Common Council - Regular Meeting

We are on. All right. Good evening. Welcome to the City Council meeting. Today is August the 4th. We are streaming the meeting live on our YouTube channel, as well as archiving the meeting there. As always, we will invite you to stand to recite the Lord's Prayer, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, and we'll get into business.

Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

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

Thank you. Clerk, may we have a roll call, please?

Sure. Patrick Tevenoff? Here. Carla Krebs is absent. Lucy DiTillo? Here. Josh Schaefer is absent. Joel Storm is absent. Jim Bartlett?

Here.

And Josh Wilber? Here. Okay, we do have a quorum.

Council have had an opportunity to review the minutes from Tuesday, July 21st. So we'll entertain a motion to approve.

I move that we... I move we approve the minutes as submitted.

Second.

Any discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. And moving on. Aye. All ayes. I do want to invite here in just a few minutes our Madison Township Trustee Kevin Fry. So welcome to our council meeting tonight. Chief Robert Black is also here representing Madison Township Fire Department. We'll move on to resolutions and bills. We'll turn it over to Joe.

transfers. The first one, the $25,000 that comes from accounting tax, you might remember when we did the budget last year, we created a new fund, the vacant and abandoned fund, and that's for the work that Dewey O'Neill is doing, and obviously there was no revenue for that fund, so we are seeding that fund with this $25,000. This just moves into that fund because he has expenses. He has already spent some money on But we don't know how long the tax liens and the fees will come in to cover those.

So this will make sure that account is whole and good and he'll have some funds left to spend in case those tax liens don't come in by the end of the year. He should be good.

And then I want to jump down to the police, medical, and county tax and police benefit line. The benefits for a police department is such a large number, we couldn't fit it all in the general fund, so we divided it in between two. Part of it was in the police general fund, part of it was in the county tax line. police benefit line and then at mid-year we need to switch that over to the other fund that we were taking it out of and that went over a little bit before we got it done so there's a negative in there that sixteen thousand dollars we're moving that money from the police general fund over to that to cover that negative and now they are taking it out of the police medical line in their general fund budget so we should be good for the rest of the year there And then the other four transfers are all park-related. It's smaller, miscellaneous amounts that they are moving around to cover unintended expenses that have come up, not large amounts. So happy to take any questions about the transfers.

So just to clarify, this is not additional spending. It's just changing and shifting from one account to another, right, Mindy? I said so this is not an additional spending this is simply transferring to cover other areas that were already approved right and then do you see vacant and abandoned being having a item line for that with a dollar amount for next year's budget potentially

Yes, we will budget, and hopefully, I know that the leads will probably start coming in. I don't know how long that takes, but there should be some of this money left, and if we need to pull some, we can, but otherwise we'll try to budget based on what that revenue looks like.

Thank you.

I move that we approve 2026-11c.

I'll second that motion.

Patrick Cavanaugh?

Yes.

Lucy Dottillo? Yes. Jim Bartlett? Yes. Josh Wilber?

Yes. Thank you, Council.

Thank you, Council.

You want to push that red button there, Kevin, and welcome to our city council meeting.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, Joe pretty much summed it up. The state house last year enacted HEA 1461, so any money that's left at the end of the year in unrestricted funds, which is basically the general fund, as well as other funds, unrestricted funds, A percentage of that now has to go into infrastructure and roads and infrastructure and goes out to be used in the township. So because the township trustee for Madison covers the city plus the county as well, I will split it between the two and the only requirement per the state is I need a list or whatever you want to do whoever's in charge of your roads and infrastructure to tell me what they're going to be used for whether it be a road a bridge etc within the township it has to be used within the township by the by state regulations and then i have to take it back to my board my advisory board and they will vote on it or agree to spend that money on whatever project you designate. Why it's being done that way, I'm not quite sure. We're not really set up to be in charge of roads and building bridges, but the state in its wisdom has decided that's the way it's going to be. Yeah, 30% of the access, and that will be year after year or until they change their minds again, which is the way it's going with the trustee at the moment. They're changing their minds on it. by a monthly basis, but as it stands right now, that's what will happen. And I'll meet with the commissioners tomorrow and the county council next week. And with all your blessings and signatures, we can get this all moving. It's a win situation for you guys. You outlay nothing. You just get an extra revenue from the township. And I say the only main caveat to that, it has to be used within the township. Well, obviously with the city, you're in the township. It's not an issue. With the county, they're going to have to, you know, they can't do up and do nothing. That's going to be their township trustee is going to have to give them money for that. So any questions?

