County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

It's not necessary. I don't see Gary though.

I don't know he's upstairs.

He'll be down. He'll be down later. You guys ready to roll?

I'm not a person.

Good morning everyone. I'd like to call this meeting of the Hancock County Board of Commissioners to order. Today is August 4th and the time is 8 AM. This meeting is being recorded and streamed for public viewing. By participating, you acknowledge that your image, voice, and comments may be captured and made publicly available. This meeting has been properly noticed in accordance with Indiana Code 5-14-1.5. Let the record show that a quorum of commissioners is present. The commissioners are open for business. We will now proceed with the agenda. At this time, I invite you all to stand and to the Pledge of Allegiance with us.

Pledge of Allegiance 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.

And I'll make a motion that we approve our minutes for the 717 executive session, the 731 executive session, and the 721 regular meeting as presented.

It's been moved and properly seconded. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Motion carries. And then I'll move that we recess our meeting. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye.

Okay. We're all up to you. You ready? I will open the August 4th drainage board meeting. First thing would be to approve July drainage board minutes. Move to approve the July drainage board minutes.

Second.

Been moved and seconded that we approve the July drainage board minutes. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes.

We'll just go down the list. Since we were here two weeks ago, this will be a, should be a pretty short meeting for where we're at. We'll approve the claims from 8-5-2026. And some work on some ditches, removing log jams. Had a couple of blowholes in areas. Had an issue on a bank. Brought some riprap in on the William Dewey South. to send assessment money up to hamilton county and uh you know kind of what it is maintaining and moving so uh we do have some repairs and things that are out right now uh from the last rain we just had um the beavers are working well right now so um they are they are hungry and and putting things out so you'll see some of those coming up as well moved approved claims paid for 8 5 20 26.

And moved and seconded that we approve the claims paid for 8-5-2026. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes.

Alright, we're going to move to a we have a request for a variance to daylight. This is the keister minor sub chairman keister. This is south of US 40 just east of 850 east. There's a row of houses there in Cleveland on the south side of the road and this is right behind those. This is the the portions of land there that 17 acres coming with three lot minor sub. The old railroad is to the south of them. They have approval from the highway to run their perimeter drains to the side ditch. There is a there's a side ditch that runs in the front of their properties and then a pipe crosses the road and runs into this pond and they have the approval of the highway to to put their water into the side ditch, but Gary does not want the outlets of the pipe into the side ditch. So he doesn't want to be able to have to maintain their pipes, but he'll take the water. So they're coming in for a approval. Lot one actually has a tile on the backside of it off of those houses that they can tie into, but lots two and three down at the bottom They have do not and so in the elevations don't kind of work as a hill in the back of those Lots To get back down to where you're at. So they're they're asking to have daylight to the side ditch so they will stop just short of the side ditch and That water can run into the side ditch for where it's at these houses are proposed and Uh, they're not coming yet, but, uh, they wanted to get approval with the land, uh, for that subdivision. So that way, when the homeowners come in, they don't have to get.

Future approval for that what's the blue line we're looking at on our map.

No, oh, that's a watershed.

Yeah.

What's the size of that tile again? What's that going to daylight? What size is it?

Probably a 6 inch for each each lot. It would come right off of their septics and there's your blue line there. That's the watershed line.

And have we talked to the owner of this pond that we're going to dump all this water into?

Well, the water is going into the, um. Uh, into the roadside ditch, so, um, they have not as far as I know, talk to the land owner that owned on.

I think we're we're pushing the can down the road here. He's going to come in complaining. We're dumping all this water on him.

I can, I can go back and tell them to go talk to him from that standpoint.

I think the letter would be adequate something been notarized that it's okay.

What are we looking at right there? Go back South there. the trees are at is that that's the crossing that's the crossing but uh that's the highways crossing where we're looking at the trees and everything is that a ravine or is that wetland yeah that's just a just an area of there's no wetland there but what what is it not level why is it not farmed i guess i i don't know yeah there's a there's a drop off here that comes in here to this little ravine and then this water goes okay

Contours this water always goes this way.

That's just my opinion. I mean, you're not holding anybody up from building or something.

No, no, no, no.

So I think, yeah, maybe Gary's idea is a good one.

Okay.

So we table it?

Table it. Make a motion to table. Second.

all right uh we got a second here do we got a second yes been moved in a second that we table the variance today like for jeremy kister on south 850 east all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion passes all right so the next one is jasmine george a lot too so you see on the map here we're at fort bill pike and two three four

Just East, uh, the, uh, Dan Jackson drain, uh, runs. South to North, uh, it crosses 234 runs through the front of these properties. Comes back and then goes into the open ditch in the back here. Um, they are building on this open lot that is here. And here in the front is where they are, uh, their driveway to get back to where they're at. So, uh. regulated drain runs through there so they are looking for approval to cross the regulated drain i've had them make an agreement that they will replace if that tile is not concrete under there whether and backfill to our specifications for where the drive goes underneath so that way that tile in good working order as it runs down through there But that is what they're looking for is a. Right to across the regulated drain. And then. I'd like for them to also reinforce that tile.

This looks familiar. Have we done something in here before?

Yeah, so just to the east of there. This lot here in few gates is how he's updated on GIS. It does not run this way. Now they made it this way. I ran through. So this, this arm, the Peter Thomas arm that connects to this arm that goes to the open ditch is not through the center of this lot anymore. It's around this lot. It goes this way. That's what we did.

Yep.

Right.

Standard County hold harmless for when we have to work on it. We're going to tear out their driveway. Yep. Okay. I move that we approve the crossing of the Cal Jackson regulated drain by Joseph George with a standard county hold harmless.

Second. I move and second that we approve the driveway crossing on the Cal Jackson for Mr. George. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes.

All right. That is all I have for old business. Any new business from the board? The Indiana Farm Bureau Drainage School is August 26th. I think two members have signed up to go in person, which is great. And then the next board meeting is September 1st.

motion to adjourn second move a second till we adjourn the august today's meeting i was very sure all those in favor say aye aye motion passes that's a new record 11 minutes uh we did eight and a half minutes that's what we did anything to sign

second and motion floors to and a second to reconvene commissioner's meeting all in favor say aye aye motion carries good morning gary good morning you guys are fast hold on yeah because he's wanting to know.

I don't have anything for signatures today. We're starting installing the, we have new truck cameras and body cameras. Thank you. The public's been kind of So, we are piloting a few body cameras on the traffic control people and truck cameras on the trucks. As soon as we figure out which 1 works best, we'll probably expand that out to all of our commercial vehicles.

Is our system compatible with what the sheriff has? It's not different.

It's off the shelf. It has one thing that's a little different. You can view it from the thing. So if there's any dispute on site, we can just view it on site immediately.

It'll be on the truck itself or?

Well, some of the ones on the truck will be on the truck and the ones mounted will be on the people. Now these people are like doing a lot of physical labor. So the giant ones are a little bit problematic. So we're trying to experiment with which ones might work the best, but we're just having with our, uh, kind of people doing the flagging and stuff, uh, just to make sure that that's okay. Uh, last year, like last year, we had some pull a gun, just people, just, just outrageous stuff. Um, Jack and sons, they'll transition once their family is done with their bereavement. We'll re-engage there and get that done. I do need to get done by December though. That's my appropriation to get that done. So Jamie says everything's good on it. He should make sure everything's, it takes a minute. I mean, I just went through with my own father. It takes a minute. So I'm just letting them take their time until they're ready. So we're in the CRO, SHPO. I'll let you know how that goes. CR is Cultural Resource Officer and State Historic Preservation Officer. Good offices. Got a little bit off mission at a couple of them, so some of the government elected officials are trying to get them back on mission. Chipping is full go, so we're chip sealing out there. I'd rather be paving, of course, but chip sealing keeps the potholes away, so they are still counting roads. We're not in the city. It does, in fact, keep the piles away. It seals it right up. Another tight year, but we are getting all our construction done. We did get our reimbursement for some of the gas tax reduction. Of course, with property tax reduction, we're feeling that as well as all the All the departments are feeling that as well. But we have a lot of construction going on and we should be finishing our microsurfacing soon. And we should be able to get our, that final payment will be done. And then hopefully we'll have a good view for what we're doing for the rest of the year. So, so far, so good. A lot of clever maneuvering there. We'll be, if we want to do micro transit, If we want to support it, we'll have to RFP that next month.

The one we split with the city?

Yeah, the same thing. Because bottom line is we won't have a contract of January next year, and we don't pay if we don't have a contract. So the cost of that might go up. Have we heard any more about that? We're working with the city of Indianapolis because they kind of ran out a lot through Indigo. They're just struggling on the federal side, having trouble managing the program. I don't know if they're having trouble. It's just slow. It's too slow for us.

What's the dollar amount again?

We were paying $600,000 and we're getting reimbursed $300,000. A while ago, we were getting reimbursed everything, but it's just slowly... blood off. So I don't know if we'll be able to participate next year. That's certainly not a promise. I would like to see it continue, especially if we're getting federal aid. I like any, everybody pays taxes, right? I like to bring as much federal tax and as much state back to the county as we can. But if we don't have an agreement, it doesn't come back.

So we'll see.

It is appropriated, but that doesn't mean it's spent.

There's no cash for the appropriation.

Yeah, exactly. Um... Should expect to see microsurface and chip ceiling go for about another one and a half months. I have no microsurfacing, so that's in the neighborhoods. Those street sweepers will be back once we're all done. We're not going to street sweep right after. We'll give it some time for the top to ravel off a bit because some of the loose stuff comes off the top after it's done. We'll let that get loose amongst all the neighborhoods, and we'll come sweep it all up in the fall. So if anybody calls in concerned about some loose stuff, it's not going to hurt them. They can just not look at it. And then we'll sweep it up in the fall. As Deb said, we're at a zero cash balance in HCSS. Huck property was appraised. We'll get that back out in a minute. NDOT, I'm going to have lunch with the NDOT Deputy Commissioner today to see if we can help out. a flooding issue on US 40, so that's obviously not a county road. So if you guys don't have any issue with it, we're not gonna spend a lot of money on anything, but we will go ahead and aid it. We have a couple citizens there that are swimming. I'd rather them not. And the bottom line is as a civil engineer, I believe there's a public safety problem there. I believe there could be some hydroplaning issues and I want that dealt with. If you guys don't mind, we'll take care of that internally. But I'll talk to Val today and make sure we got permission to do that.

Let us know by text, would you, after your lunch?

We'll do. Do you want to know after I talk to her or after I get it worked on? She's going to say okay. Okay. It'll take, I got to finish up a couple things on Chippin before I can rotate a crew out there. So it'll be within a couple weeks.

Sure. Thank you.

LMDD money was transferred and I think someone asked me how I could help. So that was a lift to get that money done, the lane mile direct distribution. So we're planning on coming out of the lit. So we'll come off the property tax pressure there a little bit and roll that in to my program. So we already got payroll. We got this. So we're trying to stay out. We're trying to stay as much pressure off the county as possible. Outside of that, that's all I have for this morning. Thank you. Maybe a quick day for you guys.

Thank you.

Thank your people too.

I will. They're working hard. Weather's better this week. Yeah.

My feet were a little thinner now. It was pretty rough to start the summer. It was pretty hot. It was part of the fitness program, right? Yeah.

I say I pay by the pound. I'll just start cutting your page. Uh-oh.

Beef it up, boys.

Corey Taylor is not going to be here, but he's got one thing. 123 East Main, signage. He's wanting to know if we want to put community corrections there or NXB or whatever.

I don't see any problem why we wouldn't sign it. I mean, we already have a sign at the prosecutor's office or just overhead.

You want community corrections or NXB? I would come. We're gonna have other offices in corrections. OK, I got you. Got that. That's all he had. Debbie Lawler. Mike Gibson forget my I'm sorry Michael get you good. You're good. Go ahead and go ahead. OK. Okay, and what is it?

