an intermediate renovation, we would like to start that in 2028. That's when we'd like to start.

Start the actual construction, but planning and design would all happen in 27?

Get started with some conceptual planning now. But also, this will help us understand the next renovation of the high school. You know, if you think about it, In 2007, the high school was about 1,000. In, what, 2034, it's probably going to be 2,000 students. That's our projection. It's literally going to be doubled. And if we don't do something and we want to do it in steps, it's just not going to be feasible. So we would like our intermediate, I say the area, the intermediary renovation, the smaller one, to start in 2028. And its total projected estimated cost is this $20 million? We would use that $20 million very smartly. A study, a facility study completed, pretty much everything in our school is undersized, cafeterias undersized. Classrooms are undersized. We need more spaces, bigger spaces. We have no collaborative spaces. Mrs. Tharp also worked with her staff extensively last year on what their priorities were to help that school grow. We have to remember that the programming has changed a lot since 2007 as well, so we need more open and collaborative spaces for students taking college courses and the like. We don't have that. It's a wonderful, beautiful school that looks like it was built 20 years ago because it was.

So have you been to McCordsville? Do they have any contributions to this project that they can offer?

Specifically, I haven't asked them that question. They do have some pass-through from some of their TIFs, but I don't hold those all in my head. They started doing those a handful of years ago.

But I assume with this need and the amount of money you need for this project as well as other projects down the line that you'd be going to them as well?

We'll go to everybody. We don't believe that one source of revenue is going to solve all the needs that we have in our school corporation. So we're going to look at all opportunities.

I have a question. I want to be sure I'm clear on this. So you're rehabbing one building and then are you building a new one?

No, what we need is for the high school, grades 9 through 12 is what needs help next, and we need to increase the footprint, make it larger to add more space, and renovate some of the space inside for our more contemporary programs.

That's what I understood, but I want to make sure it's clear.

Well, it's the board's decision, but we haven't entertained building another building someplace else.

Okay, good. Well, I lived through that period where they were trying to create ninth grade academies and my research on it, we did not do it here because my research on it said it was not a good idea. It wasn't good for the students, it wasn't good for anything to segregate the people out and then try to, because it was cheaper for some schools just to take the ninth graders away from the high school at that time and then bring them back later on. And so I'm not in favor of, I know that's probably been an option on the table on how to make the high school last longer or do this or do that, but I wouldn't encourage that myself. Greg, are the towns, is there anything, I mean, we're one source of revenue, but you know, And this problem is not gonna go away 10 years after this project's over, okay? Because we've seen the Ball State studies That's over the next 10 or 20 years and they're huge, you know, for our area. And so the towns, is there anything they can tap into or is there any requirements that the towns have or anything that Fortville and McCordsville, we've struggled to get them to participate in anything.

Yes, I was talking about you. I'm sorry. Yeah, because financial advisor to the county. Yeah. So so Kent, you can open that box and do what you want if they have any money or if they had any TIF. They could also do interlocal agreements and things like that. As you know, the must group has also entertained the possibility of saying, state, maybe there should be a local LIT for schools. They haven't talked about that. They haven't agreed to that. But that was brought up. That's been brought up at every must meeting I've had around the state. And so, you know, the thing that you did say and is important and is in the back of my presentation or with Baker Tilly is that don't forget we create a lot of personal property. And that is... Robin, you know it was even asked of me the last week. Do we capture personal property for TIF? No, we do not. And that's a big dollar amount. But you noticed his $28 million of income. Yes, he does not really, he will not get, or the school will not get in the future, under SB 1 and 1250, they will not get future LIT revenue. Okay, so that might be an issue. But yes, you could open it up. Pardon?

Say it again, Mary?

Has the presentation been made to the commissioners?

I've shared this with the commissioners. Okay, great, thank you. I've spoken with two of the commissioners in person.

Yeah, well, I mean, in essence, for us to float a bond of $20 million or whatever, you know, to help you guys, The commissioners would first and foremost have to agree. The council would have to agree. Everybody would have to agree. But I don't see a lot of people saying, no, there's no money for the schools. You know what I mean? It's just a timing issue. It's a good thing that we're having some growth coming now to us, the elected officials, for items that comes to the forefront and help paying for additional stuff like this.

I mean, also, though, I mean, we did just do a $45 million career center, so we're a little tapped out, unfortunately. And, yeah, it's a great facility, and I know it's helping you, and you guys have been a wonderful partner. For sure. But it's just this is coming, and then we have the exchange that we've committed to with NDOT that's coming in 2030. Yep. It's just fantastic. Jason is going to present to us later with what we have and what we can do. I mean, it's a dollar and cents game. So we obviously want to give to the schools, public safety. I mean, that's why the whole thing's here. But my point is that I really encourage you to go asking for other partners in the community to help with this project as well. We certainly, I think, all want to help. It's just what do the dollars show that we can do for you?

Yeah, and as new projects come online to the county, it would help if you would support those projects, because there is big projects coming to the county. Because it will support everything. Like Walmart is going to be a big support. I don't know if you knew the total figures, but In essence, Walmart's going to pay close to $70 million over the next 10 years, and we only give them an abatement. They would have paid $80, and now they're paying $70. So it was a good deal to keep that base we have coming and coming at a higher rate. And you guys will receive the benefits of that unless the state comes in and takes it all again.

Because we only did personal property for them this time. There are two buildings. Yeah, we just did the personal property. They already have.

I appreciate that. And for five years is what. Right.

And it's 50% too, which is even better.

But there will be, there's some other things coming down the pike that everybody, all the things that are starting to approach us, because the economy is kicking in and things are happening.

If I could, please, I will say I tried to make this very myopic, focusing on the capital, high school. Right. There's a whole conversation about operational dollars that we've been talking about. Just as a for instance, our lit revenue is a million dollars. Nine twenty twenty nine. So we lose a million dollars because we don't get money anymore.

Schools, by legislation, are excluded from it.

I would hope they're going to change their mind on that.

I really hope Greg is right about SB2 and SB3, but it makes it more important on some of the new companies and stuff that we're going to be able to take into the county to survive. It does. It makes a big difference on that. No, and I really would like you to come back in November, too, because we will know more what's happening. We'll have chances to talk with timelines and stuff like that.

When do we do budgets? Do we do budgets end of the year or beginning of the year?

Well, 27 is already done.

We've already done that. Yeah, but 28 is not done. When do we do budgets for 28? May? I don't know. Okay. Yeah, that's about right.

Okay.

I'll talk later about some of this stuff I have incorporated. Sure.

Because we're not talking about writing a check for $20 million. We're talking about bonding. Okay. Yeah. So... But at the same time, between now and November 2, it'll give us time to absorb what the other elected officials that eventually have to say.