I just want to remark and say thank you because I know you've been leading this and we've been having these conversations for a couple of few months now. Timing is good. Road funding is becoming more scarce at the state level. We need to do about a million dollars worth of road improvements each year just to make a dent in our annual asset management plan by probably early September. We'll provide you with that list. I know that you have to submit to DLGF a capital improvement plan maybe by the end of September.

I've already done that. Oh, you've already done that. We've done that at the end of last year to be ready for this year. And then we will do it again for next year. Actually, I just got a memo from the state. As I say, it's kind of a continual change in that now, like next year, they're saying you don't even have to do it now until 2028. Oh, wow. Because last year, they had to be started and ready to go. for this year but they said but it's up to you if you've already got a capital improvement going you can just carry on but if you don't want to do it for the next couple of years you don't have to but then you have to start it again I'm just going to carry on because it's just too much grief and paperwork so I was just going to get to the point of that by early September we'll submit lists and costs for your board to consider yeah they'll look over it and I'm sure they'll probably go with what You know, you need it for as long as it's not something so outrageous that one of you is upset, but I'm sure they won't.

Okay.

Okay?

Any questions? Yeah, we'll get a motion.

I move we approve Resolution 2026-12C.

I'll second the motion.

Patrick, do you have a note?

Yes.

Lucy DiTillo. Yes. Jim Bartlett. Yes. And Josh Wilber.

Yes. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you. Keep up a good job, Kevin. Appreciate it. Yep. We'll go back to Mindy to give an overview. I'm sorry. No, I was just going to say Mindy's going to give an overview on this.

Yes. So yesterday at the Board of Health Works and Safety meeting, we requested that they approve an amendment to our personal handbook by adding the spousal carve-out policy, which they did. Now we are asking your approval because it does have a financial impact on our benefit costs. It's not a negative cost, but it does affect it. So the spousal carve-out policy... is simply saying if we have an employee who has a spouse that works somewhere else and is eligible for coverage at their employer, they must take that. They're not allowed to join our policy. Or if they're eligible for Medicare, they need to be on Medicare and they will not be on our policy. That's all it says. We do currently have 17 people, 17 employees who have their spouses on their policy. I don't know how many of those might be eligible at their current employees, but we do not intend to make any changes to that. We will grandfather those in. We're not taking anybody off of our coverage. It's simply for new employees going forward. And at our policy renewal, which is September 1st, this will be in effect and we won't be putting spouses on that are eligible for coverage at their other place of employment. So just a little bit of background on that. It's really a risk mitigation. move because our premiums are largely based on our loss ratio, which is quite high, and it is affecting our annual premiums quite a bit. Apex Benefits has done an outstanding job for us always, but especially this year, at negotiating down the cost of our benefits, and they have been able to hold us at a 3% increase for next year, which is manageable. It would have been much higher without their help, and maybe much higher, frankly, next year. So this is just a move to help starting to control our risk in that area, and I don't know, Bob, do you want to add anything, but

I just want to add that this is our largest expense as employee benefits. And we started out with a projected increase for 2027 was going to be 24%. Then through negotiation, Apex, which is our medical broker, they reduced that down to about 12%. And then we started looking at, well, what changes can we make to get our premium reduced even further? They contributed back $40,000 in a one-time credit for 2027. And then we had to make some slight adjustments with regards to deductibles and copays to get us to a 3% increase versus 24 or 12. It's actually a 6% increase because that $40,000 credit is a one-time credit. So we'll have to budget a higher increase for 2028 and beyond. But this is our largest expense, and we have to do everything we can to continue to provide high-quality benefits. I'm proud of the fact that each year as we have approved a budget, we have held the premiums flat for our employees, meaning that their portion of their medical insurance costs, which are growing tremendously for the city, has stayed the same for the last seven years. And we're proposing to do the same thing for 2027's budget. But to do that, we have to continue to make adjustments that mitigate our premium risk.

