Common Council - Regular Meeting

We're going to go ahead and get the meeting started tonight. First thing we'll do is we'll have the prayer. Mrs. Margaret Walker is going to do our prayer for us tonight. And then after that, Councilman Eric Marshall will lead us in the pledge. So everybody please stand.

Our Father, We come in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We come with grateful hearts. We are thankful for the blessings that you have bestowed upon us. And Father God, we come standing on your word that tell us to pray for those that are in authority that we might have peace. Almighty God, you are sovereign, you are sustainer, and you're in control. And we ask that you would bless each member of the council. Provide them, Father God, with a discerning spirit, the wisdom and the knowledge to fulfill the job, the situation, circumstances, whatever comes on the agenda that will make peace and comfort for us that live here in Marion, Indiana. God, we ask in the name of Jesus that you would bless the mayor of this town, cover him, Father, we pray that you would cover the police department, the sheriff department, discerning wisdom and knowledge in the area that they're working in. Father God, first responders, we pray, the judges, lawyers, we pray for our covering so that there is peace and harmony. And God, we pray for unity in this meeting every time they meet. everything that's on the agenda. Let your kingdom come and your will be done. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Thank you, Mrs. Walker, and thank you, Councilman Marshall. Okay, roll call, please.

Kane.

Here.

Reyes.

Here.

Fordyce. Here. Brunner.

Here.

Klein.

Here.

Marshall. Here. Whitten.

Here.

Devine. Here. Calgill.

Here. Okay, next thing on the agenda is our recognition spotlight. This... meeting here. We are spotlighting our code enforcement officers. These guys' job is not an easy job. I appreciate everything that they do. And their supervisor, Justin Dickerson, is here. And so, Justin, if you and your guys would like to come on up. No, come on up here.

All right.

All right, my name is Justin Dickerson. I'm building Commissioner. I Am missing one code enforcement officer Matt Moore Then I'll let you guys introduce yourselves Chief code enforcement officer Shannon files Like I said, we are missing one Matt Moore Then I got a little something to read I It is my pleasure to be here to tell you about the amazing officers here in code enforcement. I've been overseeing them for a few months now, and that has given me the opportunity to see how hard they work to take care of the city. In truth, code enforcement is not an easy job. It's extremely difficult. These officers have to enforce a lot of rules that not everyone likes, and they deal with tons of pushback from the community. There are arguments between neighbors, trash all over yards, houses that people are breaking into. They get pulled in many directions and asked to do a lot, and they don't always get a thank you. Code enforcement has really stepped up recently in not only their own jobs, but also in supporting the building and street departments under the Department of Public Works. They have been vigilant in helping the building department address unsafe structures and permit compliance. They help facilitate the citywide cleanups each month. Code enforcement has secured many open and unsafe structures and carried out multiple cleanups in the last few months. Now at the beginning of the mowing season, they're facing hundreds of parcels worth of work to do with the summer temperatures still incoming. and they're prepared to do it. Although this job is difficult and a huge test of patience, our officers have shown up every day to do the work. They choose to come into the office to step onto those streets and endure a lot of flak just to ensure that our city stays clean and presentable. So let's make sure, especially these next summer months, that we appreciate the work they're putting into the city and understand that these officers are doing their best to support this community. Thank you.

Yeah, they are. They're shy. We got here on behalf of the council, we got certificates for you guys. You know, like you just said, Justin, this is a rough job. I mean, these guys work out in this heat. I'm surprised you don't get thank yous when you hand out tickets. But anyway... Oh, yeah, that's probably true. But we all appreciate what you guys do, and the city is cleaning up good. You guys are doing a fantastic job, and I very much appreciate what you guys are doing. It was like a free steak.

Yeah, it's a free steak, yeah.

Justin will pay for them, so yeah. Thank you guys so much. Very nice of you. Okay, next thing on the agenda is we have our consent agenda. Any discussion or if nothing, I will entertain a motion.

Mr. President, I move that we pass a consent agenda.

Okay, do I have a second? Second.

Okay, we have a motion by Councilman Cain, a second by Councilman Marshall. Roll call.

Kane?

Aye.

Reyes?

Aye.

Fordyce? Aye. Brunner?

Aye.

Klein?

Yes.

Marshall?

Aye.

Whitten?

Yes.

Devine? Yes. Calgill?

Aye. Okay, I'll take any committee reports at this time.

Yes, please. Thank you. Mr. President We had a good meeting of the compliance committee a little bit earlier today And thanks to the committee members and council members who showed up for the meeting The big takeaways from the meeting the first first one I'm going to ask Counselor our attorney Mr. Harker to explain what we've asked him to do and If you would, please. Sure.

I've been asked to put in writing a description of what the council's role in reviewing the CF1 forms, what the standard is in judging their compliance, also how it affects what the termination process looks like if there is one, what the notification process looks like, and the impact on the tax revenue if anything, if one of the forms would be rejected. So also looking into when the start date for the abatement is. We've got a dispute. Some of the forms predate that the start date of the project is more than a couple of years in advance of the actual completion date. So we have to determine when does the abatement actually start. So I'll be putting all of that in writing to everyone.

