City Meeting - Regular Meeting

All right, let's go ahead. Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the City of Jonesboro City Council meeting of September 8th, 2026. We're going to call the order.

Okay, we'll rise and say the Pledge of Allegiance. And the prayer will be given by Reverend Ken tonight. My cross will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Pray together. Gracious Father, thank you for another beautiful day in the neighborhood. Thank you for the opportunity to gather here in this place with the elected officials and the citizens of this great community. We pray your blessing on this meeting and all the decisions that are made. We pray for wisdom and understanding of the issues. And Father, as we are looking ahead to the rest of this week, we are mindful of the 25th anniversary of 9-11 coming up on Friday. Lord, we are mindful of those whose lives were taken on that tragic day, but are also mindful for those who were willing to gave their lives so that we could remain free. We pray your continued comfort for those families and those individuals. We thank you for the opportunity to bring peace and prosperity to our community. This I pray in your name. Amen. Thank you.

I'll make a motion we approve the meeting minutes for August 25th as written.

I'll second that.

Motion is seconded. We're all for it. Adrian? Aye. Rex?

Aye. Clayton? Aye. Gerald? Aye. And Greg?

Aye. We have a special session on August 25th. We need approval of those minutes, please. we are very happy to have you here I think it's very important that he mentioned about freedom in America this is a we don't have a vote in this it's really neat to that we can vote for or yes I think something Now it's needed, but let's go from there. And Jeremy's fuel is going to come up. I'd like to introduce some of your board members and stuff. But let's keep it to general questions. Because he's giving you information.

I mean, this guy has got some information. I mean, they call it AI.

I think this guy's strong. I mean, when you do something on a computer, it pops up.

Yeah, first, we'll actually start. As we mentioned, 9-11. I would encourage you guys, if you're in the community, this week, come out to the football game Friday night. We have a couple of really cool things planned. And remember, it's kind of just a tiny workout level. Boom football game. A lot of folks there. We have a video tribute that we're going to do. We already put together. And then we also have somebody from the community that we want to recognize as well. So I would encourage, if you're out and about, and you don't really have anything to do, come out and see that. Quick time. What time? I'm always there, so I don't know. So I'm usually there 5, 3, or 6. So it'll be before the game, I think, is when all the festivities that we're going to do kick off. So I would encourage folks to get out there.

Six, seven bucks could get in.

So first, stand up and I'll let you guys introduce yourselves real quick. Start with Danny. Who do we have here? Danny Smith, I'm the school warden. Mayda.

Mayda Smith. Sorry. No relation. I teach at Westview Elementary.

I'm Jill Townsend, the assistant superintendent of finance.

Mike, you're up.

So she's been through a lot of it and she can really tell the history. I mean, I'm going into year three here in the district, but Jill can really tell the history of