Can you go ahead and let, yeah. Oh, sorry. For these plats, I just need your signatures.

Okay, and your name?

Deborah Lawlor. Okay.

You wanna bring them around?

I have a black pen.

Oh.

That be it?

Might be.

Well, if I can figure out how to operate, there it is. There you go.

I'm going to. Do you know off the top? There we go.

And this is for the law or minor subdivision?

You got black paint or what?

It doesn't matter, does it?

It doesn't matter if it's black or blue. There's a lot of blue in here.

Yeah, so I don't think it matters.

All right, well then let's get to signing.

Some people like it to be blue that way they know the original in their right auditor.

That one needs the special. It does.

Mike, you got my special pen, Mike. I'll try it. I don't know if anybody's still asking for my life.

Yep. Alright.

Thank you. I get.

Good morning.

Good morning. Mike Gibson with MJ Gibson Land Surveying here to dedicate some right away for Butera Miner Subdivision located at 4500 South County Road 50 West. It is a 35 foot half right away and 0.374 acres. 748.

Acres are 8 acres 0.374374 OK. You could get I move that we approve the 35 1⁄2 foot right away for the Patera minus subdivision acreage 0.374. 2nd.

We have a motion to second on the floor to accept 35 foot half right of way and .374 acres of the Butera, what was it, Butera? Minor subdivision. Minor subdivision. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries.

Did you bring crayons?

Crayons?

Just copy.

All right. We did find Meister, wasn't it?

Is it just the one copy or three? The survey doesn't require one anymore, do they?

That'd be safe than sorry Okay, thank you Okay, this okay civil Andrew is not in here yet. So By just a second ago in the Brooks Heather's here. Heather, Ms. Condra. You get out of here early today.

I love that green.

Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning. Heather Condra with Greenfield Main Street, although I am here on behalf of the America 250 committee this morning. The committee has been working on many plans to honor the America 250 movement this year, and one of the plans that the committee has come up with is to have a time capsule that would potentially be placed on the lawn of the courthouse. So that is my request of commission today is permission to bury that time capsule. Still Interfamily Funeral Home has graciously donated a 12 by 12 by 12 vault. That vault will hold the time capsule, which will have commemorative items such as a July 4th, 2026 newspaper, Thomas Lopez on our committee is working with the hospital to get some letters from mothers in the labor delivery Ward to write letters to their children that would potentially be passed on to them in 50 years when this time capsule is open So just some of the various things that would be placed in that time capsule that we're asking permission to bury on the courthouse lawn We don't have we're just kind of starting with permission today we're still working out fine details we're thinking around maybe september 26th or so would be the date that the time capsule will be placed there would be a ceremony it would be announced to the public so that we could get as many participants out from the county as we can to celebrate that but just kind of starting with the base of generally asking for permission before we get further down the road into details of that is it going to be an above ground monument as well to So there will be a marker that will be placed there to mark the location of time capsule and just kind of a little bit of history about what is in the time capsule.

And do you have an idea where you are thinking it should be?

I went over and looked the other day after the meeting and there is a bench sitting right beside this door here on the south side of this door there. So I've gotten with Corey and as soon as we get a date to where we then we'll get 811 out here to make sure we're not doing anything uh i've also talked to the city and we'll probably end up using their their back to actually dig the hole and they're they're open to that so we won't do it like they did 250 years ago and just use the shovel yeah that's too hard technology right they dig it up in 50 years But yeah, we're we're in the process of looking. I've talked to Corey about it and all that it. I don't think there's a problem with it, but I told him they had to come and ask first so.

Okay, I make a motion that we approve the. Burying of a time capsule on property owned by the county at the courthouse. for America 200, 250 years committee. Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve the burying of a time capsule from the America 250 committee on county property, which should be around the courthouse somewhere safe. And we're also doing it to where He didn't, Corey didn't have to mow around it. So all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Motion carries.

Thank you. And I'll be happy to come back and update with exact dates, make sure commission knows.

You think before this Riley Days, that'll happen in September, you know, before?

That's the goal. So then that way Riley Days participants can kind of walk by, see where it is, know that it's there. That's the goal. I'm not guaranteeing anything with this Ragtag Committee, but...

I've also gotten, the city's also said that they've got an old cobblestone if you wanted that in there also, taken out of the streets.

Perfect. And like I said, I'll be happy to update the commission on further plans and details. Thank you.

Thank you.

There's Andrea.

Andrea. Ms. McLaughlin. Is it my turn? It's your turn now.

We'll talk about timing.

Good morning. Good morning. Busy morning already.

I'm afraid so. And I don't. Thought so I don't know.

Sarah, can you send him a message? I think he sent anything for us to tell us he wouldn't be.

That's fine. Okay, that's too close. I had three things for you today. The first one, we sent out an email on the Samaritan Fund, which is part of the services that are provided by Apex. It allows, and forgive me with my glasses on, I'm a little scattered. if an employee needs to uh avail themselves of those services they uh they can apply and if they're only if they're accepted uh then then we pay the price of it is 55 000 um right now if we re-sign up for another year of being eligible to use that program it'll stay at 55 if we do that by the end of october so we don't have to decide right now i just wanted to put it in front of you so you could look it over i remember right that that was an insurance policy they didn't leave our insurance and pick all that up yes yes that's that's exactly right anyone use it to date

We have had and be accepted.

12 members that applied in 2026 two were accepted by the samaritan fund but ultimately it was determined they weren't good candidates for the program so at this point no one has actually utilized it but it does not cost us anything unless they do there's no pepum for the program it's only the 55 well if we sign up by october 31st after october 31st that goes to 60 000. okay so there's no fee that No, not unless someone applies is accepted and starts using it. Then the $55,000 charge becomes relevant.

What do you think that we would ever have somebody use it and be successful? All these people have actually applied. None were good candidates.

that's so hard to say because you just never know when when something's going to take a turn i feel like it's a good program and it's it's a nice thing to have available since it doesn't cost us anything on the front end only if it's used it doesn't doesn't hurt to have the extra insurance especially considering the rising costs of health care so i don't have problem with it

no well you know well we haven't used it yet there's going to be one time we will use it so it does not cost us anything to do submit that on our behalf and let the people take a look at it if they so choose and it does take us out of the loops until it comes yes for payments but in the grand scheme of things 60 000 or 55 000 whatever is hard to pay if you

Yeah, a catastrophic health event can go into the millions, so. Okay.

I'll make a motion that we go ahead and stay with the Samaritan program.

Motion on the floor and a second to continue our relationship with the Samaritan program that is given by Apex. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Motion carries.

Okay. and then the other item I have found a new human resources information system met with them several times drilled them with a lot of questions checking all of the the issues that have been described to me from from previous software challenges and they seem to have everything that we need they met yesterday with myself mary and deb was on the call as well so that they were able to ask any any questions related to the the payroll side which this does not does not touch so they're satisfied i think that everybody can utilize this in the way it needs to be utilized we've discontinued our relationship with Paylocity so this and this one is actually less expensive than on the year than than the Paylocity one was for us there's no setup charge and they are also giving us excuse me is this what you've been reaching out to scott for yes yes yep uh and they are giving us eight carrier connections which we only currently need four or five of so we'll have those others in reserve we get to keep those so if we change vendors uh down the road on anything we'll be able to use one of those extra carrier connections without paying an additional fee at that time for at least the next two three or four depending on

Well, I would make a motion that we approve the contract with the stipulation after Scott reviews it. Then Gary could go ahead and sign off on it.

Second.

I was up for a motion.

We got a motion and a second on the floor to approve and allow myself, Gary McDaniel, to sign off after our approval. Attorney looks at all those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carried.

Okay. All right. I am all set then. That was what I had today. Did you have anything for me? Thank you. No.

No. Thank you. Thanks, Andrew.

Great day. Ram's here.

I don't see her on here.

What about Joe Gah?

There we go. Hope I pronounced it right. Gulf.

No worries, I'm Joe with companies on behalf of harbor homes for the Claiborne subdivision. We're currently working for harbor homes, building the offsite utility infrastructure. There's been a revision to the drainage that was originally submitted. So we're seeking approval for the revised drainage plan. Part of the issue with the revision came due to a very power line. It's belongs to 9 star. We've worked through that with 9 star and have a plan for how we're going to go about crossing that structure point is the. civil engineer and they've come up with a revised plan to essentially change the pipe sizes and change the pipe type to give us proper separation between our new storm drain and nine stars power so we also plan to completely encase all that in flowable backfill so that if there are any future needs for repair we can address that at that time so

he he's our expert hey how you doing so we asked joe to come speak to you guys today this is that easement from gdi on 500 north uh that the commissioners took um with gdi made their property remember they made a easement along the the north and the east side of their property it wasn't regulated drain but it was given to the commissioners so this is part of that easement and so on the east side of that easement there is nine star has a power line that is running through there so this line will now cross that power line twice and part of the concerns um gary pool's not here but um he will oversee that aspect but His concerns were the amount of separation. They've talked to Nine Star. Nine Star really doesn't want to move their line at all. And so we thought maybe having Joe come talk to you guys, we are going to meet with Joe and the people on the sixth Thursday this week to kind of work through those plans to make sure everything is where it needs to be. But wanted to get it before you so that way when it comes back again, probably at your next meeting for approval to go in there so that you have an idea of what's going through. But part of the question is the separation of the lines that are there. I know you guys have a great relationship with Nine Star. Maybe talking to some people there as well. Just being able to keep that going. in a way that everybody feels comfortable with it. I talked to the town of McCordsville last week, because this is a McCordsville subdivision that comes through. They would prefer, as we would, for that off-site to be municipally maintained, whether, you know, for our size of county and for theirs, for where they're at. So I know there's been some talk about making, you know, little parts of it private just because of where the crossing and things are, but we'd like to still to keep that consistent through there so really want to come before you and we asked joe to come to kind of give you an idea of what they're dealing with from that standpoint but Also, to let you guys understand that we're working through that process. Gary and I are with them before it officially comes to you for what's going to happen there. They have a plan for what they would like to do. I'm not sure Gary's 100% behind it for where it's at, but we're going to work through that for where it's there. But also, we know you guys have a good relationship with Nine Star as well, to be able to maybe talk to them as well.

I could reach out to George.

Yeah. So that just just as many times as we can get through and get as as as consistent as well as we can get in that area will help.

At this point, Chad, what would be your staff recommendation?

Well, right now, we're just asking that they come and we're going to sit down with them here at the level of the week. This is more of an informational thing for you to see. So, you know, the next time because they are. They're up against it on a time frame, right? They need this outlet to get through. And we figured if we waited to bring it to you after we met with them on the 6th, which would be the middle of August, it would probably get tabled until you talk to some people and get moved to September. And we just figured this was the most prudent way

to not get only get it for you get some of that conversation started now that hopefully by in a couple weeks we can have it all figured out and take care of it so i'll reach out to george okay i'll see him quite a bit when you do remind him that we waive a lot of the fees for utilities just be gentle with them but yeah absolutely yeah great yeah okay thank you thank you questions at this time nope all right i remember what he's talking about after he told us what he is so it's a good deal

Thank you. Brian Brees.

Yeah, there were a couple of things.

Good morning. Good morning, Harry. You've been on vacation?

My sister-in-law's pool. And it's kind of an easy...

It's real nice to have the pool real close like that.

Do you guys have copies? I think they were in your packet. Scott, do you have a copy on the... Okay.

So what are we looking at here?

Right here.

This one right here.

