County Council - Regular Meeting

a few thousand. A couple changes. All right. I call the April 8th meeting to order. We'll do the pledge of allegiance followed by the moment of silence. Okay. I pledge algiance 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.

Gosh. Golly, Shel's here.

He's back from vacation. Good to see you. All right. Uh, just a reminder to everybody that we are on YouTube and this is video streamed and live and all that. Uh, the first thing we're going to have on our agenda is going to pertain to sewer project. But before we begin on that, I just want I've spoken to Commissioner uh, McDaniel regarding this and I just want everybody to know that that there will be another presentation coming up in the future. So nothing will be decided today uh on anything but we it's to listen to it and hear about it. Okay.

All right. With that I will bring up first NineStar North State Road 9 sewer project on the agenda. Um could could I just start this out? U just to remind everyone that we do have a strategic plan that the uh commissioners and council um uh agreed to several years ago for development of sewer and water in the county. And uh that plan is based upon uh our feeling of a need to clean up the water in the county. And um you can you can read it, but the sewer part of it um has uh four proposals in u priority order. Number one was to develop the 200 West uh sewer line which is now uh being done and we contributed 6 million to it from ARP money. Second one uh in the proposal is to um uh do one on the north nine corridor. Third is the Charlottesville corridor and fourth is the Fountaintown corridor. So,

was the last one, Jim, I'm sorry. What was the last one? I believe it's a fountain town. Okay. Yeah. The fourth one, I don't know if you guys talked about it, but the fourth one, Mr. McDaniel has spoken with uh Jim Robertson down in Newal, and I think New is going to involved in that one. Okay. Um that that's a recent development, I believe. Okay.

Um but other than that, you're correct. All the rest. Well, when you say cleaning up the water, the reason you're saying that is because we have small towns that don't have sewer systems. They don't have finger systems. We don't really know what tiles the sewage is going into. Um, I can take you to Maxwell, that's where this project is coming from, and show you 3540 homes that we have no idea what where their sewage is going. I can tell you they go it's going somewhere. They go on our property on 500 and uh in a ditch. In a ditch. Well, it gets to a ditch somewhere.

But I've been on my in my life, we've been out there trying to find septic tanks for years and we give up long time ago and they just go into ditches somewhere. The sewage goes straight into the water table. And we have the same issue in Charlottesville. We have the same issue basically in Spring Lake. We have the same issue in in a bunch of other places. So that's when he says clean up the water, it's to try to take care of those concentrated housing places that have never had any type of sewer uh systems. I think you guys did my presentation.

Yeah, we're we're good at that. But along with the same time economic development along with the same time allowing sewers to come into those areas creates uh more economic development, more housing development, more everything because now you have access to u to sewer systems. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, council.

Very much appreciated. But, uh, George Pollinsky, vice president of engineering for NinStar Connect and kind of starting out of, um, we kind of informally think of ourselves as the county's utility. You know, we're Greenfield Power and Light and, you know, with the city of Greenfield, Greenfield Water, Greenfield Wastewater. The county really doesn't have any utilities and we kind of think of ourselves informally of fitting that role. A lot of partnerships, especially in infrastructure going back decades. Um, some of you on this board may recall of uh HC3 grants the county helped secure, the city helped secure, the schools helped secure to lay fiber optic cable across the county to connect all county government, city government and schools 30 years ago kind of at the foundation of the internet. We have since built off that and nearly every rural corner of Hancock County has access to fiber to the home and their services. is just over time these incremental investments build upon each other and it's the snowball rolling down the hill and eventually gets so large that you get the saturation effect with it. But kind of that rising tide lifts all ships. Um I think of why we're good partners is kind of strategic alignment. Um if you look at um the way this county is structured, our government's structured, Ninstar is very similar with our uh cooperative principles that voluntary and open measurement or open membership. Um much like a resident can move to Hancock County and you know we as a member of the community you abide by our ordinances much like you become a member of Ninstar we have bylaws you abide by those voluntary open membership um um democratic member owner control. Our members vote for our board of directors from amongst the members to set rates. Um we're not for-p profofit which means we are federally income tax exempt property taxes every year. on your little handout card shows the amount of uh property taxes paid on our infrastructure and buildings throughout the community. But kind of on that and kind of teeing

up right on what um Jim had said is kind of a little journey of the approach of kind of where we have been on the 200 west corridor, where we're headed Maxwell and kind of what's our ultimate destination through in Charlottesville or and other unincorporated areas. So, to kind of give you a little highlight of the wastewater, take that back. I know I've presented it orally, but at least you can see some pictures now. Um, four and a half miles of construction, three lift stations. It was a little over $9 million projects and 6 million came from this board in the terms of uh ARPA funding for it. Um, there's only 12 existing residents connected or in progress so far along 200 West, but that's not the kind of the big story for it. But some of those pictures, that one in the uh top left is 25 feet deep to the bottom and that is right at 200 west where they did a jack and bore to bring gravity sewer across 200 West. Uh the excavators you see there um that was in the north side of Boulders at Sugar Creek. Uh the top right is the new Boulders at Sugar Creek lift station. Bottom left is the new Mohawk Regional lift station just south of Amplify. Um those two pipes you see are 8 in uh that's a low pressure system that's right by the interstate and then the drill rig that installed those 2 in or two 8 in conduits uh for low pressure system parallel along 200 west there. So this didn't come that $9 million project was just one thing that made the infrastructure available there. Uh we also did a $2.2 million to replace the gravity mains and laterals in Riley Village. Um a lot of inflow and infiltration issues there. We wanted to be just sending waste water through the wastewater lines and not be carrying storm water or groundwater through those. Um, in 2026, we want to make this 200 West project more viable and get to more folks. Um, in Wildwood, which was not part of the project of 200 West, but we have some aging overhead electric lines in rear easements. We're going to try kind of

what we think is kind of a innovative project of installing electric facilities and gravity wastewater in the same bore in those rear easements to try to get this more people more septics retired more folks on wastewater. And if this is successful, we're trying to mirror that, you know, over the next uh taking it on another one to two streets year after year until we're able to sewer Wildwood kind of. So, on the water side of that, um, we did a little over a $5.5 million project getting a 12-in water line from Gateway, our elevated tank out there at Hancock Health Gateway out to Amplify. And we also did kind of a parallel project two years later, but last year when we finished this one up along US40 of getting from the gem area out to the Philadelphia area once again with water lines to fill those water lines, we needed additional capacity. Um, so in our Philadelphia property, we invested about $4.5 million to create another 1.44 million gallons a day in uh treat or water treatment capacity. So kind of this is the big thing, the results. So, if you haven't been out there, you see houses cropping up all over the place. Um, Mohawk Trails, it's 105 lots. Um, probably estimating total buildout, 18 months, two years. They I mean, I think there's 30 homes going right now and it's only 105 lots. They seem to be doing starting about 14 homes a month averaging. Uh, this was part of our um wastewater agreement. So, actually today we've been collecting $1,500 a lot for the county uh development fee. Uh 50 lots collected this far. So, don't let me leave without giving you a check for $75,000.

I won't. No, I I I know you won't get tackled before I even get out the door. You want to go up there now and get want to make sure that doesn't get lost. But kind of on the average sales price of just north of 375,000. That's $40 million in AV to the county, which used to be collect 60 acres of uh farm field. Is the uh $1,500 that you're collecting uh paid by the development? It is not the homeowner. not the homeowner.

And then across the street, this one was exempt because it was an existing subdivision as platted, but it's still 113 lots. Um, average AV on those, approaching 475,000 a home. That's going to add $53 million in AV to this county at full buildout. So, combined $93 million in AV where 115 acres of farm field once sat. So, as we continue to lose property from Cumberland, um, and the other entities, this is the things that'll probably that'll shore up what we're, you know, help shore up what we're losing instead of eventually the county just being depleted to small small amounts.

Now, you may ask, why is there a painting of Maxwell from 100 years ago in my this this painting hangs in my office? I kind of have a special affinity for the Maxwell area. I grew up at Cranberry Drive in 400 North. I went to Eden. I went to Maxwell. I used to ride my bike to Mom and Pops. So, but like I said, um I I proudly display that. It was uh painted by a former uh postmaster. I think it's MK Watkins in the mid 80s. Um I'm hoping he was busy and didn't do it during work, but um but there is kind of even in the Ninstar history, there's a special affinity for Maxwell. Um, many of you knew, he since passed away, but our former Hanok Royal Telephone CEO, Dan O' Conor, he had heard that there was looking in Indiana of post office consolidation. He knew at that time that the Maxwell Post Office held a special place in the community. So he actually even though our headquarters was a mile north of there and had a Greenfield address, he changed our billing remitt to address to PO Box 108 Maxwell, Indiana to generate another 15 or 20,000 pieces of mail volume through that post office to keep it there for the community. It's kind of those one little things of decisions and time that you know preserved a place. And up until a few years ago and the new owner did kind of a a facelift to it. It look very much like that with that kind of red paint up until a few years ago. So, kind of the vehicle we're looking to utilize on this is the Hancock County Regional Water and Wastewater District. Um, it is eligible for SRF funding, SRF loans, whereas a Ninstar is not eligible for those. And thankfully, so it was 30 years ago on Groundhog Day this year when the commissioners at the time and it was all about local control. At the time in the legislature, there was some legislation floating around about um if a county did not have or an existing

utility did not have a district in that area, then it would default to the IURC to find somebody to basically give that territory for. this county l about local control and controlling their own destiny formed this district. Up until this point there's been you know kind of dimminimous activity to it but because of this there's a vehicle to move this project. A little bit of the background for the Maxwell area in uh 2016 we acquired the Greenfield Central Maxwell and Eden package plants. um looking at those that there was just enough uh head capacity on those that you could connect some additional things. Not a ton, but at 20,000 gallons a day, 50,000 gallons a day peak for Maxwell and 10,000 gallons for Eden. Um at the time, County Materials was either looking to expand or relocate elsewhere. Um it was because of sewer that they were able to expand on their existing property. Um, so we were able to instantly leverage that now asset to get sewer under state road 9 and get county materials for their expansion. Uh, since then, Smith Projects, Maxwell Meets, Edward Jones, those of small businesses, um, Sapphire Springs, if you're familiar with that neighborhood around 700 North and 250 East, um, is served by our sewer. So, um, this the Hancock County government body took a big step in this area of creating in 2022 a tiff district um, between runs along State Road 9 about 8/10 of a mile east and west on average, runs from 400 north up to about the 9,500 block and encompasses about 3,800 acres. Um, in 21, Ninstar required 17 acres um, north between 600 north and 700 north. And in March 25, this would be kind of a for a future wastewater treatment plant site. Um, there is a ditch that runs right along the back side of it. Um, and we submitted a preliminary effluent

limit application to IDM. In April, we got a response that yes, all looks good, but you know, we can't make final determination until we have engineering plans for a treatment plant to say, you know, give you the thumbs up. So, kind of on that need, um, Maxwell, as Councilman Fisk has kind of alluded to, there's some lots as small as 0.11 acres. Um, most lots are between a quarter and a half. Uh, Country Mill between half an acre and 65 and homes along 500 North, half an acre. Um, dependent on soil conditions, um, that's still pretty small for a fully functioning septic tank, um, and finger system. And probably the biggest thing is, you know, when you're sizing lots and the, you know, the planning is working on this now, but the second you put that septic system in is you got to have room to for its replacement at some point in its history. The clock's ticking on it from day one that it's eventually going to fail. Um, and on lots that small, I I don't see any way that you could fit number one a first functioning system on it, but let alone the next system on it. Um we uh engaged with commissioners on uh jointly funding a SRF per preliminary engineering report and kind of taking in mind the the target of it and specifically tailored on that environmental component of it but then what did the county want to see you know from that planning from that zoning what kind of development do they want to see they engaged in a study that Clark and I were part of of envisioning that area of kind of that aggracience biotech that corridor. So, our per took that in mind and you can see on there it's low density commercial, commercial near the school, residential and commercial, low density. It's not speculative buildings, it's not warehouses, it's what we saw for that area from what we heard from this board and what we worked on in that committee. Um, there was an article I think that uh uh Mr. Mr. Higgby gave kind of a preview