With everything that we've done over the past 20 years financially, she's done a great job. Obviously, Senator Rollback won. It's really hand-tied us as a district quite a bit. As a school district, I know it's hurting cities and municipalities as well. And it's different for everybody. So, anybody up here on the table, anybody in the audience, if you want them, there's some handouts right here. That's kind of what I'm going to be walking through. But first, if you flip over from the back side of slide one to page two there, it just really talks about the impacts of SCA1 in general. Significantly reduced corporate revenue. We've already taken some major cost reduction steps ahead of SCA1 to the tune of over $2 million of staffing cuts slash resources. significantly impacting student day-to-day activities. I mean, that's just the reality of it. And not to say that the absorption test that we have made already hasn't had an impact, but the impacts that we're talking about going forward are going to have a direct impact on our families. Meaning, if we can't pass an operating record and we're talking about transportation, because that's a $1.2 million cut. Now, we can't cut all of that because we have to transport all of our special education students. We may be able to cut 700,000 or 800,000 of it. But all in all, we have to make about a $2 million difference at the end of the day by 2029. So this slide really talks about that. It passed last spring, a resolution to end transportation legally. We have let the community know a year in advance. Now, prior to SCA 1, it used to be three years in advance. I don't think things just happen just out of chance. I think they're thought through. So when the state knew SCA 1 was coming out, they changed the law from three years to one year. Why would they change that if they didn't know schools were going to have to potentially cut transportation due to Senate Enrollment Act 1? We're one of two schools in the state of Indiana that I know of that have passed this. Tri-Creek, Lowell High School up in northern Indiana being the other one, has passed this resolution. I'm sure there will be more come by 2028 when more schools have to go for reference at that point in time. There are 38 schools in the state of Indiana are going for a referendum this fall. Typically, that would be five-day schools on a typical election cycle. It would only be five-day. We're up to about 38 schools, so that tells you right there that something is going on with SCA 1 in terms of funding for schools. If you flip over to the model scenarios page right here, this really lays out what our scenarios are. And if you look at the second row, which is titled unfunded credits between debt service and operations, by 2029, we're estimating to lose almost $1.9 million per year at that point in time. We only generate a little over $2 million, 2.1 right now in operations planning. Our overall revenue that we generate from our tax base is less than $5 million, between operations and service. So just keep that in mind when I start rolling through and talk here a little bit about economic development. If you look at the bottom, where it says unfunded credits percentage, there at the bottom it says operations, 59%. What that means is we're only going to be receiving 40% of the revenue that we should be receiving pre-property tax caps and pre-SCA1. We already lose about a half a million dollars per year due to the traditional 1%, 2%, and 3% property tax caps. So what did SCA1 do? So if you look over to this little chart right here, what it's done, our revenue or our levies are based upon assessed value. As a district, we are such a small geographical district as it is, which means we have less assessed value to be able to hold from. There is $75.5 million in gas city tests right now that does not come. part of our AD. So that points to about a million dollars per year of revenue that we cannot get that gets reallocated into the redevelopment. I always say, again, Magic Brown, I always say rediscover for some reason, I don't know why. We developed that authority, okay? So that money gets diverted there. Now, they can pass through that money to schools. It hasn't happened thus far. So just keep that in the back of your mind. So when we look at our ADN, what SCA 1 has done on top of that is we already have a small ADN as it is. They need to go in $75.5 million of TIF assessed value debt that we don't see any revenue from. Then you grow NSTA1, which reduces our RSS value even more. It makes it impossible for us to survive, honestly. Flip over to the piece of pie graph there. I wrote a couple notes. First of all, it's $75.5 million in TIF. That's big money. I mean, that's big money. Trying to get all medium and most of the gas city, but that's not going to change quickly. We'll work through that avenue as best as we can for our taxpayers. But at this point in time, an operating reference is our only choice other than cutting additional student resources. Like I said, SBA 1 drops our assessed value from 346 million to about 321 million. So a smaller assessed value means we have less levy to be able to fill our operating the lit property tax replacement credit, that really hits us hard in 2029. That's where you see on that line graph right there, where we take a big, big dip down to 2029. Each year we're losing money. Even after 2029, we're losing some more money. But it's not as severe. 2029 is when we are really, really hit hard with it. We'll go to the next slide, where it says 2026, the NSF has gotten pursued it. So when we look at how schools find it, we're finding it based on assessed value. Net assessed value in particular. That's the assessed value after deductions are factored in. Net assessed value. You don't see TIF, so take that TIF money out, that TIF ABI there. You look at the state average. The state average is $524,000 of assessed value. We're at $157,000 of assessed value. Now, in this room, that's not our fault. That's just the reality of where we're at. There's nothing we can do here right now really to handle the assessed value. Look at the next page. It's comparing us with county schools. So we're like, okay, that's outside of our geographical area. Now let's look at Grant County. Okay, state average is there, still 500,000, but even if you compare us to the next lowest, which is Oak Hill, guess what, Oak Hill is on the operating referendum ballot as well. They're the next lowest. And they're twice as much a sub-value than what we are. Okay, so that puts into context how severely we need this operating referendum. I don't know what else can really show that better than that chart right there comparing Mississauga community schools to all the other Marin County schools. Look over at another piece of pie chart there. It's kind of readdressing what I said before, but breaking it down on a per student basis. So if you look at 2025, which is pre-Senator Rollback 1, we were getting about $2.2 million of operational levy. On a per student basis, that's $865 per student. I will tell you that pre-SE1, we were still half, less than half of what the state average was for that. So you go to 2026, post-SEA 1. It actually goes up a little bit because we had to drop in students. We strategically accepted less out-of-district students. That was part of it. That was about 100 students, 75 to 100 students. But then we graduated large senior classes and brought in some smaller kindergarten classes. But again, we factor in the 2027, and that last one there, 2029, when it hits us, we're at $545 per student in operational budget. Another thing about operational budget, again, it goes to utilities, day-to-day maintenance of buildings, it's not big capital projects, it's the pay for transportation, our non-educational staffing on that, staff can do those as well. That budget is about $5.3 million, about there, $5.3 million in our operations. We generate about $2.1, $2.2 million before SCA 1. The rest is transferred from our education fund over to the operations fund. Legally, we're allowed to transfer 15% of our ed fund dollars into our operations fund. Ad fund comes from the state, that's state funded dollars. So that, the amount of industry students that we get, industry students, we get about $9,500 to $10,000 depending upon the year and what the complexity of this is. So that's all well and good, but we're always transferring the max. So when we see this hit come in, and we're losing well over a million dollars per year, we can't transfer any more ad fund dollars. On top of it, we're already taking money that we should be using for our teachers and using it for our operations at this point in time. It's just not a sustainable model. And the bottom's really holding out with SCA and WAD at this point. Okay, so, projected net levy per student. This shows all property tax funds, so this is showing operations as well as debt service. So we have less, and this is some of the new schools on this chart, as $1,900 in local tax levy Flip over to Grant County on the next slide. Still, right? Under $2,000. The next lowest is Eastbrook at $3,100. So we're about $1,200 less per student. So you do $1,200. I'm a math magician here. I need a calculator. I've been alone today. $1,200 times 2,200 students. Let's see what that math comes out to. Bob, you know that answer? No. 2.6. 2.6 million dollars is what that is. we would have $2.6 million, not even compared to the state average, because it goes to pay for gibbals. $40.52 times 22 million students, $8.9 million more revenue is what we'd have if we had, per year, if we had the state average. We're not even asking for 8.9. We're asking for two. We're asking for two to just be able to keep transportation. Okay, so going back to the operations and operating referendum funds. So when I was talking to the schools just here and there, they had an operating referendum. That's where that light blue comes into effect. This is Sycamore Community Schools, $970. State average is $19.52. Again, half of what the state average is. Look over to the next slide, let's compare truly what we're looking at. We're not looking at desk services and buildings and facilities. We're looking at just operations at this point. Operating day-to-day. for the district, $970 for some of our community schools. The next, there are almost twice as much of us right there at Oak Hill, and they are going for an operating right front. Then you have Eastbrook, then you have Marion. I wanna run these numbers again real quick. So, 1669, which is Oak Hill's, minus 970, which is a large terminal. That's about $700, $799 to be exact, per student difference. 2,200 kids is what we have. That would be $1.5 million. That kind of gets us in the ballpark of what we're doing. So for the next one, what are we looking at cutting? So transportation has been a big hot topic. We have to legally pass that resolution over a year in advance. knowing that, hey, we have to get this out there because if this doesn't pass, we're going to have to start making cuts right away or otherwise we're just going to be through our cash balance and we're going Transportation is $1.2 million per year. We cannot legally cut all transportation. We legally have to transport students with special education. So with IEP, that's between 30% and 35% of our student population right now. So we're estimating somewhere $700,000 to $800,000 of transportation cuts is what we'll be able to make. So we know, okay, 800,000, let's say we can get there by cutting transportation. We still have about $1.2 million that we're gonna have to cut with additional cuts besides transportation. Now we're getting into the nipple and dime. I think I'd pay to create extra breakers. We haven't gone through all the numbers on that, but that's probably about $300,000 right there, maybe $400,000. It's not a big-ticket item, but it's something. That's probably the next thing we're going to be looking at cutting. I've already informed our school resource officer, at least one of our school resource officers, that if this doesn't pass, we're going to have to catch you in the anger. So we're down to one school resource officer at that point in time that's going to be leaving at the end of the year. And so we're probably going into next year more than likely without any school resource officers at that point in time. And I still have over half a million dollars to come up with. Five, eight hundred thousand dollars to come up with that. in that ballpark. Some people say, well, these are just projections. Well, yeah, but they're not our projections. They're projections that Bay Portility has run. They're projections that Seaflood has run. They're projections that Policy Analytics has run. And Policy Analytics has parcel by parcel tax data that not even Seaflood makers have access to. So I think it's pretty reliable data. It gets us in the ballpark, at least. Next slide, what other cuts can we make? So we talked about it there between December 25 and December 26, cut up, cut slash absorb about $2.1 million of positions. We have eliminated three central office positions, actually I think it's four now, because we just added one last week. So there's three there, two, five. So six administrative slash central office positions is what we've been cut into. Honestly, we're at the point where I don't know where else we've been cut. I mean, I'll be quite honest with you. At some point in time, you throw it up onto people's shoulders and backs, they're going to start failing the work balance. They're going to start looking for other jobs. The other thing is, if we don't offer transportation next year, if this is not passing, I would anticipate a 10 to 15% student enrollment decline. Not from our out-of-district students, because they're already getting there, from our in-district students. Those students who are gonna go virtual, they need to go virtual K through 12. So that means I'm gonna have to, at the end of this year, riff $2 million of teaching decisions in anticipation that our enrollment is going to drop next fall. If enrollment comes back a little bit higher or better than what we anticipated, I'd call some staff back at that point in time. I would anticipate 10% to 15%. So 200 plus kids is what I would anticipate, losing 200 to 250 kids and enrollment drop. That's a big hit financially. I want to talk a little bit about economic development in terms of an investment. Actually, being in the kid game, Schools are still a business. We still have to operate. We cannot operate in red. I mean, we can't for a year here and there if we have a cash balance. We cannot continuously year after year after year operate in red. We have to at least be in at zero. That's something big that I stress to our principals about with staffing and everything going forward. So that is how we are looking at this is from a cost-benefit analysis standpoint. What is the economic benefit? coming from Gass City, Middle Township, Jonesboro, coming into Mississippi and the local community schools. That's what we generate levy was. We ran some rough numbers. About 60% of our staff live in the school district. So on average salary, and again, this is a fine tune number, but the average salary of what we would anticipate if we got $12 million of local levy plus the money that we're getting from the state stays in this school district.

