Common Council - Regular Meeting

All right, we'll go ahead and get tonight's council meeting started here. We're going to start with a prayer, and the prayer will be done by Deb Kane, Center Township Trustee, and then the Pledge of Allegiance will be Mr. Fordyce after that. So if you'd all rise and take your hats off, please.

Bow your heads. Thank you, dear Lord, for this opportunity to come before you to bring the members of the council to your attention tonight as they go over the agenda items and specifically the budget. This is a lot of responsibility, and I just ask that you will give your hand and blessing upon each member, the wisdom that they need, the understanding of the dollars and figures that they need, and to work together to do the best that they can for the city of Marion. Thank you, and in your name we pray. Amen.

Thank you, Deb. Thank you, Councilman Fordyce. Roll call, please.

Kane?

Here.

Reyes?

Here.

Fordyce?

Here.

Brunner?

Here.

Klein?

Here.

Marshall? Whitten?

Here.

Devine? Here. Calgill? Here.

Okay, next on the agenda, we have our recognition spotlight, and Lillian Harshal is going to be our recipient tonight. Very well deserved. She does a fantastic job. So if you'd like to come on up, darling. Yeah, yeah, both of you. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, yeah. Come on up. You come up too. Both of you come up.

Come on up. Yeah.

I know you're going to use my mic. I know.

I just wanted to thank President Calgill and the City Council for recognizing Lillian Harshaw in the employee spotlight. Just to congratulate her when I learned that she was gonna be in the spotlight for this month. It just made me so proud and it helped me just to reflect on the time from when she was hired It was when I was charged with hiring a person for that position, and it was the first time I was put in that position to hire. So I'm so thankful that I'm not a gambler, but I hit the jackpot with Lillian. I'm just very thankful for her work ethic, her self-starter attitude, her great bubbly personality, and for being a team player always. So I thank you, Lillian, and hope for many more years. Thank you.

We just say, you know, I've known you since you come in here, obviously. And I'm going to tell you, doesn't matter what day, doesn't matter what day it is, when, whatever's going on. I've never seen you without a smile on your face. You're so kind to everybody. You work hard. And yeah, you did a dynamite job. Hiring from here, you know, did it great. So, Mayor, I think you got your new hiree person now. So I'm very proud of you as well. But we'd like for you to go ahead and say a few words to me.

Well, first and foremost, I want to thank you all for honoring me like this. I did not see this coming at all, especially just starting in January. But I am so grateful. thankful and blessed that one Layla trusted me to take this position. And for all the things that I've been doing for the city, it's, it's nothing I would have never imagined when I moved here, uh, eight years ago. So thank you to all of you. Thank you to Layla. Thank you to you and thank you to the mayor and everyone. And I want to thank my husband for putting up with me with all the late days and the early mornings and, because he knows when I do something, I go hard. So thank you all for everything that you're doing for the city, and that's it. Thank you so much.

We give everybody on behalf of the council a certificate that shows that you was spotlighted for the right reasons. Oh, thank you. And then if you want your family to come up and do a picture, then you guys are welcome to do that too. Okay. Next on the agenda, we have the consent agenda. Any discussion on this? I tell you what, I'm gonna do something here before we do this. I see all the signs of no data centers. I don't know if you guys understand or not. That's a done deal. It's not coming. It's over. The council has no control over that. It will never come to the council. It's got to come through the mayor. He stopped it. So I appreciate you guys speaking your voice, but I just want to let you know right off the bat that that's where it's at. So just so that you are all informed with it. Okay, any discussion? If not, I will entertain a motion.

Mr. President, I move that we accept the consent agenda.

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

Cain?

Aye.

Reyes?

Aye.

Fordyce? Aye. Brunner?

Aye.

Klein?

Yes.

Witten?

Yes.

Devine? Yes. Calgill?

Aye. Okay, next is committee reports. Anybody have any committee reports?

I'm done this week.