maybe to the I think it was to the commissioners on kind of what was in the final report wasn't there and it's kind of moving forward but then from the economic development envisioned as a next generation rural innovation ecosystem a place where agriculture life sciences and technology converges to drive both economic growth and community well-being. That sum up a lot of the work we did. I I think that sums up nine months of work pretty good. a couple sentences doesn't feel as impactful one sentence in nine months of work but it's close

so kind of in that per that SRF option in January 25 Ninstar and the commissioners entered into anou to jointly commission this per in March 2026 that final report was available and in April um April 1st actually submitted SRF under the vehicle of the Hancock County Regional and Wastewater District. So, looking at some of those components, uh, just real high level, uh, sequencing batch reactor, SPR, wastewater treatment plant at starting at 100,000 gallons a day. Um, that doesn't sound like a whole lot, especially when you're anticipating growth, but SBRs and Aeromod plants, they can almost be infinitely expandable. It's not you build it for 100,000 gallons and now you need 200. You don't rip and replace it. you just add more tanks and add more components almost like Lego bricks and you just continually building out. Um the infrastructure we wanted to go big on. You don't want to dig that up and replace it at some point when it goes. So the infrastructure is a lot bigger. I know that's going to be a little hard for you to see, but um kind of highlighted at least some of the projects as I quickly talk about them was the uh Maxwell regional wastewater treatment plant that would retire the Maxwell package plant, the Eden package plant, regionalize those to a central hub. um an interceptor. I think it's 18 inch going north along State Road 9 Eden Elementary School pump station. When we retire the lift station, we have to install pump stations to get it to the uh regional treatment plant. I've listed this one in yellow to show you kind of on the next page when we talk just highle costs. We kind of thought that that would be an option A, option B type bid. um if the bids came in uh reasonable or under, felt like that could be part of the project. If they're a little higher than anticipated, then that one could easily kind of shift to a future state and maybe even put that on a developer should something go around there. Uh coming south along State Road 9, it was a 21in interceptor, Gravity. Um same thing at like we did at Eden at

Maxwell, we have to convert that to a pump station. Um along 500 North would be Gravity Sewer. And the big one is Maxwell Gravity and laterals. So covering all those homes in the town of Maxwell, Country Mill, getting all those connected to sewer, including the lateral. Is there going to be um I'll go back. I assume for existing homes, there'll be a tap fee involved. I think we're talking about when we're doing the lateral um we're trying to take the any of the barriers to connecting away from them.

Nice. Nice. I think uh the septic systems probably Kent knows of excavating those they may be a 55gallon drum at one point and then maybe they needed some more capacity so they welded another 55gallon drum to it to double their capacity on some of those septic systems. Yeah. If they didn't just directly tie into a tile because we couldn't find a lot. We couldn't find anything a lot of times. But in the future, like for the apartments that are south before you get to the interstate and even cranberry because a lot of subject system in Cranberry suck. Um even those areas eventually will be able to be uh put on the system.

We'd probably have to come through mutual agreement. Um 400 North is the dividing line between Ninstar Connects Wastewater Service Territory and the city of Greenfields. Okay. When we've first came to the commissioners to ask for sewer territory, uh we respected the existing municipalities 30-year growth plans and at the time Greenfield projected that 400 North would be future town limits 30 years or now 25 years from now. Okay. Yeah. Cuz those apartments have been there for 45 years. There was sewage standing in the in the septic fields 2530 years ago. Um, and there's quite a few little apartments there.

Absolutely. Even like I said when we talked about Charlottesville in that foundational documents for the uh Hancock County Regional Wer Water and Wastewater District, it mentioned Charlottesville and that was 30 years ago. I sit I sit on a board with with Bevguard 25 years ago about uh air water quality in the in the thing because we had a big sanitation company at the time and um Charlottesville was on the hit list in this out of all the state issues Charlottesville was was on the hit list then it's amazing

I'm looking at kind of those high level cost each one of those items I circled you know has SRF cops and an SRF eligible. The only difference between like the first uh the far right column and the column just to the left of it is SRF does not cover land acquisition. So purchasing easement. So that's why there's just a little distinction between those two. Uh total probable was on estimated was right around 20 just under 22 million and same thing with SRF eligible of just under 22 million. So I pointed that out when I had that uh Eden lift station in there cuz it has a a high dollar of about 1.2 2 million. That's one that we could easily make optional to try to keep this project under 20 million. But if we get some very aggressive contractors, aggressive bids, and can get all this stuff done for less than 20 million, that's definitely kind of a a bargain. I'm looking at kind of the timeline as laid out in the per. Um that red line shows kind of where we're at today with April 26. We we submitted the peer to SRF to uh for evaluation. Um it looks like for June we anticipate some type of per approval and then working that all the way out till November 2029 of initiation of operation. I think there is some uh lead in there or some time that can be made up. There's quite a bit of time between June of 26 of completion of environmental and then land and easement acquisition complete. I think we can probably aggressively pursue those and and ramp up that timeline and maybe even to a a January or a February at least spring of 2029 operation.

So you're looking at this is 2026. So you're looking at 2029 um as capability of breaking ground is what no completion of project completion of project. So break down the funding of the 20 million. Uh you said the because uh it's a district there is grants available uh for some of that and then what will the council be um in hooks for funding for however Jim I don't know if you have any kind of of how maybe anticipation of the district funding. Now the the the funding we have talked about so far is we would fund the whole thing, the whole 20 million. Yeah.

Okay. So, we're not they're not available for for assistance, federal assistance or anything on that. They may be, but um I guess the way we've looked at it so far is let's not count on it. Let's let's work with the the total and we would fund it. that we would go after uh grants both state and federal, but but we wouldn't count on it. We wouldn't hold it up because of that. And because this is a tiff area, then the other tiff's areas can uh support the funding.

What we hope it'd be about a million and a half a year probably uh for the bond payment. can't use Yeah, you can tiff money from another township for a project in another township unless they are in some kind of lineage con compatible or compared to servicing area. That's my understanding. Uh originally our our thinking was uh that uh we hadn't thought about the tiff area yet. So we were looking at maybe um getting it from economic development andor food and beverage some combination of those two.

Yeah. But I think I I think if we delve in there is um initial tiff funding even if it's um because you're out you're talking about a bond. Okay. I think they're um because the tiffs are continuous to each other. U they all match up now. I think I think um you might be able to draw from the other tiffs. That would be great. That would be great. Well, I have a feeling about they're not separate. Yeah, but they're not separate anymore because we tiffed everything. We tiff everything from a half a mile east of nine to to county line. So those tiffs touch each other. The tiffs touch each other.

It's continuous tiffing. Yeah. And it would also be a from the political end of it, it would be a way to say that we're using some of the u funds that are coming from the warehouses uh to benefit everybody in the county. Yeah.

Well, I I'll be gone at the end of the year, so my opinion isn't going to matter too much as we get later in the year. But I want to say that I would want to see the tiff monies generated from the areas that they are actually paying from to primarily stay in that area and service their needs being whether it's road improvements, infrastructure, what have you. And um if there's a contributory factor from the other tiff, uh define that and uh know that it's not going to be a major uh contribution that you're not going to bank on Buck Creek Township TIFF money to support a center township state road 9 project as a whole. That's just my feeling on it. And my gut is on that if like I said you're not going to see the development in that area in that particular tiff area until there is it's but lack of water and waste water of why we haven't seen development there. It may just need a year or two infusion after those facilities are in place and then hopefully generating enough tiff on its own to support that.

Yeah.

Yeah. I agree with you. Well, the the oposis of it is um in order for the Mount Comfort area to stay sustainable, in order for the mega sites and all those things to stay alive, we're going to have to have additional residential housing to support that at some point. And that's like from 200 west east of there. And then that's basically what's happening here is you're going to see residential areas be able to be uh created because of the sewer systems and stuff like that. Um because if you remember when you saw the original thing that farmers brought to us about the mega site, they had apartment complexes and all kinds of things around between here and McCordsville. And that has to be supported somehow with with sewer systems. And so that's that's why all this is runs contiguously

kind of right along those signs with uh wastewater. Ninstar is trying to parallel that project to get public water fire protection out in that same area throughout that entire corridor. It's a little project we're calling Heartland horizons kind of back to that kind of a bioscience rural living type of uh corridor. Um we're looking at a future wellfield, a water treatment plant, an elevated tank on uh 28 undeveloped acres that we own on the uh southeast corner of State Road 9 and 600 North. Um in June of 24, we conducted both a 6-hour, which is not required, and a 24-hour required pump test and received a permit for 3.3 million gallons a day of withdrawal from that particular aquifer. Safe yield. We talk about safe yield. it was if you had to pump 3.3 million gallons a day for a 100 consecutive days, those pumps never shut off that uh folks with residential wells in that area would not be affected. That's kind of the requirement of when you actually receive your permit. So, some kind of the components of that is a water treatment plant. I'm looking at a 3.3 million gallon a day horizontal pressure filtration. Um, for what that looks like, um, look no further than Becken Hole Park at the city of Greenfield's water treatment plant back there. It's a very very similar design, elevated tank. Um, the the breaking point as far as um, if you saw Greenfield's new uh, I think that's a 2 million gallon composite tank there by the 911 center, the break point between using a composite and a spheroid design um, is about 750,000 or a million gallons. But being able to price both those out and see what we need for that particular area. based on kind of the hydraulic modeling. Um we're getting ready to start on another or 750,000 Scott and kind of your neck of the woods. You may have gotten a letter from me in the last month or so to let you know that and show you a picture of what it's going to look like when it's done. Um and then the biggest thing is the water manes. Uh, like I said, going big

from day one to support whatever the future holds for the next 30, 40, 50 years in that Maxwell area of 12 or 14 in along State Road 9 and 500 North and then 6 to8 in within the kind of unincorporated town of Maxwell Country Mills insuring fire protection, public safety, public water supplies. And our looking at our estimated water infrastructure cost is just north of 24 million to make that project uh or viable. So on some of those uh Heartland horizons, the letters of support that we've received was from Greenfield Central Schools. They also submitted a letter of support for the SRF application. U Maxwell has had documented instances even though we handle their wastewater. Um they do have wells there for their water supply. Um they've been contaminated with E.coli. They have to test those daily and every once in a while they do fail a test. And when that happens, those wells have to be bleached. They have to be cleaned. They have to bring in skids and skids and skids of bottled water for all the students. And uh you know um when we purchased the wastewater treatment plants and Dr. Owen had kind of told us that I'm not in the utility business. I'm in the educating students business. And I was happy to get that off my books and not have to worry about wastewater anymore. But he still has to worry about water because they are on wells still there too. And contaminated or septic fields that are failing, they do contaminate wells. And um Maxwell, like I said, being a public institution, they do have to test their water daily, you know, where residents do not. So, kind of finally, you know, what's our ultimate destination with this is after we get done Maxwell, um I didn't include Fountain Town here. I didn't even kind of think of that. Sometimes I think of that as a Shelby County community, but you're right, it is in Hancock County. But, uh, Charlottesville, Mohawk, Philadelphia, Willow Branch, there's all these kind of unincorporated villages that this same model could work to, uh, be able to sew those. But, I think Maxwell is kind of first and foremost. It's a known issue

and there's quite a bit of viability towards economic development in that area. It doesn't hurt that it has a couple schools there as well. Is it is it possible to receive the presentation? Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to share it. I may have to give Bernie via a flash drive. It's about 75 meg. And

so I got a lot of pictures. Got a little happy on there, but I wanted to show you at least what uh what was accomplished. George, I don't know whether you I didn't hear it uh covered it, but to get to the Charlottesville uh project, the idea is to uh for the the people who who pay a monthly fee for the sewer line in the 9 north area, there would be a small amount, a monthly uh addition to their fee that would then be uh coming into a sinking fund that would eventually be able to be used for the construction of the Charlottesville

sewer system.