Good morning. My name is Brian Brees, Walker Hughes Insurance, and I'd like to address some recommendations for the county to consider purchasing some environmental or pollution coverage. As I've kind of dug into this, when we went to the self-insured program, obviously all of our deductibles raised and then the county overall We do the collection event. We have some exposures and so I just wanted to get this in front of you guys for your opinion. On the. On the recommendations I took. I took applications and questions. I had a lot of questions to get it to this point and I talked to multiple people within the county. With. What I've got in front of us, the reasoning for a quote, the quote's gonna be based on 5 million pollution liability and it's called a premises policy. There's a contractor's pollution policy where if it's a contractor doing pollution work, they would carry that and it would follow them with their jobs. What we're talking about is site pollution. So all of our locations that are buildings, I have quoted in this, The purchase of the salvage yard was addressed, but since we don't own it yet, it's proposed that we would have to go back and look at that. But for them to really offer coverage on that before they can give us anything, we would have to have either phase one or phase two information, so.

Okay, because we've got an agreement with the city of Greenfield to use their Brownsville grant just for that, so. Yeah, I read up on that and we're in like it's phase one, possibly phase two.

Yeah, we're district five. I think I looked all that up. But as I was digging in and kind of trying to figure out what exposures do we have, I didn't realize we had underground storage tanks. We have two that I found. And what's even weirder is on the IDEM website, they're not listed. And any tank that's got 10% or more underground should be listed. So that was one of those weird things that when I dug in, I saw where Osage on the highway department had four tanks at one time and those were pulled and that was back in 96. So we do register on the IDEM website and that's something that's updated every week or every day even. But so it's current information. And so as I was talking around it, like I said, you know, Corey, I leaned on Corey a lot with his access to in and out of all the buildings. What we found was the underground storage tank at the old, I say sheriff's department, the community corrections building on Main Street.

1.3.

It's a diesel tank for fuel oil, for the generator. And so that was one. And then we just installed one at the highway department that's an oil water separator. And then we knew I knew about the above ground storage tank at the highway department on Osage, which is for tar for road surfacing. But and then the other piece was with solid waste management district. We have the collection events throughout the year. We did a special event policy for the last one in April. And with the one coming up in September, it's you know, what can we do for the county? I know we're talking about that department we're going to talk more about that department today at the end of the that might lead into more information yeah yeah i know that's being the pieces of that are going to be possibly being separated out so i have those pieces factored into this as well we can So as far as site coverage, which is what the county would need, the other pieces are like when we do those events, there's transportation. we have the vent and then after the vendors come in and I've always made sure DD gets the certificates of insurance and they have pollution coverage from the vendors. So we've always had that safety net, but then you have the transportation piece and then you have the in-location piece. So that's where, This site pollution policy is gonna cover that. I've quoted it at 5 million. We could lower it to 3 million or 1 million, and I have those totals I'll give you. And then there's also a break if you pay for a three-year lock-in. The only difference on those are where You say you bought a five million policy. It's for that three year period up to five million. You could have one event the first year and then we would have to rebuy another policy because that three year would have been used the limit. But knock on wood, historically, we haven't had any pollution issues. The other thing I've talked to the carrier and underwriter about is we got a lot of roads, county roads with some right away, I just heard Chad up here talking about it. So When I went through the county website with them and showed them all the locations, because you can pull up, and I was just showing them, here's a parcel, here's a parcel, and you got strips of land everywhere down the county road. So they're going to look at adding that. It's just there's so many to add. They don't feel it's going to be a significant cost increase, but I'm working to even get that in case we had somebody like... just do a random dumping and then we're stuck with it. So but in pollution, There's also what they call PFAS, P-F-A-S. And there are a bunch of different types of names for that. And I put a flyer in there that showed what some of those definitions were of what, you know, and the policy does exclude that. And they're just, they're forever chemicals. And we could maybe get a buyback on that. of a lower limit. But with the county having older buildings, we're most likely going to have those somewhere and someplace. But typical policies would exclude that unless we wanted to add them. So again, at a high level of what this coverage offers, it's site pollution. We're going to work on covering the highway. I'll just read through this recommendation list here. So obviously environmental claims can be extremely expensive. A small contamination event can require soil remediation, groundwater testing, regulatory investigations, engineering studies, legal defense costs, neighbor property claims, long-term monitoring requirements. So if you have a spill, it has to be under 100 parts per million. So, and IDM monitors that and will stay on us if we ever have that happen. You know, the cost can jump quickly. And with us, with the county owning and operating multiple facilities, you know, there's gonna be environmental exposures, potential environmental exposures with as much property and such. So one of the, Where the county operations create environment exposure is really, we have the highway department, just their operations in general, fuel handling, salt storage, herbicide application, drainage and ditch work, park maintenance operations, emergency response activities, debris removal, fleet operations. So this would pick up our work with us owning multiple properties. Every additional parcel owned by a county increases environmental responsibility. So county's not only responsible for it, it knowingly creates, but in some cases, some existing environmental conditions discovered after acquisition. So back to the Jack and son salvage piece, You know, salvage yard and recycling operations typically present higher environmental concerns because they're gonna have petroleum products, hydraulics, antifreeze, batteries, solvents, waste, lead containing materials, scrap metals. then you know potential ground with all that with potential groundwater contamination so even if that's contaminated before we acquire it agencies are still going to require investigation testing remediation and that's what you mentioned that you've already you guys aren't buying it blindly you're making sure the tests and stuff and that's what the carriers really want to see is like what i couldn't insure like if you came to me with a car that was already wrecked and said brian i want full coverage on this and then i then the next day after it's insured turn it in to get it fixed i'd be like we can't do that so so we will we won't be able to use this for jack and sons well you can um and when in my conversation once we know that there's contaminants there and we're going into our eyes are open we know that so i mean wouldn't it be more expensive to go to them after after the fact and add insurance to that or what no carrier would insure that blindly so to speak and i don't know i haven't seen jack and son's insurance but if if they're going to be able to stay there for i heard the owner passed away sadly but and that purchase was delayed but i would assume they have some kind of coverage and if they do Do they have pollution coverage? I don't know how quick they'll be out. So like when you buy it, I heard Gary say he would like to get it in their timeline by December.

We want to buy it, but I think they've got, what, a year to get all the cars out of there or whatever?

I don't know what the parameters are.

Yeah, they're not bringing any more in. They're just taking them out.

So and the site testing and such like that, I know the brownfields, I've looked it up, saw the district five we're in and all that stuff. So the the thing with that, we just want to make sure we buy it right. And then if any testing or on the site policy, like we have the farm location that's excluded because it's Um, vacant. So the shooting range, the firing range has a lead exclusion because of obviously all the ammunition that's out there been fired. So There's a couple of little caveats like that. That one, you can buy it. It just may not go on the policy until we get a clean bill of health. So you can put full coverage back on a car, in my example, once you get the repairs fixed, but it would have to be...

So we wouldn't want to buy it, add that to it until after we got it cleaned up.

Right. We wouldn't be able to add it. We might be able to, depending on the reports you have. So like at the time of sale, what all you have. If phase one and you're saying it's leaning towards a phase two, that's one thing. I even checked with the underwriter and had him look at the property Jackson Oil next door because I had concerns of, is that going to bleed off over to this property? And the good thing she said was the tanks are all above ground storage. So those... Those aren't as bad. You're going to notice a leak in an above ground storage tank versus if it was underground where you just didn't see it. So you're going to catch that quicker. In an environmental world, those are a lot less vulnerable. You're going to catch that quickly. I've kind of hit, and we were doing aerial maps, side maps, street view, all these things to just angle it. And I'm saying, this piece is really close. I'm concerned about runoff. And she said, well, we could still add it. And again, to go into every building and do all the things to get it dialed in to have every single little detail, this is kind of a higher level coverage, but we're hitting on the main parts. I mentioned the salvage yard piece. So the, if we go, Okay, so the salvage yard, the next page on discovery risk. One of the greatest exposures in discovering contamination after acquisition. We got soil contamination uncovered during redevelopment, leaking storage containers, improper historic disposal practices, groundwater impacts. So those are some of the things we could be picking up that right now would not be covered. If you pick those up, you use that brownfield grant and get things under control, then we could bring this back into the policy. And that's where they just, they're fair. This also, as far as an effective date, it's going to be whatever date if you guys approved it it would be that date forward so it would just be based on new there could be the retro date could be removed later on but it's again as they get more information so Since we don't really have any true pollution coverage and with the collection events and such the highway Department, I felt like this is really worth bringing in, and especially with our higher deductible coverages. Now we had some limited pollution on the on the old policies, but this would be a true standalone pollution policy that stood on its own.

So Brian, let me ask you a question. So if we picked up the pollution policy, because we're self-insured, that would be a gap coverage.

This would have a $50,000 deductible versus your $300,000. And then this would have coverage aside. So if there was ever a hit to this policy, it wouldn't affect our losses or loss runs on the existing GL policy and such.

When we go to re-up our...

If we switch carriers there, this is with an A-plus rated carrier. So it's a high-quality company. And then on the pollution piece, it would just always be standalone. And if we ever change companies on a pollution side, it wouldn't affect the self-insured. If we were on the switch companies on the self-insured, it wouldn't affect this.

But does it help us at renewal time for the GNL to maybe keep our policy prices down?

Well, the current policy excludes pollution with the self-insured piece. where we would we would be exposed on the deductible out of the gate and then possibly more. So that's why I was trying to bring our deductible down to 50 plus have the additional coverages for. When you look at the state of Indiana, ours is like the lowest budget, one of the lowest budgets. I think it is the lowest budget in an active solid waste district. And. When I talked to the underwriters, they couldn't even believe how they go, well, that's a low budget, 146 grand. Was there 20, 25 numbers? So it's not like we were running a landfill or things like that, but I know in conversations, we're talking about tying in with Republic possibly and having a collection event or a collection facility where it's weekly, monthly something. So it sounds like that, the county's exposure is going to expand. And that's why another reason as I started looking at just the solid waste district itself, I felt like we needed site coverage included. And then I have a whole nother piece for the solid waste management district. It just, we're kind of up in the air on where that's at. So I just know the details from where we are currently. And I have all that ready and I've got all the numbers ready on that. It's not bad at all on that side for coverage. I think it's 11,000 for the GL piece. work comps around 2500 and then the pollution pieces just under five grand. So for that side it's minimal, but it would protect us too. Even though it's different, it's not a part of the county. They work with the county so we would have coverage under that. That would be a contractor pollution policy for the solid waste management district if it if it goes the direction i believe it's going to go so that would be standalone under that budget and then this would be standalone under the county budget and then the um uh annual fee is so the annual um let me uh give you a breakdown here the annual was um has the insurance committee taken a look at this has this been brought before them at all not no not the liability committee i had asked if it needed to go there and i think it was just to get it in front of you guys to talk about it but i'm not sure that it needs to go to the committee i i don't think so either it said we would just make a recommendation or not and i think that we would all

Just leave that to your discretion. Sure. What do you think? Question? No, just.

Uh, have a, have a insurance committee meeting just to discuss a pollution policy. Do you think we need to do that? Or Debra and I think we don't need to do that. Don't need to do that. It's pretty straightforward.

The only question I have for you guys on that would be. How does this compare to what the coverage we already have? We don't have any coverage. Well, no, he said we do have some pollution coverage.

Prior, when we were with travelers, there was some limited pollution coverage. And where we are currently, when we moved to the self-insured, the limited piece went away because we raised deductibles.

But we don't have coverage.

But we have zero. Zero. The deductible is above what the limited was prior. But our exposures, and again, we haven't had any claims, but we are getting to a point where the county's growing to where we need to really bring this up and get it in front.

If we don't have any coverage, that's a big...

and again as an agent i've been here since uh 2021 july 21 i didn't even know until just a couple months ago we have storage tanks underground so that that's those are some things and then we'd always made sure that on the collection events the vendors had pollution coverage and we had those copies on file beforehand this is just going to provide site coverage um i i'm good i just i just wanted to make sure

I think that the risk and the amount of the rate that we would be charged and what we could potentially have to pay out, I think this sounds good to me as a member of the insurance committee.

Well, I just know that we get named and everything, so.

Yeah, and this could really ding our our money that we have set aside.