is estimated at about $12 million.

So $5 million in investment to $12 million to sustain the district. I can tell you that if you have to rent $2 million of employees, I don't delineate if they live in the district or if they live out in the district. Going back to the slide deck here, what will happen if the community does not pass the operating referendum? Okay, we've talked through all this already. Okay, staff reductions are only defined. Big one, I will say sports consolidation. Some people think I'm folded with that, I'm not. teachers because we're going to have less kids. So I lay out teachers and we have 200 less kids next year, means I have less programming options for kids, for industry kids. So what happens in that following year? Since I have less programming options, or I don't have K-8 extracurriculars, where are those kids going to go that want K-8 extracurriculars for those various non-required courses, whether college prep, all those different courses. If we're not offering it, they're going to go somewhere else, which means I'm going to have to have a couple more teachers, which means I'm offering less programming the following year. And it just keeps going and going and going until you, I'm telling you, in five years, it's a completely different story in five years. And it's not a scare tactic, it's the reality. It's just looking at it, what is going to be the reality of the district level. five, ten years out. Maybe sooner. I don't know. I don't know. Five years to be the max that we would be able to survive without something drastic happening. If this thing fails in 2026, I mean, it's not a team all together, but my opinion is we're going back in 2028 for again. If it fails in 2028, Sorry, guys, I'm leaving. I'm going for another job at that point in time. I won't be here. I mean, that's as simple as that. But if you spoke to the table, that would be forwarded at that point in time. So that's how I look at it. The other thing that I want to talk about, a ballot question will come after that. But I'm going to go to this right here, 10 reasons why. Talk about cost-benefit analysis and what you're getting for a return of $2 million. If you look at number two, massive college savings, last year's graduating class blew over $400,000 in Google credit savings plus almost $3.2 million of scholarship dollars awarded. So that's the zero operating revenue. But let's say we have a $2 million operating revenue. $2 million to get $3.6 million in return for one class. To me, that's a good investment. I mean, that's a really good investment as far as I'm concerned. Graduation rate, all that air, it really seems highly to what we've done with a very, very limited budget that's continuing to be cut more and more each year. Operating referendum, we'll go back to this one here. Waltville, if you need to work, So $1 million per year will go to transportation, half a million for facility maintenance, $400,000 per year for teacher salaries, when I say teachers, it's staff in general. $100,000 per year for appropriate or extracurricular supports. That's what the budget goes for. The way the referendum is written, the way it works is a massive It's a maximum rate or a maximum levy amount. So the max is $2 million or 49 and a half cents. I encourage everybody to please check out the tax calculator, plug in your numbers, encourage folks in the community to do that as well. A lot of people still think it's related to building a building.