I didn't get into the Charlottesville, but we did kind of a I'll call it a PE light of Charlottesville and those numbers were very high. I think Maxwell and Charlottesville were almost on the same level uh with the number of residents. And if you looked at just servicing debt um debt payments, uh the sewer bills would have to be north of $300 a month just to support the debt service. That's not paying principal. That's just interest on the note. Um so, but um Ninstar, like I said, we think of ourselves creatively. Um our f our kind of cooperative grandmothers and grandfathers saw an area, you know, they were doctors, businessmen, um you know, agricultural farmers. um they saw Greenfield had electricity and they didn't. Uh they saw, you know, maybe New Palestine had electricity and they didn't and they came together and they figured out a way to make it to make it happen. And now all of Hancock County and all the rural uh areas have electricity out there. So we're facing these same problems that we faced before, you know, nearly 90 years ago in rural America with electricity. We had Janine and I when we were doing the comprehensive plan we went to all the different entities and when we went to Charlottesville they were very positive about it and they knew you know to hook up there might be some cost but the fire department needs the water they have to take their tanker someplace else to get water and they said we can't even have a gas station because you have to have restrooms and you know and so they were all very positive about they wanted all that out there. I said I think we can get there, but I think it would probably be um 2030s time frame.

Well, I appreciate everything you've done and I remember sitting in the little meeting room more than four years ago when we talked about ARPA the first time and we talked about these needs and getting out to Charlottesville was, you know, a pipe dream because it would cost so much money. Um, and that's when we decided on the 200 West project. And it's cool to see it come to fruition. And I just want to say, I don't know if the public in general knows, but I want to thank Ninstar for being such a community contributor. I don't know if the general public is aware how much you guys give back and your employees volunteer and you you put your employees in our civic programs like Leadership Hancock County and you guys are just um a great contributor to the community.

Appreciate that. That's kind of those cooperative principles concerned for community.

Um, you know, the community is going to grow. We we can't stop it. It's been happening for years. It doesn't look like it's ever going to stop. Uh, so the only thing we can do is enhance the areas we want it to grow in. So we kind of uh create an environment where we want the growth to go. And so where we want the growth to go is where our infrastructures are. Um, and that's why this, and if you look at the North State Road 9, the state has dumped millions of dollars into North State Road 9, keeping it up to date, uh, last year alone, fixing interchanges or, you know, where where fatalities that happened. Um, and all kinds of things like that. And then we have schools up there, uh, so access to education is is is very viable. I know Maxwell has plenty of ground to expand their schools if they have to eventually. um you know, fire departments eventually had to be moved, you know, expanded up into that area, but um I think it's important for us as a county to embrace those infrastructures up there. If not, then the cities will have to do it and then we lose um we lose more of the the county whenever the cities have to take over stuff.

Uh anything else? I'm going to start try to stay on task today cuz uh we have a pretty packed schedule and I know some of us have a meeting 11:30. So, anything else? All right. Thanks, George. All right. Next up is uh for this on the agenda, it's 9:00 sewer projects with Lena.

Afternoon everybody. Lana Bergazi. Uh I'm the owner and founder of BCS Management. Um thanks George. Uh we worked with Ninstar in the county on the 200 West project. Um, after listening to George, I'm going to back up on what I was going to talk about and still make it quick. I know you guys have a packed agenda and you just listened to uh Tales of Sewer Projects for 30 minutes and I think George outlined that uh the projects themselves quite well. Um, I founded my company 13 years ago in Allen County uh managing the Allen County Sewer District and septic elimination projects. Um, I thought, what am I doing in sewers? Why am I working in sewers? Um, doesn't everybody already have this figured out? Don't the engineering firms do all of this? And I want to point out that um we do not do engine uh engineering, but I found a niche in um uh sewer districts and since have built a company that uh specializes in sewer districts. We've we've formed them. We've dissolved them. We've combined them. Uh we run them on a contract basis. Um excuse me. So, I'm going back to what I uh wasn't going to say, but George pointed out something really important is that you guys have a county sewer district that does not have any employees. It does not have any infrastructure. Um, it doesn't have it has a board and I think some people know who's on it and some people do not, but uh it is a great mechanism that you can use to get SRF funding for projects that otherwise would not be eligible. Um, and so somebody has to manage those those uh interfaces, right? So Ninstar has been a great partner. They're a wonderful utility. They're a wonderful county um agency, but if they're going to be running these projects through the county sewer district, they need somebody that specializes in sewer districts that can help you put together your capital stack that can help you um with the public relations and be that interface between the county agency and the entity that's going to ultimately

run these, which we believe for the most part will be Ninstar. Um, we do have a project that's listed here that is the new PAL one. Um, that's still included in the concept that I want to talk about today. Uh, but I think that one would be an exception to the county sewer district approach, if you will. Um, because I think, uh, unlike Ninstar, Newal has a sewer district. they can be eligible for SRF funds on their own, but they're probably going to be asking for some startup funding, uh, which is the concept that I've, uh, put in this handout for you guys. I don't have a fancy slideshow like George. Um, uh, maybe next time, but I did put something together here that that talks about how do we prioritize projects? How do we get these projects moving forward? How do we determine what the rates are going to be? How do we get creative in communities like Charlottesville that um as you guys know if if we go forward with the project that George described um would not be affordable for the residents of Charlottesville. You you can't move forward with a project that's going to be $300 a month sewer bills in in rural Indiana. Um so a lot of what we do is uh basically coming up with how to solve a problem from essentially nothing and someone has to help get that that process in place. So, a lot of the projects we've done over the last 13 years have been in areas that are very much so like Charlottesville and like Maxwell where we have to get creative. We have to find a way to combine what we refer to now the the term is the capital stack. You guys were talking about TIFF funds. You were talking about SRF grants. You're talking about connection fees contributor contributing from the school. You know, whomever is going to be putting that together. And that's the piece that we put together. But somebody has to kind of fund what we would I I hate the term owners rep, but that's essentially what it is where we would say what's the priority going to be. Where are the funding sources going to come from? What should

the engineers be focusing on? How can we make this affordable for the residents? And that could be paid for what I'm uh presenting here as the um name it whatever you want, but the Hancock County uh water local revolving fund. and you would you would create a fund that would be used specifically for these kind of startup planning owners rep um contractual arrangements between the Hancock County Regional Sewer District and the uh municipality that will al or the the co-op that will ultimately operate these areas. Um the public buyin, the public relations, the um rate planning, all of the pieces that are non-engineering for these projects. Um, and then betting on that the project would eventually have an ultimate financing mechanism, whether that is bonds, whether that is grants, whether that is tiff money, or some combination thereof. All of those expenses up to that point at the time of loan closing would then be eligible non- construction costs that could be submitted as part of the uh the the loan closing or the bond closing um and reimburse back to the county essentially recycling back into that fund to move on to the next one. So, in George's timeline, he had Maxwell loan closing in October of 2027, right George? Um, that particular one, if if the county seed fund contributed to the administrative and uh operational setup and the public relations of that project, when that loan closed, those funds expended would be reimbursed back into the fund to go to the next one. Um, we also have some some ideas about Charlottesville. Would love to coordinate with Ninstar on that, but utilizing again leveraging the Hancock County Regional Sewer District as the actual owner of that project until the

long-term operational and foundational financing is is put together. Um, so what I have here is not actually a proposal to utilize my company. Uh, it's not a proposal to utilize BCS management. Um, I did present something similar to the county commissioners that had some more specific projects on March 16th. Those were suggestions of priority projects based on our discussions with uh, Ninstar and with the uh, county uh, planning director and county engineer and just some ideas that we believe would be the priority projects. Those can of course change and the structure and the pricing of those can of course change. Um, but my intent here is to introduce to you all the the idea, the concept of a revolving fund at the county level to start moving these projects forward in a viable way. Um, outside of the engineering, the engineering would likely need to be included, which is why I suggested the fund funding levels that I did. Um that would be what I've put in here for seeding the fund would be for uh services in addition to ours including engineering and legal uh survey things like that everything that's required to get you to the point of financing your projects. So this is something that we're taking uh to other counties. We have uh successfully in the past reimburse seed funding for these types of projects to counties. Um, but it was kind of a in the past it's been a you guys get this started, we'll get the project financed and then we'll reimburse you and that was the end of it. Uh, the thought of a revolving fund loan is a is a new program that we're taking uh to several counties um as a way of continually every every county has multiple small uh communities that are unincorporated or incorporated but don't have a utility that need this type of thing. And so, uh, this is this is

something that we think can be beneficial across the state of Indiana and especially in Hancock County where you have such a great partner like Ninstar, uh, being your county utility as George puts it. So, I have just a couple questions. Lonnie, you've been working with Ninstar a long time, right? Because I think I probably met you four years ago talking about that first 200 West project. That's right. Yes. You're an you're an attorney, are you? I am not an attorney. Okay. uh should have went to law school. I could charge more. Okay. Um but I did put together that contract um between the county.

No offense attorneys. Uh I did put together I did draft the contract uh between the county and Ninstar for those uh reimbursements and such. And a lot of that uh I'm not an attorney. So I draft it uh with the concepts that we think will work from a business and foundational operational perspective and then run it through the attorneys to make sure it's sound. Yeah. And then um based on your prior experience, Jim mentioned, you know, there might be funding, we won't plan on being funded. In your experience, you know, how optimistic are you about receiving funding from the various sources you know about?

Well, that's a great question, Key. Um, first of all, SRF has become much much more competitive and so ranking on those projects has become significantly more difficult regardless of how good your per is. But I do know that SRF is highly focused on the environmental stewardship piece. They score their projects much higher for that. Um, most of the projects that get uh ranked need the financing to make the rates affordable for the homeowners. And there's combined with the environmental stewardship piece which we know Maxwell will score high on just because of what we know um and the um the income the median income. The issue with the income piece in Hancock County is that your countywide median income is pretty high. Um so sometimes it's hard on these applications to get hyperfocused on a specific small area that is actually lower income. But long-winded way of saying you have a good chance. But um in the last 3 to four years, we've had to get a lot more creative with financing and do that. Bring in the word capital stack all the time where it's a little bit of SRF uh a little bit of grant and then it's tiff dollars. And I know Mary mentioned she wants to keep the tiff dollars where the tiff dollars are. Um but also you can it's just creative ways of making this affordable. You can't have $300 sewer rates. You just can't. Um, but it's it's a it's a I think it'll rank, but I can't say that it will. It's just gotten a lot harder. Projects that you think absolutely will get grant funding don't always.

So, the fact that the that the water is contaminated will help our cause. Yes. Uh, yes. Environmental need is a big deal there. Yeah. Any other questions? All right. Thank you for your time. Thank you, thank you. All right. Next up, Hancock County Public Library annual update. Dave Gray, come on up.

Good morning. Thank you. State. Uh we have every four years we have to make an appointment to the um the board appointment to the Hancock County Public Library. Uh Dave Gray and I have spoken and he has a suggestion of who it shall be.

I talked to uh um to Scott and I said we have an opening on our board and he suggested somebody from Friends of the Library which is a wonderful separate 501c3 that helps provide um for literacy needs in the community and sometimes outside the community but also for the library as well. So, I got him in contact with the uh friends board president, and she's actually here today. Marilyn Burroughs uh who I think would be uh we both thought would be a wonderful uh addition to our to our board. She knows uh she already has a key to the back door for the friends. So, uh she's in all the time and and we work together well and and I think it would be a good way to highlight the the friends of the Hancock County Public Library as well. Do we need do we have to uh vote on

Yeah, we have to have a motion and a second and then vote on the board member. It's the term is good for four years. Correct. I think Mary Lynn is an excellent choice. So, I would like to move that we um appoint Mary Lynn Burroughs. I'll second it. All right. I have a motion and a second to approve Marilyn Burroughs for the board appointment to the Hancock County Public Library. All those in favor say I. I. Any oppose? Same sign. Motion carries.