Michael, anything? Nope, okay. Okay, I don't see any, so we'll go ahead and move on to unfinished business, or no, I'm sorry, new business. We don't have any unfinished business. General Ordinance 04-2026, please.

Amending General Ordinance 13-1995, first reading. An ordinance amending General Ordinance 13-1995, turning 2nd Street to a two-way street between Adams and Branson. Speaking, Mike Graft, Administrative and Project Manager and Chairman of Traffic Commission.

Welcome, Michael. Thank you. So as we discussed at the last meeting, and we kind of made the ordinance that you see before you to include just a specific one block area of Second Street. Obviously, there was a few other things that were brought to you, but not really, there wasn't a lot of need for discussion as the Traffic Commission deemed this the best option for us. So if you've got any questions on the particular ordinance that we brought to you this evening, I'd be glad to answer any of those questions.

I had one thing, and I see Fire Chief Garr back there. Driving through that area, I got to thinking about if it was coming, up Second Street to Adams to make the right turn around to Adams to do the curb. I was a little concerned about is that enough and a good enough turn ratio for the fire truck, especially if there's traffic moving and they've pulled aside.

Yeah, so obviously we hope that traffic is pulled to the side, but one of the firefighters is on the traffic commission, so we had that discussion to make sure that the apparatus even the ladder truck can make that turn. So, yes.

And that's what we discussed, too. That's actually a better turn because of being a one-way street than if it was to go all the way down Washington. And if you've got a car coming the other way, that's a tight turn anyway. You would run into more problems turning onto Washington than you would.

You'd have to eliminate probably more parking on Washington Street just to make those turns.

Yeah. Any other questions? If not, I will entertain a motion. Yes, sir.

Mr. President, I make a motion to pass General Ordinance 04-2026.

Second. I have a motion by Councilman Fordyce and a second by Councilman Brenner. Roll call, please.

Kane.

Aye.

Reyes.

Aye.

Fordyce. Aye. Brenner.

Aye.

Klein.

Yes.

Witten.

Yes.

Devine. Yes. Calgill.

Aye.

Thank you, I'll see you in a couple weeks.

All right, next up, additional appropriation 15-2026.

Appropriation for fire truck, first reading. An appropriation appropriating $725,000 for a fire truck. Speaking, Fire Chief Curtis Garr.

Welcome, Chief.

Good evening, how's everybody doing tonight? Good. Good. I'm hoping that you all got the packets and the email is sent. I'm open for any questions you may have.

I just have a couple, Chief. Go ahead. Sure. I know we had talked about this earlier, and I see that you've got an additional $25,000 for the truck, and you explained it. I'm a little concerned about it. So we get an additional six-month warranty free with it, right?

Correct, but it doesn't cover everything. Okay, what's the free six-month warranty? The free six-month cover, it does not cover the pump of the truck and does not cover any of the aerial equipment.

Okay, so the reason that you're taking the additional warranty out is to cover the aerial equipment and the pump.

Specifically for the aerial and the pump.

Okay, and is this from Rosenbauer? The additional warranty?

No, it is through the company.

You're going through a different broker?

Through the company that's, through the sales company that's making the transaction. They themselves have their own warranty company. And so I stuck with that because if you go through a different company, sometimes the warranties don't transfer and they say it works, but you find out in the end that it doesn't. So I wanted to go with the company that they say this is their warranty, so that's the one I wanted to go with.

Okay. And then on the tiers, I was kind of maybe I didn't read it right. On the tiers of the fire apparatus equipment protection plan, you got a Tier 1, a Tier 2, and a Tier 3. Yes. But the Tier 1.

The size of the truck determined the tier, and so we couldn't do a Tier 1, so we had to do a Tier 2.

Okay. Okay. So that was the one to five years?

Correct.

With a 350 deductible on it?

Correct.

Okay. And then on the additional money that you're going to use for, I noticed, for minor equipment and stuff. Correct. Do you have any money left in your operating budget as far as vehicle and equipment?