It's not. We've got that part on wood, I think, figured out.

We'll have more here in the next couple months on that. We have a transition plan to get us out of RG Basket over the next, as far as early as next May, June. Take about two, two and a half years for us to be able to transition out of RJD. Westview would become a K-2 building, Northview a 3-6 building, high school a 7-12 building at that point in time. We have enough buying capacity within our current debt service rate and levy. to be able to renovate 85,000 square feet of the existing high school. I think it's somewhere between 14 and 18 classrooms that we would need to be able to move 7th and 8th grade over there to function. Out of district students is another thing that comes up from time to time. Those out of district students, we get about $1,500 per student that goes into our operations fund. So yes, I get it's not fair that those kids aren't paying for fun but that's just the reality piece of it that's just how it is um but we do get that 9 500 to 10 000 per student which does help us keep our teachers and an academic program so i really stress the folks who possible, my request to you guys, as a board, to consider it as verbally supported. And even one step further, if you consider it as asking a resolution as a city council, that you do support it. And I think that will carry a lot of weight in our community if you guys do feel that way.

That's what I would encourage.

My biggest concern is we don't know what kind of money we're going to get at the end of 2028 because we're going to go through 2027 without all 2028 until we find out what we've got. And we're going to have to do a budget.

I don't know how you guys do a budget.

I'd like for the board to speak to you because they're the ones making the decisions here. Absolutely.

And I hate to see what RJ, Bobby walked 80.

We're at 75, 76. It was about 50 or 48. I think last year it was 52. Okay. I think they started construction on 48.

48. Yeah. Mike and I were around then. Yeah.

That's not when they started construction on YouTube. I have several, but... We can take turns here. So when does the TIF in yesterday expire? That seems to be a big part of this equation. And is that a reset edition?

So it'll be a reset. And that's outside of our purview, to be quite honest with you. I do know there's a TIF reset somewhere around 2034. It's a long time.

It's not like... It's not tomorrow. It's not next. It's not before.

Operate my friend on a full cycle eight years before those step recess would start right and the So you mentioned transfer students there at the end. That's a big part of this, too. I Hate to break it down dollars and cents like he said that's what we're talking about here The question I get asked sometimes is well do those students not I mean a big part of this nav per student We have a lot bigger denominators than we did 10 years ago. If we were to take out 600 students, that number gets a lot bigger. Do those students pay for themselves? Do we make money on those students? Do we lose money on those students?

What's the economics there? We make money on those students. We ran those numbers before. It varies a little bit. But $9,500 to $10,000, it costs

And that includes their portion of the buses and the zoning and everything. That's interesting. And this net levy per student, or maybe I was looking at net assessed value. I guess I was looking at net assessed value. Does that take into account? Last time I went to a meeting, we talked a lot about circuit breakers. Does that account for circuit breakers? Is that after circuit breakers are applied? Is that just pure, this is the assessed value for the one, two, three?

Yeah, it's confusing sometimes.

People say, does it count for it? Does it count for it? I get confused, but thank you. I can shut up for a minute. Out of the 2,200 kids, how many are out of district?

I don't know the number off the top of my head this year. It's about 30%. It varies from year to year. So we're in that 500 to 600 ballpark. I don't have the number for this year. It's declined quite a bit since my first year here. Just going to be tying up our... So what kind of data do we have as far as how many kids are riding the bus each day? So 900. And how many buses do we operate? Without steering. And if you do away with the busing, how will the schools handle all those cars? Because I've been at both schools this afternoon. problem, but it's not. At that point in time, it's a community problem. I mean, if we get a solution, I don't have a solution for that. I don't really know.

Yeah, that would be tough. Yeah. Okay, thank you. So we'll do the best we can with the staff we ever made.

I appreciate it.

A couple more questions and we're going to move on.

So this thing

Jeremy, I do have one more question. I'm kidding. No, I'm kidding. No, just generally. So all the information that you have given out in the community for quite some time now, so much information. And if you want to be informed, you have no reason to not be. And it's up to all of us to be informed if we really care. We can't complain if we don't, right? What is the biggest, cut it down, streamline it, bullet point it, and In layman's terms, what is the biggest misconception that people, just regular people, you know, over-raising our taxes, what is the biggest misconception, just generally, not, you know, like, that people think that is totally not true?