Thank you. Our first meeting will be next Tuesday. We'll get the paperwork done and I'll get it to Mary and and get all that notorized. So, thank you very much. appreciate your support. I know you have a full agenda. I have a very quick annual update. On uh my first slide, I always like to go over how uh we spend our money. And uh on the lefth hand side, you have uh what we spend. On the right hand side, you have state averages that we get from the Indiana State Library. So, from salary and benefits, we're pretty lean. We try to be so we can be flexible. Uh we're about 53%, the average is 61 uh collection. Uh we're usually around 181 19%. We're just under 18% this year. The average is 14. We try to put as much into the collection as we possibly can. Uh supplies is usually about average. Uh other services and charges is a big area. It could be anything from landscaping, snow removal, which we've had a little bit of this year. Um so we're usually a little bit under on that. We're over on capital because, as you know, we came for an additional appropriation for uh two new boilers and a chiller uh and a 20-year-old building. So that was expensive. And then right after the primary uh election, we're usually the most popular site. Uh we'll be doing some extensive work in our parking lot because it it needs a lot of attention. On the next slide, just a quick overview of some of our 2025 stats. I'm happy to say we have over 21,000 active card holders. We had almost 460,000 visits to one of our locations, including the bookmobile. Kind of a fun fact, if everybody checked everything in at the same time, we wouldn't have enough room to put it on the shelf. Uh but we would have 252,190 items. We usually have somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 to 40,000 items out at any given time. Uh we had over 19,000 people attend one of our 874 programs last year. Uh a breakdown between physical and electronic, which electronic is a is a a big growing area for us, but we still have a very healthy physical collection. We're at about 6832 about 634,000 physical items checked out last year and just over 293 digital

items. So, we're seeing the digital increase about 2 to 3% every year. Not included in that 21,000 card holders is a great partnership we have with all four school systems to where we provide electronic cards to all the students. So, we've issued over 25,000 cards. Um, those are for electronic items only, but it also helps when those kids come into the library. It's easier to give them a card because we already have them uh in our system and and ready to go. Uh those students have checked out uh 89,000 items. Our electronic resources, a little bit of a breakdown. We checked out over 17,000 movies, TV shows. Um kind of maybe surprisingly, we checked out more audio books than we did uh ebooks last year. So we checked out over 50 151,000 uh audio books and over 118,000 ebooks. We had over uh 5,900 songs uh streamed. And we also have a service called tutor.com and that's anywhere from um it's K through 12, but it's also for adult learners in college as well. And those are actually live virtual tutoring sessions. Uh we started that midway through the year and we had 665 tutoring sessions. And I did have my son who is at Purdue University use that for calculus and that worked out really well. Uh beyond the bookshelf, uh we do experience passes. So when we can, we try to have uh free and reduced uh state parks, museums, cultural sites across the state. Uh we also have board games, learning tools, puzzles, Blu-ray players, iPads, and uh Wi-Fi hotspots that are very popular. And again, we have uh study rooms at both of locations in Greenfield and New Palestine. And we had over 63,000 people use one of our small study rooms. Maybe surprisingly, you think everyone has internet and a computer at home, but we had over 53,000 computer sessions on our public computers last year. And again, over 19,000 people attending one of our 874 programs. We can also personalize service for you

if you have an issue or something that you'd like to work on, whether it might be your laptop, your iPad, one of our services, or genealogy. Uh we can book a librarian and we match you up with the person that's best suited for that. Uh we can also help you find your next great read. For parents, if you give us your child interest and reading levels, we can have a stack of books ready for you to go. And we also do interl loans. Sometimes there are some uh items that we might not purchase, uh we might not be able to purchase, but we work with other libraries, academic and public, across the nation, uh to not only lend, but also borrow books as well. Try to provide service where you are. Hopefully, you've seen our bookmo and some of the parades and some of the community nights. We had 466 stops last year serving almost 18,000 people. Wilkinson Shirley, the local healthcare community, schools, and many more. Uh we also have delivery service as well. Uh we will pick up and deliver materials for patrons. So we had 153 homebound patrons that couldn't make it in. And we also provide uh special teacher collections when they contact us. So if they're working on a a particular uh lesson, we can absolutely get a special collection for them. And we did almost 200 of those last year. Uh, another project that we had last year was a remote locker. Uh, on those eastern three townships, uh, it's not always economically feasible to have a brickandmortar location, but we do have the bookmobile. We do work with the schools, and we also installed a remote locker. It's actually the same lockers that are used by Amazon and Home Depot, but they're branded and the software is specialized for library service. So you can actually check out uh of course the students can check out any of our electronic items uh that they would like with the electronic card if they have a physical card. We can also have for anyone because it's right outside the uh main entrance of the high school at Eastern Hancock schools and they are wonderful to work with us on that. You can request any of our physical material

and we'll have it there in two to three days depending on when you request it. You're notified. You walk up, you scan your card, the locker pops open, you grab your items, and it's checked out to you at that point. You can also return back to the same location and return your items as well. Summer readings, our busiest time of year. We try to help with the summer slide. We had uh almost 4,200 participants read almost 8 and a half million minutes. Uh, as I said before, we had over 19,000 people at 874 programs, but in that short two months, we had 8,900 people participate in 237 special activities and programs over the summer. We have a wonderful partner with the community foundation. Uh, we've been working with Imagination Library since 2016. Um, the community foundation is the funding piece and we do all the administration. So, we take care of any address changes and new users. Uh we usually have around 2,700 people enrolled in the program and you can see a breakdown of uh where they are if you've graduated if you're not familiar with the program. You receive a uh book at home once a month from birth to age five. And if you go through that program, we consider you graduated and we've had over 3,300 kids graduate from the program. I have a link up at the top from a daily report reporter article that uh they took the data from the kids and then their testing data as well and it showed that those kids that participated in Imagination Library scored higher on kindergarten readiness than those kids that did not, which we knew, but it's always nice to get the data that backs that up as well. Couple other projects that we worked on last year, we fully redeveloped our website uh to better feature our services and spaces. Of course, we want to be uh compliant as well. We are. And we also refreshed our mobile app. I always put my contact information in here. That also includes my cell phone number. If you ever have any questions, concerns, anything at all, please do not

hesitate uh to contact me. We're always happy to talk about the library. When I get locked out of the app, I call you, right? Let me know. We want those checkouts. He's probably not the one that solves it for you. Yeah. Not so bad. Uh Dave, specifically h how do you support the Eastern Hancock uh Sure. school?

So, uh I've been at the library for 24 years now. When I first started, we actually had a satellite branch at Eastern Hancock. Um it didn't go over as well as we'd like. Um obviously for um financial reasons and just logistics, it was difficult to have something out there. And then if you do, where where do you put it? Uh I mean, there's a township where you there's not even a Coke machine. Um, so working with the schools has been key for us. So working with the schools with the bookmobile stops and as well as these lockers. Um, you don't have to come to Greenfield, you don't have to come to New Palestine. Um, it started off a little bit slow with the lockers, but that's kind of the way that we wanted it. Uh, just so we could work out some of the kinks. And so that's actually gone very very well. Um, because that school is the kind of the hub of that whole community. And so that kind of a lot of people come to the school as well. So, we've seen uh good traffic and increased traffic with those lockers as well as our special deliveries and also some of our homebound patrons are in the eastern part of the county as well as our bookmobile uh stops that we come through. And we also go to Eastern Hancock schools um in addition to Wilkinson, Shirley, and Charlottesville. Technically park in Henry County when we're in Shirley, but we're there. PE

people are literate on the east side. Absolutely. We we we love our Eastern Hancock patrons. You guys do a great job. My son loves the library and I see you there. He thinks it's an awesome place to be. Good. We'd love to hear that. Very good. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Dave. All right. Yeah. You you any of you guys I've gone to his board meetings about once once a year roughly and you guys can go to it anytime you want. Pretty educational, tell you a lot of things. He makes it he's very um

very helpful and and always willing to talk to you if you go. So, all right. Next up is 9:30 Vernon Township Public Library annual update with Ashton Bennett. Good morning. Um as you know, my name is Ashton Bennett. I am the library director for the Vernon Township Public Library. Um, some of the things I'm going to share with you today are also going to mirror some of the statistics and things that of course our Hancock County Public Library is doing um, in terms of collaboration and working with all of our patrons. So, um, our year in review, the first page that you have, I like to showcase a plotted map of where our card holders are, specifically since we're township based. Um, so you can see all of those red dot clusters, all of those are individual card holders. Um we did see an increase of um almost 13 and a.5% of our card holders um almost reaching um over sorry over uh 43,000 um of our residents have cards. So Vernon Township our census numbers from 2020 that we based that data off of is still 15,615 but we know that that's going to be greatly higher um by the time our 2030 census goes around. Um I also have d um dotted plots outside of Vernon Township. We do have reciprocal bar agreements of course with Hancock County and we have Pendleton reciprocal bars. So because we're kind of placed on that line of Hamilton County um and Madison County um we try to serve those patrons as well. Um our Hamilton County residents, we have over 109 um family cards that are purchased. They pay $35 to um have a Vernon Township Public Library card. We're seeing a more increase of those because if families live right on the side of 96th Street, um which is within walking distance of our physical building currently in Fortville, um their taxes go to Hamilton East Public Library. And so the option for that is for them to pay $35, which is essentially the amount that residents would be paying for library use. So

we're seeing more and more of those. We do have a lot of um Hamilton County families that are coming to our story times and our programs. Um we often hear that they like the environment. It's much smaller, um more cozy. um our staff know them by name, that sort of thing. So, I I did want to share that our our location's super unique and so um I like to highlight the the avenues that we have to support the other residents living just outside of our lines, but bringing them into Hancock County. We do have a variety of um design patron cards. So, you can see those on there. And like Dave had mentioned, um we do partner with Mount Vernon Community Schools and Guys Monastery. All students and staff can get a Vernon Township Public Library card to access our resources. Um something that is a little different than Hancock County Public Library is that we're an Evergreen Indiana Library. So we pay into the statewide consortium. There's over 155 other libraries in the state um that we can share materials with. So that serves as a um distribution hub. So our patrons, if there's an item um that has too many holds, they can place a hold through Evergreen. It is sent from one of the other 155 libraries in the state to us and then available for them to pick up and return at our public library. The same for us. We share more than 12,000 of our materials every year with other libraries across the state. We're sending those in and out. Um I have um our resources for teachers. So I um one of my passions I was an academic librarian before I came into public. So I like to go into the school systems, educate the teachers and students about their card. Um so we have a resources for educators on our website where our um teachers can fill out a form request um some in-class um instruction and then as well as us providing cards for the students on that day showing them how to utilize them. We've done a lot of teacher sessions as well to get them educated about how the Vernon Township Library cards do work. You can see our statistics, our increases in library visits. um we see

we saw just under 40,000 um in-person visits last year and then we have increased almost 90% um by the reference questions that we answer. So we track um when people call and ask us um any sort of reference question. It could be to get resources into the community. It can be about our collection. It can be just other services that are available. Similar to what Dave mentioned, we track our programs and events. Um so we held 369 programs last year. um 5,73 um in our attendance. Lots of those were in collaboration with our community partners. We don't have a lot of space in our building, so we are out in Fortville and McCorville parks. We're utilizing spaces at town hall, um those sorts of things. So, those aren't just in-house programs, but it is what our staff planned and presented. Um our summer reading stats from last year, we had 601 completions. We consider completion if they participate 75% of the time, so six of our eight weeks. And then you can see that we gave out almost 2,000 prizes um which we purchase a variety of things. Lots of those are books though, so they can choose their own books to start their home library each week if they participate in summer reading. Um we also have a partnership with um Libbyy's Ice Cream for a thousand books. So I like to highlight that a lot. So a thousand books before kindergarten is um a program that focuses on readiness for students to enter school. And um a thousand books seems like a lot, but we break that up into hundreds. And we're encouraging, it's a family bonding experience, too. We encourage the parents to read to the kiddos. Um and then they track that um either through an app or come to the library. We have a little wall of fame that they get to put their stickers on um as they complete each 100 of those. And then um at 500, they do get a Libbyy's ice cream um gift card. So um working their way to a,000 books. We have partnership with Logan Holmes, one of our local homebuilders, who will purchase a book that the child wants to start their home collection.