I have some, but I know I have a couple of very large payments that are coming. I have one for $34,000 and some change to fix our wrecked truck. And then I have another... Five to eight coming from our current ladder truck that's in Whitestown right now.

Okay. So are you depleted on your vehicle equipment fund? I'm getting very close. And you've still got four months to go. Yes. Okay. That's all the questions.

I just had two service calls today on engine four and engine two. I haven't gotten those invoices yet.

Okay. So instead of coming back on additional appropriation, you're trying to get it wrapped up in this total amount?

If I don't need all of it, I won't use all of it. But I know it's, I've got some equipment I can obviously, I can definitely use some of what I have, but I'm getting low.

Yeah, but you can transfer some of the equipment from the old ladder truck to the new ladder truck. Yes. The other question I guess I was going to have, why can't you transfer the radio?

because the radio is for, I could, but then that would render that truck not necessarily useless, but just like we have spare engines, I would like to have a spare ladder, and this will use the one we currently have we'll work as a spare if we need to.

So you're going to keep that the old ladder truck in service.

Correct.

So you need a new radio for the new truck.

Yes. And it also will help with our ISO rating to have two ladder trucks in the city available, um, instead of just one.

Okay. Um, I, I guess, um, the other, uh, question I had, because I know we had spoke about this on, uh, during budget hearings is that, uh, is anything included in there for new rubber?

I'm sorry.

Is there anything included in there for new rubber on the truck? Because you said there were some tires. I brought up the issue of tires on the used truck.

Yeah.

Because I know they're very expensive on these fire trucks.

Correct.

And you said it was needing a couple tires. Yes.

I'm glad you asked because I just spoke with the chief of the department that's selling the truck yesterday. They put 10 brand new tires on it. Oh, fantastic. For free? For free. They had to go and did a pump test anyway.

A month?

And so when they went to get it pump tested, they noticed that one of the tires was really under par. And so they changed the one. They looked at it, and they said, well, you know, if I change one, we might as well change them all. They've got money like that that we don't kind of have. So they decided to spend $11,000 and change all 10.

Right. And I think the $15,000 on the warranty, that wouldn't take long to eat up if you had to replace some of the aerial equipment.

My main concern is the aerial part.

Sure, sure, most definitely. Okay, thank you. I appreciate the information.

Chief, how soon are you going to have the opening for your new firehouse and the public invited?

That's on September 11th. There will be a 9-11 memorial event for the 25th anniversary of that. And then following, yes, it starts at 8.30, but the open house starts at 10.30. Okay.

What? If appropriated, what's the anticipated time to get this in hands, this new truck?

They're eager to sell. They're eager. Matter of fact, when we went to go look at the truck, they asked me if I wanted to take it with me.

Did they put cash in one of the bays, like just all the stuff that they had?

They're a very well-off department. They have two brand-new Pierce aerials on ladder currently. So they're using the sale of this truck to purchase another Pierce truck. So they're just... selling it they acquired it from because they acquired a smaller township and so they didn't pay anything for the truck so they don't really but they when they got the truck they spent And that was the additional stuff I put in there in your package today was about $65,000 that they just wanted to change. And so they did that.

And I see all of that stuff. I guess some of the small equipment, then that's the aerial equipment that you want?

Some of the equipment is nozzles, K-12, things that we can cut roofs and things with. It's just some minor tools that we don't have a lot of.

Perfect. That's all I have.

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

Mr. President, I move that we pass additional appropriation number 15-2026 to a second reading public hearing. Second.

We have a motion by Councilman Kane and a second by Councilman Witten. Roll call, please.

Kane.

Aye.

Reyes.

Aye.

Fordyce.

Aye.

Brunner.

Aye.

Klein.

Yes.

Witten. Aye.

Yes.

Devine? Yes. Calgill?

I guess so.

Aye.

Thanks, Chief. Thank you. Thanks, Chief. Thank you. Okay, next is the 2027 budget. 2027 City of Marion budget, first reading.