Bob, Mindy, I will tell you, I believe you have an error with part of this. I don't believe you legally can keep a spouse off the plan if they're eligible for Medicare. That is not a legal basis. You can get in trouble with Medicare or with the government. So you can educate. You can't encourage them to go on Medicare and not take the plan. You have to be careful of that as well. Thank you. So that is something you need to talk to Apex about because we can get ourselves in some legal issue. Other than that, the other is all good.

So the clarification here I think that you're making, Councilman, is if they're on Medicare, we can exclude them from being on city coverage. Versus saying if you're eligible for Medicare.

No, even if they're on Medicare, you cannot exclude them. They can't be excluded from taking the coverage. You can educate them. about why that may not be advantageous to them cost-wise, but that doesn't mean you can exclude them. So you want to be careful of that. Also, the fact that they're just eligible for Medicare does not allow you to exclude them from coverage. So be very careful of that.

We've worked with our HR consultants on this, so we'll get back with them and get clarifications.

Yeah, I know we can't as a business because this has come up several times about people of that age. Because we have spousal opt-out instead of spousal carve-out, and it's the same thing.

Thank you.

Thanks. Now we'll recess the regular council meeting and call to order the public hearing for the two ordinances annexing certain parcels into the city of Madison sponsored by councilman Schaefer and councilman storm.

Uh, good evening council. Um, As you know, two ordinances that are in front of you are to annex voluntarily all those parcels that have been mentioned in those ordinances. This is to facilitate the new housing development both on the eastern edge of our boundaries as well as our western edge. Again, one neighborhood will be in the low $200,000 to $400,000 in housing. We believe the other neighborhood will be in that $350,000 to on up in terms of housing. So we have two neighborhoods, just a little bit of crossover, but different audiences. Both have interest in different typologies. So that means different unit types, whether that's single family duplexes or patio homes potentially, townhomes. And the one property, Madison Woods, also will be building market rate apartments soon. as a part of the development. We do have Hunt Reynolds from Barnes and Thornburg available tonight just to give a quick overview as well from a legal perspective. we need a motion to table oh okay yeah thank you I was just something that got overlooked as a part of the scheduling process questions I had with this was

With this annexation, does that increase then the buffer zone from where the new boundaries of the city would lie?

No, it does not. Not automatically. Not automatically. Okay, so that's not. We can choose to go to the county and ask for that to be extended. We feel there's some benefit to that. But at this point, we haven't researched that. But no, it does not automatically.

Thank you.

Hunt?

Hunt, you mean?

Hunt, thank you. Thank you, Nick.

Thank you, guys. I'm going to go ahead and jump off if you don't need anything further from me.

Council, are there any reports, recommendations, or other business from Sandy or select committees to the City Council? We're going to do that right after the demo. We'll just follow through with the agenda, Jim, and the bills on second reading will be after report from city official. Thank you. And that brings us to the Civic Plus website demonstration that Hannah and her team and city staff have been working on.

My team of one.

Your team of one and all the city. It sounds better when I say team.