Thank you, appreciate that. Not just you explaining it, but you doing it as well. And we had, it was our annual look at the compliance forms for businesses and homeowners for personal property tax, homeowner property tax, and personal property tax abatement. Got a lot of forms. Some came in late. Some came in incomplete. Some came in both late and incomplete. and what Councilor Harker is working on will address those issues. In recent years we've asked the Grant County Economic Growth Council to look at these reports and give us advice on approval, disapproval or problems to fix and we're gonna ask if they will do that again this year. Another set of eyes of experienced Eyes and looking at these things to look at it. They're not making the final decision We make the final decision, but once we hear back from them, we'll call another committee meeting to give an approval don't approve on the To the full council on the abatement forms any of the council people or anybody else who was here have anything to add to that? Hearing none. Thank you

Thank you, Councilman Klein. Appreciate it. Any other committee reports at this time?

Go ahead, Jim. We had a park board meeting earlier this week and just wanted to let people know that tomorrow at 2 o'clock, the dog park will officially open up. kind of a slice, three iron away from our building here. And that will be at 2 o'clock tomorrow, so we're looking forward to that. Also, we are moving forward with the skate park and hope to have that possibly ready to go in the fall. So I'll give you more information on that. The dog park, for especially people who live in apartments, it's kind of a rough go to try to get out and walk your dog. So that's what the dog park's all about. So it'll be opening up at 2 o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Thank you.

Good deal. And Mr. Brunt, the renditions at our desks are of the skate park, I presume?

Yes, that is the skate park. We got some bids on that, and we hope possibly to have that ready to go before winter gets here.

Thank you, Jim. I have to walk my dog, Matt, there tomorrow. Anybody else? Nope. Okay. All right. Thank you, guys, for that. I appreciate it. We're going to go ahead and move on to unfinished business. Additional appropriation 9-2026.

Appropriation for opioid settlement unrestricted second reading public hearing and additional appropriation appropriating $150,000 for opioid settlement unrestricted. Speaking city administration.

Mr. President, Mr. President, members of the council, thank you for hearing us again today. We've made our pitch in the first meeting. I won't put you through all that again except to tell you that I appreciate you listening to what I think is probably some of the most meaningful legislation that you're going to consider in your careers. I know it's very important in my 40 years. So we've got some special guests here. Of course, Dr. Montero is here to talk about the nuts and bolts, I think. I see the fire chief in the back of the room, and Tim Harris is here with a couple of very special guests. I hope you'll let him come forward with those people. They deserve to be heard. So I'll yield to any questions you may have, and of course the citizens as well, and I'll hand the mic over to Dr. Montero.

Good evening. Thank you for hearing me again. We are again requesting currently $150,000 to be appropriated from the Opioid Settlement Fund restricted to cover wellness activities for our first responder personnel. Um, this, um, these funds will fulfill a current RFP or request for proposals that is out. It is called the public safety mental health initiative. Um, at this time we've not received any proposals to fulfill that, but my understanding is that there is interest for at least three different agencies for that. Um, so at the top, at that time we will receive, we'll review, um, We will communicate with the heads of our departments and our mayor to obviously make a decision that's in the best interest of getting all of our first responders the services that they request and that they need. Okay? That's it. Any questions for me? Go ahead.

Yeah. Jade, thank you. I appreciate you being here and explaining that. I just want to clarify one thing because on the agenda it says from the unrestricted.

Yes.

You're saying it's for the restricted fund.

No, unrestricted. Okay, he just said restricted. Oh, sorry. No, sorry, it is unrestricted.

It's coming from the unrestricted.

It is coming from unrestricted. It cannot come from the restricted fund as it's not directly related to prevention, treatment, or recovery of opioid epidemic.

Okay, I just wanted to clarify.

Thank you.

Yes.

Anybody else? Did you want the guest to speak? Before I think that they ought to speak before we go to the public.

Regarding the point of order, I'll leave it to the council's pleasure. I'd like for them to have the time they need. I think maybe the other section may have some restrictions on that. I think it'd be worth your time.

Yeah, I agree. Let's go ahead and have Tim. You want to.

Thank you, Mr. President, members of the council. I addressed quite a bit the last time. I know a couple of you weren't here, so I won't take a lot of time. But I did, I've got a couple of guests here tonight. One, Susan Shearer-Vincent, who is the owner of Frontline Counseling, who will be part of our proposal, the RFP. Her counseling group is the one that we work with in Hamilton County. And she'll tell you a little about that, but she's the one that really put the program together in Hamilton County and then invited us to be a part. And what we found is that what we do along with what the therapies they do really Improves the progress and sometimes even speeds up the healing so I'm excited that she's here and appreciative and then a couple of you had asked I know councilman Marshall had a great question which was Success stories while we have one Here one of our officers from Noblesville who was gracious and said he would come Dennis coffee So if it's okay unless you have questions for me. I'm happy just to shut up and introduce the officer and then Susan. I will say, and he asked me to mention this, your deputy chief, Mark Stephanotis, is here, and he asked me to mention that he is one that we're working with currently, so if you have any questions, you're welcome to ask him. He's having some coughing issues, so it doesn't feel like getting up and speaking, but he's happy to speak with you if you would like, and he asked me to do that. Normally, we would not do that in a