What would also be nice in our planning as these other projects he's talking about are coming and as we're working through budgets for this year and years to come? is you have a plan with your renovation, you're phasing this work, right? So just if, and you have your facility study, probably from a capable firm that does that, and they've presented you an estimate of cost. What would be nice is for us to understand what kind of that projection is, knowing it's just an estimate, so that we can then, when we budget, what is our projections to help contribute? What does this look like? And how can we stay in alignment with the project funding you're needing year after year? Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

So instead of just one captured renovation project, what's the plan to get to where you need to get and 2032 with this capacity issue. So what are these little phased projects you're thinking about doing over time? So it'd be nice for us to know maybe where that's at and also other people in the community that are contributing and where we may need to step in.

Yes, and I appreciate that, Mary. I think my real quick response to that would be that is something we are working on. We have a history of collaborating with our community and getting your thoughts and opinions, and we have not collected enough of those yet. We know we need to do work. We know the school is undersized for the future, and we know it needs about everything someplace. What are those priorities? We really want to engage with our community members.

And I know it takes time. I'm just saying, as those develop, It'd be good to understand. We'll keep you guys up to date.

We give a few dollars to you guys already every year, what, $350,000 or something like that. Is those dollars operational dollars also since they changed the law?

If I may, if I may, those dollars are for HC3 and all county schools share those dollars. We just happen to be the LEA. So we're the bank, we're the checkbook.

All right. So we don't really want to touch those.

But it's all of our money. But we do have you reimburse Mount Vernon for capital expenses. And we legally through attorneys are allowed to use that for operational expenses. Okay. In the reimbursement process. Okay. We have asked for the county to consider changing that now that we have the Career Center. The law does allow just a direct support for operational expenses so we don't have to do the shell game.

Well that probably needs to be thrown into the mix. Let's figure that out now that it's yeah because I know it is it is a moving of money around to try to get where it's needed most. And unfortunately, you have to.

Yeah, we're good for this year. It's next year that myself, actually our board president, Harold Olin's here, HC3 board. Yeah. We're going to be asking for next year for support for HC3.

Next year being next fiscal year. Next fiscal year. Forgive me, 2027. Okay, but not, we still are good for the... We are good for this calendar year. For Amplify until the end of the school year. Yes.

Okay. Yes. Then we got to kind of figure it out. As a matter of fact, you guys have already sent us the reimbursements. Okay, I thought so. Greg put that right in the UC3 account. Okay, cool. Okay, all right.

Great, thank you. Thank you.

We appreciate it. Always happy to continue to talk. Absolutely.

No, appreciate it.

Gary? Yes.

Actually, Gary, though, John, you here? Are they done that we could go on with the agenda? Mr. Jocanis from 911 wants to give us money, too.

He didn't have his tie on.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Two of you. So, John Jocanas, I'm one director for Hancock County, if you're not aware. The reason I am here today is the council would like us to try to take one of the new positions that we're requesting out of the RDC. This position is actually what's called a public safety program manager, and what that is is basically a technician position to Work on radios, our computer-aided dispatch, and about 60 other things throughout the job description. Gary Poole had programmed in about $110,000, and that would be for, it's a $79,729 salary, plus FICA, plus PERF, plus partial group insurance. Right. And so we left it at that obviously to make it to the 110 or to keep it at the 110.

So for, if you don't remember or don't know, this conversation started a while back. The TIF district is allowed to support into other county functions percentages of what actually happens in the TIF area, especially like the sheriff's department and stuff. They can be responsible for those things. That's why we do help the sheriff's department with the percentage of the money. And in 911, we've never done anything with 9-1-1, even though we're legally allowed to and everything. And as things expand, you know, we've been working on this where when he needed to add another addition, we would take that addition out of the TIF district. It was programmed into the system already. The commissioners have already cleared it back months ago. It's what Gary already had it in the thing. So it's just... Yes, it's just a matter... I don't know I guess of us agreeing to it.

Yeah, well I'm on the 9-1-1 board and so I've had a little more lengthy explanation of why we need this and I think it's something that we really need.

Right. I will say this is the we've had two items on the agenda and both of them aren't supported by McCordsville or Fortville. Because we get no money from McCordsville or Fortville for 9-1-1 even though we provide 9-1-1 for for all of them and in the states wonderful thing about trying to fix that problem of us having to require entities to help and not they just said well you can raise taxes and So we've tried not to do that We had to do it once seven years ago or six years ago or something, but we've tried not to do that But we still provide 911 service for all of Hancock County even though we don't get any money for it from Greenfield or Coorsville, Fortville, or anybody. But the TIF district can help support because a percentage of what happens in the county happens in our TIF districts. And so, yeah, it's the... Do we have to make a motion to appropriate the money?

I wouldn't. Or are we good, Gary?

No, I... Well...

It's for next year, right?

It's for 2027. 2027, but I think we ought to go ahead and... and have a motion to agree to allow that, even though it's funded.

Do you want to wait until after your December collection?

Yeah, if we can.

Oh.

What do you need the commitment by? I'll need to know this commitment

Did you submit that in your budget that's been advertised?

It's in my, it was in my regular budget, but I don't know if it was actually removed during the budget hearing or not. Something we'll have to address.

Because I programmed money for them. Right now, if we're going to make any changes to that, then I'll need to know. But you'll see it in my presentation.

Is it?

December collection, we'll have a little better picture of what's up.

Right, but it's in our 2027 budget that we've already passed, right?

Thank you. Until you pass it in May. Remember, I don't decide anything for you all. Right. But right now I have, what did I put in there for you?

110.

Well, we have to vote next month on 2027's budget, period.

Yeah, we're going to pass the budget next month.

Yeah, 2027's budget is done then, but I've already presented that in May.

Okay, and that's what he's talking about.

Oh, here it is. Yeah, 110 is already in there. Right. So 110's in there.

Yeah. So as far as I know, we're not going to alter the budget that's going to be passed next month. We had a discussion about yesterday in the County Council meeting and we're set on what's happening right now for 2027.

If that's in there, I don't think we're going to take it out. My only question will be for specifically the two of you then, if money doesn't come, because we're advertising this position nationally, so I need to start moving like now because if somebody, if we get our perfect person that knows all of our systems and they live in Colorado but are willing to move here because it's such a great place to live, especially apparently in Vernon Township, which is where I live too. And so we wanted to get the job pushed out like this next week.

So Gary, what you're saying is you don't think the receipts, of course it's not 110,000 January 1. Right, you don't pay somebody your salary.

110,000 is okay.

Yes, that's all he saw. No, he's asking for what's in there. Okay, yeah, then I'd obtain a motion to go ahead and... I have a quick question. What's the official title of the position?

It is the Public Safety Systems Program Manager.

Okay, on the worksheet, The word systems is left out. Oh, okay. And I noticed when you came up and you said the title, you left word systems out. I probably left it out as well, yeah.