Yeah, it does. I am going to turn this. Thank you, Jim. Okay, so... Hopefully you all can hear me. But we started the city website in November of last year. We got word from EGIP Strategies, which is also called CORE, that they would no longer be providing the service to cities. Unfortunately, that news came after budget season. So we had to scramble and figure something else out. And so we did a couple different demos and got some quotes and ended up going with Civic Plus, who the city used in the past. um during that time it was right when i came in with the city the civic plus didn't have a lot of features it didn't have the options to allow us to edit in the way that we edit um we ended up having to ask for permission to make a lot of edits and that just became burdensome which is why we ended up switching to core and it saved a bunch of money now we're back with civic plus and They have revamped entirely. So I just wanted to do a quick overview. This is the homepage. We're able to switch these pictures out seasonally. There are going to be some glitches because we just launched last week. So if you see anything, please let me know. We have these buttons. This brings you to our agendas. This brings you to our permit portal. This brings you to our reported concern portal. This brings you to our city project page. This is where you can find jobs and this is our connect with us button which I'm going to explore a little more later because I think it's an important feature for us to explore. We also have this down here. We can switch these out whenever we need to but it's just to help the community find what they need right away. And then as you go further down, we have a message from the mayor here, and then we have our latest news. So those are our press releases that get posted here, and then our calendar. As you go into the calendar, you can actually search the calendar by just city council. If you just wanted to see city council, you can do all events. You can just do holiday closures and trash delays. You can sort it however you'd like to sort it. So that's a nice feature or you can see everything. The other nice feature with it is that when you click into here, you can actually attach the agenda. So as you can see in this corner, tonight's agenda is attached with this calendar. So the public can click into the calendar and then just download the agenda straight from there. We also have the playlist for city council linked there so they're able to see that. Going back to the homepage, In this agenda center, you're going to have, I'll go down to city council because I think it's probably the cleanest. One thing to note is minutes do not get uploaded until they've been signed, but the minutes are just right here, this little green check mark. So someone can click that and they can download the minutes. They can click over here to download the agenda. And here is the YouTube stream. So we're able to link all of that in here. making simplifying it one feature that I got a lot of complaints about when we had our previous website was our search feature it was really bad because they did not have a keywords function so we couldn't go and input keywords to help the public find what they needed to find we are still working to input keywords but it is a much nicer search feature do pickleball because that's what carla always is concerned about so it brings that up um we're able to do that with all the web pages we're able to go in and put in keywords that are that makes sense to that so for jobs we'll put in jobs employment those sort of things we just have not built it all out yet um keywords that's our probably one of our last tasks to finish but it should make it a lot easier on the public we also have the ability to see what the public is searching on the back end so if we see that the public is searching for something like a keyword function isn't coming up we're able to go put it in we can also put it in this how do I over here so we see that the public searching for something consistently and we don't already have it in this how do I column we can add it in there but this is something that we built out just to try and make it a little bit easier for just some of the weird things that the public might be looking for some of the things that we don't want them to have to go digging for and we can add anything so council if you all have suggestions if you've heard anything from the public of hey we can't find this on the website let us know and we can build it out even more we also have the city services tab i linked animal control because i think that's a question we get a lot as a city building permits and inspections code violations golf cart registration information about your trash recycling and compost information about how to set up your water and sewage service then obviously you can explore the different city departments And then you have your government, which has all the boards, the mayor's office, you have the agendas and minutes, city council, city ordinances, and clerk treasurer. And then, like I said, I want to go back to this connect with us page. So this connect with us, we build out, it has information about there's many ways to stay involved with the city. You can attend a meeting. Here's the city calendar. Here's our visit our agenda center. You can request a meeting with Mayor Courtney. You can subscribe to notifications. I'm going to bring us back to there. You can sign up for our e-newsletter. Or you can follow our numerous social media accounts that we manage. Our social media is also linked down here, just the main city ones. But as you can see, there's also Parks and Rec and Public Safety social media. So the big thing I want to cover is this sign up for notify me. So here... You can go in, you can create an account with the city on the city's website, and you can sign up for notifications. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna sign up just to show you all. It's going to look completely different than how it would look for the public for a second. So just give me a second. Obviously the public's not going to be able to edit the page. So we're going to go here. And here you can see my email address is there, but I can also say that I want to subscribe for text messages. So we'll just put in City Hall's phone number here. Hit save. And then all I have to do... That's okay. All I have to do then is go down and click. So if I want to get notifications when a Board of Public Works and Safety agenda has been published, I can click this little email icon or the phone icon, and that subscribes me. And at any time I can go back and uncheck them, and that unsubscribes me. So there's... All this for wherever we post agendas you can sign up for. Emergency alerts, that would be if we have like snowstorm or flood or tornado type situations, not the stuff that EMA sends out, but like, hey, avoid this road, those sort of things. Bid postings, we're going to be getting those online now since it's a much simpler process. The calendar, that's one. So what happens with this is we actually send out a text message three days in advance that says upcoming city council meeting and then it'll say when the date is as like a reminder that, hey, this meeting is coming up. If a meeting's canceled or rescheduled, we'll go in and plug in a new text message to say that that meeting has been canceled or rescheduled. One I highly recommend signing up for is holiday closures and trash delays. I think that a lot of people call City Hall on a trash delay week and say, hey, why wasn't my trash picked up? So I encourage everyone to sign up for that. What it does is it says like upcoming holiday and there's a link where you can click and you can see all the details and you'll be able to see like there is a trash delay or there is not a trash delay that week. You can also sign up for job postings, and then you can sign up to receive a notice that a press release has been posted. So different options. We can build out a couple more if there's anything that we think the public needs to be alerted for, but I encourage at least council sign up for holiday closures and trash delays. Tony needs to sign up. He left the room, but he needs to sign up for that one too because he's always asking. But I think this is a nice feature. There's probably going to be some things we have to work out because the staff liaison for each board is the one that is actually inputting the information. So they're the ones uploading the agendas. I help them with uploading the meetings. So figuring out those text messages, they've been coming to me a lot. I've been working with them a lot. But I do think this is a nice feature that we did not have with our previous website, even though we were supposed to. So I encourage anyone to sign up for that. Basically, this is the overview I have. That's the one thing I really wanted to show you all. If you have questions, if you see broken links, if you see misspellings, the migration that CivicPlus did was a little bit rough. We found Madison was spelled incorrectly quite a few times. We had to change a lot of stuff. So the big goal was to get this done by August, and we got it launched by August. So does anyone have questions?