in a public hearing so questions all right dennis if you'd like to come up and appreciate it thanks good evening my name is dennis coffee i'm with the nozel police department i've been there 19 years i had the opportunity a couple years ago to get introduced to tim through susan and frontline who I was a patient with and still am currently. And I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Tim and go over what he does exactly and to get a good understanding of that. And the benefit that I had over, it was probably a year, was seeing him and going through the brain training and stuff that he does and still continuing to see Susan at Frontline. The experience for me was absolutely head over heels. I know my wife thanked me and thanked Tim and Susan. My daughter thanked them both as well, is that there's a lot of things behind the scenes that people don't get to see from first responders that we deal with on a daily basis that will keep locked up and deal with it in certain ways that aren't healthy. They gave me the opportunity to work through those and to figure out what would be best for me and the training and the program that they had that they came up with along with Susan was, again, very, very beneficial and I'm very thankful to both of them for the opportunity for that. So that's all I have. Any questions I can answer for you guys? All right. Thank you.

Thank you so much for coming.

Absolutely. You're welcome. Thank you.

Hello, Brian. Nice to see you. Brian came down to an open house we did, gosh, what, a year ago now? Probably was. I'm Susan, and I own Frontline Counseling in Noblesville. I've been doing counseling for about 45 years and have been working with first responders for over 20 years. We solely work with first responders in our practice, fire, law enforcement, dispatch, EMS, veterans. And gosh, it's really a blessing to serve this population. And when I started serving this population 20 years ago, really there weren't many people doing it and departments weren't, they really were kind of scared and really didn't understand it back in the day. Now it's so different. And officers, firefighters, they welcome it. About two months ago, and I'll tell you this story, we were at a SWAT conference in Indianapolis and an officer from your department was at that conference. Long story short, was talking to one of my counselors, invited us, Chief Gilbert invited us up, and we did what you call a critical incident debriefing. And what a critical incident debriefing is, when there's been a really bad incident, we form a team. It's a mental health counselor, peers, from your peer support, and there's a protocol you do uh... that if you do that right after a critical incident it statistically helps people process through and not have the trauma build up and build up and build up now sometimes you need more but that's a really good start and when we came we had an officer from Hamilton County Sheriff's Department and an officer from Noblesville that came with us Emily and I and your officers were so welcoming So welcoming. And I remember the day when I would walk into a room and everyone would kind of be afraid of you and they'd act like you weren't there. Not to be rude, they just didn't know what to do. So anyway, that was a couple of months ago. So what we do is We like to what we call embed ourselves in the department a little bit meaning that we will ride along in the cars You know, we'll go to the fire station. We'll go to dispatch whatever the different departments are we will go to different trainings We will do trainings and then of course officers come to our office and to talk about their trauma. And we do different modalities. We do EMDR, which is called eye movement desensitization reprocessing. It's basically a way to work with trauma. The brain has a lot of neuroplasticity. So trauma gets stored in the brain in a maladaptive way. So when that happens, there are ways, different modalities that we work to create kind of a new tunnel, a new network where it goes to an adaptable place in the brain. And what we've learned by working with Tim, which has been such a blessing, is that when we do the brain training along with the therapy, the combination just works together so well. And so often, it will increase the efficacy of the EMDR or the brain spotting. Those are other terms. And gosh, I don't have an hour, so I know I can't go into all of them, what they mean. And ART, Acceleration Resolution Therapy. So we found that working together has just been really, really helpful. And so in Noblesville, with the Sheriff's Department and Noblesville Police Department, we were able to actually get some of that in the budget and have officers go see Tim. And we've been working together for really about two and a half years now. Tim's been driving down. So think about it. 180 critical incidents is the average number of what a first responder will see a year. 180. That is huge. That is huge. And so, and I'm so glad that, you know, Captain Coffee came tonight because I heard this quote and it was a couple of years ago and it's a quote, I don't think it's an original. But it said, if I recover loudly, I keep others from dying silently. And that is what I have found with my first responders, that they're speaking out. You know, they're not, I think, gosh, Brian, when you came, could you believe all the first responders in one room?

I was shocked that day. I really was.

Right. You know, they're that open. 20 years ago, they would not have been. You know, they'd come in the back door.

Yep.

You know, but it's different now. So anyway, thank you for letting us come. And, gosh, thank Chief Gilbert for us coming and doing the debriefing a couple of months ago and listening and caring enough about your first responders. You know, thank you.

Thank you so much. Good to see you again. Yeah, go ahead, Tim. You want to say something? Yeah, I am.

