Common Council - Regular Meeting

We ready? Okay. Welcome everyone to tonight's meeting. Today is Tuesday, August the 18th. City Council meeting. We're streaming live on City of Madison YouTube channel and archiving the meeting. Our goal here is to have a pretty quick meeting because we are beginning our 2027 budget workshop. immediately after this meeting. So once this meeting concludes, we will adjourn. We'll get settled up for the budget workshop here, and then I'll give some remarks on the budget, and we'll get into that. As with all of our meetings, let's take a moment here to invite you to stand and recite the Lord's Prayer, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Thanks.

Lord in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. 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.

You're ready for roll call.

Patrick Tovano. Here. Carla Krebs.

Here.

Lucy Dottillo? Here. Josh Schaefer?

Here.

Joel Storm?

Here.

Jim Bartlett is absent. And Joshua Barclay?

Here. Okay. Thank you. Council, we have the minutes dated Tuesday, August the 4th. If there are no amendments, we appreciate a motion to approve. I'll make the motion to approve the minutes.

I will second that motion.

Any discussion? If not, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. And moving on, no resolutions or bills tonight. Any reports, recommendations, or other business from standing or select committees? Seeing none, we'll go to bills on second reading. We have three bills. All right.

The first one is ordinance number 2026-13C, and that is annexing certain parcels into the city of Madison. So are there any questions or comments on 2026-13C?

I have a question. I think this is great that we are going to be annexing this property. I just question, have we checked into fire safety, police safety, how we're going to cover water, all the city duties as we absorb this property?

I'll let Tony answer questions on this and that. That's a question probably for both ordinances?

Yes, it applies to both.

Good evening, counsel. To answer your question, all of those things were factored into the fiscal policy plan of the current annexation for that. Certainly as those areas develop, additional trash service and those sorts of things will generate revenue to help those. Water and sewer will be the responsibility of the developer to implement and there is plenty of water and sewer capacity in the area.

That would include sidewalks and curbs and that type of thing?

Yeah, so the development, we'll have to follow our new UDO and subdivision standards which require street trees and sidewalks and curbs and lighting and all of the modern amenities that would expect that we haven't had before so this this should be and i'm happy to share with you a conceptual plan that they provided me just yesterday so that stuff starting to work through the system and we'll be coming for rezoning and then ultimately for playing fish approval on the plat in the next couple months if there's any did i miss anything uh hunt

I didn't really hear the question that well, but the fiscal plan report that was adopted a few weeks ago would also outline any impact to the city as well. So I would want you there if you have specific questions. Okay.

Thank you. Minnie, are we getting his sound from your laptop or from the TV?

I don't think it's coming through the TV, and I don't know how to change that setting.

You can't turn the volume up on your laptop?

It's up.

Okay. Thank you, Toye. The sponsor is Councilman Schaffer.

Seeing and hearing none, can we have a roll call vote?

Patrick Thibodeau. Yes. Yes. Lucy Dottillo. Yes. Josh Schaefer. Yes. Joel Storm. Yes. Bertland Sapson. Josh Wilbur.

Yes.

Okay, so the next one is ordinance number 2026-14C, and that's an ordinance... annexing pursuant to voluntary petition certain territory is that right yes certain territory within the city and placing the same within the corporate boundaries thereof and making the same part of the city of Madison Indiana and sponsor here is sponsor Councilman Storm any questions council

Any questions from the audience? Clerk, roll call.

Patrick Tevenow? Yes. Carla Krebs? Yes. Lucy DiTillo? Yes. Josh Schaefer? Yes. Joel Storm? Yes. Jim Bartlett's absent. Josh Wilber?

Yes. Thank you, Council. One more.

And the last is Ordinance Number 236-15C, Ordinance...

question for you on those last two. What is the effectivity date of the annexation at this point?

Probably in about a month once we go through the potential appeal process. There will be a notice of annexation in paper, I think maybe Friday. This Friday. And then that will start the clock for anybody who would like to appeal the annexation. It's voluntary, but there are certain provisions for an appeal. In court.

Will we need to update our council district ordinance with this new annexation?

In this ordinance, we're adding it into those council districts. Did that fit in there? Yes. Okay, I missed that one. Thank you. So we'll have one in five and one in four.