I just want to say, nice job. It looks great. We put a tremendous amount of content on social media and statically. Also, for our website, definitely more than anyone in the county and more than I've seen in southern Indiana. And we're adding even more capabilities. The text message alerts will be very helpful.

I'll add, during migration, we were allowed to migrate over 80 pages because that's what a typical city has is 80 pages. We had 120 pages. So we had to go through and say, cut that, and we would condense it into a page. Or we had to save that information from our old website and then go add the page back in ourselves. So we had more pages than they had really ever seen.

So you could only migrate 80, but you could have more than 80 if you built it yourself.

Right.

I'm glad you're getting this project mostly wound up before you go on maternity leave.

That was the goal. When I found out that I would be on leave, I called them and said, hey, we need to get this launched quicker than we planned. Can we do it? And Civic Plus said, yes, we can do it.

And how is the conversion to mobile or iPad devices working?

It will be a little different. The homepage, I'm still working with them. There's some things that Civic Plus needs to work out with our homepage, but it actually flows really nice. One thing that Kristen and I had to do was, as we were building out pages, go and look and see how they were laying out on our mobile devices to make sure that it was clear. One thing we noticed is tables. looked really funky um on the mobile device so we started so we went and removed as many tables as we could find i think there's a couple other tables in there that we still need to remove but if you're on a mobile device and something looks weird let us know and we'll go in and have to figure out how to navigate it to get it to look better yeah i'll just make the statement which is transparency comes up all the time

And it feels like we have tremendous amount of content out there as well as accessibility for anybody that has any questions or wants any documents. And, you know, uh, this page just does even more for transparency. It's all there. Uh, you can't go to a County commissioners or a County council meeting or a town handover meeting and see everything that you're going to be talking about. But prior to our meetings, you can see it all. It's right there. Uh, we tell you what's going to be on the agenda. And if you want to be well-informed, if there's a lot of information on what's not there, just ask for it.

so to add to that and the contact information is included on the website new website as well right all of all of our contact info so just to remind people that during public comment it's public comment so a lot of people have a lot of questions and and there's the ability to ask those questions in in more of a real time and not save it for two weeks for a City Council meeting because It's public comment. So the Q&As will be really important. In between that, call us and let us know what you're thinking about or what you want to know an answer to. I talked to a couple people today prior to the meeting and stressed that don't worry about you can come to a council meeting. But don't come with questions. Come with your statements. So it just makes communicating better. And like the mayor said, with a better website, good job. And I'll be looking for any changes that I might find or broken links.

Please know I'm a perfectionist. So if you see anything, tell me right away and I will fix it. Because it bothers me when there's anything not right on the website with how many hours we put into it.

I appreciate that.

you know, I'll tell you, you and your team did a great job. Um, this is awesome. It's so much better really than, than what we've had. And I know this is a large, large project I've seen firsthand on, on what we do go through as a business. It is really not a lot of difference when you're building it for a government or rebuild it for a business. So amazing job. There's a lot to it. There's so many things and it sounds like you guys have really done a good job and thinking through what you're doing, so you certainly had a good plan with it, and you followed through. It's a nice job. Thank you.