So... Yep, but yeah, the official title is the Public Safety Systems Program Manager. Systems.

There's so much technology now, the thought of 911 not having, keeping up with the technology that we need, and somebody to do it. You've been doing it, haven't you?

Myself and my deputy director are, yeah, we've hit our max, so...

And no offense, but I don't think John's really a expert IT person, are you?

Who, me? Yeah. I can hold my own.

Yeah, but we need somebody that's, you know, that's what they do all the time.

Right, well, yeah, and that's all they do, yeah. That's the whole goal of this.

What'd you make?

I will. I make a motion that we will approve, do you want to approve it now? Yeah, it's in the budget. Okay, that will approve the... You've got to advertise. Say the title for me, please.

Public Safety Systems Program Manager.

Thank you. For $110,000 for 2027. Anything else you want to add, Kent? Second.

All right. David, any further discussion or anything? Okay. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, the same. And we will have another... And you can go ahead and try to get somebody by then. Thank you. And my wife appreciates it, too.

It'll get me home a little earlier.

Yeah. Okay. Jason and Greg and everybody, you want to move along a little bit?

Morning. Good morning. Jason Semler, Baker Tilly, and Greg Garitas with Financial Solutions Group. It's that time of year again where we come and present the annual TIF report to the Redevelopment Commission. So I have in front of you, you have two reports. One, a PowerPoint presentation, and then I also have a more detailed report behind that. I thought I'd go through the PowerPoint presentation, but all the supporting documents plus out to the life of the bonds is in this bigger document. So as Gary's putting together the PowerPoint presentation, we're putting it up on the screen. Again, this is a requirement of the state. We've done this every year for a number of years now. You guys even had done reports even before it was required, but we kind of more formalized it here recently. So beyond just kind of providing this information, I know in the past it's been a good opportunity to just kind of ask some general questions about this TIF areas or general questions about TIF. So if you do have questions as I'm going through the presentation, Feel free to stop me and I'm happy to answer those questions or Greg as well. We've heard already through the first part of your meeting, you know, TIF is more than just redevelopment, you know, bricks and borders and equipment, but it does impact the lives of people throughout the entire county. So, and it's becoming more and more important like that as we're getting more strained with all the new legislation with SCA one and other things. So again, if you have any questions as I go through this, I'd be happy to answer them.

So you're here to tell us that there's so much more money coming in than we've ever anticipated that Gary's going to have to adjust his things.

I'm telling you, you're in a good situation. But some things that we should be looking at going forward. But yeah, things are growing well on all of your TIF areas and growing as we anticipated. As you mentioned, the Walmart that you talked about, the expansion continued to grow.

So I'll start on page two.

I'll kind of go over each allocation area just briefly. A lot of this information is similar to what we've done before just in previous years, just kind of an update. But the first area we'll talk about is Mount Comfort North allocation area number one. It was created in 2009 and we just recently expanded it earlier this year to add a few parcels. It's anticipated to expire, the majority of the area, the original area is expected to expire in 2034. So the last year of collection is 2034, taxes payable 2035. Seems like a long way away, but it will be here before we know it. And I know, you know, working with Gary, we do have that in our projections because as you know, your kind of cash flow goes out beyond 2035. That fourth bullet point there, it's already been mentioned multiple times today and you'll see it on every slide. We do not capture the personal property from the Mount Comfort North allocation area number one or any of the other areas. We've kind of talked about the benefits of that and I'll hit on that even more later on in the presentation. We do have two bonds outstanding and that are payable from the tax increment from this area. The bonds that were issued in 2009 to help pay for the infrastructure that has supported a lot of the growth that's out there, along with a lot of the existing TIF that you've captured, you've been able to capture a significant amount sufficient to be able to do a lot of infrastructure without having to do very many bonds. But we did issue bonds in 2009 to kind of jumpstart the area. We refinanced those in 2017 and saved about $700,000 in interest. There's $3.1 million of principal outstanding. Those do mature in 2030. And the interest rate on those bonds are 4%. So still relatively good interest rates. And then, as was mentioned earlier, we did issue bonds in 2025 for the Amplify project. There's still a little under $44 million of principal outstanding on those bonds. We won't really start paying principal on those until the 2017 bonds are paid off. Those expire in 2045. You can see there in 2026, we're estimating that you'll collect about $9.9, almost $10 million in revenue. Your spring settlement was a little over $5.7 million, so more than half. But as Gary mentioned, fall settlement always seems to be less than the spring. I think that's when a lot of the peels get settled throughout the year. So we'll be mindful of that. But right now, projections are... well in line with what we thought. And in page 2027, we're anticipating that revenue to increase to almost $12.3 million. A lot of that has to do with abatements rolling off. Now, I will tell you in 2027, we did assume some appeals that did get settled, so we reduced what we think you'd capture by about $22.2 million, just assuming some of those appeals are outstanding do get settled. So hopefully it will be larger than that and those appeals will get settled in the county's favor. And then again, we go beyond 2027 in the more detailed report. And then the next page I did have a graph when the recommendations from last year was to add graphs or maps of the area so you can see the allocation area number one on page three and where it's located there outlined in blue. Any questions on Mount Comfort Road, your original area? It's where most of the activity is coming from, as you know.

I just want to say, Jason, I really appreciate these reports. I look forward to seeing them because it really puts everything in a nutshell for us. So I appreciate you doing that.

I can even read them. And sometimes in the past, it was like, oh, goodness gracious, what does this mean and what does that mean? Greg is a little bit in the weeds sometimes.

He's deep.

Let's say he's deep. The weeds are in here. He used to keep telling me the same thing over and over sometimes.

Whenever Gary calls me or the auditor's office, I always pull this out because this is kind of like my Hancock County TIF Bible. Everything in here that I think most people would need to know is in here.

Most of it's in the auditor's office, but we'd have to dig and you did that for us.

I appreciate the comments. Page four looks at the West Allocation Area. It was created in 2021. The TIF on it is also pledged to the Amplify bonds. So it's anticipated to expire in 2050, which is 25 years after we issued those bonds. Again, we don't capture personal property taxes there, but you can see down at the bottom, 1.5 million is what we're anticipated to collect this year. We collected over $950,000 in the spring, so well over 50%. And then we're anticipating that that revenue will increase about $3 million in 2027. Page five is again. You can see the map of the West allocation area there. You can see it's kind of on the West side of the map there outlined in blue. The next area allocation area number 2022 allocation area number one created in 2002 expanded in 2023. No bonds have been issued for this one yet.

Slides aren't keeping up with you. Thank you, no problem.