Well, we've worked to, we've saved, knock on wood, I hate to say this, but we've had really good runs on claims. I said that in a safety meeting and it's like, and we're, the money we've saved, I don't want to see that go out the window on something. And, um, In just reviewing the way this works, even though it's at a high level, I think it secures this. We're kind of more of a higher level, we're a low level exposure, but at a higher level of what this offers, it's picking up all the areas that we need. And we can add, even though we know we're buying a salvage yard that possibly has contamination, once we get the clean bill of health we can add that on and go forward then if something else happens there later we're covered but there's breakdowns like we could do a million if we if you just want to do a lower limit instead of five million you can do a million for the three years 36 000 and a one year is 22 000 and those are um those are approximate i'd have to um so but for 38 get the five million that's one year premium and on the five million if we do a three year it it comes out to 66 000 and some change there's some fees on there um total or per year or for the site you you would pay a three-year policy would provide um again The one year would have 5 million and then you renew 38 grand again, 5 million, renew again, 38 million. So what is that? Just under 120,000, 114,000. So if we do the three year on the 5 million and it's locked in, you got 5 million over that time, unless there's a claim. Say you have a loss 2 million, then you'd be 3 million the rest of the time through that period. You're buying 5 million coverage over a three year window. where the reload on every year, you're still paying that higher price. And I asked specifically, what about if we buy the three year and we have a loss that maxes out the first year, are we screwed? And they said, no, we just would redo a new policy with the limits that they wanted. Well, no. Say we blew the 5 million in a laser hit on a claim. we would just reload a new policy at whatever point that one was exhausted.

Brian and I have had several conversations on this and I think we're, you know, as a fast growing county as we are, I mean, we are at risk and anything that happened could for $38,000 or 66 for three years worth of coverage.

That's 20 just 2223 a year over so in 5 million and we're getting the site coverage in the collection events again like for the solid waste district. It's it's given both both recommendations I have for each have the event so like a third party location even when we move to if we move to the Republic has been talked about this will we can add that location on here and then my understanding will have a. building portable building where people can go and drop stuff off and so this would extend to that location we just would add it there they charge for location so it would bump it up a little bit as that exposure comes on same with over at the salvage yard but again we can cover what we got now and then as those things start to develop Pollution is something that is not gonna go away. I mean, we're gonna need it. And with the county, even though the Solid Waste Management District Recycle Hancock County is separate, we still need to protect ourselves. So that's what this one will do. And again, it covers the onsite, whether it's at the high school, junior high, church, parking lot when they're doing the event or at Republic. It'll protect us there. It protects us in transport. So even though it's not our vehicles hauling it, we've got third party coverage for that. And then we've got end use where wherever it lands, it covers there if we get pulled into a lawsuit later from that. So it just hits us. County has so many moving parts, and as an agent, this is one piece I feel I'm mad at myself a little bit, like, why didn't I catch this earlier? But again, I didn't even realize we had underground storage tanks. It's just the county with the, there's so many things like that that's out there. I just, as I found out, I'm like, well, this is kind of a no brainer. We really need to get this up and talk about it. But yeah, the three year is obviously the best pricing. It just depends on what limits you prefer. And we can, then as we have collection events or if we ever have any kind of contamination, we would have the, If you guys want the 5 million, we would have that in place, but it would be effective whatever date you said, let's go with it forward. And again, if you buy property or we add anything that's possibly contaminated, we just have to check it and make sure everything's acceptable. If you go out and buy like a piece of farm ground, I don't think they're gonna want the phase one, phase twos, but that one is an example where we have to have that to add that one.

Brian, if we form a partnership or solid waste district forms partnership with Republic, does Republic at that transfer station? Are they required to cover their own pollution and then ours would be secondary?

Should something they're going to have their own? It's kind of like we're all fighting. We're all fighting for ourselves like. We have an event, the state's gonna come down on us like you gotta get this cleaned up. And so, all right, we're gonna fight for ourselves. They'll fight for their selves through their insurance. And then the Recycle Hancock County will have their policies that help fight them too. And so we're just protecting ourselves depending on where the event happens. So if it's at their location and it's from us, they might come on us and subrogate to our policy and say, well, it happened because your people were, the people with the county use came over. If we have one where, sorry, if we have one where they're, because they're full-time, they got people dumping stuff there all the time too. If they had something like that and then the state came in, we might get brought into it, but we would subrogate back and say, well, that wasn't related to what, they weren't there for a county event or anything or county use. So, yeah. the policies are going to pay for who's responsible or who what the use was for. But they pay for cost of defense. There's outside limits. Yeah, thanks for bringing it up. There is outside limits of 1.25 million for defense costs. So a lot of times you'll see policies where the defense costs are inside. So we've got actually 6.25 coverage, 5 million on the loss and 1.25 on the uh attorney fees that's funny the attorney asked what about the fees well of course who pays the fees i think my clients want to know about no that's a great question i'm thank you that's a great question because it is that's a big number 1.25 of just attorney fee costs that would be covered so so have you gone before council pardon have you gone before council

i haven't um i just in talking to janine she said come in and talk talk here first and then go from there well since they hold the purse strings you might want to clue them in so i don't think it's a bad deal i mean we get sued for everything else so i think i'm a fan of the three-year i am too yeah plan instead of the one year and three not too long to lock yourself into something that you may not

But it also gives us a fairly big benefit on the cost we pay every.

Well, and the thing I like to is like the county roads. I mean, you see a lot of trash and stuff out there. Somebody goes out and dumps a couple of 55 gallon drums. The underwriter was saying it's more likely going to be a majority that will go on to the. property owner because they'll be pulled into it too but at least we know we're protected if we have something like that and those those aren't added yet they they gave me they said it won't be bad but we could if you think about all the county road how many miles we have and all the all the um right-of-ways that we have to get that brought on it was a it was a small number like five to ten grand is what they were saying based on what they saw on the website. And I'll double check with Cindy to make sure I've got everything, but I pulled up all the property and you could see there were like 500 parcels, 550 parcels that you look in them and they're just a little strip of land here, a little strip of land there. But we'll be able to pull all that in too. That'll be in addition to this, but that's a big piece I feel to have as well for us.

I THINK IT'S GOOD FOR A YEAR.

OKAY. SO I MAKE A MOTION THAT WE SEND THIS ON TO COUNTY COUNCIL WITH A FAVORABLE RECOMMENDATION FOR THE THREE-YEAR $66,000 PRICE TAG. ROUGHLY 66, ROUGHLY.

ballpark.

Yeah, let me give you the exact number.

Actually, there's a surplus line tax and a brokerage fee. It ends up being $67,574.15 and The policy does have a minimum earned premium. So if you guys, if we write this and you say a couple days later we don't want it, it's 25% minimum earned. So we're committing to at least three months of the premium. But I've worked with this company on, I have restoration companies that go in and take out asbestos and all kinds of stuff. And I work with this company with those kind of companies. And these people just know they're, pollution up and down. So they gave us, they shopped the market. This is best coverages, best pricing. And so I feel really good about the numbers and where we are. So, but 67,000 for 15 seconds.

Okay. I have a motion and a second on the floor to send this insurance quote for pollution on to county council with a favorable recommendation. Everybody approve it? All in favor? Say aye. Aye. Motion carries.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

A lot of work into this. I really appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

I mean, I'm here on the telework policy I sent to Andrea. Did you get it? Yes, we got it.

I just saw it. We do.

yeah so there's just three main things um i've kept the policy since i started when we had covid so you don't get you don't have a cold you come to work they can do the queue at home for that and that's worked very well uh to do i have the provision in there if it's two more if it's two second work days you got to get it uh you can't work from home for that period unless there's additional proven and i got to have something from a doctor and if somebody's sick that they can't work at home then i don't approve it short staff that really happens when somebody's on vacation then somebody's sick and so I'm down to really one or We have a jury trial going on and somebody's out that week so there is some catch-up that can be done and the last thing is transcripts every court reporter is required to do transcript and they're required to do it outside of the regular business hours and It's something my staff doesn't love to hear, but you have to do them, and I've had so many jury trials, any of them, all of them, if they're found guilty, is getting transcripts. And we had that one for 11 days, and we have three different court reporters here in our county that's actually divided that up to do. So it's a lot of work, and they're not allowed to do it on... Company time unless they do it for no cost and there has to be time to be able to do that. The statutes in there and it says that so they have to do. That's the reason they would have to go home, work at home and it would be after regular hours unless it's the illness and they're working during regular hours.

Did you say Andrea helped you go through this? Sorry.

I sent it to you. I think I sent it to you first.

I'm good with it.

I'm good with it. Okay, I make a motion that we approve the Hancock County Superior Court 1 telework policy. Second.

Motion, second on the floor to approve the Hancock County Superior Court 1 telework policy as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you very much. Thank you, Judge. You too.

okay on that it looks like do what like it's for the for jess you need to sign it i think it's for one people sign it like oh is that what it is okay very good okay thank you you're good you're good kayla hello good morning I've got five items to speak to you about today.

Okay.

First up is the HWC on-call planning services contract. So this has been reviewed by Scott. So just to summarize, this would be up to 16 hours of help from a senior planner, an HWC planner per week. And one day in the office one day of that being in the office. The Max invoice would be about 11,000 a month. This we build hourly not to exceed over the total course of the contract $32,900. The contract is good for 90 days or three months from signing and then it would have to be brought back here if we needed to continue that. We discussed at a previous meeting paying this partially through the RDC for work that was actually occurring in the TIF districts.

I'm good. I'm good, too. I mean, it's a must have at this point.

Yeah, yeah, it is. Now, did you you did not actually plan for this during budget, did you? No, but they're aware that county council is aware

where we are yes because i think that last discussion was at a joint meeting with the council yes as far as i know they're on board for it so uh i make a motion that we approve the hwc engineering agreement for professional services for our planning department hancock county indiana not to exceed not to exceed how much was it thirty two thousand nine hundred dollars thirty two thousand nine hundred dollars annual second

We have a motion and a second on the floor to approve the HWC contract as presented, not to exceed $32,900. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries.

Next item is an invoice for work on the UDO. This is also HWC. The invoice total is $6,684.99. The planning department paid the first invoice, but the second invoice exceeds the remaining amount in contractual services. There's about $26,000 worth of billings left on this project. Next meeting and just as a quick update for the progress of this project, the next meeting with the consultant is tomorrow. It's virtual to go over the adoption draft essentially, and we are planning to have a public hearing at the next plan Commission meeting. So the hope is that they'll come out of that with a recommendation for the Board of Commissioners in early September. And once again, this is UDO light. This is just combining existing zoning ordinance with existing subdivision control ordinance and kind of mashing them together into one document. No content changes.

Okay. And this has been taken into account or not? This one you're asking now for the other part of that invoice?

Payment of invoice, yes.

But you've got this where you need to go to counsel on this one also?

I'm asking you guys to pay this one. I think it's my request. And the amount again? $6,684.99.

We can take that out contractual, can't we? Ms. Auditor?

I'm sorry. I got a text.

It was for $6,000 something.

And it's not in your budget?

No.

I'm paying what I can out of my budget, but this one exceeds the amount I have in that line.

And it's for a contract with HWC. Yes, we can take that out of contractual.

Okay.

I make a motion that we approve the HWC invoice of $6,684.99 payable from, what did we say?

Contractual.

Contractual. The commissioner's contractual.

Second. Second.

Okay. We've got a motion and a second on the floor to pay the remaining amount of $6,694. Is that it? $684.99. $84.99. So, all those in favor say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Motion carries.