Um the map on the next page is kind of my mind um if I could draw it. So uh each of the um orange highlights are things that we're doing that are outside of our collection, outside of what we consider to be, um you know, foundational library services. So we work with um early childhood centers. We visit 17 in Vernon Township um including the local schools preschool and those are daycare story time. Um our staff go in present a story time, do an activity with the kiddos and we visit them each month and we see um 27 sessions each month of kiddos in those um in those entities. We also do school outreach. So I mentioned going in and presenting to the schools. We partnered with Mount Vernon to offer adult English classes um last year. Um that also was paid for by a grant through the community foundation. We've also increased our afterchool programming for all ages. So we do visit um both elementaryaries, Fortville, McCordville Elementary, the middle school, the inner school, and the high school to provide after school engagement. Um we also provide delivery delivery service. We don't have a bookmobile, but we do go to um all of our senior living facilities um one day of the month, provide books and materials for them to check out. And then we've also started partnering with um the home builders when they have their um family days to get people acclimated with the area or people that have bought homes. We're going and presenting and providing an activity and getting them signed up for library cards on those days before their homes are even ready. Um and some future focuses. So I'm going to talk here in a minute about recordsville location. Um but we are revising our strategic plan this year. We are doing that in partnership with the Mount Vernon Education Foundation. Um, we're also creating multiple unique collections. So, that'll go into my discussion with the Mccorville location as well. Of course, our focus is always on literacy development, supporting our families and our young kids, getting them ready to school and providing those literacy elements and life level of lifelong learning. Um, we're expanding our community partnerships. So, we have

um partnerships with um IvyTech Community College um out of Anderson um Firefly Children and Family Alliance. So, we have some animal rescues that are all coming and doing programs and offering services to our to our patrons. Um, and then the story walk at McCord's Square will also open um a little bit later this year. We received a $10,000 grant from the community foundation in partnership with McCorville Parks Department to install a permanent story walk. Um, our staff will do the story walk each month. It'll have panel boards and um we'll have a celebration to open of course, but it is open to the public for them to walk around McCord Square Park um in between Ninstar and the police department and experience a story, get movement. Um there's a lot of benefits to those. So, we're excited for that to to kick off as well. Um so, I'm going to talk a little bit about our McCord Square. Um we mentioned Ninstar Connect. It worked really well that they were here presenting um because they have been a wonderful community partner in helping us u meet some of our community needs. So, we have a partnership with them for a 3,000qt space on the second floor of their ninstar building in McCord Square. We began that lease in January of this year, and we are currently in construction for a second library location. Fortville will remain open with current services. Nothing's changing. This is just to supplement the needs that we have for our community um and offer an extra space. So, all of it will work um the same. Returns can be returned at both locations, pickups, holds um but the collection will be um unique. So, the idea is that we want both spaces to complement each other. It's not a long-term solution to our space um needs, but it is something that we can get started now. So, 3,000 foot of pure library space will include two study rooms. Um that is one of our highest demanded things that we don't currently have at the Fortville location. Um it will feature a program room, which we also currently do not have um at our Fortville location. And then, um all of the foundations of library services. So the collection will be specific and feature some innovative technologies. We've worked with Dr.

Parker and the uh superintendent of Gist Monastery to talk about um how to help reluctant readers. So we'll have some audio uh physical audio books that are picture books that are releasing. We'll have Yodo players, a lot of the things that families currently may have access to in the community, but the library isn't serving them in our part of the county. Um a lot of that is the growth from Accordsville um into that area. Um, so we're really excited to open that space. We have a midsummer opening date. So, um, there are walls up right now. Flooring is being delivered this week. Um, so the photos that you have on the next sheet were from when I took those a couple of weeks ago. They're moving very quickly. Um, we have hired a um full-time librarian for there, but the rest of the staff will work at both locations and support all the programs and events that we have going on. Um, we also have um space that Ninstar has created a grand stairs. I don't know if you guys have been in there. Um, but we'll be able to utilize that for um some of our story times and author visits. So, there's additional space within um the building that we can truly focus on utilizing and expanding and meeting all of the needs that we have been asked for in the last several years. Okay. Uh my contact information is also on there as long as well as our um board member contacts. So, um, we do have another year on the two appointments for your guys, um, appointments, and that includes, um, Julie Wilson, who's our current board president, and, um, Tanya Galbreth, who is one of our serving members. Is there any questions I can answer for you?

When did you guys start the Evergreen? We've been in Evergreen Library since 2020. Okay. Mhm. So, you can go to you can go to any of those libraries.

You can your Vernon Township card will work at any of those 155 other libraries. And they we have a consortium hub too. So our catalog is reflective of what is in Evergreen. So if you you can spec specify your search for what's at Vernon Township, but if you open Evergreen, it'll show you all of the copies available to you. You can just place a hold and it's transited for you to pick up. Mhm. It really works well. We have limited budget of course and so we can focus our collection on meeting the needs of our community. And a lot of times any of those kind of niche or multiple copies of stuff that we need, um it really helps our teachers. So, we can ask for, you know, 20 copies of a certain book that they're reading and we can get those shipped right to the library and then taken into them. So, and and all of us can be members if we want to. You can.

Okay. There you go. Anybody Anybody else have any questions? All right. Thank you for your time, Ashton. Thank you. All right. Next up, 9 Oh, we're running couple minutes ahead. Finally, 9:45 a.m. Additional case manager position. Morgan Walker's here ready to go. Just I just jinxed it. Well, we gota be done at 10 for public hearing. So, good morning. Morning. Morning. Okay. How are you? Good. How are you?

Good. Um so I I went in front of the commissioners a couple weeks ago and presented this but basically what I am asking is um back in the 2023 and the 2024 budget cycles I don't know if you remember that but we had two positions that were taken out of our budget during that those cycles. So we used to have a staff of 11. Um those two positions were taken which gave us a staff of nine about a year or so ago. Um I asked for one of those positions back and that was granted. So we now have a staff of 10. Um what I'm asking for today is that final position back giving us that staff of 11. What I have in front of me um to to give to you um just kind of outlines where we were and where we are. So if we look back when we had that staff of 11 um postcoid so this does not look at work release this is after work release um we were running about 96 clients um per month with 11 staff right now where we are is about 127 clients per month and that's with our we just hired our 10th staff member. So, um we of course have more clients with less staff. Um we've added a ton of programming that didn't exist during the time that we had our 11th staff. So that programming um we have MRT anger management substance use MRT uh domestic violence program that is certified by the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence. It's actually

the only certified BIP program in Hancock County and that's utilized by all of the court programs. Right now we're running it in the jail. Um but we'll also be running it in our office once our construction is completed. So, um, it'll be a it it'll be referred to by community corrections, probation, behavioral health court, drug court. Um, and then I've talked with, uh, Magistrate Kums, so it'll also be referred to by uh, DCS Chen's parents. Um, and then finally, I want to touch on our juveniles. So if we look at 2024, we had 11 total juveniles that entire year. For 2025, we had 13 total juveniles for the entire year. Um where we sit right now, the fourth month of 2026, our 14th juveniles being placed on today. So we're trending much higher. Um, so with that, I'm asking that I get that 11th position back. The salary would be paid for out of our grant funding and out of our project income. So, the cost for the county would be the benefit package only. Um, and that's what I'm asking for.

It it would totally come out of that uh fund, right? And you've been building up a pretty good balance in it, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It' just be the we'd have to come up with the money for the benefits which can range depend on who's hired anywhere from 10 to 50,000. You know, why can't the benefits come out of that fund, too? Um I mean, historically, I think all of our benefits have have been paid for. Um yeah, we've never paid our own benefits. So, I I was just asking that that be covered, but um if it's something that you're not willing to do, it's then

I'll have to look at that. The other thing is what what programs are are you doing at the jail? I was looking at the jail um uh summary and I noticed community corrections does have a

Yeah. So, yeah. So, as I mentioned, um, that that bit program, so the one that's certified through the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence, we're running that program at the jail. And so, what's nice is if someone's ordered to do that, they can start there and then if they get out, they can transition. Um, we were running an anger management group, but for some staffing issues, we had to put a pause on that, but we will start that back up too once we're able. Yeah. Yeah. Good to see the community corrections working with the jail

and that's our goal with I mean that's the same with our other programming. We have referrals coming in from other agencies too um at no cost. We don't charge for those programmings. Um so we want to continue to do that but of course we need to have the staff to be able to run that. No, I'm sorry Jim. Go ahead. I thought you were done. You you told us in uh our meeting uh when we were talking about uh future u building needs. Yeah. That uh work release is probably uh um not in the cards because of the efficiency of the uh home detention devices and your people. Is that still your

Well, of course that's up to the commissioners. That's of course who I report to. So that's not my call. But um a lot of counties have done away with that because of efficiency and cost. So yeah. Um Morgan um do you think that the grant would allow the benefits to be paid from the grant? I know, you know, the grants allow certain things and they don't, but it could be paid through there. I'm not saying that's what I want. It was just a question. Yeah. Um it wouldn't come out of the grant. It would have to come out of our project income.

Okay. And I will say too, I work very hard to to keep our grant funds. So, um I've seen the trend in juvenile and juveniles. So, um I wrote a juvenile grant and um it's the first time Hancock County Community Corrections has ever wrote a juvenile grant. Um so, I I do try to keep a pulse on on things and and write grants to to keep that and to be able to sustain our programming. Um, which is why I I try not to to ask for money and um, you know, we have zero county general dollars and I and I try to keep it that way. So, um, yeah.

What position that you're talking about, if if the, uh, grant had to pay the benefits, they would be an outlier employee because they would be the only one of your staff that is not paid through the county budget process for their benefits. Is that correct? Correct. Yeah. Because all of our benefits are paid for by the county, so they would be the only one that wouldn't be. Yeah. And I I don't know if Mary would BR would want to chime in. I mean, is that over complicating something anyway? that's to have one person from one department that's treated differently than

so I don't believe benefits can be paid from the ID do grant okay but I will say years ago when I did payroll which would have been prior to 2013 there actually were benefits coming out of your budget but that's when they had county general dollars at some point when work release was eliminated then I believe they got

and they just started operating with just the ID do grant and the project income fund at that point the county was picking up the benefits but there was also a big sustainability issue at one time and I do believe they've built up their balance but I think if benefits started being paid out of county or not county but out of project income I think that fund would probably not be sustainable over time. Well, that's just a guess. Mary, my experience with grants, I would be quite surprised if they would let you do that.

Well, also when you're writing for grants each year, you you want it to be as clean and ask possible. And so, I don't know if it it would convolute it to try to do something like that. Anyway, there there's only a few grants I know of that allow benefits. Um, I believe VOCA is one of those. Um, the people that are paid out of child support, out of the federal, uh, title 4D money, they get reimbursed for benefits, but usually that's not something the grants the grants do. I think they want it to go to either salary or programs. How much are you asking for for this position? Do you have a number plugged in?