I think there's a few. I think there's a few. It comes in pockets. One is that this is for buildings and facilities. Because two years ago, we were talking, trying to build a new school and get out of R.J. Baskin. I think that's one. out-of-district students. That's the other misconception with it. The other piece is, well, my property taxes have gone up every year drastically. Well, yes, that's true, but if you went to sell your house today, guess what? You're going to sell it for a lot more. And it's not Indiana's Indian's property taxes are based upon the market. What's the housing market doing? I know somebody the other day, well, it was a couple weeks ago, they're going to be selling a ranch house in Gas City, and here in probably the near future, probably going to get $500,000, $600,000 for it, and I couldn't believe it. Right, you're right. They're probably not wrong about what they're going to get for it. They're able to ask that because it's such a demand. So that's the other thing. The misconception is, just in regards to property taxes in general, property taxes is an investment into the communities that you want to live in. It's going to provide a service for you. Now, you may not use that service every single day. That's fine. You may not drive down every single street in Jonesboro every day. But part of your money is going towards upkeep of that. Whatever the case may be. You may not have kids in the school district, but I guarantee you that if the school doesn't have busing, your property values are going to decrease dramatically. You know all that? All that money that you put into taxes over the years is going to be for nothing because when you turn around and sell your property, it's going to be worth a lot less.

And the reason I was asking that is because I agree, is because you have all this information and it's great. We, because people know what we do or are in the community, they'll ask us and it's not, even though they have all this information and are privy to it, it's on the spot, hey, what do you think about this? to know if you were telling us what would be something you would wish we could say that would kind of not be to this detail, but rather than an ordinance or referendum or whatever, you know, that you wanted us to agree, like, just say, hey, well, you know what? This is a good point or this. I was just curious if you had something that you wished we

schools of the community and i said this recently i mean i could be wrong but i think between all the businesses in the gas city area jonesboro area i believe the school is the third largest um in terms of employees we have a you know warm distribution center you know woodmark and you got us which is about 300 350 employees economic development standpoint, what happens if the third largest business closes in the community? What happens from that? So something that, on the other side, I would like people to start thinking about the school in terms of being the third largest business in the community and treating the school like the third largest business in the community.

We give out abatements and we give out

all kinds of different benefits to businesses that I guarantee you do not have 60% of their employees living in the community.

But us as the third bar just have 60% of our employees Employees living in the community carries a lot. That's a good point. That's a good point.

I mean, to me, it's a lifeline. I'm not trying to be downgrading the Performing Arts Center or anything like that, but the Performing Arts Center holds 1,700, 1,800 people. You go out to a football game on a Friday night, there's 60,000 people out there. So what attracts people here at the community? It surrounds the school. Housing is a hard problem. There's a lack of housing here. That's a problem. But that's a good problem to have. That is a very good problem to have. It's a better problem than having too much housing, I can tell you that.

We're working on that, aren't we, guys?

But, yeah, that's my main thing. Other thing I would say to people, if you're a supporter of this, is just tell them today, we're public question number three on the ballot. So if you like kids, you like us in the Senate, I'll just vote yes on public question number three. That's all I have to say.

whether or not to endorse, officially endorse the issue. And it's not something that we would like to do or leave it on an individual basis, but we can at some point soon discuss that.

I'll just add that this is very confusing. Even for us, it's very confusing. It's designed to be confusing.

Jeremy has done a phenomenal job of being as transparent as possible, but it's still way above...

what most of us can come right so i would encourage you to have questions or concerns anything reach out to jeremy but he puts his phone number on his book all the time but if you guys have questions if you want to consider that resolution often yeah to talk about the future let's say you know this passes or doesn't pass either way i read this

This is a, you know, you look at the districts. I mean, you've shown that before. You look at the net assessed value. They drew the districts 70 years ago, and those don't make sense anymore. Say we pass this operating referendum. We're going to have this conversation with your role. I am. So is there, and I know this is naive, but I'm young and I have to worry about this for Who do we talk to? Is that a county commissioner? Is that a state board of education? Because this looked like stats to me that I wouldn't show to someone making $40,000 a year in Jonesboro and say, sorry, you have to pay more property taxes. This says, go to the state commissioner of education and say, the lines in our county don't make sense. How do we redraw the lines?

There's an annex process there, but my understanding, I've never personally been through it, never even attempted to be through it, and Joe, maybe you have during your time, but my understanding of that is you have to have both parties on the same page with it until it's... There's no...

There's no oversight. I find it difficult to believe no one... I feel for you personally. That's part of what I'm saying to you. This is a hurdle. I don't anticipate being in support of this. But you've done an excellent job, and I recognize how unfair these numbers are because it just doesn't make sense. And part of it is I don't know it'll make sense even with an operating referendum. I want to try to fix it long-term. And even if we get this referendum, I don't see how that's a long-term fix. But that's my only question.

We do get about a million, we get our ORJ basket, that's about a million dollar, 800,000 to a million dollar operational savings per year. That starts to get us back into where we need to be at that point in time in terms of the functioning. What really does hurry us long term Having low assessed value in a debt service fund in terms of facilities and taking care of facilities. Now, that's what I'm working on right now is the long-term facilities plans in terms of HVAC and mechanicals and all that. Having that plan in place, a lot of that's outside of your control. You just don't know what inflationary numbers are going to do for us in the long term. long-term thing that is somewhat in our control is the TIF aspect of it. Seventy-five and a half million dollars of TIF in E. Last, it's been a while since I've looked at it, but about 35 million Thank you. Thank you very much.

I'm not trying to throw you out, but I know you got things to do.

I don't think we should

I think we should call that company and make them come. Almost everyone got caught at the dead ends.

From the park, all eight, nine.

These new drivers, for some reason, don't want to run the route. They had two trucks here and didn't pick everybody up. I mean, I'm not saying we won't, but I don't think we should be doing their job.

I did a quick, there's got to be 30 or 40 in the case.

Take any three ways you can handle it.

Now, I can, like I said, I've got numbers for them that I can call them.

One of them attempted to call and got no answer.

I mean, if we're paying them to do it, we need to make them do it.