I was just going to say how much I appreciate them coming. The teamwork that we have with people that are culturally competent to get first responders, and you guys know first responders are a rare breed, and we love you guys. And we love working with you. And Susan's been doing it for more than 20 years. It's really remarkable, the trust that they have. So anyway, any of them would be happy to answer questions. I'm happy to answer questions. But other than that, we just appreciate the opportunity. Thanks.

I just want to just say a little something. Like you just said, the average person will deal with maybe two to three critical issues incidents in their lifetime at 180 a year. If you do a 20 year career, we deal with 3,600. I mean, think about that. And you know, the average person, they haven't zipped up a body bag. They haven't done CPR on somebody that doesn't make it. And you know, you don't, uh, You don't forget the screams of the parents when a child doesn't make it. It's rough. And we've always been taught just to push it down. And that's what a lot of us do. But 3,600 incidents, there's only so much room to push down. So I'm very thankful, Tim, for you and for everyone. Ms. Coffey, thank you for coming tonight and sharing as well. We've got to take care of our first responders, guys. I mean, you know, when we need help, they're the ones we're calling. So, by God, we need to take care of them. Okay. Anybody else? Only police officers can speak tonight. No, go ahead, Kurt.

Good evening, Council. Apologies, I missed the first meeting, but I was on a much-needed vacation. As President Calgo said, I started my career in 1999. You didn't utter the words mental health. That was a wordy dirt. You were weak. You were not worthy of the profession and all the nasty things they can say that I can't say right now. Over the years, we've been taught to Just put things in a box and forget it. Don't worry about it, just put it in that box. So we all have that box. Eventually that box gets full and you keep trying to put stuff in it. And it's just like any other box, it's not indestructible. That box bursts and then that's when the crazy things happen for us. So I'm in full support of having our mental health evaluated, helped us mentally, We need it. Most of us won't ask for it because, again, we've been taught it's a sign of weakness. But I just wanted to be here, and again, I apologize I went at the first one, but I wanted to support Chief Gilbert and everything that we're doing, trying to help the mental health for our first responders.

Thank you. Thank you, Chief. This is our second reading public hearing, so at this time I will open it up to anybody in the public that wants to speak for or against this. State your name, your address, and you'll have three minutes. Go ahead.

Linda Wilk, 1016 West Fifth Street, but I'm also here as a Hands of Hope director. I've been doing this work for 32 years. And Dave knows very well when I started, and it still is a very macho field and profession, so I am so pleased and I feel so excited that Dave and all of you are supporting this. Because from a Hands of Hope perspective, when you're talking about domestic violence, and we know how machoism plays into domestic violence, If we're going to change culture, norms, if we're going to let men have emotions, we have to let them address their mental health. This is so critically important. I'm not just talking about law enforcement. I'm talking about anyone, you know, addressing their mental health. But to let law enforcement and firefighters be the... the poster boys, the poster men to say to other men, it's okay to address your mental health. And yes, law enforcement firefighters see far more than anybody else does, but they're also the ones that are out there and they can be that bold, strong role model for everyone else in the community to again say, I'm going to stand up and I'm going to say I have challenges. I want to address them. I want to be the best man I can be for my spouse, for my children, and be that public support that we need to stop domestic violence. So thank you from the bottom of my heart so much.

Thank you very much, Linda. Anybody else? Nope. Here we go.

Okay, sorry. Never done this before. Chris Stephanotis from Converse, Indiana. I am the wife of Mark. I also have two sons in law enforcement, one on the police department, one on the sheriff's department. One of the things that I started volunteering with Tim probably almost a year ago, just kind of out of curiosity to see what it was all about. Developed a passion for it. And one of the things I saw as a mother and as a wife, I've been doing this for 30 years now as a wife, and I want my sons, thinking of the younger police officers, I want my sons in fire. I want them to start their lives. I want them to be the best husbands they can be. I want them to be the best fathers they can be. And I think this helps with that. And I also want my husband, who is maybe close to retiring one day, to be able to retire as complete as he can because of just 30 years in the business. That's kind of what comes with it. So as a wife and a mother, there is a lot of benefit to what they do to just, let these men and women be the best people they can be as they're young and as they get ready to go be retired and old and, you know, just enjoy life the best they can. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else? Go ahead, Mr. Moon.

East Fraser Street. People ask me, why do I support the police? My answer is it's the only civilian occupation that has a target on the back. People, believe it or not, hate police. I think one of the best examples we find is the incident here, if we could so go, where they subdued an individual. They had to fight him to get the handcuffs on. And everybody was saying the cops were mean. They were horrible. They were beating that guy. Well, if he would have complied, it would have been all right. The day-by-day life of a police officer has stress. There are crises experienced as crew. But every day they put that badge on, they're going to look at people, people are going to look at them, and some are going to have hate. They have to live with that. Just sitting on the corner with a sign supporting police, I get all kinds of comments. I've been threatened my life two times by the same individuals. Now, think what our police officers go through. The constant day by day by day hate and harassment and comments that they receive. Now, I will say there is a lot of support for police. I have a lot of horn talking. I have a lot of hands waved, thumbs up, support, much support. but that doesn't take away the stress, the pressure that our police live every single day. And then the wife, the companion, the children. He's carrying the weight of the hatred that people have toward his children. He's carrying the weight of the attitude that people have toward his children because he's a police officer. We can't categorize too much or find out how much, can't think of a word I can't think of, the pressure that they go through every single day, mentally, emotionally. What's going to happen next? Who's going to be the next one that has a bullet in their back or the chest? We've had it happen. It'll happen again. And these men and women live that every single day.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Moon. Anybody else? seen nobody else come up i'll go ahead and close this part of the public hearing uh council anybody else have any comments or questions or anything if not i will go ahead why i'm buzzing tonight um i have a question i i'd like to start by saying 100 supportive eric you used yeah