Thank you. Third item is a zoning ordinance text amendment that received a favorable recommendation from the plan commission. at our July meeting. So this text amendment would remove a requirement for a full legal description to be in the public notice for any planned commission public hearing. So at this point, any time you go to the BZA or the planned commission, um you have to describe the property in question so if you're doing a rezone or if you're requesting a variance you have to include that entire legal description from your deed with the newspaper public notice and with the notice that you send out to your neighbors that's great if you're lot one in such and such subdivision it's not so great if it's a legal if it's a meets and bounds description that takes up the create a part of a page that gets very expensive in the newspaper, oftentimes exceeding our filing fee. And we require our applicants, obviously, to carry that fee. So by removing the requirement that the legal notice be included in the public notice and instead changing it out for simply a requirement that the parcel identification number and still, of course, a general description of where the property is located. be included in our rules and in that public notice, we're really doing a service to our residents and making the process simpler for them. That's my, yeah, so that ordinance has received a favorable recommendation and I would request that- And it's all legal, we don't get hit?

It's- From access, public access or anything?

I do have a question and it wasn't in our packet for Friday. This ordinance, okay, I don't know when it came in, but. I'm not going to vote for it, not that I don't think it's good, but I'd rather see it advertised again for some transparency to the public. Okay packet wise. Opportunity to look at it. I'm here in the morning and find what happened, but I. They're on the side of transparency and have back it for. I'm not opposed to the legal. Probably in like a Schneider. Method that we do it now, so we'll table this. make a motion that we table an ordinance amending title 15 chapter 156 of the code of ordinances of hancock county indiana or not so much table it but just move it move it to the meeting i think ours is on the 18th and make sure that this and we don't have to have a motion for that either do we do it

Do we need a motion to do that, put this off till next week?

You can just ask her. For continuance.

Okay. Continue it to the next week so that when it comes in the packet.

Okay, so the ordinance was not in the packet?

This.

Or just the certification?

The certification, anything about the ordinance was not in the electronic version of what we received.

We send those out on Friday afternoon. So if we didn't get that until yesterday, it wouldn't have been in the packet.

Okay. I'm so sorry. I thought I had shared the draft ordinance that I took to the plan commission in late July earlier than that.

Well, we wouldn't know or be able to hold on to something for July.

Again, a great idea. Save a little money probably on verbiage in those ads.

That way the public sees it.

All right, next item, number four, impact fee review board. So we have an impact fee review board now because we have an impact fee that we collect for Parks and Rec. That's collected through the Planning and Building Department. Every time we issue a new single family home permit or a new dwelling unit permit, we collect the impact fee with that. Because of this, we also have to have an impact fee review board, which is basically like a mini BZA for impact fees. Because we collect the fee and we hear any and all objections to it or requests for appeal through the planning department, we're requesting that the impact fee review board itself be included under the planning department's umbrella of boards that we handle. And this would extend then to utilizing Brandon Moorlach for legal services for that board. We don't expect this board to need to meet every month. This is going to be on an as needed basis. If and when somebody tries to appeal a impact fee, that's when we would call the meeting of this board, which is already appointed. So that would be my request and just some clarification direction that I'm OK to do this.

So they if there was a declination and they were not paying the the impact fee, then Would that come back to the commissioners with a favorable or unfavorable recommendation from the impact fee board, or will they be the, do they make that final decision?

They make that final decision.

I'm still a little bit fuzzy on that part of it, to be quite honest.

The way it's written, they make the final decision on that. So it, we met with Greenfield on this, Ellen Cukor, and it's, They've never given any feedback. Simply because they might not want the land that's being offered. So if somebody comes in and says, hey, I want to put a trail back here and I could we claim this as our fee? And. The trails only going to benefit them. It's not they're not going to get out of heat. So that's exactly what it amounts to.

To put some light on it, too, in talking to Greenfield, they mentioned that their impact fee review board has met four times over the course of 20 years. So we're not sure exactly what that's going to look like for Hancock County, but we do need to make sure we have some sort of a structure for this board if and when it does need to meet. And we know it at least needs to meet one time to understand it exists and how it should function.

It is a requirement.

It makes sense that it's in the planner's purview because those I think if it were to stay close to parks, there'd probably be some kind of conflict of interest, so it makes more sense that.

Good with that.

So what do you need from us?

Just confirmation, I guess that I'm OK to proceed. So a thumbs up is good for me. Yes, thank you. And then my final item, and I'm not totally sure if I'm doing this the right way or not. So I've got a planning vehicle now. And I've got a mileage account or line item that has money in it. I understand that the car is going to run out of gas at some point. How do we go through the process of filling up the gas tank on this vehicle? I believe I need to request a gas card and gas line in my budget and the transfer of some of my mileage fund to that gas line.

Auditor yes, that sounds like you have to have those accounts established and I don't know if you've worked with Mary or not to get that established. And then you would probably need some approval from Council. OK. Once we have that approval, then we can go ahead and help you get that thing.

Do I need to do anything else here?

Just need to go to Council now.

OK, sounds good. Thank you. Alright, that was it.

Thank you. uh i think is that it all except for uh solid waste board let's take care of some uh i make a motion that we approve claims and payroll second motion on the floor in a second to approve claims and payroll all those in favor say aye aye motion carries uh auditor business

um really what i have is the estoppel certificate um that you had said that you would sign um so we've got that we've we just we've already made the motion we don't need the signature on that okay and we did make a couple changes to that uh lisa did too lisa lee so it should be good to go did this just get put it's just my signature all of us okay yeah oh

What?

Sorry, this is, it's just the second part of it.

Oh.

I took my paper clip apart. And then the other thing that I have while you're signing that is we have, I just got a text, the text I got from my office, that we need to do a budget transfer. If you could just authorize Gary to come up and do a budget transfer. There's an invoice for $36 for, sorry, yes, Dave's Car Wash. For one of your vehicles that we need to put some transfer some money and we want to transfer $350 into that line so that we can use that moving forward for you. Into what line? That would be from county general utilities to vehicle expense. You could just authorize here to say okay to that or you guys vote on it and we can take care of it.

If we make a motion to approve the payment of $36 to Dave's Car Wash, is that what you need? Budget transfer. No, we just need a budget transfer. And of $350 so the girls can work from that. Second. Second.

We've got a motion on the floor to allow line item transfers and for me to sign off on it. On the floor, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Motion carries.

And I believe that's all I have for you.

Okay. I've reviewed the contract with Andrea, and you're okay, Mr. President, to sign off?

Okay. Did we already make a motion on that one?

We did.

That's what I thought. Okay.

So you can sign that today. Okay.

I'll come to your office. After here. Out comfort area resolution.

That's the same one. Resolution. That we're going to adopt. But this is creating the tip. Call.

Do we have a resolution number for that?

Yes, it's 2026-8-1. Is that good? Yep.

I MAKE A MOTION THAT WE APPROVE RESOLUTION NUMBER 2026-8-1, RESOLUTION OF THE HANCOCK COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS APPROVING A RESOLUTION OF THE HANCOCK AREA PLANNING COMMISSION. THE HANCOCK COUNTY REDEVELOPMENT COMMISSION DID ON APRIL 8, 2009, adopted declaratory resolution is amended and the debt the declaratory resolution and confirmatory resolution are here in act referred to as area resolution second

I have a motion and a second on the floor to approve resolution number 2026-8-1, resolution of the Hancock County Board of Commissioners, approving a resolution of the Hancock County Area Planning Commission. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Motion carried.

That's a mouthful.

Yeah. There you go. Amplify AEDs. CENTOS, is that this contract?

There it is, contract. Yeah, that's just a ratify. You could just sign it.

Already.

We've already done that? Yeah.

Just ratify it.

So we are ratifying the contract for AEDs through CENTOS, allowing President Gary McDaniel to sign off.

Second.

motion floor motion second on the floor to allow myself to sign off on workplace solutions 001299 was sent as a cooperative acceptance agreement first aid and safety for AEDs at Amplify all those in favor say aye aye motion carries make a motion that we approve the um

No, I don't think there is one in here to sign. What's that?

Those are the ones that you signed, Bill.

Oh, the Cintas? Oh, right.

Yeah, your name is on the bottom.

Oh, just ratify. Okay. Just ratify.

Okay. I make a motion that we approve payment of invoice number one one five four nine four PDF mechanical This was for the chillers at the jail in the amount not to exceed and has met that at twenty three thousand four hundred and ninety two seventy seven cents, okay or to also invoice one one five five zero in the amount of thirty three thousand eight hundred and fifty nine dollars and thirty three cents both for the same project and that can can come out of the 2021 is it 2023 okay 2023 okay so uh

second okay there is a motion on a second on the floor to approve uh two invoices with pdf mechanical one for 23 492 77 and one for 33 859 33. uh all those in favor say aye aye motion carries travel request make a motion that we approve uh

out-of-state travel request for Morgan Walker of Hancock County Community Corrections to attend the Trauma Disruptor Conference in Austin, Texas in the amount not to exceed $940. Second.

Motion and a second on the floor to approve out-of-state travel for Morgan Walker to attend the Trauma Disruptor Conference in Austin, Texas. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries.

also i'd like to make a motion for morgan walker of hancock county community corrections to attend she has been selected to come observe and be trained as a pilot location for a program that will be able to bring back not only to hancock county but also the state of indiana this program is trauma focused for individuals in the justice setting and this is in october and it would not exceed uh one thousand four hundred and twenty dollars second

Motion and second on the floor to give permission to out-of-state travel to Morgan Walker. As presented, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries.

Signed in the wrong spot.

It don't matter.

I will.

board appointments i make a motion that we um accept a board appointment to community corrections advisory board as a lay person dusty wicker with his term through 12 31 20 29. second motion second on the floor to approve order

Board appointment to the Community Corrections Board, a layperson, Dusty Wicker, term through 12-31-29. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries.

Quick question to Dusty Wicker. You don't have to give that up when you become clerk, do you? And we have to reappoint anybody. Okay, great.

Make a motion that we approve the Affidavit for Construction Fund Disbursement Request Number 30, the Hancock County Redevelopment Authority Lease Rental Bond Series 2025. Second.

Motion to second on the floor to approve Request Number 30 for Affidavit for Construction Fund Disbursement for $4,749.95. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Yep.

Let me sign the lead on that. I think on the RDA. Probably are.

I just wanted to briefly touch on this. So the money that we have remaining with Argent Bank is going to be utilized for debt management payments. Right. So the remaining invoices that will be coming in will be moving through RDC moving forward. Gary's aware of that. They're going to be talking about that at the RDC meeting on Thursday. So we had to break this invoice up because we wanted to use that last $4,000, but that's what we're doing moving forward in case you have any questions. No, makes sense. I figured we'd run out one way or another. Yeah, he had set that aside for the remaining portion that we'll owe.

Okay.

We're the client, aren't we?

So the signature's this.

That's just the sign there. That's Hancock County government.

go okay cleaning rfp update so and you and i spoke about that yeah so my recommendation is we go ahead and send it out as is and then uh corey will have to show them the buildings i think and also the we're going to you know complete some let them know that there's going to be another one coming on yes if that that's if that's all right with you guys i think send it out as

uh the the rfp to where you guys know what we've been talking about uh corey give us all the buildings and everything that we're supposed to have cleaned and uh but it doesn't include the prosecutor's office that we're getting ready to finish but once it's finished then they'll have to know about that also but we'd like to bid to kind of cover that yes

Yes. You're okay if we pick the dates out on that and we can coordinate with Corey's schedule as to when he could probably show people around eventually? Yes. We just have those dates we have to meet, so we can pick those out ourselves and have that come back. Is there a certain date you want it back by?

Well, as soon as possible. I mean, I'm not going to rush it because we've got a cleaning service as it is right now.

Okay.

We're just doing a little comparison.

Perfect. We'll get those dates, too, so that you know when you'll have those coming back to you. Thanks.

Well, we've got a couple of minutes. Well, we can't adjourn yet.

We can recess.

Motion to recess. Second.

Motion is second on floor to recess until the solid waste board. All in favor, say aye. Aye.

Thank you.

I will call to order our Hancock County Solid Waste Management District Board meeting. First item on our agenda is a review of the minutes from June 2nd, 2026.

I have a motion to approve the minutes from June 2nd, 2026.