Well, it just depends on the experience. So, we require a bachelor's degree. Um, so it's going to be around 50,000, but it just depends on their experience. It could be a little less or a little bit more. Mary, were you asking her what she's going to pay out of her funds to the person or were you asking what it costs us? Yeah. In county, because that would be that's not paid for by the county. Were you asking what she plans to offer the position at out of her money or were you asking what it costs us here? Yeah. It's so if they don't take the insurance at all, it only costs FICA taxes and pension. If they take a family plan,

then so that amount that amount I'm sorry, that amount would be their salary which would be paid for by us out of our grant and project income. Not that's not that's not your cost. Yeah. So the salary is the 50,000. Yes. That would be their salary and that's paid for out of the grant benefits would the benefits 10 to 50,000 pretty much. Yeah. I would have no idea what they select. If somebody takes a family plan, that's 40. It's substantially more than if they just take a an individual plan or if they are already covered by a spouse's insurance. So, we'd be agreeing to it without knowing what health care they're going to take. Right. Yeah. And obviously, I don't I don't know what that would be. Is

is this position for immediate or is this for our budget year 2027? It's for immediate. We have a we have immediate needs. And then what did the commissioner say to you? Yes. Yesterday they gave me a favorable recommendation.

I like the idea. I I I like to see that you're focusing on juveniles and creating programs to get ahead of that with those age group of people kids. So um I don't know what we need to do today or if we're going to do anything today. Scott is up to you. No, it's on the agenda. You can do you can make a motion today. Uh we just need to know where it's going to be paid for and then if we have to advertise or anything like that um or appropriate anything. Well, it would come from general fund, wouldn't it? I mean, that would be where the benefits would not where Well, the the benefits would Yes, those would come from the commissioner's budget. Um I'm assuming we would need an additional appropriation from her budgets.

We would also need a salary ordinance amendment. So, the monies would come as a whole. I just want to put it in a place that it would stay. Mary, your comments about the benefits uh u coming from a grant, but uh the benefits would be coming from the um other um your fee feebased thing. I would think we could do that if we wanted to. It's a probably complicates matters for the for the benefits to come from project income. Is that what you're saying? that wouldn't be a problem. I just don't know if it's sustainable over time, right?

They don't collect. They they struggle with like all of our departments collecting from people with criminal um backgrounds. So, I guess we need separate motions if if we're generally favorable to uh is the rest of her employees health insurance benefits in the commissioner's budget for county general. Okay. So, that would be the the one first thing. Um, I would make a motion that we approve adding uh benefits for one additional employee corrections to be compiled with other uh insurance costs funed by council in the commissioner budget. I'll second that.

Okay. Everything good? I'm trying to look to the attorney. Everything good? Yes, so far. All right. I've got a got a motion on the table. All uh all those in favor say I. I. All those opposed, same sign. Motion carries. All right. Next motion. Or and we need to advertise for an additional appropriation out of her own funds to so that money is available to hire somebody. Right. That's a thumbs up. Thumbs up everyone. Yeah. For 50,000. Okay. You'll just need to let me know if you want to split that between Okay. two funds or or how you want. And it'll be a prrated amount this year anyway. And then next year you'll have the full amount to build into your budget. Sure. Okay. Okay. Anything else?

Was there Does that cover everything, Mary? I just have one quick question. So on the benefits, is that going to include FICA and PEF because we will need to add money to those lines as well. It has to. So that'd be group insurance, FICA, and Perf. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So, are you suggesting we need another additional appropriation for the remainder of the year on that or is there probably just catch up with that later in the year? Wait and see. Yeah, I think there'll be a shortfall for sure. And well, isn't there always a shortfall? I said, isn't there always a shortfall for that? There has been the last few years. So, maybe we can just address that

September. We just wait and see what we're going to need. Okay. Yeah. When we hired the six uh when we approved the court security, did we appropriate anything additional benefits there? Okay. Yeah, we got it. I wasn't at that meeting. Yeah. All right. Anything else? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, m Mr. President.

Yes. Go ahead. Could I backtrack on uh the sewer project for just a minute to let you to let everybody know that uh he couldn't be here today, but FSG has been in on all of the um uh meetings and has guided the whole sewer deal from the standpoint of uh the financial end of it and all the work with the state getting the SRF stuff done. And um Greg has been doing all that. Yeah, I think he was Greg was online watching or listening in today. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Where were that?

Hey. Uh All right. I got two minutes till we can do our 10 o'clock public hearing. Um do we have the How about the minutes? I uh make a motion that we approve the minutes as presented. I'll second it. I have a motion, a second to approve the minutes for March 11, 2026. All those in favor say I. I. Any oppose? Same sign. Motion carries. That took 30 seconds. You guys are too fast. You need 30 seconds. No, I said that took a whole 30 seconds. I know. That's I know I could do that one. Problem is the other ones are going to take multiple minutes. Says it's 10:00. Huh? My clock says it's 10.

Well, my iPhone says 958. 58. It now says 959. Well, um, Jeopardy music. Yeah. One thing I could help fill the time with is, uh, go ahead. Um, DD Allander, uh, county have agreed she will become an employee. So, that'll be on your radar, too, in terms of salary andor benefits and what that's going to look like. So, I'm just So, is that going to be an agenda item or is that going to be something for our budget then for next year?

No, I think it would have to be an agenda item. Okay. I just want to let you know that um you know that had been resolved with the solid waste. Isn't she will become a an employee of the county and it'll be a year one employee. Well, that's because I know there was discussion about uh service that Yes, that's interesting that you guys will need to kind of how you feel about that. I think she will be requesting, you know, seniority. Yeah, we just can't continue in the arrangement that we have now. Yeah, Rob, so she was there yesterday. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I'll look forward to the update on that because I know the last time we talked about it, you know, when we looked at at the what defines a contract employee versus employee, all the boxes were checked that that operated like a contract position. So, something's changed. I'll have to get No, what it what it was is basically wanted her LLC to be the director and I gave a legal opinion that doing that

and so then she had to decide what she's going to do and frankly was she was still going to even stay in the position and then she had came forward and originally we were considering her as county employee. We were looking at that option. I think we wanted that becauseble to have her 8 to5 the phone and all those good. So now some accountability. We've kind of come full circle. Yeah, she's agreed to that. Um Oh. to being 8 to5 in an office. Well, to be to be an employee. Yeah, that's what I'm Yeah, that's what I'm asking. Exactly. So, so you

when we started this, she did not know that she could not use her LLC as she's done ever since day one of her employment. So, now that she couldn't do the LLC, now she's decided, well, I'm just going to I'll be employee instead. So, well, she asked us to be an employee and we told her no. So that was because she didn't want the older side or whatever it was. But she didn't know that she couldn't use the LLC. That's that was the whole thing. That held every bit of it up. So I guess there's more to come on that. Yeah, there's going to be more to come. And it's past 10:00 now. So he went he passed his minutes. So I filled it up for you. Yeah, you filled it up. All right. 10:00 is now 10:02. The public

always go over a lot. We're going to start the public hearing for the additional appropriations. Uh first up is fund 4021, solid waste management district. Uh it's the solid waste HHW collection tucks away of the amount of $25,7523. I open the public hearing. Is there anything from the audience? Public anyone from the council? All right, I will close the public hearing and entertain a motion to approve the amount for solid waste.

Make a motion to approve the amount of $25,7523 from fund 402135201 solid waste HHW collection talks away. I'll second it. All right, I have a motion and a second. All those in favor say I. I. Any oppose? Same sign.

Our motion carries. All right. Next up, fund 9110, the Ninstar Community Trust Grant. It's for sub one client supplies in the amount of $6825. Luckily, Kent's not here, but I opened a public hearing. Anything from the council? All right. At least Kent won't be able to vote no. I guess I close the public hearing and entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion to approve $68.25 from fund 911 0.21151 Ninstar Community Trust Grant as an appropriation. Second. We have a motion, a second. All those in favor say I. I. Any oppose? Same sign. Motion carries. All right. Next up, fund 9118, uh, Hancock County Community Foundation. That's for probation training, and it's in the amount of $1,470. I open the public hearing for any public to make comments on this. Not hearing any. Is there anything from the council? All right. I close the public hearing and we'll entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion for the Hancock County Community Foundation. Uh, this is from them. It's It's fund 91118 and it is probation training and it's for $1,470. I'll second it. All right. I have a motion and a second on the table. Uh all those in favor say I. I. I. Any oppose? Same sign. Motion carries. And that concludes our public hearing agenda items. Next up, 10:15 a.m. abatement application. Mary, no. All right. Um, everyone should have got a copy of the latest version of what we had talked about at the previous meeting. Thank you. Throw it at you.

Uh, I myself after I sent it out to you guys and started looking at it a little closer myself, I made a couple of uh changes to it just because it was uh more type of typing errors than anything. Um, I corrected on uh, let's see, it'd be the third page at just answering questions um, 12 through 14. Actually, the numbers changed. So, they're questions 7 through nine. So, I fixed that and I reached out to the auditor's office and economic development to see if they wanted to update uh their uh email contact since the auditor will be leaving at the end of the year and uh the economic development director would be leaving at the end of the year. Uh the auditor agreed to go ahead and put uh Mary Bulmer uh who is running for auditor and but now the uh bookkeeper for the auditor's office. So, it'll just be an easy change of email address. Randy got back and he doesn't want his changed. So, it will continue to stay as our Sell until I guess they uh hire a new director. So, that I I got that fixed in there. And then I posed a couple of questions of my own to the to the council that uh I'd like to get some direction on as to whether or not uh if we want to put a timeline on after the abatement has been approved that they have to pull a permit. I think that would be the thing that would activate the uh process moving forward. If they were to get an approval say this year and then something changed in their capacity to start, how much timeline are we willing to give them to start? Uh I think we kind of verbally went through a few of the last abatements that were

approved. it was either five or seven years, but I don't know if that's still how the board feels or what their um opinion is on that topic.

Well, kind kind of that and uh we were talking before the meeting about a a couple of other other things in here. I guess I I would uh throw out maybe it would be interesting to hear from the the people that uh sign up for this uh about uh some of these items and get their input. Uh not that they control it obviously, but just to get their attitude about it. And I think there are several developers on the HDC and I would assume that they would be happy to come and comment on some of this.

Well, Robin and I both talked she and I uh Bill Spalding and Gary P worked on this in the first go around that made some of the initial changes that uh we don't want to end up with a 10page application. Right now we're at four pages and um the amount of information that I want to see on there and this is just for me is just strictly county council requirements and and needs to know to move forward on deciding if we're going to approve it or not. the developers. I don't know what they would bring to the table per se that would affect us directly

for maybe for example on on uh uh putting a timeline on it. Uh I would assume to if you're building a spec building, you're going to buy land and so they've got an investment in this thing and so are if you put a time limit on it, would that mean that most developers wouldn't do that? I don't know.

I just don't want an abatement that's floating around out there that's 10 years old. Five and seven's too long myself. And I would be much more generous with owner occupied start dates than speculative. You know, if you were building a speculative um strip mall, let's say, and you don't know who your tenants will be, well, I'd be more leeway, but they don't apply for abatements. It's only industrial. So, we're only talking about speculative industrial. And uh I'm not saying I know the exact right amount of time, but I would say within 12 months of your anticipated start date on speculative. Now, if you're going to be owner occupied, I would be much more liberal in case they run into an environmental hazard that has to be cleaned up or something that takes a lot of time.