I know we're late, but we got stuff to do. I'm sorry. But I had someone questioning how far, and so I'm questioning. The mayor answered what he thought. I think I know the answer, but I want it on the record. If I have to talk to the Grand County Highway Department, where Avenue stop going north. Pearl Street turns up at 22. That's our city limits. But then there's 4th Avenue and that's our city. That's our road name that inherits. But that's technically out in the county. Do we maintain or plow already that 4th Avenue?

We plow everything to 22 on 4th Avenue because we took over that road. The houses and everything's still in the county, just like out here. We take care of Winston Road, we take care of 6th Street, we take care of 9th Street, all the way to 150. The only thing that's ours is the road.

I'm not talking about west, I'm talking about north. 4th Avenue, north of 22.

It stops and then turns into the county, and then it starts on the other side of 22.

So that's why, yes. We don't do any of that, it's county. Okay. You're talking behind the trailer parking.

Yeah, he's talking about gas. Spike, yeah. People contacted me and said that the county highway department said that that was our road that we maintained. So I will maybe talk to the highway department.

That's where I live. That's what the county used to do it, and now they've figured that out, but not on the other side.

You're actually talking about Pearl where it comes out to 22 where Spike lives. Yes.

At the Board of Works meeting tonight, we are moving forward with the CCMG rounds open for this year. We are going with 3rd Avenue from 2nd to 6th Street, and 4th Street from 9th to 12th. And that will be repaving. And I think we're going to address maybe some storm on 3rd Avenue.

And then closing it. They have storm drains on 3rd Avenue?

Yes. There's actually...

Looking back at Water Street, there are still some issues. One is a drain that we're going to increase the surface area. So I've got a quote, receiving a quote to get that storm drain put in. During heavy events, I don't know if you've seen that street, but there's maybe one or two drains along the entire street and it all funnels down in front of And it was an issue prior, so hopefully we can address that with an additional drain there. And then, for some reason, signs weren't put in by the contractors. Some were left on the sidewalks. It was brought to my attention that some are missing now, so we're going to get a list of those and address those with the contractors as well. Frank, that's his responsibility to put this back. And the grass. And the grass, yeah. That's all I have if you guys have anything

and he gets that.

I was awake at the rail rally because they were going to use their, go have a bike show. Okay. Me and Quentin walked several times, and we have decided we want to go in front of that house down there and make it further.

Okay. I just want to make sure that it didn't fall off the radar, and I can assure him that, yes, that's still on the plan, and we'll be working on it.

We can help him lay out. Yeah, we like that. That's our pistol. And I'd like to parallel, Parker, if that's okay with everybody.

We are moving forward with another annexation informational meeting. We are sending packets out this time with information for the residents and more informants. And get them out a little sooner? Yes, sir. pinpointing a Thursday. Mayor, do you have a date in mind? This month or next?

I'd say next month. Maybe last Thursday, but we don't want to do it too early. We want to pack this out. WELL, ONCE OUR TIMELINE FOR FINANCIATION, DON'T WE MAYBE, WE DON'T NEED A BUNCH OF THESE?

SO WE HAVE TO HAVE ABOUT FOUR OR FIVE OF THEM. SO 15TH OCTOBER, THURSDAY? 15TH OCTOBER? OKAY. THURSDAY? YEP. THE PACKETS ARE READY, SO WE'LL GET THOSE SET UP. OKAY.

THANK YOU.

I'M GLAD YOU BROUGHT UP THE, I HAD TO BACK UP, BUT YOU BROUGHT UP FORTH THE The building on the corner, right there, every plan is designated that number one to be torn down next in the county. That's the next building when they get their funding, they're taking that down. That's where they came over and talked to me about it. So that's kind of neat. I don't know when, but the very thing that came over told me that.

So they'll pay for that. We don't have to make it a green space.

No, they'll have to make a green space. We may have to supply the dumpsters for the brick, but the county's going to take the brick away. But that's a good thing.

On your parking on 5th, are you talking about both sides of the road or just a gazebo side? Both sides. Okay, so the only thing different you've got to think about, I don't care either way, you do diagonal parking or angled parking, you've got to realize... You've got to pick which way. Like, turn off the main, they're going to put one this way, but they ain't going to be able to come up this way to get into the gazebo. They're going to park on the other side. So you're going to have to have your angles to go with whatever way you want them to come in. Or a parallel parking, it wouldn't matter.

I would suggest, if you're going to do the angle parking, come off the main street, be on the south side, and then all

Because we are talking about parallel parking on the 4th by the library and the families because when we're trying to pave them or plow in the winter, you've got all them cars and you can't plow that road because they're all in an angle. If they was parked a long ways along the curb, we could at least get by them. So we talked about parallel parking there.

Let's hope we have a business that we have that issue somewhere here in the next few years. It would be a good problem to have.

And we could possibly change it then.