We are pleased to share the 2027 budget for the City of Marion. This budget reflects our continued commitment to the city's mission and long-term goals. Speaking, Honorable Mayor Ronald Morrell Jr.

Well, it's so great to be here before you guys. I'm excited. This is our third budget together. I appreciate you and all your hard work and our budget committee hearings and all of our team's hard work and the controller's office for putting this together. We're excited to present to you, again, our third year in a row of presenting a balanced budget and being able to accomplish what we need to do to keep the city of Marion moving forward. As always, my top priority. um in these budgets are being able to take care of our people that work so hard every day um to make the city of marion run as i share often i get to be the one that is um on pictures and ribbon cuttings but without the people that run this city none of that stuff would happen so our focus is always on the people And, you know, we are, you know, excited to be able to be in a situation where, you know, last year I had to give more of this devastating news and no one got a raise. But this year we'll be in a position to be able to do so. So, again, thank you all so much for your hard work. Are there any questions for me or any other department here that are available? And we'll do our best to answer that and then, you know, continue to move forward. One thing that I will add, I do have... I don't want to lead off with this, but we can get into this as we go along. I do have all the information and data regarding what you guys asked us to research for the billing department, hiring our own operator for the excavators. So I have that information here. We can get into that as we go along, talking about the budget, and then we can entertain if we want to move forward with this idea as opposed to doing more contractual style work.

Any questions? Comments? Thank you, Mayor, for getting that to us about the... You have it in front of you.

Okay.

I'm going to go ahead and make a comment to start off with. We obviously, we've had a lot of, you know, we've had our hearings with the budget and the heads of your departments and everybody. man i'm telling you i spent a lot of time up here and may i give you a lot of credit for the department heads that you put in place you guys all just do such a great job i mean honestly it's we're a lot of people don't understand we're really blessed to have the people in this town i've been lucky to travel all over the place and i'm telling you i'm not just saying it because it's here marion is the best the the people are the best all you guys work hard um I just very much appreciate everything that you guys do for the city. And, Mayor, I was glad that you was able to give them raises this year. So I commend you for that as well. Go ahead, Mike.

Yeah, not a question, Mayor, and we've had this discussion. You're going to hear it again. In fact, we've had it here at the council before, so this isn't a new thing for me. And thanks to the department heads and everybody who did this work to put together a balanced budget, and you mentioned raises. The thing that catches me... are raises for the city electeds. Given what's happened and what's likely to happen in the world of municipal finance, electeds need to be leaders, we need to show I'm just going to cut to the chase. I can't vote for a budget that gives electeds a raise while they're in office. I just think that's wrong. I don't think it should happen. I'm sure the budget's going to pass, and that's good. It's a fine budget. On principle, I just can't vote for a budget that does that. But for the rest of it, well done.

I'm just going to kind of make a little bit of a rebuttal on that. And I understand, Mike, and I appreciate how you feel on that. The only thing I'm going to say is the city council went 20 years in a row without a race. And that's why everybody's paid the lowest of any elected officials in this town. And I'm glad that you put it in there, Mayor. I really am. I don't do this. Well, none of us do this for the money because it ain't that much. But I just think at some point in time, you can't expect these guys to put in the time and the effort and everything for free. Because, I mean, $8,000 a year is not a lot of money. So that's my only thing.

And my serve rebuttal.

I'm going to have a survey buttled in.

Would be that, yeah, we can give electeds raises, but they should not kick in until after the next election.

Yeah, but the budgets go year to year. So if that's the case, then I mean, yeah, we'd wait another two years in or whoever the next count, because we may all be replaced. None of us may even be here. But my point is, you've got to think of the people in the future that's going to be here. I mean, man, look at grocery prices. You can't go to the grocery store and spend $100 and get one bag of groceries anymore. So I don't know. Anyway. Any questions?

I mean, I do want to hear kind of the research you've done on that piece about the...