And I'm happy to answer any questions from the public as well, if they have any.

I'll take some time to navigate across it and see if I have any more suggestions.

See what I put on the mayor's page?

Yes. This is all true. If it's there, it's got to be true. And thank you. Moving on, Bill's on second reading, as Jim was alluding to earlier and Joe explained. We need to have a 14-day period between the public hearing, which we had tonight, and the actual adoption. So I would ask for a motion to table Ordinances 20, 26, 13, and 14C. I'll move, thank you.

I'm sorry. I move that we table ordinances 2026-13C and 2026-14C until the next meeting.

I'll second the motion. I'll second. Any discussion? Comments or questions?

Patrick Chevenau?

Yes.

Lucy DeSillo. Yes. Jim Bartlett. Yes. And Chuck Schwilbert.

Yes. Thank you, Council. Moving on. Jim, are there any public comments for a sign-up sheet?

Is Robert Black still here? I believe he's the only one who has signed up.

Okay. Under Mayor's comments, this one mentioned tonight's National Night Out, so we have a bit of a scarce crew here tonight, but I invite everyone to Roll down to Bicentennial Park, which I will do after I put a pair of shorts on. And I go down and maybe even run through the splash pad and eat some hamburgers with the community. And our police and fire departments are down there hosting people out like they've done in the past. Beautiful evening to be out and about. And then secondly, at our next council meeting will also be the first night of our, I should say, the budget workshop will begin. So look for information on the budget. We're still, uh, gathering data and, and waiting on information to be published by DLGF that will roll into that. But I think many had indicated that by the end of the week, we hope to have the budget workshop, uh, budget materials for the workshop, uh, to you. And then also in early September, as we were talking about with, uh, with Kevin, uh, we need to finalize our 2027 CCMG road list. So, uh, as you drive around your districts, Let me know if you have several roads you'd like us to look into. I think road funding is going to be tight for 2027 based upon what I'm seeing legislatively. But our goal is to do a million dollars worth of road projects outside of our Main Street project each year for the next 10 years to help elevate the average pager rating for our road inventory. Of course, outside of that, we will continue to be working on our Main Street project, so As we roll into the fall of this year, we will be letting the bid awards out for the next phase of the Main Street project, which is the paving from the top of Hanover Hill down to McIntyre Street. So that will be let this fall, and then they'll begin to do some mobilization, some work in the fall. But most of that paving will happen in the spring of 2027.

Mayor, does that include alleyways as well as roads?

Only if they've been added into our road inventory, and I think a lot of them have, but not all of them have. Okay. Thank you. Meaning they would be CCMG eligible if it's part of our road inventory. But with such a scarcity of funding, what we've been doing are the worst-rated roads that have the most traffic on them, and when we do the roads, we're also looking at all the other elements, the gutters, gutter pans, drainage, sidewalks. and on everything that essentially goes along with redoing a road. And we've been milling and paving, not asphalt on top of asphalt. Some of the roads that we're doing this to don't even have a road base, so it requires a little bit more time and expense.

Mr. Mayor? Yeah. The weekend, just a comment for our families throughout Madison and the Madison area. The weekend after our next city council meeting is the Madison Barbecue Party, which should be a very inexpensive weekend, a very fun weekend down on Vaughn Drive. lots of good food and a lot of good entertainment with a family based event for the entire family.

It's gonna be fun. It's another prior second major music festival of the year and then after that being a broken circle and the fall is going to be just chock full of different events. Yesterday at board public works, we approved the street closures for The Soup Soup Chili and Brew. So a lot in September, October, November.

And for those families who aren't used to hearing such words, as I understand it, that is a no-charge event. Which one? The Madison Barbecue Party.

I will be looking forward to the barbecue, too, because the Kansas City Professional Barbecue Contest will be here as well. If there's no other comments to be made, our next council meeting will be Tuesday, August 18th. We'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Thanks, everybody, for being here and watching. If you have any questions between now and the next meeting, please reach out.

I'll make the motion to adjourn.

Second that motion.