So you can see the tax increment revenue there estimated $337,000 this year, increasing to $800,000 next year. And both on these slides and then also in the report, I just want to keep in mind that I haven't assumed any other new development that isn't already assessed. So we talked about, you know, Walmart expanding, none of those numbers or any of the other projects that we're aware of. They haven't been assessed yet. They haven't been put in my numbers. So these should be conservative. And the map of area number one on page seven. I guess this slide doesn't have the map, but you have the maps in front of you. The 2002 Hancock County Allocation Area Number 2. Again, it was created in June of 2022. They all expire 25 years from the date that we issue bonds. Currently, there's no bonds outstanding there. It's a smaller area and hasn't had as much development in it quite yet. We created it anticipating what development would happen in the future. We anticipate collecting about $17,000 this year and then increasing to $32,000 next year. This slide here, the one on the screen is an old one, but the one that you have in front of you, That's, we got this from Gary. So it's showing in 2026, $11.7 million of projects that I think you have budgeted. So this kind of goes in line with your previous discussions of trying to project the revenue streams with our current budgets and what we can afford going forward. These are just the capital projects that Gary has identified that you either approved for 26 or 27, or that we've kind of talked about going, this shows 2030, But I know that you have something, cash flow, capital outlay that goes out beyond that. And then page 11, this is probably really the schedule that you care about the most, is this was looking at the revenue from those four TIF areas. So in 2026, we're anticipating about $11.8 million in revenue. We have the bond payments for the 2017 bonds of $963,000, have a bond payment for the 25 Amplify bonds of about $2.2 million. We have some miscellaneous costs that we incur throughout the year, and then the $11.7 million of projects from the previous slide. So a total of about $15.3 million is what we're estimating this year. So you can see that that's a $3.4 million expenses over cash flow, but you can see you have a very healthy balance of 11.8 million at the beginning of the year, and we anticipated spending more than what we're bringing in in 26. Again, that's credit to you because we're being able to accumulate that TIF, so you can fund all those projects from the previous slide without having to issue bonds. So you can see, starting in 27, based upon the current capital outlay, we do see a slight increase in revenue each year, and you can see that increasing over time. So, Ken, to ask you your question, I think you do have some room, which I know You've been, a number of people have been in front of you asking for, to help fund different projects. So this is where I think, you know, as you as the board, council and commissioners have to look at on what priorities you have to use those funds.

These are all, this cash flow all rolls up with all the TIF districts you outlaid. This is just a roll up of all of them together. Yes.

Okay.

So Gary mentioned that we do have a $21 million for the overpass in 31. So if I would have gone out a couple more years, that does drop down, but it shows that even with cash on hand, we could make that payment.

So with our cash flow, Gary, you're saying the overpass isn't included there?

Yeah, it doesn't hit until 2031. Now, the commissioners have been interested in accelerating it to 2030, so you could if you wanted to. That's still a few years out. I don't think they can make it by 2030, the design.

That 20 million that we committed to pay for that overpass to NDOT is cash, right? Correct. Okay. That's not a bond. It's cash.

That's our goal.

That's why we're building. Yes, they want to check. Yeah, of course they do.

So the things that we're approving right now, Like Walmart, we did another one a month or so ago. There was recently another building sold that's going to be coming online. Those are not in any of these numbers yet. They'll be in next year's numbers or whatever. So there is a little bit of relief coming. Well, I know, but I'm an 85 percenter, not a 100 percenter, okay?

So, I know. And the other thing, one of the reasons I don't, well, Again, try to be conservative. Some of those things are recent developments. The other thing is you very well know you have a history of a large amount of appeals in your county, especially out in the distribution center. And my thought was as those abatements roll off on those real property buildings and those taxes increase for those companies, we could start seeing more appeals. from them. Now, I think you have some things in place for the EDA payments where they may not be able to appeal. So I think we do have some protections there. But I keep that in mind because, as you know, you have a lot of appeals and a lot of them are in the TIF areas that impact our revenue. So I'm hoping that that growth is going to offset some of those appeals if they get settled in the taxpayer's favor as well.

So how do those appeals affect your projections?

They will decrease them.

That's exactly right. But you've been doing this a long time, as you had stated. So have you ever went back and looked at what percentage of the appeals we get that offset your projection?

It varies, and it makes it more difficult because it's not like an appeal gets settled. You know, a company appeals, it's not like it gets settled the next six months. It could take years. Years, right. And so there's multiple appeals.

I just wonder what our factor of appeal would be. Is it 10%, 2%? That's what we've been assuming.

So in our numbers, we assume that the outstanding appeals, 10% of them get settled in the taxpayer's favor. So we've reduced our AV by 10% of those outstanding appeals. We're starting to be able to affect some of that.

So could it be safe to assume your numbers may show a 10% reduction in its projection?

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

We, Jason and I, work on these each year, what he projected versus what we got. We create a standard deviation. We also do that with project expenses. And it shows, in general, we're off. One standard deviation is $800,000 per year. So we go back and check those appeals. So right now, our standard deviation to bore you to death. You're 68% sure that we'll be within $800,000 of his projection. Based on past.

$800,000.

Based on past history, I'm 68% sure it will be within $800,000. Where's your 100% sure, a million?

There is no 100% sure. We get the 99% sure, and that would be... Put me on the spot. I'm doing... No, you don't have to do it.

You're good. Greg calls it all pennies from heaven, but it's not really. It's like, oh, we've overestimated and you have another $5 million we didn't know about.

I think this is working in the other direction.

Well, I don't know about that because I see things coming. be 100% sure would be 900 would be 9 million so they're 100% sure yeah I got I got my hat I got my hat handed to me from the school board and we cut we had to cut 10 10 teachers one year and then two months later after we cut the teachers the state came up to me and said oh we found 300 million dollars and you get 5 million of it And we'd already cut the teachers and changed the programming. And so I don't have a stomach for over You know what I mean, because we should have been able to save that. And so that's why I'm kind of anal on Greg about pennies from heaven and stuff. Even on the council, January rolls around, oh, we got a couple million dollars we didn't know we had, and we had already made decisions that we didn't have that money.

Kent and I make a good balance together because I go the other way.

I'm trying to be reality and everybody else is trying to be over.

But Jason, I think you said it. I didn't realize that was baked in.

We've reduced our revenue by a certain amount anticipating some of those appeals will get settled. So we've tried to account for some of that already in our numbers. So if they don't happen, then our numbers are going to be higher than what we're showing.

I'd rather err on that side. Thank you.

We haven't always done that, but just because your appeals in the last few years have been so drastic.

Well, these are big companies. They go after it and they get it.

So page 12, Mount Comfort RV allocation area was created in 2018. It doesn't really have any bonds outstanding, but you do have a local agreement with the company where you give a percentage of their TIF back to them each year. And that shows up on page 13.

When's that one expire?