100% supportive of this initiative. I'm just curious as to the mechanics of how it is going to be administered, who will be in charge of the 150,000, how we arrived at 150,000, and will there be some kind of report at the end of it? This is not gonna be the end. I imagine $150,000 is not gonna go but such a period of time. So I would like, I wonder if you could speak to some of those types of issues.

Yeah, thank you, Councilman Marshall. And that was our reason for the RFP, was because it provides some guidelines around the scope of what we're looking for. It spells out the price for us. It lets us know what sustainability looks like. One of the things that the chief and I talked about was if we are going, the city is going to make available this type of programming, I would love for our first responders not to have to pay anything out of pocket. So does that mean that I need to seek more grants? Will we be coming back for additional appropriation? That is what the RFP will allow us to really find out, right? I think the other piece is what will record keeping look like? What does liability look like? It's not every day that a city makes this type of programming available. So yes, as therapists, we have liability insurance insurance as businesses we have liability insurance but what about the city do we need more so that is why we we decided to go the rfp route to get all of those questions answered before we would look at funding i am the coordinator for the opioid settlement fund so i will be asking for those funds to be released from the controller's office Whatever format we find that is most deemable, whether that's like monthly billing, whether we need to award on a quarterly basis, I will do that until we decide a different structure is necessary.

Yeah. So the answer to the question is you will be administering the funds? Yes. Okay. And how many employees are we hoping to cover with this? We have how many police officers and how many firemen? And are there any other first responders that aren't firemen or policemen?

Yeah. My understanding is... My understanding is that we have about 120 firemen and police. Yes, around 120 firemen and police. And then that does not include dispatch and EMS that also serve within our city. So that's one portion of it. We also don't know. How does insurance factor into this? Can we bill insurance? How would we then cover a deductible or a co-pay? So there's just a lot of questions that need to be answered to make sure that this is sustainable for our first responders and for the city, right? This isn't something that we want to administer for a 12-month period. We want to be having success stories two, three, five, 10 years down the road. So... Yeah, we still have some figuring out to do. The initial numbers that I received would only serve about 40 officers, and that's only one part of the service that I received. With the numbers, the cost proposal I received, it was about $8,900 for 40 sessions of brain training and 40 therapy sessions, and that is per person. So that's only serving 17 individuals. So we've got some work to do to figure out the numbers, hence why we came with an initial ask, and I will be doing a lot of planning. Yes.

Maybe I'm getting ahead then, but if we have ballpark 120 people, the money so far, you said 17. How's that prioritized then on who gets it?

Well, I think the purpose would be, I don't know that we would consider priority. That's something that we would still consider with both of our chiefs. Yeah, that's an opening.

I didn't know how other to phrase it. Yeah, no. You've got 120 people. How many thousand hundreds incidents a year?

Right.

And finite number of dollars. Yeah.

Yeah. Just curious. Well, and I think that's why the proposals are so necessary, right? Because, yeah, our cost proposal that we were presented were for $120 per therapy session, but what if our insurance is going to cover It's so important for us to have everything laid out for us to really plan to have true numbers. And then I know what else do I need to appropriate? There are still funds in the unrestricted fund. Also, what grants do I need to seek out to make sure that all expenses are covered for every first responder that requests these services?

Yes. What's the anticipated start date of this program?

So our RFP has an anticipated start date of September. If we are able to choose a provider and have an executed funding agreement contract earlier, obviously we would love to see that happen. But I do have an anticipated of September.

And then, so the RFP has been open for how, first question, the RFP has been open for how long? And we haven't had anyone interested up to this point. Have you gotten feedback of why that may be?

The RFP has been open since May 15th. I've received three emails indicating that there will be a submission of a proposal from three different organizations, including Mr. Harris's. It closes on June 15th. So there's still some time for people to, to,

figure some things out yes and i will say that a lot of times unfortunately it's the nature of the beast that it takes one or two or three guys to have the courage to step up and once that happens you might be surprised how many follow after that yeah anybody else any other questions Thank you, Dr. Mentara. I appreciate you coming here. Absolutely. I'll entertain a motion at this time then.

Mr. President, I move that we suspend the rules on additional appropriation number nine, 2026. Second.

Okay, we have a motion by Councilman Kane to suspend the rules. We have a second by Councilman Klein. Was that you, Mike? Okay. Councilman Coleman-Whitten? You pick. You pick. Councilman Klein. And roll call, please.