I'll second.

It's been moved and seconded that we approve the minutes from June 2nd, 2026 meeting. Any discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Next on our agenda is a director's report. We have DeeDee who will give us some information on invoices at first.

OK. So we didn't have a meeting in July, so we have a lot of invoices that we need to go over. So it's in your packet behind the minutes. Two invoices for the contract. I did notice that my calculations got messed up somehow under fuel. So the actual amount says that we've spent $83,000, but that's not true. We've only spent $280.18. under fuel and so the amount remaining is 921.6 so i apologize i didn't catch that before i printed um under vehicle maintenance um i my uh company truck the battery went dead so i had to purchase a new battery so that is um the battery expense there and then i had to drive my personal vehicle for the month of july so i racked up some mileage there as well May and June invoices for the phone. And then we got our invoice from Caldwell Environmental for the spring collection event and the tire portion of that spring collection event. The advertising from the Daily Reporter for the new PAL event. And then our electronics invoice from the new PAL event, the Fortville event. and then some snacks for the Fortville event. And then I purchased some signs for our fall event to help with traffic flow. And then there's advertising for the New Palin Fortville events. And then I also purchased some more signs for the fall event. And then I had some transfer of funds, um, under the, um, the talks away line item to vehicle maintenance, to mileage, and then to meet meeting travel and lodging. And then under meeting travel and lodging, I had a conference fee for the stormwater drainage conference. and a parking fee for that conference and i ended up staying in a hotel the night before because it was up in lafayette and it started at like 7 30 in the morning so i decided to get a hotel so there is also hotel fee and then i did also transfer some funds under dues and subscriptions to meeting travel and lodging as well and then under the event fund We had cash that we brought in from the new PAL event, credit cards from the new PAL event. I paid Bush Systems for the Parks Department trash and recycling bins, so that's a big invoice there. We got, or we have an invoice out, I don't think we've received it yet, from Knopf. for glass collection in June. We have our Fortville cash and credit cards that we received at that event. And then there's also one more invoice that didn't make it to the spreadsheet. It's another invoice to cut off installation. It was for a March glass recycling that somehow I missed that collection. So that's $109.20.

Motion approve invoices that present second.

Any other questions on invoices?

Could I make a suggestion? Because we're online now, we have all this information, which is great, DeeDee. You're great about being very specific on everything. But for the people, you know, online, I was just wondering, when we approve the invoices, could we have a total next to it that we could say so people know how much we spent, you know, for that month for the invoices? Unless it'd be too much, you know, a lot of extra work.

i assume you have all this on a spreadsheet so i'm sorry so i have the the total that the invoice was on here so what is it that you're wanting the total of all the invoices yeah oh all the invoices all yeah oh the total of everything we're approving yes that would be really nice for people at home to understand you know because they don't have all the materials that we have sure it's just suggestion you don't have to do it yeah no it's fine i can do that that's pretty easy

Any other questions? So there's a motion on floor. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes. On to your June and July time schedule, vacation schedule.

In the very back of your packet are my hours for June and July. for you to look at. And then I did want you to know that I am planning on taking vacation starting Friday through August 21st. So I did want to let you know that I will be unavailable during that timeframe. And I will be out of the country, so I will not be able to get phone calls during that time. I'll have to set a voicemail message on my cell phone for that. I've already got my out of office on my email, but I'll take care of all business when I return.

Is there anybody that you kind of identify as a second source that we, if we do need to contact, we wouldn't bother you, but we could reach out to you to say, hey. Like a backup person, per se?

Well, you could text me on my personal phone, but I mean, if I have residents that need help, you know, they could call the Purdue Extension Office. They have that information. Would that be sufficient?

That's fine. We're going to try to do the least we can to disrupt your vacation, but you never know. You just try to plan for the worst and expect the best. If there was a secondary source, if it's just contact the Purdue Extension, we'll make sure people contact the Purdue Extension for whatever their needs are. Yeah. Okay.

Because you don't have anybody else that's working for you, with you.

No, I don't.

There is only one person there.

Yeah. Yeah.

Under old business, why don't you go ahead and lead us off in our June collection of that results.

okay so also in your packet behind the invoices are the results from the new palestine collection event on june 13th we had 66 people attend that so that was really good and then the next event we had was the next weekend in fortville on june 20th and we had 71 people attend that both of those were just electronics and shredding and each of the towns paid for the shredding services so residents didn't have to pay for shredding all they had to pay for was electronics so that was really a nice partnership there with the towns um The Parks Department, we did receive our trash and recycling bins and I had a picture and it's gone down the line already. So we got 10 of those bins and there are four at Depot Park, I think there's four at Brandywine Park and then two at the splash pad area.

So can I ask a quick question? Sure. I push the picture right on. Does it say on there something about solid waste? Because well, it's it doesn't yet. Okay.

So we are going to get signage for the sides of the containers. Okay. And it will have the Parks Department logo on there and then it will have our logo on there. as well as the Community Foundation of Hancock County, because they helped contributed to the project. So, but they just got them. They're in the middle of all their summer activities.

So in the future, because, you know, I hear this all the time. So what does solid waste do? Well, I think it would help if they saw some of it. And I said a lot.

They do a lot. Yeah, it will be on there, but probably not till the summer activities die down because they wanted to do that signage themselves rather than paying extra for the company to do that. So yeah, so I did, like I said in the invoices, I did pay for those bins, the full amount of the bill. We've already received the $6,000 from the Community Foundation for that project. And then I sent an invoice over to the Parks Department for their portion of it as well. So they should have that by now. The next thing that we have is the IDEM Tire Grant. And this was kind of a whirlwind because we found out, I don't know if it was, I think it was the very end of June, that we were awarded a $10,000 grant through IDEM for a tire collection. So I scrambled very quickly to get, it actually may have come in in July, but I scrambled. We only had about two weeks to advertise. We pulled off a tire event on Sunday, August, or Saturday, August 1st. And we collected 931 tires, and we had 83 participants. It was a great day. Thought we were going to get in a torrential downpour, but it held off until after our event was over, so that was good. So that was great. So I'm not sure exactly the expense of that event. I worked through Caldwell to do that event because our tire vendor was not on the approved list of vendors for IDEM. in order to use the grant. So their entire person was. So we went through them. So they will be sending me an invoice for that soon. And then the Republic Services Hazardous Waste Partnership, I had a meeting with a couple of the gentlemen from Republic Services. They are all in favor of partnering with us to do our hazardous waste collections over there. They've got it approved so far for just like a one day event where all the hazardous material is removed at the end of the day. Nothing is stored on site. They're fine with that. And so I told them, I said, well, I still want to pursue to see if it's possible to get a facility, a trailer put on their premises to collect the hazardous waste if we should all approve. So they're still looking into that, trying to figure that out. But we decided that we would like to, with your approval, to try a trial event um and if you want to hold off on this until next year we can definitely do that but just to to see how it's going to work um i think yeah in the in your packet right in front of my time sheets um this is a list of our hazardous waste events since 23. I have the number of people that attended so we've been at least our smallest event we had 124 people our biggest was 241. so I'm not sure how republic services is going to be able to handle that many vehicles but it's spread out over several hours so know maybe it won't be terrible to push that many through and then the actual cost is what we paid for the vendor to have that event at each different event the the very right column is a quote that we got from republic services to have the event on their property if it's just a one-day event where all the hazardous materials leave at the end of the day. So they have quoted us $89 per vehicle with a minimum of $8,900 for each event. So I did kind of a breakdown of how much that would save us in expense to go that route versus the way we're currently doing it. So just over the past three years, it looks like that would have been a savings for us of about $19,000. And then the column just to the left of that, that is their bid or their quote to us, an estimate, it's not the official quote, but an estimate that they would be able to do $80 per vehicle instead of $89 if we had a hazardous waste trailer on site. where they can just store the materials and they don't have to remove them at the end of the day. And so that savings for the three years would be about $32,000. So that's just there for your reference. I'm not sure our last event for this year is September 26th. And then our proposed date for our trial event would be November 21st. So that would be two months after our last collection event. So I'm not sure how many people we would serve just being two months after our last event. But we are proposing doing the November 21st from 9 to 1 at $89 per vehicle to try that out. So I want to run that by you to see if you're interested in doing a trial run or if you want to just wait until, you know, next calendar year. And I currently I have not budgeted for an additional hazardous waste event, so that would be at least $9000 that would have to come out of our budget. I would probably have the money in the event funds. But that's your call.

Any thoughts?

I think wait till next year. I mean. That way we're full swing. Do you need a motion on that?

So we'll go ahead and that sounds like just a motion for us to wait until next year for DD to engage.

Were they going to hold the pricing till next year the same price if they did it next spring or will it be a whole other process?

It'll probably be all another process.

OK. Make a motion to forego the trial. Event, yeah, as presented.

Second. Well, give it to Jean. I already done one.

Motion on the floor. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Okay.

So our fall event is scheduled for Saturday, September 26th from 9 to 1, and we are going to be back at the Greenfield Central Junior High again. I'm planning on getting more volunteers. We are partnering again with Greenfield Banking Company for the shredding portion. I've met with them to plan the route, and I feel like we have a really good setup this time with a lot more stacking room for cars, so we should not back out onto Franklin Street at all. and as i'm hoping we should be good so that's in the works i'm starting to advertise that now our 2027 budget was approved up to this point by the the county council in the amount of 179 699 and then i guess that's the legal engagement letter review That is the separate legal services agreement that you have. And this is for the services of Michael and Rhonda, our new attorneys that we voted to take on.

Then we would just need a motion for approval of the legal services agreement for Michael Frischkorn and Rhonda Cook.

I'll make a motion that we approve the legal services agreement between Brandon Moorlach. Second. And Rhonda Cook.

With the council, you gotta be quick.

Right, approve that Brandon Moorlach professional agreement with Rhonda Cook and Michael Frischkorn. Seconded that?

Robin.

Okay, great. Another motion on the Florida approved legal services agreement. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes.

Okay. We're going to move on to new business, and I'm going to have them come up and give you their legal update.

Do we have a clean copy of this somewhere, DeeDee? I'll sign off on that.

You're good sitting there.

If you would like me to come over and sit next to you, I would be happy to do so. It's leg day today, so I don't know.

I'm Rhonda Cook, Michael Frischkorn. Thank you for hiring us to be your attorneys. I'm just going to start out with a little slide presentation that we put together to kind of summarize what we've been finding out about the Solid Waste Management District and some of the historical documents that we've been reviewing and trying to get up to speed in doing your work. So after June 2nd, your June 2nd meeting is when you approve the hiring of us. And we've met with DeeDee a few times now, and then also met with Robin and with Bill on a Zoom call recently to bring them up to speed with these findings. So we met on June 18th, June 16th, and then we also met at the advisory board meeting on July 13th. Solid Waste Management Districts, their authority is under the Indiana Code Title 1321-3. are a separate municipal corporation not a department of the county now we've been finding out that things have been kind of blended with over time with between the county and the solid waste management district and so we've got lots of questions about how you might want to continue to blend or how you may want to unravel under statute The solid waste management district is governed by a seven-member board that is structured with representation from county officials and municipal officials. But I'm going to point one thing out. In your district plan, we found that there's actually 12 members listed for your solid waste management district board. And that... Let me just go through those. It'd be the three commissioners, one county council member, the mayor of Greenfield, a Fortville town council member, and then these additional people. One McCordsville town council member, a New Palestine town council member, Shirley town board member, Wilkinson town board member, and a Cumberland town council member. so in your district plan somewhere along the way historically there was a decision to be more encompassing with these other towns that are right now not sitting here when I look at the statute that's not really allowable there's seven members but you may just think that at some point in history and we haven't been able to put our hands on the minutes there was intent to be more inclusive with all of these other towns as well so just keep that in mind So the history was pretty interesting when we started digging through, and I think it will help to explain some of the reasons why we, you know, why it looks like what it does now. So prior to 2001, Hancock County was part of the Three Rivers Joint Solid Waste Management District. But November 13, 2001, the Hancock County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution to withdraw from the joint district and to form their own single district solid waste management district with their own district plan. At that time, the Hancock County Agricultural and Natural Resources, abbreviated ANR director, served as the director of the Hancock County Solid Waste Management District. In 2008, an interlocal agreement was signed between the Solid Waste Management District and Hancock County. And so that's when we start to see some of the blending of things and what the thought process was behind that. In 2010, CGS, a private waste management company, provided the education component for the district. And DeeDee worked at that time for CGS, and she started in with being the education program coordinator role in 2012. And then in, let's see, 2019, the A&R director retired. So there was a need to kind of move move directors and change things up a bit also at that time cgs was bought out by waste management in 2020 and they didn't want to continue with the education program so in 2021 the setup was changed where dd was the director and the program coordinator and it was a contract between her company and the county wasn't it the county or the solid waste management district okay We also found an MOU that was in place, but it has expired. That was with Purdue University and that expired in 2023. So,

Ron, can I mention something? Yeah. I noticed when I went through this, I thought, well, where are all the MOUs, you know, during my time from 2009 to 18? So I knew where they were. But anyway, Nicole helped me print off a couple. And then I said, let's just get 18. But we can get it for you if you want it just for history, because they did an MOU every year from 2009 to 2018. Okay, that would be helpful.