2030. Good. So you can see right now, you know, you are getting a little bit of excess tax increment each year from what you're committed to agreeing to pay them. And that's going into its own separate allocation fund and can be used for capital projects. Page 14, you can see the map of that area and it's just, you know, I think one or two parcels is all that TIF area is made up of, just the company business there.

Can I say one generality about the whole thing. The reason that we argue about money spent and future and stuff is because we are doing wonderful projects with this money. If we just sit on it and did nothing for the community, we would have millions of dollars just sitting in the bank earning interest. But the sewer project that's going to take care of our water problems up in the Maxwell, up in that district, is a very good project to spend money on. The school, the trade school, we're spending the money to help as many people as we possibly can, even with the stuff we give Buck Creek, even with the stuff we give... Given and and we're we're trying to work into our schedule to give them out burn a school district So the reason we are tight on money is because we are we're doing things with the money the new interchange Everything that we can to help everybody. It's not that we're wasting this money, and there's no money there We're we're creating these these projects that nowhere else where we'd be able to get the dollars to do Yeah Yeah, and we're trying to help as many people with as many things as possible, as fast as we can. And that's the path we've got to stay on, or I know that there's higher beings in the state that would try to take the money from us if we didn't have uses for it.

And that kind of goes well into the next couple of areas, the Mount Comfort South allocation area number two and the HRH allocation area. Those were both created and bonds were issued to help fund the water tower out there and then also the development and the infrastructure. that supports the hrh allocation area so there's our you know three bonds outstanding for those areas um payable just from the tax increment and and to your point kent i mean a lot of communities they'd have to be raising utility rates to fund a water tower or you know using income taxes or property taxes to pay for that infrastructure but fortunately because you've created the tiff areas you have that luxury where you can use the tiff to make those capital expenditures rather than some other source or revenue of the

We're very fortunate to have Gateway and to have that area out there. It's, you know, what's developing out there and everything. And it basically didn't cost the county anything. And it's self-supportive. And it was a tough negotiation and dream that all that was going to happen like it was supposed to when the hospital came in and said, we're going to do all this. And you go... You know, it was a leap of faith, but I'm so glad that that mechanism is there. You're right, we could have never put a medical facility out there, a hotel out there, any of the amenities that are going out there, improvement of the intersections, the roads, the water tower that feeds now even Cumberland and stuff with utilities that wasn't capable before. We couldn't have done that on our budget.

We're showing in the area, too, we're getting $270,000 this year and $283,000 next year. And HRH, you know, it's, you know, as you know, has more development out there, $713,000 this year, almost $900,000 next year. But actually the growth isn't occurring as fast as what we thought it would when we did the bonds.

Yeah.

But if you remember, the company bought the bonds. So if the development doesn't occur as fast as we thought, the TIF doesn't get thrown out like we thought, there's no risk to us. They just don't get paid back as much as what we thought they would. So again, there's no risk to the county for all those assets that they're funding.

They're building quite a few apartments and stuff out there. The people living in those apartments paying income tax in the county. We're getting a I didn't even when when when they talked about Senior living senior help and all the things that they were going to do out there in association with the hospital and everything I didn't even in my own mind count that we would be getting income tax revenue From from from even that yeah Skip the

Page 19, that's the GDI allocation area that we created in 2022. We captured the tax increment on that, and then 50% of that tax increment is used to pay off bonds that they purchased, and then also to reimburse the county for some of the funds that it used towards its project. So it's doing well. About $381,000 this year. We're projected over $500,000 next year. And then page 21, I really wanted to hit on, I know we do this each year and it kind of flows into Greg's schedules that he'll be talking about here, but I really want to point this out because I think repetition is good. I think it gets overlooked to the county as a whole on kind of really how tax increment works and what we're capturing. But page 23 looks at the existing tax rate structure of Buck Creek Township. You can see Buck Creek Township Taxing District is made up of the county, the township, and the school. You can see the tax rates there that add up to $2.11. You can see the tax base, and you can see the levy that's generated from the tax base. So if you look at the county that I highlighted there, In yellow, kind of starting from the right side going to left, your budget, basically the county's budget that's payable from property taxes is that $17.4 million. Your tax base is $7.1 billion. So your tax base in the entire county, that's basically all the assessment, utility property, real property, business property, equipment, everything that's not in the TIF. That's $7.1 billion. So the county has to generate a tax rate or levy a tax rate of $0.24 to be able to collect that $17 million for your budget. Same thing for the QCAP development. It's a little bit different because it's a rate-driven fund. So the council gets to pick what rate it wants up to the .0333 cents. The county is at its max. So you take that three cents times the tax base and you generate $2.3 million in revenue. Same thing for the township and the school. Except for the school referendum, if you look at the school corporation, that's the two bottom there, you can see the tax base of $2.5 billion for the $1.06 tax rate, and then you can see a higher tax base of $3.3 billion for the referendum rate. And that's important because they don't, TIF assessments that we capture, we don't get to capture that for the referendum. That all goes into the calculation for the referendum and helps the schools. So that's one key point. And that's why you see that $2.01 there, and then we back out the 17 cents and the tax rate to $1.84. And I did there in the box there, for every $10 million of assessment with that $1.84 tax rate, we capture $184,000 in TIF because we don't capture the 17-cent school referendum rate. So I showed at the bottom of the schedule, let's say we didn't need that 184,000 for your projects and we wanted to pass through $10 million of assessment. Again, your council budget doesn't change. We can't raise a penny more than what we're allowed to by the state. So because we pass through TIF areas, if we end TIF areas, council can't capture a penny more. But what it does do is it increases your tax base. So you can see now the county's tax base is $7,159,000,000 instead of the $7,149,000,000 above. So now you can see the tax rate decreases slightly from 0.2436 at the top to now 0.2433 from below. So by ending TIF areas or passing through, you're really reducing your tax rate, not really generating more revenue To the other units the only Entity or a fund that you would be collecting more revenue is your king cap development fund because it stays at that three cents And that's why you see an extra three thousand three hundred four You can cap development fund for the county and also the cum fire for the township So that's, I want to make sure that that makes sense because a lot of people think if we interfere to re-pass through, that's going to be a lot of new money to these units. And that's, it would just reduce their tax rates. The other thing I wanted to point out that, and it was kind of brought up about the personal property, Buck Creek Township, if you look at all of the townships, it's the only township for 2027 that saw an increase in assessment for the personal property. I was looking at their 2027 values. Last year, the net assessment for personal property was 179 million assessment. This year, it's 194 million. Went up $15 million. The next closest, and this is just personal property. So this is all the equipment that's in those distribution centers that we don't capture. I'm sure Gary and I have talked about this. If we didn't create the tip area, probably some of those distribution centers probably would have happened anyway. But I can guarantee a lot of them wouldn't without your benefit of putting in the infrastructure.