Kane?

Aye.

Reyes?

Aye.

Fordyce? Aye. Brunner?

Aye.

Klein?

Yes.

Marshall?

Aye.

Whitten?

Yes.

Devine? Yes. Calgill?

Aye. At this time, I will take a motion to pass.

Mr. President, I move that we pass additional appropriation number nine, 2026.

Okay, now neither one of you want to say anything. Second. Second. There you go. You waited too long. All right, got a motion by Councilman Cain, second by Councilman Fordyce. Roll call.

Kane?

Aye.

Reyes?

Aye.

Fordyce? Aye. Brunner?

Aye.

Klein?

Yes.

Marshall?

Aye.

Witten?

Yes.

Devine? Yes. Calgill?

Aye. Thank you, guys. This is important. I appreciate this.

Go ahead, Chief. I echo that. Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.

Thank you, Chief. Appreciate it. Okay, we'll go into new business now. Resolution 8-2026.

A request to approve an economic development agreement. A resolution of the Common Council for Marion, Indiana, approving an economic development agreement. Speaking, Joe Murphy, Economic Development Director.

Thank you. I'll give you one moment here. You're fine, Bob. You're fine. I'm going to change the source here.

Danny, where are you at? We had this all set up. You just had to turn it on. Is Danny in the building? No, he left. Danny left. Yeah. Here we go.

All right. There we go.

We got it now. There we go. Good evening, members of the council. Joe Murphy, Economic Development Director for the City of Marion speaking. I do have the pleasure of introducing to you our plant manager for the Prismian Marion plant, Justin. He is going to give a brief overview of Prismian as a company, their history in Marion, and then dive a little bit into the specifics of what this investment is going to yield for the community as well as the company. And then we'll get into the particulars of the EDA and the abatement process. But first I want to introduce Justin and give him a moment to speak to you all. Thank you.

Good evening. I am Justin Pangmer, the plant director of the Prismian plant here in Marion. I'm here to give kind of an overview of the company, our footprint and the plant. So Prismian has a very large footprint, not only in North America but globally. In North America, we have 25 manufacturing plants with seven distribution centers. Our headquarters is located in North America for Highland Heights, Kentucky. Our overall headquarters is Milan, Italy. Globally, Prismian has over 107 manufacturing plants and distribution centers worldwide. So this is an overview of the Marion facility. You can see the largest part of the facility is all manufacturing at the moment. The building to the north there is warehousing for finished goods product. So the Marion plant was built back in 1910 and it has been making wiring cables since 1911. The facility is 850,000 square feet currently. Currently we have 174 employees, white collar and blue collar, with two labor contracts on the plant. Our products, so we are a true specialty plant. By that I mean we do operate in five different value streams for the company and four different product channels, everything from utility to diesel locomotive to building wire. So we have a project that we are proposing. This project is to increase the capacity in our current product line that we run today. This project would bring facility upgrades, upgrade to our current equipment, would also add five new pieces of equipment, along with bringing in 29 new jobs. We are requesting for a tax abatement on our personal property for this project to move forward. I'll turn it over to Joe to go into the details of that. But if there are any questions, I will be around to answer anything that you guys may have. Thank you. Thank you, Justin.