So I don't think, did you have that in your records? We're trying to pull what records we have. And so sometimes, yeah, any of that would be helpful.

I think I have some of those, but I think it's just the same. Okay. Yeah, okay.

yeah if you would want copies check with nicole because of course debbie was down here so nicole um printed them off for me so and robin you've been great with some of your historical knowledge because yours goes back to when you were the auditor and you've been able to tell us some things that we didn't know so thank you for that um okay so in the interlocal agreement um i think the one we were looking at was one of the most recent ones actually it's the one that i think is still in place as far as we know Hancock County Government and the Solid Waste Management District were commingled. At State Board of Accounts, and I think we got this info from you, Robin, they had requested delineation between the two entities. So then an interlocal agreement was adopted in 2008 and apparently been renewed now, we're finding out year after year. And the interlocal agreement states that the director shall be from Purdue Extension, the program coordinator will be a county employee, The Hancock County Solid Waste Management District will be insured by the county. The controller will be the county auditor. And I will point out, we at first thought there might be a dual lucrative office problem with that, but we have since changed our mind on that and think that that is acceptable. And the statute even says that a municipal fiscal officer can be your fiscal officer of the Solid Waste Management District. The EPA ID number shall be shared with the county, purchasing authority up to $1,000 between meetings. The budget may be combined with the education fund, but there is to be a separate accounting for the Hancock County Solid Waste Management District. And all grant documents are to be signed by the board and not by the director or coordinator. I think we were going off the 2008, so if you've got ones that are interlocals that are more recent, we may want to take a look at those too. Sure. Okay.

Well, Nicole can help us with that. Okay. Thank you.

I was just going to say with the interlocals generally, the statute is pretty broad in what it allows to be included in the interlocal agreements between the district and other entities. So that's part of some of the questions moving forward is like how do you want the relationship to be or not to be? And again, it's a pretty broad allowance in the statute. So, and that's, I think one of the things we noticed, at least with the older one, it's like, hey, we do need to update this because obviously if this is the most recent one, then some things have changed.

I don't know that we've signed an MOU since the new director came over and I've been auditor. So last one might've been when Robin left office and that director left.

Yeah, I know we did the MOUs. They did do resolutions before that. But during my time, I started doing the MOUs. I don't know that we have done anything.

Yeah, I mean, so so currently we we the things we're kind of looking at, we're looking at the MOU with Purdue is that know what's going on with it frankly um because i think there's some questions of whether like what produce wants to do moving forward with that as well so obviously we need to have you guys take a look at it again and then with the interlocal agreement that just sets the standard like how how did how does this thing run um and making sure that we cover all those things uh i think is is kind of big because i think there were some They just asked for it at our last audit.

Before my time. We asked for an updated one.

Yeah. And so that's, I think, you know, the state's always going to ask for these things. So if we have them, we should have an updated version of it.

I think I may have a slide in here coming up, but.

Did I skip ahead? Sorry.

It seemed to me like when the interlocal agreement was formed, and probably there was a little bit of delineation because it was almost like the solid waste management district was being treated as a department of the county and it's its own separable separate municipal unit um we treat it that way at the auditor's office and in gateway with the state and dlgf because i even have to be bonded for that okay that's good to know so i mean that's just the direction that they've given us okay

And what they tell us to do, we do. Yeah.

To that point, the solid waste management district having their budget approved by the council, like a department, is not really correct. It would be more that the council is giving a grant to the solid waste management district. Because you're your own taxing unit sitting here. You could levy a property tax if you would like to. And maybe that's something you want to consider with all of this SEA 1. stuff coming down the path and you know maybe that would make more fiscal sense we'd probably have to have a financial uh analyst look at that and so you've got a lot of things coming up to consider um let me got a slide about the purdue mou it right now it is expired and um DD tells us that Purdue is going through some changes. I know they've restructured with more of a regional format. But they've notified DD that she will no longer have use of Purdue Tech support for her county laptop computer. And does that mean your email address is also going away with them probably?

Okay.

Okay. Her office space currently is at the Purdue Extension Office and the building is owned by the county. I think one of the tasks that the board has before them is to evaluate where you need to be with Purdue University and if there's any reason to collaborate again or what services that, how you can collaborate together. That's probably got to be looked at here and determine whether you want a new MOU.

We had something saying that they were changing something. So don't remember what it was. It might be what DeeDee's talking about here, but at the same time, just recently had something come. I'll have to look at it.

Like the restructuring of the Purdue? I think so, because I think they're shifting employees and they're going to more of a regional format and less of every county office has their own core employees.

But we've got Wi-Fi over there now, don't we? So you can have a county notebook or whatever, and you'll have to get a county email.

Well, we could, as a board, if she operates under us, depending on how we figure all that out. We could probably temporarily get her a laptop, but the board could get her a laptop and an email address.

There may be a desire to. It wouldn't be a county email. It would be a solid waste management district email, right? Your own taxing unit. That's right. Think of it in those terms. And also, there's... By separating, there's a degree of transfer of risk. When you're combining things, there's a risk to the county that the county is taking on that you may not want to take on, that you may want to separate that over into solid waste management district, let them have their own risk. Like if there was some hazardous spill or something at one of these events, let's say, that only solid waste management district is on the hook for that, not the county, right? And we just had contract reviews today. There's some security in that by separating and operating independently, because you are a totally different board.

It would be similar to like tourism. They're their own separate board outside of our ledger.

They're like a nonprofit. And this is now, aren't they? Aren't they a nonprofit now?

The board they do, it's a statutory thing. I have not looked at that statute for a long time.

They changed to a nonprofit structure recently. And a not-for-profit advisory committee, something like that.

Where's the innkeeper's tax code?

too they're tied in with county government quite a bit so i i just think that this would be similar to that from our aspect and and county aspect that could be wrong i mean i think i think the the overall approach to this that i in my head i'm thinking through is the board here needs to you all represent county right in your individual other capacities so looking at the the district in and how best to accomplish the goals of the district while also working with the different councils you're on. And part of that is figuring out where the money goes and how the money flows from place to place. Because if you're saying, hey, we want to put all this stuff on the district, the district has to pay for it somehow. And then the question is, where does that money come from? Right now, it comes from the county in the form of a grant. but if a lot of costs are shifted to the district then that grant may have to go up to accommodate those additional costs um and then the vice you know and that may be you know a question about whether or not you want to do a tax rate or something um i think part the part where i generally the meta view of this is I don't know if anybody has really looked at the structure of how this is working for a very long time.

They've not.

And so I think that is where we're kind of coming from this and going, hey, how do we want this to work and how will it work? And asking those questions. And this is a little bit off those, but one of the things that your advisory committee or advisory board is there for is for this board,

to go ask them hey can you look into this for us that's what that's one of the things the advisory board does so we would have dd go back to the advisory board for ourselves and just say hey you're going to be directed to look at how the counties surrounding us yeah i mean are doing their operational report and i think and and you know obviously

That's going to fall on Didi. Sorry. Sorry, Didi. But I think the overall idea of getting people engaged in this process to figure out what do you want to be and how do you want to do it. And then once we figure that out, pushing the levers to make it happen. And that's kind of where this is looking at. How are the levers pushed in the past?

And how do you want to change them?

And how do you want to change them? Or going, hey, this looks fine. It's not broken. It's not broken. Let's go with it. Sorry. Sorry for that long aside.

No, good. Mainly for identified needs, as we were kind of looking at where we are now, is for bonding. And, Deb, I'm glad you said that you were bonded separately. I didn't know that, so that's good to know. The state requires...

the auditor have two bonds and specifically for this I think that that's where there's a lot of confusion because especially when CGS closed and I think they no one did really know what to do and they just kind of said well we still want this and they brought her in but yeah so but I think you were always bonded weren't you for solid waste even before they did that merge so I'm not sure what the scenario what the situation is

So I think we question whether there's a need to have more further people bonded because there's a lot of handling of money at these events. I think we have volunteers handling money. And we want to try to streamline that because the people handling money need to be bonded and we need to make sure that the payments all happen at maybe one place where that person that's overseeing that's bonded is watching all of that. These are public funds. So we've got to institute some safeguards there. I think that's one of the things we've identified. There's a really old internal controls policy that we found, but it's super old and probably needs to be looked at again. But I'm glad you have one because that's a requirement by the state law. um we need to look at i.t support and the website right now hancock county solid waste management district does not have an independent website if you go on the county website you drop down under departments and you'll find them there again it's not that's really they're not a department so it probably shouldn't be there but um if you're trying to have your own identity especially to the these other cities and towns and that you're working for all of them. Maybe it's important to kind of have a standalone website. That's something we've discussed, showing that you're an independent municipal corporation. You need to talk about future office space in light of the Purdue changes, and then talk about general insurance coverage and coverage for events. So we've started to look at some of those things as well. and whether or not the county wants to take on the risk for some of these events or whether it makes sense to put that aside and make that all solid waste management district and and they cover that liability themselves yourselves Other observations. Like I said, right now the district is treated more like a department of Hancock County. Budget requests come before the council like a department would, but this is not accurate. It's more of a grant funding situation from county to district. Budget approval should happen here by this board. So you need to approve your budget as part of the budgeting process. The board should set the vision and the plan for the district in light of any input you get from the advisory committee. You provide guidance and direction to the director, DeeDee, so that services can be delivered to all taxpayers within the county. I really just wanna implore you that I feel like DD brings a lot of information to you, but this board really needs to think amongst themselves how you want to guide your employee, which is DD. So how this board, what your vision is, what you want to do for all these municipalities within the county and all your citizens, and direct her and provide her that direction.

And to that point, I think one of the things that we would suggest looking at is the district plan. that plan is probably needs to be updated um it's you know as kind of pointed out initially there's an amendment that added a bunch of people to the the council which i'm not sure you can but but Part of that is looking at the plan as with comp plans and things like that. It kind of guides your decision making and helps you figure out, OK, what do we want going forward? And that allows you to make decisions based on that and then give direction to DD and other folks to make it happen. And I think that is, you know, I've always When I was on the council, I was like, I always like to point to the comp plan. They're like, this is why we're doing the things we're doing. It's in the comp plan. We had a process. We looked at all this stuff. People had input. And that way, when you move forward, you have a plan. Whereas I think this, the one we have right now is, it's old and it hasn't been updated for a long time. It's kind of been amended onto, but it hasn't really been, the amendments were weird.

Yeah, I would I would probably start fresh with a new district plan altogether.