Right. I know an example was the I3 project. uh the abatement was granted and then for whatever reason their decision does not start is what now are we in the third year of the abatement being approved and nothing happened but they went back to agriculture they did yeah that yeah and that was a commissioner's decision so three years you know I I am not inclined to go a lot longer than that if it's that's my opinion

well I'm thinking whatever the smaller amount is we decide we could always give them an extension I would think. So start kind of the smaller and then we could give an extension if we had to if they would already started or you know with the planning and everything because it does take time. Scott could probably talk about that how long it takes them to get through planning and some things with their buildings. I think that's a good best practice though to give relevant guidance and that's just from my work and having a clear regulatory framework to where not only we have that oversight but the developer knows hey I've got two years and then I can request a one-year extension if we go that route or if I have three years like having it on there is a best practice versus keeping it ambiguous. So that's and some of the research I did, I looked at a lot of other communities and some of their agreements and just a general regulatory best practices being clear. And so I think whether we go three years or two years with a optional one-year extension and I I like the idea of getting a developer's eyes on it or investor's eyes on it just we don't have to do anything they say but that's another good best practice is to have their look at it because there may be something they're like oh my gosh this would never fly then again we we're not going to take everything they say but it's good to get their eyes on it when we think about agriculture you know we work with corn and soybean farmers and look with the a industry and then farm bureau and so I think in this case you know us as the council but then thinking of those other groups to get their eyes on it but I think anything we can do to be more clear so again not only the investors and developers but also the public knows here's what they can expect and know what actions we're going to take at two years versus oh we're just going to wait another year another it keeps us from punting it but also helps

the public hold us Who are our appointees to HDC now? Pardon me. Him and Clark. And Clark. Clark. Would you guys want to bring this topic up at your next meeting and just get the feedback and then I'd really like to keep this moving so we can finalize it and be sure done with it, but then you could bring back their their thoughts on it. Sure. For our next meeting. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great. So, what we're talking about possibly that you can tell them is maybe a three-year uh approval and after that they would have to come back before council for any extensions. Yeah. And any other items in here too? Well, no. Comment on

we would probably have to define is that pull the permit is that again con you know like you could say well I haven't started construction but I've done these other things. So, like we'd probably have to be more specific about what starts that clock, too. Yeah, I think pulling the permit because they're not going to pull a permit until they've got all their planning and um right re anything done. So, I I I'm comfortable with the date the start date of the project is when they pull the permit. So, they have three years if that ends up being our number to pull pull their permit and after that they'd have to come back and ask for an extension. So, that's what you could take to the H EC sounds good

on that. Yeah. Okay, that's that one. And then the other one that I had was uh find my notes. Oh. Uh do we require an application for each building? I I thought we discussed that we would require an application if they come in and say, "We're going to build three buildings and this is what they're going to be, but we don't want all three buildings on one application." I agree.

That each building has a standalone application that we can review and what's going on with it. But if they're asking for three buildings all at one time, is the application fee just going to be $500 or do we want it per building? How do we want the application fee apply? It's $500, so it's not a huge amount of money, but it's it needs to be clear what we expect them to pay when they apply. I like the separate applications. There were some abatements that got approved several years ago that were a number of buildings on one application and it really convolutes it reviewing their CF1s annually.

Um, so I like that a lot separating it. I would say go ahead and charge the 500 per application. I mean, I think that's a drop in the bucket for what you're asking for to, you know, and the time you're asking everyone here to spend researching it and the auditor's office and Nicole processing it. So, I think 500s per application's fair.

I looked at a lot of other counties and a lot of them didn't require that, but some of them did. And I think with the cost of everything, I don't think it would hurt to require that. Well, and my hope would be, you know, those uh applications that had multiple buildings, they even said at the time, we're not building building two till we're, you know, 80% full on building one, and so on and so on and so on. And if we're talking about putting time limitations on pulling permits, well, is it building one? Is it building two? Is it building? So, I think they just do be treated independently almost entirely.

Keeps it cleaner. Does everybody else feel that way as far as I'll type that up and make some changes and what we currently are working with? Um changes. Okay. Um so that's what I'm going to do unless somebody has an additional opinion on on it. Uh the third thing that I had uh written down after I'd already emailed this out was on page one. And it talks about uh if the project changes more than 5% they will have to refile their application. Uh there anything or any discussion? Is everybody clear on that and okay with that paragraph?

Well, one thing I didn't quite understand was uh it says 5% in parentheses but in the written that was me. That was a type I did not change. I I Okay, I fixed that. Got it. That was my fix. One of my fixes. Yeah, we did leave it at 20. We left it at five. I forgot to change the the typed word from 25 to five, but I have already changed that. So, that will be a change five. Well, aren't aren't we trying to uh get somebody who uh changes what they propose to come

and tell us about the changes? uh if seems to me like the language could be I'm not sure what but a little more uh uh general. I mean if you put a percent in there it's a percent of what

right? Jim had asked me before the meeting if they came in and we approved a a project that's going to be a million square feet and then they decide well we're going to build two buildings at 500 instead. We need to know that it may be that we don't feel then that um that would fit as to what we vision for that location. So, we need to clean that up a little bit to say that um that it will be 5% changes including Yeah, we need some wording on that. Mary says more wording. Jim says less wording. As long as we have a consensus.

No, I agree with you. We need to say you know if the square footage or uh building number of buildings count would be well it could be investment dollars you know uh

but but I mean basically we want to know if there's a significant change in anything. I think the investment dollars will be a tough one all the way down. Like I'm all about 5% on building type and square footage. 5% on dollars, you know, they're ballparking you their construction cost for 24 months out. And so it will easily, you know, and there's contingency percentages in there in excess of 5%. So their their actual spend could easily vary more than 5% for what they propose. So, I'm not as worried about the investment because they're going to have to meet all the building specs of planning anyway and they're meeting those hurdles regardless of spend. So, but I do think on square footage, number of buildings.

Well, I agree because construction costs are just going up and up and up and they've changed so much that I don't want to tell them they have to come back again because they're going to pay more than they said or even less than they said. as long as they're meeting all the criteria. All right. I know I know for those on YouTube, I do know that I'm made made aware that uh the camera is frozen, but you can hear us, but I also need to take a brief two-minute recess to speak with Scott Banky. Um so, could we um take a recess real quick? Thanks.

All right, I'll call the meeting back to order. The next thing on the agenda is 10:30 tiff management annual. We haven't finished the thing. All right, what do you got left on? No, I just wanted to address um Clark had sent an email with some ideas or thoughts on it. I just wanted to take the minute to let him go over what he wanted to say or what he thought would be of interest.

Yeah, I mean a little late to the game, but I I did some research on some other communities and other applications and just found some things. I know we talked about the the jobs and payrolls and how those are estimated on there. I think some of the things we talked about the separate CF1s is going to clean that up. Uh there's some other communities have but but for justifications uh but we I think a lot of times we know the the answer to that. But I just was curious if we do put on there just a section addressing the community and infrastructure impact. Just asking for estimates on traffic, road impact, water, sewer usage, safety demands. And then knowing we have amplify now just any local hiring, workforce partnerships, and infrastructure contributions. It could be a short section, but it seemed like that was a general best practice. Again, it's not numbers that we're going to hold the developers to, but I think they'd be good numbers to kind of know what to expect, what to anticipate. Uh just good relevant information that we know ahead of time. Again, we we wouldn't hold anybody's feet to the fire on those estimates, but I think it would be good to know from a developer's perspective what impact they expect, and then we could start planning. And then the big one is just the infrastructure contributions. I kind of feel if if you don't ask, you're not going to get it.

Why don't we ask what? Just put on the application what they'd be willing to contribute. If they put nothing, we're right in the same boat we're already in. But if they put a fire truck, a fire station, a million-doll check, then we can go thumbs up. That's great. We didn't even know you were willing to do that. Yeah, we have a section uh on the second page that does address incentives that they should list anything that uh they're expecting us to do, but it doesn't really address what they're going to do. So, I could kind of tweak that up if they've reached any agreement with um the township that they're going to be located in as to what incentives they will be bringing to the project. Something like that.

Yeah, I think the easiest way to sum it up is just what are we giving and what are we getting? because we had a situation where some of us thought somebody had promised a firet truck and they said no we later they said no we never did that so it would be good to have that in writing. Yes. Yeah. So and I'm sure it was an honest mistake on their part.

We already ask for for jobs and and we use that measure quite a bit when we review the the annual stuff. How many jobs did they say they were going to have versus how many jobs they actually have? That's a real good measure for us because we have we have in the past canceled abatements, maybe one or two since I've been here for people that said they were going to have a thousand jobs and they had a 50. Yeah. So those but most of those businesses were dying anyway. But Okay. So,

all right. Well, that was all I was going to add to it. It's just any of Scott's uh or Clark's uh ideas. So, I'm going to make the changes of what we discussed here. I'll wait for uh Robin and Jim to get back with us on what they were going to talk to uh the timeline. No, that's Clark. I'm not Oh, it's anymore. It's on everything. you guys will get back with us on timeline questions that we were throwing around and other than that uh hopefully we'll wrap this thing up at the next meeting. That's my plan.

Okay. All right. All right. Now it's 10:30. We'll do the uh tiff management annual report. Baker Tilly. Anybody Baker Tilly here? Lisa Lee, are you doing the TIFF management report? No. No. Oh, no. No. She's here something else here. something else I will attempt

the temp management report is similar to the it's derived from the expenses and revenues that I produce in the the RDC spreadsheet and basically within that report it allocates everything that the tiff believes that they will receive in funding and everything the tiff believes they will spend in funding this is a new state uh requirement it's basically a reformatted it's a reformatted um document basically from your budget approval. So you approved a budget, those are expenses, those are reformatted into a state that the state board of accounts can do and then it'll be it'll be submitted through gateway through the auditor's office. I believe that is due before April 20th. Um this is with a new tip collection. It's just another require another administrative requirement from the state.

Right. And you're the budget. We kind this is a closest guess correct of income. So we base the whole budget off of these numbers. Right. That is correct. But it's a little odd because remember the state's fiscal year starts in July and ours starts as a calendar. So there is some shift on that. But in general we haven't we haven't changed any project in a large amount. Right. And your income you do years in advance. So there has been no major changes for next year that you know of that's going to cause our grant receipts were higher than we expected. So we're actually going to be spending about 2 million less than what's on there. Right. So it's better not worse. So we're going in the right direction.

It is this year. Every year I hope it is. I wanted to comment too that Baker Tilly did come in person and present this to the RDC. So Okay. They probably didn't think they needed. It's a because it's pretty self-explanatory. Yeah. And you guys really the crux of this is when we get to the budget for the RDC. Yeah. You want to keep that on you when we start doing the Well, we're getting into budget season soon. Uh but this does need to be submitted to Right. Deborah is not in here, but she her office I believe will be submitted through Gateway. Do we need to make a motion to accept this? You do. Or that you've reviewed it that we've reviewed it.

Can I ask one quick question? And the Mount Comfort North allocation area 1 expires 2034. Is that called something different on the fund balances sheet? Mary, is that don't come for West Tiff Hancock County TIFF one? I believe that matches up. It's a GDI area. I don't have the sheet in front of me though. Hold on. Does too. Yeah. I'm not sure. Key. Okay. Nicole, do you know? See, they have what number they do this. Okay, the names do match up with the funds. What what they here for?

Some of them aren't actively spending right now. This should have all Can we ask her a question? Charges $700. Ask her a question while she's here. While she's That's okay. We don't have to I can find that out. I can figure that out offline. I don't see in the fund balances sheet which one is called Mount Comfort North allocation area one. It may not have any money. I don't think it's current. If there's not, then it will not show up. Well, the one I'm looking at is the oldest. I'm trying to figure out which one is the oldest one that's going to expire in 2034. That's soon. So, will you ask her? That would be 20 46

16. the TIFF would have to move it in ord would have to Yeah, I'm not sure. Lisa, do you have something that you can add to uh any of this that they keep discussing whether or not we just need to review this and uh Yeah. So, we just need to reflect in the minutes in your review that you've reviewed it. That's all we as the president let it reflect in the minutes that we reviewed uh the TIFF management annual report. Okay. Okay. It's called allocation fund. TIFF revenue is what we're calling it on the balance sheet versus what expires in 203. Well, the oldest TIFF is going to be the original one. 4616. The 4616 is our oldest.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think they should say the same. And um that doesn't really affect this is just a spending and revenue report for you. Yes, sir. Gary on the uh Mount Comfort North allocation area number one. Uh the uh property tax lease, rental bonds. Um are those all due to the school? Those are due to the amplify project because remember we have structured it so that we're leasing a road. So yes, that is due to the school to answer. Yes. Will the will the president allow me to ask Lisa Lee a question since she is in the audience?