So as you heard there, quite a long, extensive history under several different names with this company here in Marion. And this new investment for me is very, very exciting. Ultimately, getting down to the brass tacks of the abatement, when my office receives an inquiry like this from a company that's already located here, we typically evaluate three consecutive questions. Number one is, is this a company and a project that we want to be associated with as a community? Does it align with our strategic vision for growth in the community? And in this case, I think that is a resolute yes. You know, under Mayor Morrell and this administration, we've been experiencing somewhat of an industrial growth period, which is really exciting. Obviously, this community was built on industry. And so this is in line with additions to the GM plan, additions to the Cafe Valley plan, Hartson-Kennedy plan, And now Prismian, we've seen four major manufacturers choose Marion in the last several years and invest in not only new equipment, but new jobs in our community. So I think on question one, it's a resolute yes. Question two then becomes, does this project need abatement to move forward? I've got Andy Mouser here with Baker Tilly that can bring you up some numbers if you're interested in hearing the particulars. What I would share with you is on the personal property side for this project, you've got an existing assessed value of right around $9 million for the existing equipment in the building. With this new investment, we would raise that assessed value by almost double. So overnight, the company's tax bill on the personal property side would double. meaning that this would not be a tenable position for the community or for the company to make that investment, right? There's no feasible way for the company to make ends meet, continue to operate, employ the people they do if overnight their bill is doubled from $300,000 to over $600,000 annually in the community. So we recognize that there is a need to abate this project. Then third question is how do we work with the company to best provide that abatement? So that's been the longest process with this project is just identifying Correct mixture of abatement to be sure that the city is being treated fairly but also the company feels that they're being treated fairly I will point out as it's been I think reference on one of these slides is this was a competitive project So as you just heard prismian has an extremely large footprint not only in the United States, but globally So we want to be sure that we're competitive and that we can bring those jobs and that new investment here to Marion as opposed To seeing them land somewhere else across the country. I think what's what I want to point out to begin with here is that as If those jobs and that investment does not land here, we don't experience any new tax growth. Even with this abatement proposal, we do still experience some meaningful tax growth, not only to the personal property side, but we're also going to be recipients of roughly $2 million in new salaries for this community, as well as 29 new jobs. So there's meaningful impact to the community in spite of the fact that we are proposing abatement. Ultimately, we looked at an array of abatements on this project and landed on a 10-year, 75% flat abatement. Two reasons for that. Number one, at the front end, typically with a project like this, you may consider a descending abatement where it starts at 100% and phases out over 10 years down to 0%. What we experienced with this is kind of a strange phenomenon that occurs in Indiana when you have a really old plant with a lot of older equipment, and then you interject a large amount of new equipment If you abate 100% of that new equipment, you experience something where you actually start to feather into the existing equipment. And what we've seen, and Baker Tilly's provided us the numbers on, is that the actual tax revenue to the community in that case at 100%, would decrease from where its current levels are. So you'd see almost $120,000 decrease in the revenue. So that wasn't a tenable position for us to take. So that's the reason we don't start at 100 in this case. We're starting at 75 so that they do receive some property tax relief up front, but it still represents an increase in revenue to the city from year one all the way through year 10. And then what we've done on the back end is we've maintained that flat rate because And we've you've heard this before with some of our other tax abatement proposals Marion's got a fairly high overall tax rate and so circuit breaker tends to become a factor in these projects And so we maintain that higher rate through the remainder of the project to avoid those circuit breakers Cutting off any Bennett to benefit to the commute art to the company in the later years now even with this project at a relatively high rate of After year seven the impact of the abatement is essentially zero because of that circuit breaker tax already providing You know somewhat of a quasi abatement for the company already So that's where we landed on the 10-year 75% I'll be happy to entertain more questions on that Just a quick review again of the investment. We're talking about 33 or 33 million dollars total 28 million on the personal property side. That's what we're contemplating an abatement on and The $5 million in real property, they're not requesting any abatement on. A large portion of that is going to go towards replacing large sections of the roof, as well as upgrades to the facilities that primarily serve their employees, primarily their blue-collar employees. So that's going to be upgrades to their locker rooms and their break rooms and some other amenity areas inside the building. And again, that will represent some meaningful growth to the actual assessed value on the real property side. that we will capture through our TIF that they're not requesting any abatement on. And then on the job side, again, we've got 29 new jobs, three salaried, 26 production with a combined hourly rate over $30 per hour. I'll point out that that represents 125, actually above 125% of the county average wage for the applicable position. So we're talking about doing above and beyond what the average wage for a type of position in this county would look like. So that's great. That's music to our ears. Again, another reason to be very supportive of this project. Shifting gears really quick to the actual EDA, which is the first item on the docket for today. Essentially, this is a commitment on behalf of the city to provide the abatement and then rules and requirements that the company is going to have to meet both in the short term and the long term over the life of the abatement. to be sure that they can continue to receive that abatement. We just talked earlier about the CF1 process. That's what's outlined here in pretty clear detail. So again, those investment figures, those employment figures are referenced in here. The 10-year 75% abatement is referenced in here. And then what we have as well is in protection of the city, we also have in Article 3, company's obligations. Section B, you've got an overall employment level that needs to be met as well. One of the things that we want to make sure we avoid with projects like this is a situation where they add 29 new employees on paper. while also reducing their existing labor staff by 29, resulting in a net gain of zero jobs. So we require that they at all times maintain an employment level of 190. According to their SB1 that they submitted, they've currently got an estimated employment of 173. So that will represent, again, the goal is we would always see that add of 29 new jobs, but we do recognize that economic conditions don't always make it possible over the 11-year lifespan of this abatement or 10-year lifespan of this abatement to be able to Sustained that level of commitment if you do experience some level economic downturn we do recognize there's need for that to be Flexible, but we do maintain that 190 Employee level in there and then you've got an article for all of your abatement termination and compliance information in there So again, there is going to be the requirement on the front end that they submit the SB1, they've complied with that. And then there will be the annual reporting requirement of the CF1 as well whereby if this body finds that there's anything that they're not complying with, they can inform the company that they're out of compliance, triggers a hearing in front of this body whereby you guys have the authority to terminate the agreement. You also have the ability to seek damages for the prior year if they were unable to perform so you can, you know, cancel the abatement moving forward. you can also look at collecting damages, and the formula for how you collect those damages is outlined in here as well. So in closing, I would just offer this, that I think, again, this is a project that aligns really strongly with this mayor's strategic vision, with this community's strategic vision. It's another investment in our industrial economy. This was a competitive project. We're really excited to see that Prismian recognizes Marion as a great place for an industrial company to be, and they want to make that investment in here. And so in consideration of that, as well as the tax implications that they're facing, if this project were not to be abated, we recommend approval of the EDA and the 10-year 75% abatement. So happy to take any questions you guys have at this time. We also have Justin available if there's questions about the specific investment in the plan.