Okay. Ordinance number 2026-15C, an ordinance of the Common Council of the City of Madison, Indiana, amending the employee handbook as adopted in 2026-6C.

So we do have an amendment based on discussion last meeting. Mindy, do you want to go over that? I'll be happy. And a red line of the proposed amendments in your package. So after we adopt the amendment, we can adopt the final policy.

Yes, so after the last meeting and Councilman Wilbur's comments, we went back to, this had come to us originally from an HR company, so I'm not sure what happened there, but we went back to our benefit provider who uses a firm who does their policies and they sent us their policy. which is what you have as an updated policy. We use their verbiage. So I assume that this meets what you were talking about before. Your red line will show you what changed in there. It's basically the opposite of what we had, I think. So updated policy is exactly as you see it, and that would be the amended carve-out policy.

This addresses Councilman Wilbur's comment about Medicare eligibility.

Correct, correct.

So I think we need a motion to approve the amendment.

I'll make the motion to approve the amendment to Ordinance 2026-15C. I'll second that motion.

Any discussion? Any discussion from the audience on the amendment? All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? All right, so any comments or questions on the amendment as it has been, or on the ordinance as it has been amended? Anything from the audience? Seeing and hearing none, we'll have a roll call vote.

Patrick Tavena? Yes. Carla Krebs? Yes. Lucy DiTillo? Yes. Josh Schaefer? Yes. Joel Storm? Yes. Jim Bartlett's absent. Josh Wilber?

Yes.

Thank you, Council.

Thank you, Council. Moving on to the rest of the agenda, I'm not sure, does someone have a public comment sign-up sheet? Grab that real quick.

Signed up.

Hi, Lisa Ferguson, 718 East 2nd Street. Just a quick update for you all. I talked about this at Board of Public Works yesterday. So I am representing the River City Patriots, and I let them know yesterday we are not the drinking golf cart club. We formed ourselves to become the patriotic golf cart club around town. And so we were excited. The first thing we were able to do was participate in the 250 parade for Independence Day this past year. And so the next thing we're going to take on, because most of you are just as old or younger than me, but you remember the 25th anniversary of 9-11. Hard to accept that it was 25 years ago, definitely a day in our history. And so we decided that one of the things we'd like to do to promote that and to honor the people who were lost and those who are still serving us in the fire and the police department here, the sheriff's department, the first responders, that we would like to have a program. So we went about doing that. It will be on September 11th at 8 a.m. at Lorenz Park. The hardest thing for us is going to be to get the word out to you all because we have a very small following on the River City Patriots Golf Cart Parade Facebook page. But because we're honoring our local firefighters and our police officers and our sheriff's department, we would like to get the word out. I've spoken to the newspaper to try to get that. But if you all are able to be there, that would be great. The program will begin at 8 a.m. The mayor will be speaking to kick it off. We're excited because I have been able to make contact with somebody who is a colonel in the United States Air Force who was at the Pentagon the day that it was attacked. He was working in the Department of War under Donald Rumsfeld, and so he has asked us if he can speak his heart and tell us what his thoughts were on that fateful day. So we're excited to be able to listen to him We think that's a big draw. We've invited a lot of other people in other parts of the community. We've gotten it out to Switzerland County, Trumbull County, and Jennings County so far, hoping that we can get an appropriate amount of people there to have such a speaker like that. And also, I've been working with the Fire and the Police Department, and we'll have quite a showing from both of those departments. So just wanted to get that out to you all, because we don't have a lot of way of communicating, but If you all can be there, we'd like that. So that's our new thing.

Did you say the location?

At Lorenz Park. We're having it at Lorenz because it's Unbroken Circle, so we could not do it down at Fireman's Park, which is what the firefighters had asked me to do, but we're not able to do that because of Unbroken. So we're doing it at Lorenz, which is good because we don't have to have a street closure. Really, it's kind of not a lot going on over there. So I think it's a good location. So thank you.

Thank you. Looking forward to it. An important event. Thanks for organizing it. I will withhold my mayor's comments so that we can move to adjournment. Our next council meeting is September 8, 2026. I have a motion to adjourn.

Move to adjourn.

Seconded. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. And we'll adjourn and then come back after we set up for our budget workshop. Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for being here.