They're not really integrated into it in a way that helps you figure out what it says. So I think that's so looking at the interlocal agreements, any MOUs you want to do, and then the overarching district plan is probably, you know, at least where I see that some of the need.

advisory board is statutory it's under 1521 311 just so you see how this is set up if you look at c in this section uh no no let's see d No, C. So in the resolution establishing an advisory committee, which I don't even think we've been able to lay our hands on that resolution, the board shall specify the terms of the members and the purposes of the committee. Each advisory committee shall do the following, study the subjects and problems specified by the board and recommend to the board additional problems in need of study and discussion. So the board needs to give, you know, there you see the board needs to give the advisory committee some things, direction of what you want them to sort out and then if invited by the board to do so participate without the right to vote in deliberations of the board later you'll see in the statute that you're supposed to meet with this advisory board two times a year so we should be having them come here at least two times to share their input each year the other thing we found out is that The current members of the advisory board don't meet necessarily every time the statutory requirements. For instance, they have to be residents of the county. Not all of the people participating on her advisory board right now are residents of the county. They're great volunteers. They may work here or work in conjunction with Hancock County, but they don't meet the statutory requirement, but there would probably be a way to like incorporate them as more of a volunteer board. We don't wanna lose those people. while they may not be able to serve in that exact role, there's probably a volunteer role that we could plug them in and they'd also keep coming to those meetings. So this is last slide. Um, the things that we're doing on August 4th but for the future and upcoming meetings we've already said that revamp the district plan think you need to totally do a brand new plan understand the procedural steps to amend the plan Indiana code 1321 321 provides that solid waste management district funds can be used for the cost of implementing the district plan we talked about This fall perhaps DD should be directed to go to the various municipalities and get input from them about what they want to see or how maybe the solid waste management district could provide services that they're now providing out of town funds or city funds that could be run through the district and save them some money and free up some money within those municipalities. Gather info as to the budget needs so that a request can be made to the council for grant funding. And maybe if real aggressive is if we got it done in time this fall for approving the district plan. We also know you have to meet two times a year with your advisory committee. So that's a lot just on the table, but probably needs a lot more discussion and happy to take questions or hear your thoughts.

So really everything needs a good shakedown. And it sounds like it needs to start with the advisory council, the advisory committee, correct?

I think at least one of the things we could have the advisory committee do Michael was talking about, have them find out how the solid waste district person is being taken care of in their community. So we can make a decision. I mean, if this is a separate, you know, entity, I said the solid waste board or Any employee Start out to direct them to one of those things I'd like to me her budget's gonna go up I Think maybe the first thing has to approve the grant to run that budget so currently it's the budget

It's currently what budgeted?

We're not doing the grant process, right?

Currently it's budgeted.

I think it would solve a lot of confusion that we've had and trying to figure out the employee is contractor. You know what's going on. I think it would. I think it's the best direction to take.

So Deb. Knowing that we need to bring the budget here and not to Council and this the this board needs to approve the budget.

can we make that happen through or where are we in that process I think I think until until we do this whole reorganizational thing I don't know that there's because she is already in the 2027 budget so I think once you get your new district plan and it's all reorganized then I think that that's when that you would adopt and Council would approve and then we could go ahead and even even in january of 2027 include a new grant line for for this district but i don't i don't know without all of that being in place how we would follow that but I mean, we would take your directions, you know, and the state's direction from it.

It would probably be best if we had the attorney's interpretation of how this should actually be. Oh, just a lot of pressure, guys.

Right now, it's currently budgeted. It's not through she is not paid through or this district is not funded by a grant. It is actually budgeted. I mean we even have we have we just had a budget meeting with DLGF for solid waste so I mean it's it's tied in and even at the state level I mean I the way I look at these things is

This year is done. Going in there and fiddling with the car right before you leave on a vacation is a poor decision. We're not going to swap the engine out right now. But the good thing about how this timing works is that gives us basically the maximum amount of time to figure out what to do with budgets for next year. so looking at this like how do we want to do this what do we want to pay for what do we not want to pay for how do we want to pay for things um what do we want to even do those are the questions to ask over the next year and then next but 2028 yeah and then for the budget cycle for 2028 then we can say okay this is because the thing is is that Could it be a grant is the right way to handle it? Maybe not. What's the best way of ensuring that there is some adequate separation, but also recognition that there's integrations here that are necessary to make things work? So I think, from my perspective, this year, don't even think about it. Because if you've already had meetings with the state, and the state's like, this is great. then don't.

I think back to Janine, what you were saying is start with the advisory committee. And I think that's a good place to start. Because I think this board, maybe next meeting, should look at your appointments and who's on that board. Let's make sure we get it following the statutory requirements. But then let's see if you can find some people from these municipalities that we know there was an intent to include those at some point and get their input on what they would like to see.

in all of the places throughout the whole county and not just you know one or two municipalities or well i was looking i was looking at this the the requirements for them and they're saying a lot of these members should be from the waste business so dd can speak to you do have some people from the waste business on your board but you have

Go ahead and explain that who's on there.

So on the front of your agenda at the bottom under I do have the list of the advisory board members and I'll just go through them and just tell you who they are. So Teresa is an employee of Lab core. Jared is an employee of Nine Star. Susan is an employee of Burke Engineering, former surveyor. Chad is the surveyor. Kennedy is an employee of Caldwell Environmental. Cole works in the surveyor's office. Nyla is with the town of New Powell. And Kim is just a Hancock County resident. So Kennedy is actually the only one that's in the calling business.

So what's the percentage we did? We could get a 50% we could get them to meet here at our next at least 50% of the members to the advisor board committee must be made up of red with that means that would actually work better for next month, right? That way we could think. Wasn't there a scheduling issue to share with share with them some of these things here and put them in charge of going out and doing these things we want to direct them to get done?

Can I ask a question? Because I do work with

Greg Garrett has quite a bit on budgeting, and it literally is set up under county government and then the county solid waste district for budgeting and purposes like that. Is there something that we may need to get him involved in if there's a law for the financing end of things that we're not aware of? I just don't understand why it's there on Gateway for... us to be over if it's supposed to be a separate district i looked on gateway and they're they have their own budget and their own their own budget but it's it's under my it's under my drop down so whenever we submit stuff i have to go in and do a lot of that i looked at an email from state board of accounts

and they were having trouble figuring out what kind of entity, what are you? Like, how's this set? Where's your ordinance? And we said, we don't have an ordinance.

Yeah, we had to dig around this last State Board of Accounts. I mean, and they accepted what we had, but it was.

I think we're added on under you because you have access to our records. I'm understating.

Well, I mean, I would be glad not to have it, but it's all tied in with DLGF. Whenever they do their pre-budget workshops, they're like calling that and I'm like, I don't know. I mean, it's just it's a lot. It's really commingled there.

So probably we're probably going to go with it for 2027.

And then I don't even know if you could get a new district plan. I mean, Robin, if they came in after January, I mean, and we needed to correct it according to the new district plan, we could go ahead and add lines at that point in time and we could make changes because we do an appropriation. But I just didn't know if it might be something worth reaching out to Greg.

Well, if we don't reach him out on that, I think we're going to reach out or I would think we would on the tax implication. What is a what's a tax living look like?

And I think council would like that if that, you know, took their whole budget and they had their own revenue stream.

I think back in 2009, I think it was that they did it. I think they intended to do this, to separate us, because before that, it was just a line item fund. We had the funds in the county's funds. And then they said, no, it's got to be separated. It's got to have its own budget and so forth. So I think that they were on the first step of that, and then it got, you know. dropped or whatever. Somebody moved on something. So I think that's where they were going on this, but no one instructed us to move forward.

I'm wondering if in 2009 there was a lot of issues. So I'm wondering if maybe they're like, listen, we don't have any money. Nobody has any money. So let's just not do anything right now. Because you'd be taking, you know, it's got its own tax rate, so that's going to affect other people.

I'm just kind of wondering, I mean, because throughout this thing, there's been different members and different commissioners and all that kind of stuff. Somebody get ticked off long way. Well, we're not dealing with that anymore. So, I mean, that's what I'm thinking it might be.

I think a new district plan and having everything with your internal controls and the whole thing laid out is the best course of action. I agree.

And with the with all that information stored somewhere so somebody can go back and find it.

Yes, I think I think maybe some of it was under the old solid waste director and some of it was the auditor's office. Some of it may have gotten recorded. I just think that you treat everything just like you do are all of our resolutions and our ordinances. Then there's no.

right and that just i just don't i don't think that we've lost anything i just don't think he's been done since cgs and you guys combined i just think it got really um hairy yeah well we have a lot better tracking system than we used to you know instead of going to the wall this morning and pulling all that paperwork nicole just pulled it up and printed them out for me yeah we've got it all in there yeah everything's been scanned so

Well, so I have a question here to do if we're going to do this new plan, which is great, but you're going to be losing your office space and email in November this year, right?

I will be losing my email address and all my software and accounting system and everything electronically. But my office space is still, I'm in a county-owned building, and Purdue uses that building for their services. So I don't feel like I'm losing my office space unless they have said that they want to kick me out. But I feel like I have an office, I just don't have any electronics.

They can't kick you out.

They can think they can.

We own that building.

OK, but if they have a lease agreement on it, I don't think there's probably not.

I'm just asking the questions.

If I'm not saying it's a memorandum of understanding, yes, and it doesn't include anything with the building.

I don't believe we have. I think we'd have to look at the county agreement with Purdue, but we don't like and that's right. anything to do with the solid waste management district so because Purdue is the one letting her work out of their leased space, but I don't know what the agreement is between Purdue and the county.

Yeah, we don't collect any rent for that building. And we do all of the maintenance, basically, there and upkeep.

Is there an agreement between Purdue and Yale? I could afford an agreement.

I don't know, but I'm sure I could find one.

Where did I read the agreement?

I was going to say, I've never seen one. I've never seen one. Green to the list.

This is another one of those, we did something back in like 1993, and then

We didn't do anything since we do have it. We do have an MOU with Purdue. I don't know what it says or if it's even is it still active?

Do you know?

But I do get a computer is temporarily until we get this.

I think I think your computer is county owned, right? Is that? The actual computer is county-owned on it.

It's maintained by Purdue, though.

Maintained meaning?

All their IT, their software, all that stuff is all Purdue. What kind of software are you using? So like Office, I do use Photoshop, all the Adobe Suite.

So when it comes to renewing that, if there's a renewal on that, that would be us.

They're not, it doesn't sound like they're specific things to Purdue.

They're just general, yeah. No, it's nothing Purdue. That's what I was wondering. And your email is county?

Email is a Purdue email address. I do have a county email address also, but I don't use it for very much. You know, I get maybe five emails a week. So, I mean, it's it's not utilized. So I could switch over and use the county email address unless you decide you want a solid waste district email address. And then I might as well wait until we get that set up and then do it all the transition. Identify it all.

Yes.

And note that the MOU right now, at least the one that I saw, talks about the director coordinator being a county employee. So if you want to change that, we want to redo the interlocal agreement. Did I say MOU or interlocal agreement is what I meant to say. And then I know there's been discussion about whether she should be her own contractor or whether she's a solid waste management district employee. So I think changing that interlocal is the first step and then you need to have that discussion. Which I know is has been something you want to talk about.

I think we're hoping maybe sending a message to the advisory board to see how it's done and the other communities help to. figured out or at least some information.

I actually know they're all separate. The solid waste districts are all independent from their counties. They hire their own employees. They have no, I haven't found anybody that has a contracted employee that works for the solid waste district. They're all solid waste district employees.

They're a solid waste district.

That's the way we need to move forward then because we've been so up and down on the contract county employees. That makes more sense. Yeah, and if When you start to revamp everything and you meet with your advisory council, would it be advantageous to have one or both of you there as well, just to kind of get them on the path to what we're looking for? Or we could leave that up to DeeDee. How would we handle that?

We'll handle it at your direction, if you would like us there.