I wonder what the stats would be if we charged personal property, how many wouldn't be here?

Well, they still pay taxes. They still pay personal taxes. They still pay taxes. It just gets included in the tax base of the county.

We don't receive it.

We don't receive it. And we didn't give abatements to anything under a certain millions of dollars, like for a long time if it wasn't. What was it? If it wasn't $10 million or more or something, we didn't debate it at all. But just to give you kind of a... So what you're saying, Buck Creek gets more money this next year because the personal property is still increasing. They get a higher tax base. They get a higher tax. Which helps keep the tax rates low. Which is a good thing.

Very good thing. And just as a comparison, the next township, next highest township, I said Buck Creek Township is $194 million. The next closest township is Center Township with 8 million. So you can see how much growth that we've generated in the county by these TIF areas by not capturing the personal property.

Tax growth.

I didn't realize at the time, but 10 years ago, Jim Shelby and I from the council went to the RDC and begged them not to take the personal property. the commissioners at the time wanted to take personal property also because back then there was no new things that was debt you know what I mean and they wanted to add to and and we went at that time on behalf of the schools and behalf of the fire departments and said no the council doesn't believe that and i'm so glad we didn't because now um we really uh it it's helping us in the community more than uh more than we know i i agree with that toy but i do want to think one thing i am concerned about though is like on page uh

21 we're showing that the assessment decreases when you add tax base one of my concerns is and that we talked about this when walmart and amazon came is once all that assessment all those tax abatements roll off and all that assessment gets added to the tax base that could substantially decrease the tax rate which is great for the taxpayers, great for the community, but keep in mind that $1.84 times what we capture equals our TIF. So if our tax rate drops down significantly, that means our TIF drops down significantly. So it's something we kind of have to monitor.

And so what happens if the state does away with personal property tax?

Then more like the tax rate's going to increase substantially unless there's some other revenue source to make up for it.

Because I know they tried it once and they failed.

Well, it's gradually going there. I mean, you know, 80,000, you know, companies with 80,000 or less were exempt. Now it's 2 million. That's why you see all these other townships. But I said Buck Creek Township is the only township that saw an increase in personal property. All the others saw decreases, probably because of that increase in exemption.

And to further that, Jason, I think it's important to re-evaluate because the council knows Pause these entities are within the district. Their floor does not go 10%. It stays at 30% for personal property. So that benefits the schools and the townships and everybody too. So that's an important point.

So I agree with, I just want to keep in mind we don't collect personal property right now, but it might be something that we may want to consider in the future if tax rates drop to a point where it doesn't generate enough revenue to be able to fund the projects that you want. That is an alternative. With that, I'll pass it on to Greg.

Who's next?

Good morning. My first name is Weed. My last name is Warfare. I'm in charge of the Weed Warfare Department, which means I kill the weeds so the grass grows. So, hopefully Kent heard that. That was for Kent.

You what now?

I said, my first name is Weed. My second name is Warfare. I kill the weeds so that the grass grows. Your name is in the weeds. So diving into the weeds on page 22 of your package, keep in mind, yeah, we're going to talk about a couple details. So the more AV we have, when that $7 billion goes up, the less, and we assume that we have growth that helps then the circuit breaker go down. That's why on this page you see that in the future we're saying as this in Robin and Kent, I'm assuming what you did is the recommended 50% over five years, that means AV, right? Yes. That means AV will hit automatically next year or the year after, real quick, because we collect on 50% on the abatement. So that was our recommended position because yielding those dollars now was the best, and that's the abatement. So that's what we factored in here. So it's good. It helps lessen circular breaker. Now, as we heard from North Vernon School Corporation, They've got a pretty large circuit breaker amount, but every little bit helps. And so this is a benefit on page 22. Page 23, this is... 23 is the fact again we do not capture personal property huge amount of personal property coming on and we use an estimated remember the true tax value factor goes up to it's a 0.56 and that's why it matches that 50% abatement really good in the first year. Then it starts going down to 46 and 35 subject to check and ultimately will hit the floor of 30 in five. So anytime we can get capture, assess value of personal property in the first year or two as opposed to giving 100% abatement, it's awesome. It's really good. And so this helps everybody in the county. Helps Buck Creek. We've talked about North Vernon, but it helps Buck the township and the fire department. So that's awesome. And so again, two direct benefits. The next one is the estimated income taxes. Yes. In 2029, Greg's checkbook, he's not here anymore, it's going to be a little less by the fact that they'll be pulling out basically the old certified shares that the school corporation was getting. But as I've already told you, MUST has talked about that. There may be, it is my understanding, schools will be lobbying. Basically, we had all Hendricks County schools show up at our MUST meeting there, and they basically said they were going to lobby for new legislation to take care of that. So what this shows is the substantial benefit of estimated annual income tax and And again, this is kind of assuming that maybe the employment is 50-50. About 50% of the people live in the county, 50% live outside the county. And when you're in this area, that's highly likely. So the final page then I have is how more assessed value coming from either real or personal property builds the school referendum pot. So on page 25, the school referendum rate is 17 cents. They get more money because there has been more development. And I highly agree with Jason that there's no doubt if the infrastructure wasn't there, the warehouses would not be there. I mean, you can go to Hendrix, you can go to Morgan, you can go to where, the infrastructure has to be there for the development to happen.

So these are the good, good benefits.

The other thing I want the Redevelopment Commission to know is we got the geobonds rating, and we got our ratings report yesterday. Okay, and how does this impact the Redevelopment Commission? Well, you're spelled out in this report because they look at the geobonds rating, and then they look at any bonds that are

issued with a general obligation backup.

And as you know, as your county financial advisor, we recommended that the 05 bonds have a property tax backup. So when you read down here, you're going to see they say, we want to qualify it. They qualify it. They say, it's only the AV of... Hancock County without the other TIF districts, like the Greenville TIF districts and the Mount Vernon and all that. So it's a net-net. So it took that seven billion, probably about three million, or three billion took it down. And then what they said is we reaffirm the AA plus on the Hancock County Redevelopment Authority bonds. So the amplified bonds did not hurt our rating in any way, shape, or form. And we were able to enhance the interest rate. And obviously, when Baker Tilly sold it or had it sold by the underwriter, it sold at a better interest rate because the special benefits was backed. So that's written up in this report. This is a really good report. Kent, you might want to read about the forward-looking thoughts on budgets and things like that and the conservative nature that Robin, the council, has had in budgets.

But what you're saying, too, is the amplified bond didn't – It curtail us from ability in future bonds if we have to so create future bonds.

Not at this point in time? No, it did not.

And because of the rating we carry, which is AA+, our interest rates are as good as we can probably get. That is correct. So we're not losing a bunch of extra money, too.

We are very, very efficient with the taxpayers' money.

Yes.