Yes, I'll invite Justin up. I'll lead it off, and then I'll invite Justin up to come and share more about it. So essentially, I'll give the whole story. Under this administration, and thankful for the council's blessing to buy into this, we've been very aggressive on black elimination. And that's very successful, and the citizens really appreciate that, and that's something I hear everywhere we go. However, that's not a cheap or free endeavor. So what we're looking to do is how can we... keep the sustainability of the aggression we want to do with Clean City Mayor 2.0 while also, you know, making it as affordable as possible for us. So we've been exploring some different options, different ways to be able to keep the sustainability going while also keeping it in as affordable as possible. So with that, we've come up with this idea to, which will be the first of our, from what I can understand correctly, be the first of our First, the city has done this, has hired somebody specifically and only for demolitions to be a full-time member of our staff. We've had people that have done that before, but they were a part of our street department, the street department union, and et cetera. But what we're looking at and exploring now is bringing somebody on where their only job, their only role, they only exist just as the city of Marion demolition person. So you can see the numbers break down in front of you. I know you guys had that, so I'm thankful you do. But if I'm understanding this correctly, it looks like it increases that budget by, am I understanding this right? Is it increasing by $150,000 or $92,000? Which one is it, Justin? Help me out. On that end, but, you know, this would potentially be able to save us, because right now I think we're budgeting at about $300,000 or so for external services for demolition. So we would be able to ideally save some money, but also, you know, continue to push forward in getting our overall, one of this administration's main goals is to buy elimination.

Yeah, and we're looking at, like, $80,000 for their salary plus their benefits is right in the $80,000 range.

Yes, I understood. I was misspoken. I'm saying this was about a $79,000 increase for salary and benefits. But then there's some other things you need to add at the bottom, which is like vehicles and things when you see that other total come up and it adds up to some more money at the bottom there.

Yeah, there is one mistake on your guys's where it says truck and 50,000, that's actually equipment maintenance. Then we've got a fuel adjustment because now we're gonna have to start paying for diesel and equipments.

Justin, what's that total cost like with diesel, with truck maintenance, salary benefits, all of that ballpark estimate?

So with everything, it's going to be somewhere around 157,000. But I'm sure, I mean... There is going to be some more unforeseen costs that I haven't got to yet, but I am working my way there.

And so we're budgeting $300,000 for demolition, which covers roughly how many properties?

We're currently budgeting $250,000 for demolition. And if you look at the bottom of your sheet, you see there's a subtraction there. So we're taking that current budget of $250,000 and subtracting the new person's total demolition expenses of $157,000, which leaves us about $92,000 left in savings that I would like to continue to budget for external contracting if we need it. And what was the last part of your question?

My question is, I understand that. Like $250,000 is what we have budgeted now for blight. How many properties can we do with $250,000 with external services right now without this position if we were able to do that? Ten properties, I think, is what we estimated at, roughly?

Yeah, they're averaging $20,000 to $30,000 a property.

So we're talking... We spend the 157 on somebody and we still have 90 plus K to basically use for external services so we can get four properties plus a year-round person potentially demoing 20 other properties. So we go from 10 properties a year to 20 properties of year and could potentially save 90K.

Well, it'd be more than that because isn't it right that if we contract it, it's $20,000. If our guy does it, it's around $6,000, right? Depending on how many jobs. The size, yeah, but just ballpark it. So that's about a $14,000 difference. So as soon as he demos six houses, he paid for his position. So, I mean, you know, potentially we could save thousands of dollars on this. I mean, to me, this is a no-brainer.

The only comment that I've got, you brought up a truck and diesel fuel and equipment. We've already got that. We already allowed for that when we had him in street maintenance. So I'm not sure you can pull it from citywide maintenance if you want to on their budget and put it into that, but we've always had a demo guy all the time. We had one for 40 years that worked at the citywide street department. We've got the excavators and he always had a pickup truck And we had the diesel fuel to run the excavators, bulldozers, backhoes. So, I mean, you can't add that back in unless you take it back out of citywide maintenance because we've always had that.