I don't remember the shapes of all the districts, but I didn't hear you mention TIF, so there's no TIF involved in this, right?

So the project site is within a TIF. However, TIFs capture real property tax, and there's no – this is a personal property tax amendment, so there will be no negative implication on TIF. And, in fact, as I mentioned, the $5 million in real property that's being invested, you know, whatever meaningful AV is – growth experience in there the the tiff will capture and that will be again to the benefit of the city so we'll be receiving some you know some modest but new revenues on that tiff we'll still be receiving some some meaningful new personal property tax revenue as a result of this project even in spite of the abatement and then as i mentioned almost two million dollars in new salaries and 29 new jobs for our community yep anybody else have any other questions

Jess and I appreciate you and Alicia both being here tonight. Appreciate the fact that you guys chose. And I know we was in competitive, what was it, Kentucky, I think. I can't remember now. And I see you, unfortunately, got the job done without me going to Italy, but that's okay. There's still time. Yeah, that's right. Very much appreciate you choosing Marion. We're on the rise again. And so it's a great thing. I appreciate it. If you don't have any other questions or anything, I'll entertain a motion.

Mr. President, I move that we pass resolution number eight, 2026. Second. Andy got it.

All right, we got a motion by Councilman Cain and a second by Councilman Whitten. Roll call, please.

Kane?

Aye.

Reyes?

Aye.

Fordyce? Aye. Brunner? Aye. Klein?

Yes.

Marshall?

Aye.

Whitten?

Yes.

Devine? Yes. Calgill?

Aye. All right, that passes. Go on to Resolution 9-2026.

A request to approve a declaratory resolution designating certain property as an economic revitalization area and authorizing abatement. First reading, speaking Joe Murphy, Economic Development Director.

So this is the second part of this process. As you'll recall likely from our previous abatement processes, in order to actually approve abatement, you have to first establish this economic revitalization area. You can do this in any area of your community. In this case, we would just be identifying that individual parcel that encompasses the actual building itself. And all this does is essentially recognize at the state level that this is an area that is in need of revitalization. It's lacking investment, et cetera, et cetera. And it allows us the authority to then approve an abatement on the project. This is the first of two resolutions that will actually assist us in establishing that revitalization area. This is the declaratory resolution. Assuming approval this evening will then send notice overnight to the papers and have this noticed and Senate I will also send notice to all the Overlapping taxing districts that this is set to occur and then we'll be back before you in two weeks with the confirmatory resolution Which does have a public hearing component as well to be sure that we can hear from any members of the public They want to speak in supporter against the project and then once that is complete and that economic revitalization area is established the abatement is approved and we can move forward with actually securing that investment and abating the taxes. So entertain any questions about that part of the process at this point in time.

Seeing none, I will entertain a motion.

Mr. President, I move that we pass resolution number 9-2026 to a second reading and public hearing.

Second. Okay, we have a motion by Councilman Kane, second by Councilman Brunner. Roll call.

Kane?

Aye.

Reyes?

Aye.

Fordyce? Aye. Brunner?

Aye.

Klein?

Yes.

Marshall?

Aye.

Whitten?

Yes.

Devine? Yes. Calgill?

Aye. Thank you, Joe.

Thank you all very much. Thank you again, Justin. Appreciate you very much.

Okay, we'll go on to additional appropriation 10-20-26.

An additional appropriation appropriating $360,687.81 for a park bond. Speaking City Administration.

Good evening. Good evening. So this is, we're asking for additional appropriation for this park bond payment. Park Bond, you guys had approved it in December of 2025. And so we wanted to make the payment. We have a payment in July and a payment in January, which we'll pay in December. So both of these, the $366,887.81 will be for both of the payments for this year.

Any questions? If not, I will entertain a motion.

Mr. President, I move that we pass additional appropriation number 10-2026 to a second reading public hearing. Second.

I have a motion by Councilman Kane, second by Councilman Whitten. Roll call.

Kane?

Aye.

Reyes?

Aye.

Fordyce? Aye. Brunner?

Aye.

Klein?

Yes.

Marshall?

Aye.

Whitten?

Yes.

Devine? Yes. Calgill?

Aye. And the CF1 forms, annual review, CF1 forms. I'll be speaking, Councilman Mike Klein.

Remember what I said in the committee report section? Nothing has changed since then.

All this time, nothing's still changed? All right.

Good job, Mike.

Okay, well, that was pretty quick. Thanks, Mike. The only other thing announcement-wise we have is citywide cleanup. The next one is going to be on June the 13th. It will be from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pickup will be for District 3 only. So anybody outside District 3, you can drop off items at 520 East 6th Street. Any other councilmen and women that have any announcements? Okay. Take a motion to adjourn.

Mr. President, I move we adjourn.

Second. Okay. Roll call, please.

Kane.

Aye.

Reyes.

Aye.

Fordyce. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Klein. Yes. Marshall.

Aye.

Whitten.

Yes.

Devine. Yes. Calgill.

Aye. Word, Jared.

Testing.