Thank you very much. Okay, I'm Dean. Police vehicles. I'm going to make a comment and try to influence you guys to do a couple of things. No action tonight. I'd like to purchase a new vehicle. that we make payments on it. While we, in the meantime, when we purchase one, we try to seek a grant. Because we, our new chief has really found out there's a lot of grants out there, but they just closed all that stuff. We missed the boat again. But this time, he's guaranteed me that he will find something down the road. I forced to purchase one now. I rode to Marion with him in our newest, best vehicle. not very good so the Explorer

that we're only driving it now because the charger is in the shop with either an ECM problem or a radiator fan problem because it's consistently overheating no matter how you drive it. So we don't know what that cost will be. I'll know more probably by Thursday. With the Explorer, the tire sensors are bad. The ball joints are bad. The tire audios are bad. The air conditioning goes out. fuse box gets real, real hot. When the AC goes out, if you pull that relay out, it actually almost burns my hand. That's how hot it was. So once I get the charger back on the road, then that's when I'm in the shop and don't know how much the expenses are on that. We're not going to be doing much pursuing around here to be speed driving or anything like that, but still the safety of the officers out there driving those to include myself. If I responded to an unresponsive, you know, at the west end of town and a tire I didn't race, it could potentially throw you off the road and probably roll over and then you got injuries and stuff like that. I'm doing the best I can with what I got, trying to get it fixed, get rid of them early. But that's kind of where we're at right now. We're down to one car back now. So I guess I'm a little upset that it's that bad. So what do you think is happening? We have a 16 and a 17. The 16 was the Explorer that was bought brand new by Jonesboro. And then the Charger was bought used, I believe, from Farah.

And our house is

You got $107,000 on the Explorer, and then $66,000 on the Charger.

Yeah, there's no reason it should be. Yeah. Yeah, we need to get that.

It was a take-home car all the way to Congress for years, so it's decimal.

And if I may, 20 years with the Marion Police Department, out of that 20 years, probably $17,000 I had to take home a car. And I treated that take-home car as if it was my own. It was free for me to drive. It didn't cost me any maintenance. It didn't cost me anything to keep it clean. If something went wrong, I'd have taken it. And my opinion is that was never happening in the past year. What I can say here to assure you, each and every one of you, is I'm big on that. Clean cars, well-maintained cars, oil change, the export fees and oil change, and I couldn't even tell you how many miles it's passed. To me, that's unacceptable. Same way with the department. The way it was found when I came in, it's unacceptable. That's why we're doing the things we're doing. Policy team, it's just, everything's... move to the future. And that's what I'm putting a lot of hours to be able to do that and not complain a long bit because I took on the role to do this. And I just ask for a little bit of guidance or support from you guys to be able to move forward with kind of the stuff that I inherited. Because quite frankly, you can ask Brittany, I'm If I don't have to spend money, I don't want to spend money. I treat it as if it's my own, and I want to make sure I have plenty of money in the reserve in case bad things happen and I need to use it. So that's how I fill out these correspondence, too.

Okay. We haven't called him yet.

I called him a while back, but I... 10 months ago, trying to get something, and you guys kind of got, no, we don't want to do this, but I'll send you some information. Exactly. It's called First Government.

Those who we've always went through.

Hey, Bob. I understand we need a new police vehicle to happen and take care of. But there's other places in this community. It's been collective. And I'm going to say it. The fire department has been elected. We've got a fire department that needs work on them. There's other stuff, and we back burn it, and they say that's the fire department's building. No, it ain't. It's a city building belonging to the city. The city needs to start stepping up, because every time I turn around, for the last 35 years, I'm city hall, anything they've done, it gets done. Anything down in the fire department, it's put on the back burner. And I'm a fireman, and I'm a citizen, and I'm a taxpayer, and I'm tired of seeing it. We've been put on the back burner down there. We always get things for everybody else, but the fire department's left out, and it's time to change. I hear from council members, do more fundraising. Why should we do fundraising and make more money and fundraising and getting grants and wants the city to give us. We're volunteers. We're giving our time to you. We're saving, if you look at the state, Indiana Volunteer Fire Association saves the state $6.2 billion a year. And cities and towns need to start learning that. And I'm going to start voicing my opinion on this because when we do things this way, when we put other things on the back burner, we need to

We need to consider it. I'll give you the financing things available and everything. And hopefully we can get some things taken care of. All right, let's move on. You might ask your comments about the police car. Okay. Court, treasurer.

Oh, and you need up to $500 on park funds for pumpkins again. If you guys want to do the carving. It went really well last year.

I agree. Except we need to put the trackers in them because we need to get them all back. Are we going to do also pass out candy up here again? Yes. We'll do that also?

We'll add, since it's park funding, we'll raise that to like $600 or $700 for candy. To add?

Yeah. Okay.

Because, you know, that was concession sales and stuff like that.

We'll only make $700 for kids and everything.

Okay. Up to. Up to. I'll make the motion up to $700. You said that for the pumpkins and candy? Yes.

I'll second.

I have a motion for the pumpkins and candy. You doing it on Halloween night again?

Whatever we decide trick-or-treating is.

Halloween night or Saturday night?

Yeah, why wouldn't we do it?

Saturday, 31st, right?

Time, 5 to 2. 5 to 2. 6 to 8. Yeah. Ask the Halloween king, George.

Halloween trick-or-treating hours.

What do you think, Mike Myers? laughter

Five to eight.

I think it was five to nine, but then we decided eight to nine was trickling off. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight.

Five to eight.

Five to eight.

Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight.

Five to eight. Five to eight. Five to eight.

Five to eight. Five to eight.

That's why I didn't bring it up.

They're the ones that brought it up at the last meeting.

The what?

The alley. The alley. Yeah. So you guys wanted me to give a quote for the alley. Yeah. What you guys talked about first, just doing that little tiny section where the holes, he said if you do that, it's going to have to go up out. If you don't pave that alley and make it solid, it's going to come out. He gave you two different quotes. One is to start, if you go down there, there's bricks that come off the ground and go up so far. Yeah. If he starts right there and goes to the end of their parking lot, it's $20,697. That's him come, tearing all of it out, hauling it off, refooting, face down, and payment. If he goes all the way back to Main Street, where the bricks are, and pay over them bricks, that's why it's a little more.

And how much was the rent?