You may, but you're running the clock. Take the time to talk on YouTube. Yeah, I know. I don't know if she wants to come up for YouTube, but this not not generated by her in any manner, but since we're talking about tiffs and and Lisa is one of our assets, can I ask you a question, Lisa? Sure. Earlier today, we talked about the tiffs, the continuous tiffs we have and what funds can be allocated for working for infrastructure within those continuous tiffs. Contiguous

contiguous, excuse me. Uh and u so we're we're working on a project in one of our eastern tiffs for a sewer project that we're going to have to bond for. And and I was wanting you if you don't know it off top of your head if you can look for us or whatever if if any of the other tiffs are available to help with that project since all the tiffs are and because we're believing I'm believing the residential and stuff like that will come out of this tiff that supports the other tiffs. So you're telling me it's a sewer infrastructure project?

Yes. uh that is going to be in one particular area but I suspect can your sewer this is for Greenfield is your sewer provider correct nostar is our ninstar and they're throughout the county right and we have them in other tiffs already right but we're going to be putting a sewer project in in one of our nor eastern tiffs and it's contiguous to our western tiffs and I we're we're going to have to fund it we're going have to bond it what is the what type of sewer infrastructure are you doing? They're going to put a new sewer or treatment plant in and run sewers down the roads and uh brand new. There is no sewer now. There is no sewer. It's a $20 million project.

Okay. So, this sewage treatment plant, can it serve other tiff areas other than just that one? Yeah, I think that's what you're asking, isn't it? Yeah, I think it can. I mean, it's got to be I think that's the plan though at that time. I think the plan You think it'll be a single? It's for a very specific area that will uh service that very specific area when it's developed at a later date. I guess there's room for expansion possibly. I don't know what their details are. We don't the tiffs are so close to each other like on uh Forville Pike separates them

and so we don't know in the future if a subdivision goes in on the at the edge of those tiffs if it'll be satisfied from the Maxwell or if it be satisfied from uh the other treatment plant that's in Philadelphia. Sure. And actually Philadelphia is farther away. So I you know what I'm saying? That's what I'm saying. Pennsylvania. No, exactly. I'm still going back to the same things. Ball State told us there would be 12,000 homes between here and McCordsville. Well, if there's going to be 12,000 homes between here in McCordsville the next 10 years, then we got to have sewers for them. And

most likely uh I'd want to see a map and know exactly what the kind of the project is, but most likely in infrastructure situations we can find that there is a way to serve and benefit other TIFF areas whether it's now or it's there and capable and available for future development, right? Um, so a lot of times we can find support for using more than one tiff area when it comes to infrastructure, water, sewer, roads, because they all connect somewhere and go through other tiff areas. I was say they're contaminating water with ecoli and such that travels creeks that go through the rest of the county.

Exactly. So if if it it's going to help clean up those, uh, then it's probably servicing most of your tiff areas. So I think you can find support. I would just want to see some specific facts before I would sign off. But but project we're just now sure in envisioning it or you know what I mean? I suspect we could find support for more than one tiff area. And there there was also right now the the tiff that the project's in doesn't really have revenue to speak of, but they do believe that because of having the sewer and water that it will create development that that generates revenue where other tiff funds wouldn't always be needed to make that. Exactly. Okay. All right.

So, I think we could probably find support at least for one other TIFF area, if not all of them. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Is any Gary? Is there anything else left on the TIFF management report? I have nothing else. All right. Then we will move forward All right. Next up is the budget meeting update. We need a motion. Oh, we need a motion to approve the Yes. To approve the TIFF report. Okay. We need a motion to approve it. Go ahead. I'll make a motion that we uh approve the uh tip management approval report and that we have reviewed it that was provided by Baker Tilly. I'll second. All right, I have a motion on the table Mary and second by Robin Lauder. All those in favor say I.

I. Any opposed? Same sign. All right, motion carries.

All right, that concludes our uh timed agenda items. Now to the action items. Uh the budget meeting update. Um, at the budget meeting last week, we reviewed fund balances. Everything looked good. We rectified that darn jury pay that's always trending negative. Um, that the special purpose lit for libraries is now spending down. Uh, we did say we were going to have the health department in to give us some updates at an upcoming meeting on uh their sustainability of their funds. Um, and We went over GEO bond totals. Uh commissioners Graham and McDaniel gave us an update that they have 6.038 million uh planned for geo bond spending in the next geo bond. Janine or Gary, did you have any has there been any changes since last week or is that still the geo bond last the totals you gave us? Have there been any um any new things come up?

No. Okay. So, that was that. And um and we did also discuss the public defenders uh ongoing need for additional uh additional fees for outside attorneys. Any anything I missed anybody wants to mention? Oh, and we did also ask Greg Geratas to uh put together some updates on the financials for the Amplify project and bring those back when they're ready. Did you say we reviewed fund balances?

Did I say I did you say that we reviewed all record? Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. Uh the only other thing um Jim I don't know if you caught it but the sustainability that Greg had previously given us uh we had questioned if it had included backing out the 27th pay for this year and the good news was it had not. So, uh, we told him to show us a 3% increase for the coming budget cycle on personnel, and that was supposed to put us about in line with what this year's costs were after you account for backing out the 27th pay. It was a similar payroll next year with the increase for having backed out the 27th pay. So, he's supposed to show us some uh some stuff on paper about that at the next meeting. sustainability for the 3% increase.

Yeah. You did also touch on the MUS group. Scott, is there anything to add there about appointing anyone to the MUS group? I know you've been already getting contacts about that. No, it's not I mean he's not not in a rush, but obviously the other towns and cities are. So, we'll just keep communicating with them. More to come on that. Oh, man. That's all I got. Okay. All right. Next up, we already number two on action item number three, auditor business. I know there's several. Okay, I have one really quick thing. Okay,

so Weights and Measures approached me yesterday afternoon and they had acquired a county vehicle last year. They've purchased a a trailer with some new equipment, that type of thing. So, his budget line for mileage, he really needs that shifted to fuel now to pay for the fuel for the county vehicle instead of mileage from his personal vehicle. So he would like approval of a budget transfer from mileage to fuel for $3,000. So moved. Second. Okay. I have a motion by Ken FZ, second by Mary. No. All those in favor say I. I. I. Any oppos? Same sign. All right. $3,000 transfer done.

That's all I have, but I believe Gary has something. There's there's something with the planning department that uh as part of the auditor business that uh Gary and

this is just this is just to bring it to you guys' attention. We will be coming back for an additional appropriation for the planning department. Last year they tried to actually uh redo their subdivision controls and unified unified development ordinances. Get that out there real quick. Uh it it got to where it was taking too much time and we've asked Kayla to bring in H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H HWC to actually do that for us and to get it done quicker that way cuz we we need this done because we're growing and we can't do certain things because it's not in the the rules and regulations, all that. We want to get this as combined as we can. So I'm just I I've got you with the contract and everything. So, it's just for your information,

but there'll be there'll be more money needed to it's going to be to the tune of $31,000. She's already got she's already got $10,000. It's going to be at $31,000. So, please review and yeah, being on the plan commission, I was on I was on the committee to to meet with HWC and and to interview them and several other people are too, but yeah. Okay.

Um and and then also speaking of planning department and it's also number four. Um obviously the the commissioners have uh have there's been a lot of going on with the data centers and um and about moratorum and the commissioners I think about a month ago uh sent it down to the planning department to set up a committee. Uh the committee is going to be mostly made up of the public but there will be a commissioner and a council member on it. Does not have to be somebody that's on the planning commission and but people that could contribute. Um, I don't know if you're still interested, Clark, to being on the committee. I mean, I certainly would be interested. I know. Making sure. Excuse me. I need to get somewhere. I just want to let you guys know. You're good. Thanks, Gary.

Making sure there's a clear distinction of No, I am not on the Hold on. Uh, I am not on the committee. I'm on the planning commission. I don't have to be on the committee. Um, we can appoint someone else on the committee, but there will be one member, at least one member from the council. The council will pick one member and the commissioner will pick one member. I believe the commissioner is probably going to pick Janine Gray who is on the planning commission but I'm not positive on that. Um but we can pick one member and he has a background in agg which would be somewhat beneficial possibly to the data center committee group. Great.

Yeah. Just making sure we're very clear, you know, am I approaching it as a council member, as agg, as both, but I know, you know, I don't know what the the future of it, but making sure we're also clear like the council and the commissioner representative. Are we going to be voting members or exeicio members as advisors that sit on the committee but don't vote? I just think the the purpose of the committee is to get the different voices that if the council and commissioner representatives are voting members that could be looked at as swaying influence, but I think it's good to have both those voices at at the table on the committee. But if there's any votes, I would just maybe recommend to the planning committee or the commissioners to make those two positions as exeicio members.

I just I've recommended that uh to to to the um plan planning committee and and that are trying to organize this. I think that's an excellent idea. But but being on the planning commission myself, I I will have a vote on whatever they decide to push it on to the commissioners and then the three commissioners, but the ultimate vote. So you'll be involved in it also. So we'll have two people. Is this a reaction to a specific data center? No. now or is this us trying to protect ourselves? It's trying to protect ourselves, the water and all that. Um, for the future, some a member of the public brought before torrent to

I keep hearing these things that things are going to come back and drop on top of us and and so I just want to make sure there wasn't something happening that that I didn't know about. There's nothing immediate, but there is land that's zone industrial and that could be used right now as a data center. I don't know if the land's really big enough for a mega data center place, but uh Oh, so you're saying with that there that has been a question of the public is is there somewhere people could go build without even coming. Yeah, there there's there's a situation that could happen. I think without any of us being involved at all tax, but the zoning,

but we're trying to tiff that area right now. I believe we're in the process that will be our chance for control. And so this committee will likely produce some changes to what Hancock County has in writing that would put us in a position that people could not build a data center without getting they will make a recommendation to the planning commission of some sort that may include a moratorum or may require some like a like maybe not full moratorium but a partial mortorium or no moratorium. So that

the moratorium would only be us voting it down or it would mean that somebody couldn't build something even Somebody cannot build something of whatever you you put in place. So if you put right now a mortoriium on all data centers and not any no data center can be built. We can't vote anybody down if they don't ask for tax abatement and they won't be asking for tax abatement. There's no reason for that. No. No. Google does not need your tax. No, they don't need our tax abatement. So we're we're helpless unless we set up some things. Kayla, what IC code or not IC code, but uh the county code does the data centers fall under? what uh letter I what zoning?

Uh yes, there are some industrial zoning districts where a data center or a communication service exchange could be permitted uh by right and would not need to go to the BCA or request a reszoning. Are you discussing maybe redefining those rules? Yes. Yes, that is something that this uh subcommittee could discuss and recommend then as an ordinance change. I would think that would should be a big part of it. Yes, agree. All right. So, if we're going to have Clark beond, we'll need a motion and a second to appoint him to the data center committee. So moved. Second. All right. I have a motion, a second to appoint Clark to the data center committee. Good luck, Clark. All those in favor say I.

I. Any opposed? of state. Welcome to the welcome to the jungle. All right. Any All right. We've completed items three and four. Anything else among the council for the the good for today? No. I think I I will say one thing. I predicted the end of the thing was Friday. I missed it three or four days. Okay. But um do you have something, Kayla? Yeah. Um, regarding the um, the contract that I gave you a copy of, the total fee is actually $39,825. All right. Okay. And auditor, is there anybody that scheduled to speak for public comment? No.

Okay. And then I think we have an 11:30 county farm visioning meeting. Correct. Right. And Jim Jim did make a motion. I'll second at the jail. At the jail. I have a motion by Jim Shelby and a second by Kent Fist to adjurnn. All those in favor say I. I.