I want to get clarification from the controller. I don't know if we can cross-contaminate equipment that's meant for street department for other things. We actually have gotten in trouble for that before. I believe if it's funded for the street department, it has to be specifically and only used for those purposes.

Well, I think that we can get around that because the street department is not going to be using excavators. They're not tearing down houses and stuff. So I understand what you're saying because they're their own taxing unit, Mayor. I understand that. But I think that we can negate that problem with the equipment because that's why we bought the equipment. And I'm not sure that we'd have to get into that situation with the State Board of Accounts. But we've always had that allotted for demolitions because we've always had a demo guy and bought the equipment. It hadn't been but two years ago, three years ago, we bought another excavator and a new trailer and a semi-truck. So, I mean, you know, we've got the money allotted in citywide maintenance, and we always had it allotted. So if we need to move some out of that because they're not doing it anymore into the building fund, then I'm good with that. But let's not add on top of something that we already had.

Let me and my team research to make sure that's possible. I'm not against that. I just want to make sure that we don't get in trouble.

I would agree with you on that.

Okay.

Another question real quick, Justin. Yeah. Capacity as a leader of this, is that what... having another person under you that does just this instead of doing all the others and things like that, what's your capacity? Are you still going to be able to manage another body? Is it worth adding to your team? Because I know when we've done this before, we went to contract-based services because it made more sense at the time. What's your capacity? and your team's capacity to actually make this person successful in going after blight elimination like what the mayor wants.

Gotcha. So I feel like we could make it happen. Like right now, we've got our code enforcement who jump in. They help haul the skid steer where it needs to go. I mean, we've got the manpower to make him successful. It's just...

We know we've got enough property to make them successful on that part. That's not my, but I just want to make sure like adding another member to your team, does it make sense where they're going to be successful in doing what you need them to do?

Right. So, so a worry of mine is, you know, we get into December, January, February, those hard months of winter, you know, we've got a full-time equipment operator. I mean, are we still going to be able to tear down houses in the winter? Yeah, it's going to be depending on the weather. So when he's not doing demos, we'll have to find a job for him to do outside of that as well.

Maintain certifications, professional development. We can get into tons of things. Right.

I think it's going to be in the 70s all winter, so you're good.

Yeah.

You're basing this salary off of a 35 hour work week.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

And I kind of did some research on hourly. Yeah. Kind of like what a, an equipment operator in the area would make. That's kind of what we came up with.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Any other questions on the budget for the mayor right now? All right, if not, I will entertain a motion.

Mr. President, I move that we pass the 2027 city budget to second reading, public hearing.

Second. Okay, we've got a motion by Councilman Kane, second by Councilman Brunner. Roll call, please.

Kane.

Aye.

Reyes.

Aye.

Fordyce. Aye. Bronner? Aye. Klein?

No.

Whitten?

Yes.

Devine? Yes. Calgill?

Aye. That's the last thing we have on the agenda, though, as far as announcements. Get these on. Our last citywide cleanup this year, 2026, will be on September the 12th from 9 to 2. And that's, what ward is that? Where are we at, Mayor, or whoever? That's yours? Okay, that's in Ward 6. Does anybody else have any announcements?

Also on September 5th is the fly-in cruise-in. It's been popular for decades, so invite everybody out to that.

If not, I will entertain a motion to dismiss. I so move. Second. We got a motion by Councilman Cain, second by Councilman Klein. Roll call.

Cain.

Aye.

Reyes.

Aye.

Fordyce. Aye. Brunner.

Aye.

Klein.

Yes.

Whitten.

Yes.

Devine. Yes. Calgill.

Aye. Meeting adjourned.

Before you all leave, I want you to know we have a professional golfer in our midst. A what? A professional golfer. Ryan got a holding one. Oh, gee. So I want to make sure that everybody knows.

Thank you very much.

They give him an award for getting the closest to the hole. He got it in it, so I guess it's close.

Thank you very much.