$900, something like that. Yeah.

Anybody talk to you Aaron is

I've been trying to work with him. Before we do, my suggestion is let us try to see if I can try to get in there and show him that quote. Show him that quote because he's going to be responsible.

That is actually for a big concrete box that he's going to actually put in the ground. It's not going to be a pipe going through there looking to hit a pipe. It's going to actually be a concrete manhole.

I've shown him that. We've got to do something. That's all he wants to do.

Let me see if I can get him in here, because he's going to be, I don't want to blindside him with, what was that, $12,000? $8,000. $8,000? Well, he probably should have paid somebody $2,000 to do it. I don't want to blindside him. I don't know what he's going through, but I really will get a hold of him. I promise you.

We can get it done. It's been a long time.

It's a problem, gentlemen. We have to fix it. If it's worth having, then I'm going to move on.

Thank you.

It wouldn't just pay for the rims. We pay, sorry, I'm talking about the alley again. I just want to make sure it didn't pass without a comment. But we spend a couple hundred dollars, a couple thousand dollars here and there all the time just to make life better, to make Jonesboro a little bit nicer. Well, if anyone comes to visit Jonesboro, they go and get a pot at Jonesy's. That's what they do while they're here. And they bump and hit. get your car there. I think this will be a good thing. If we can't make it, we should at least take care of it. That's my impression.

The only thing I want to tell you, just so you guys are aware, this is just our alley. So if you go down there and look just to the north of our alley, their concrete is all broke up. Their entrance is still going to be bad unless they fix it.

Is that a result of the alley falling in like that?

No, I think it's the years of the semis running over concrete. If the first bid for the $20,000 is starting, if you go down there, you'll see brick come up so far into that alley. If he starts at the brick and goes to the end of their parking area, that's the $20,697. If you want him to go over the bricks right off the main street, pack all that and pay you over that, that's when it's the $22,795. In my opinion, that's the most important.

Yeah.

I hate having to go use that exit to get out on Main Street. But if you do that, what's it going to do with the water running down Main Street?

Same as everyone.

He said if you tax it, it will stay.

It's still going to slide down the main and then go down. He won't take that slope completely out of it.

So we will still have that.

Yeah, you're still going to have a dip there. It may not be as bad as the first one.

Now, maybe if we still have that big of a dip, we need it for the drainage. What's the point? I CAN'T TALK TO PEOPLE THAT OWN IT TO FIX IT, SUCH AS IT'S GOING TO BE A NASTY GARDEN FOR THE ONLY BUSINESSES ON MAIN STREET FOR THE REST OF THE TIME. SO THAT'S WORTH A SHOT. IT WAS WORTH A SHOT. THANK YOU, CLINTON.

NOW CAN WE GET WITH THE STORE AND ASK THEM IF THEY WANT TO MAKE IT ALL CONCRETE?

IT'S A NEW OWNER, SO MAYBE. I'M NOT GOING TO HOLD MY BREATH, BUT THERE'S A COMMUNICATION BARRIER FOR ME THERE.

YEAH, AND THAT'S WHAT I'D BE WORRIED ABOUT.

All right. The attorney's off today, so let's go to special committees. I don't have anything in special committees, but I do have a comment. It's October 5th. We have the Domestic Violence Awareness Program. There will be free caramel corn, and a handful of ladies are coming over with little pumpkins and some stuff. They're going to be a little festival here about. mental health and everything. So it's a good little thing we're going to have. I'll start promoting it a little bit more as it gets closer to October 5th, 5th, 7th, the Z-vote.

Are we charging them to use that? No. Why? Do you want to put it in the market? I could, yes. Sure.

If you don't have anything else to ask, we'll go ahead and have a comment on that. Public comments. Approval claims. Yes. For the general fund for the city of Jonesboro for September 8, $80,117.47.

So a couple questions. On the I&M power, are those like a whole street, like it's 949, 3960? Why is there such a discrepancy?

I don't remember if I've asked that before. $949.

Is that just one hole, one line, or one? One meter. So on the IAM, the second or third page, well, the one on 414 South Main is $949.

The one on top is $39.80.

Why is there such a huge difference? So this one is 603 Fairmont Avenue. Okay.

So that's just one that's not being used at the park. Okay. It's a city hall. It's probably like air. Okay.

I thought it was just the lights going down. No, no, no.

The street lights are made out of MBH. Okay.

Well, there's a couple big ones there.

This one and this one.

Okay. Those are okay. They're actually street lights. Okay. And then the $26,000 repayment for 2024.

That was the refund. So that's the money they sent us for a project for 2024-1, right? We came in under, so I just gave them the money back.

Okay. And then Baker Tilly.

That's TIF.

We have to pay that every year? And we've got $0 on TIF? So far.

Now if that's something that someone wants to take over.

Hi. Rex?

Aye.

Clayton? Aye.

Gerald?

Aye. And Greg? Aye. All right. Public comments or questions? Yes.

This past summer, the city dug a huge amount of dirt at the Queen, the Cardinal Queen's Way and my driveway. For Ms. Susie's weeded way back. And back to all the rains, that nice, previously concrete culvert that cured all the rain, down the hill and into the sewer, is now solid pattern too. It can no longer drain.

I have to run it down here tomorrow. Because my basement is wet now.

I support it myself. I think our people is going to be very difficult for some. I know I've got some elderly neighbors that have made cuts just because things have become so expensive. And this will be very difficult for them to deal with that. And that would be, for me, that's the only negative thing I can say about it. I understand it. But some people, they're just not going to have the money. I don't know what they're going to do.