Thumb it up that way. Okay. But please read the report, especially for the Redevelopment Commission. It's kind of got a nice paragraph in there about it. And so that's very, very important. So that's all I have at this point in time. Any questions? Any questions about the benefits? Because there are. No doubt about it.

Yes. No, I mean, it's I said that the whole purpose of the whole exercise was to make the county a better county in the future. My distaste with everything was when the state come in and starts capping everybody or all of us because we never 12, 15. 20 years ago we didn't, my parents, my father that was on this did not understand that the future of the state would come in and ruin what we were trying to do. And I'm still, myself, I'm still upset that the caps that we put on, we've only gotten excess levies, what, once? Maybe twice. Maybe twice. And our growth is hugely exceeded. what's happening. And that's hurting us, in my opinion, now because we're pinch-pointed at things, and we should be able to go ahead and help other people, but we can't. We're still pinch-pointed.

That's why we have the Weed Warfare Department to try and work through all those because I guarantee you the caps will be alive and well, and they will continue in the future and probably get more capped. As you know, I kept telling you for five years, income taxes will be capped. Guess what? There's a capped rate in 2029. Now they'll cap the growth if we don't watch it.

I'm very excited about the new way we've kind of altered our personal property tax abatement, okay, to get that deal done. We've got to get the empty warehouses no longer empty. We've got another building that was sold, so that's going to have a tenant in it. We do need some more growth. We've got facilities that are empty. We've got facilities that haven't been built yet. We don't even have to approve new facilities to get this growth. And we do need that.

Well, and as you know, we've got a 6% growth factor on budgets for schools, for township, for the county. And we did not have 6% increase in our overall AV. It's my understanding. So, you know, we've got to really watch that. Now, I think that's going to get capped next year, too. But stay tuned. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks, Greg. Thanks.

Okay. Any other questions about the annual report or anything from anybody? If not, Gary, can you come up and give us your update and tell us where we're at?

Keep in mind, the annual report doesn't touch on circuit breaker impact. So make sure you dig back into that because the school does have a circuit breaker impact in that area that is significant. So take a look back on that. But I don't have that in front of me. but lock that into your minds. Go check the circuit breaker impact on Mount Vernon schools. Okay, where are we at here? Oh, boring stuff. We've been paving roads. We're about done there. You'll see some bills in there again for road paving stuff, a lot of chip ceiling stuff as well. We are just moving out of there into the south, We kind of work our way around the county. Right now we're in the northwestern side, we'll move to the southwestern and then we finish in the southeastern. But we finished a bunch of roads, we should be out of there soon. CSX closures in October, I'm still negotiating with them on some of these. The final will be out by the Board of Commissioners meeting. This will affect, we'll make sure they talk to the schools here, we'll make sure it gets out to the transportation, but there'll be a bunch of rail crossings closed up in our area, well really throughout the county, but that'll affect this area as well. Amplify warranty period began in May, so the clock is ticking on Amplify warranty period. So we'll make sure all warranty will probably about February of next year, I'll review all items and make sure anything in warranty that can be fixed is fixed at that time. 300 North grant, we were working on a category four grant on 300 North. Hopefully if we can win that grant, we can free up more money for you guys to spend on other stuff.

Four West to three West. Is that an improvement?

So we have a project now between two west and three west. Yes. And then the next one will be between three west going back towards 600 west.

Right. And then when you get to four west, though, that's all been improved from there on.

A lot of that's been improved. I will have options depending on the roundabout of five west if we want to do something with that or not. But I don't like to pay for things.

I like to use the state to pay for things. Okay.

But that one's on the queue right now, so we'll see if we get the money or not for that. So we'll keep it out of your pocket and pull it out of the state's pocket. Fiscal's on track. We just went through nearly an hour of that, so good times. Everything is on track on that. Keep in mind when you're looking through that, look at the... Remember, I have one that goes out even further. His is based on that. Right now we're 90%. 96% good this year, and in the future we should be good too. We're looking pretty good fiscally. And I did include $1.6 million for some sort of $20 million bonded project started in 2027. So that is loaded in there. So you have options. Everything we've talked about, you have options.

7 West, 3 North. How far along are we on that?

the roundabout project off the top of my head. I can't, I can pull it up quickly if you want. It's sometime it's in a few years. It's, it's, it's queued up. We're using state money, so we got to wait for it. Okay. The reason we have all this money is because we're making the state pay for most of the stuff that that requires us to wait.

Um, I won't, I mean, I, I, I did have here a conversation and, uh, about communities that are turning down projects and about the state's ability then to give communities that turn projects down because they're assuming then that they have enough money on them.

Well, I go to them like a pulper. They've been giving us money for a long time. Let's hope they don't stop. Specifically, they've given us $187 million since I've started here.

But the tax relief that they've given for fuel tax, how's that going to... Oh, yeah, that's a whole other subject. How's that going to impact our grants?

I can talk for an hour about it. I know. I'm sorry. I've got my plays. I'm making my plays.

I think I've got it under control.

I think I've got it under control. Okay. But it's a roller coaster. Right now, I think I have it under control through a series of fiscal and legislative maneuvering.

I'm going to ask our legislators to beat our drum with the state level because we are promoting Wal-Mart. We are bringing on everybody in the last time that we can, and we're all doing the best we can to keep the state growing. And so they don't need to be looking at us as someone not fulfilling, you know, things that are going to help the whole state of Indiana.

Okay, it looks like 350 and 7 is... Sorry, 300 North will be finished probably by the end of next year. 700, 300 will be done probably by the end of next year. We're building that right now. 750, I'm gonna let that in December of 27. And 507, December of 27 as well. So 2028, we'll start building those. 2028. We'll build 350 and 500 North. 300 North is under construction right now. It should be open in a couple months.

You don't have anything else? after that?

Holy crap, Ken, I got stuff everywhere. Well, I understand. On 7 West, no. Okay. Because that's really the last bottleneck. Yeah, 3 North and 7 West. We got 6 West. We got that done. Now we're doing these two. Mr. Witzman's working on some stuff to the North. Okay. Let's go back. When I say we have stuff everywhere, we do as many projects as a small NDOT district.

Yeah.

This county.

Well, the growth comes with needs.

So we are busy. But that says we impact people. We impact subunits. Yeah. This goes on track. I'm going to contract... We've been doing... I'm going to contract a greenfield business for our median clearing. We're kind of doing some outside ones, but it's under $50,000, so I can just directly bid it. So you'll see that next year. I'm going to switch to a greenfield business. It's about the same price. I'd rather do a local business. If you guys don't have objection to it, it's less than $50,000, but you'll see that. It'll be RASC. It's a greenfield operation, basically for the weeds and the cleanup and the street sweeping of 600 West. It's not a large project on your thing, but I was just going to move that... I'm changing the contract, so I'm going to move that to a greenfield business versus Indianapolis business.

I don't think I'm going to have an issue with that. The 1.6 you said you had in the budget, though, isn't that the sewer project? It's not allocated anything yet. Okay. It's a placeholder. Okay.

It's in red still. All right. Let's pretend we did both. Or you could do half, half of one, half of the other. If we did both, let's see what that does. We're already running a long day, let's have fun. But I did talk to some Greg, the school district's Greg and stuff, and I want you guys to look at our circuit breaker impact, because it was something I wasn't quite alert to. We are impacting their cumulative fund. We're close, but if we do that, now you're super, like you said, I'm a very count your eggs guy. If we would fund both, say we do two $20 million bonds, our rub would come in 2031. And there's a 58% chance, the way I calculate things, that we'd be successful in paying everything and everything would be good to go. Thanks. And there's a 42% chance that we would have to come to the council and say, hey, we're a little light.

The bottleneck is in 2031, and then what does it do after that? Does it get better again or get worse?

It opens back up, but as Mr. Parker showed, his need is early. I'm just saying that's what it would be if you did both.

Okay.

Say the sewer district's delayed, though. Let's war game that. Let's say... Or say he delays a year. Let's say someone delays two years. What does that do? Yeah, now we're at 83% success rate. I was directed by the commissioners to stay above 90, but that's getting close.

So the cash that we're developing for the interchange, Yes. The cash deal, okay, what you're developing, the cash deal, is that required by the state?

Yeah, they're doing $56 million.

Right, but are we required to provide a one-time cash settlement at that thing?

We are contracted, yes.

Okay.

We've made a contractual commitment. The county government has made a contractual commitment within DOT to cover that.

So we either need to keep collecting that cash or we need to find cash from someplace else.

Correct. They don't care where they get the cash from. Right.

It doesn't have to come out of the TIF just so it could come from other forms.

Correct. What I'm saying is if we did two of those bonds, there's a 42% chance that we're going to have to find money from somewhere else for something.

Yeah.

Which the council would just love.

All right. Well, we still need to fill our buildings. Yep, yep.

All that means is... Well, I pulled up Collier's on that. We're at 90% filled. You might want to get a random Collier's stuff. The warehouses are 90% filled. Well, there's six. Or a lease. I don't know if anybody's in it, but someone's paying a lease on 90% of them. Right. But there's like six buildings?

I'm not sure, but I pulled it up. They're at 90% filled. I think there's still a dozen buildings total, including ones that haven't been built yet. That we've okayed, but I don't know if they'll, they've got a seven-year window.

As the highway guy, I love getting all that property tax and no traffic, but I'm just, I'm a little biased. Let's go to, oh, that's it for me. Okay. So you'll see RAS next year on our stuff. You probably won't even notice it, but it'll be on there next year. That is all I have, Barney. Questions?

While he's up there, We need to approve the invoices. Is there anybody that has any questions for him on the invoices that were sent out? The Brandon Warlock and those are, we've agreed to pay legal expenses that the Planning Commission has endured because of the TIF district, and so, It's just now getting through the paperwork and getting everything done. So those on there, he wouldn't necessarily have had those himself. But if there's anything else on there that, is there anything that's happening with the Amplify project?

It's winding down. I might pave them some additional parking through the highway department. Okay.

I was going to say, anything that we don't know about that any surprises?

That would be the only thing, but it won't cost you any money. We've done some minor payments for some fans or things like that. Nothing major. It is winding down. Veritas will stop coming to the meetings until they come back to that warranty meeting. The schools have done a good job. It's full. It's over capacity. That's great. they've hired the teachers, you know, people don't, it's hard for them to hire teachers. So my hat's off to them getting good quality instructors hired. That's difficult. And we don't, we just take it for granted. They did a good job with that.

A miracle. Everything comes together at a specific date and it all happens and we didn't crash. It kind of reminded me at night when they said that all the computers would die and it didn't die that day. It's like, this is going to happen. And, It happened whether we wanted it to or not. No, we wanted it to happen. We wanted it to happen, but I mean, it was like the last two months before I was going, man, we're never going to get this thing off the ground, and it did. We'll force it. Huh?

We will force it. If it's a good idea, we'll make it happen. Well, the schools have been really good. I'm worried about them. Yeah. I'm worried about them. But I'm not elected, so it's not my thing. I want you to look at that circuit breaker impact.

We need some help.

I've done a lot of good work for you. You can do that for me.

We need Senate Bill 2, not Senate Bill 1.

Play with the rules we got.

Debt service relief. We need some other things. Anything else? Nope. I would entertain a motion to pay the...

Invoices, I'll make a motion to approve the invoices for six hundred and thirty three thousand two hundred and seventy eight dollars and ninety nine cents David has and Dave go ahead Do we have a list of the invoices?

I know you sent individual PDFs zero right here This one

The eye test. The issue with the magnifying glass.

The only one that's odd is the Brandon Moorlach at the bottom because it's plenty commissioned stuff.

Yeah, I wasn't in the loop on that one.

That was my only question. And Robin has made the motion. I need a second. What was the amount you made the motion for?

It was $633,278.99.

For total invoices?

I'm sorry?

That's the total for the invoices?

Yes, that's the total for the invoices.

I thought the total was 959,811.88.

I don't know. That's what this says.

So it changed from the original one. Did it change? Okay. Because we added, we're always adding before.

So what's the correct amount?

Yeah, so what is it?

What's the correct amount, Cindy? The one she said or the one I'm looking at?

That one right there. Okay.

So why don't you- We need to modify the motion. I make the motion that we approve the invoices in the amount of $959,811.88. Okay, I second.

Okay. Let the record show that Robin has withdrew her first motion, and then David has made the motion to accept the invoices as presented, and Robin has seconded. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed the same. Thank you very much.

I'm going to change that date to November 7th.

Yes. Gary, what is your... We need to have a different date besides November 11th because that's Veterans Day.

I'm a veteran. I'd love to have it on Veterans Day. But, yeah, we probably should. I believe that was a Wednesday as well. Let's open up a calendar and take a look here.

Well, it should...

It's quite next year. It's on Thursday.

Oh, next year. Okay.

They're already doing the calendar for next year.

They're already doing the calendar for next year. So that's a Thursday next year in 2027. Okay. But we're still not going to do it on Veterans Day. Right. We need to do it on a Thursday, though, I think. Which one would you like to do? Yeah, because if not, it'll screw up the other.

So November 2027.

It should be then November 18th. Thursday, November 18th for that meeting. Is that agreeable? Yeah. That's good. I'll mark that on your calendar. Can you put that in the minutes and get it on the calendar for us, Cindy? I appreciate it. Well, seeing no further business, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. I'll make the motion that we adjourn.

I'll second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Thank you. Thanks.