Montgomery County Council - Regular Meeting

Good morning. Welcome friendly faces. Would you please stand with me for the pledge and the prayer? Thank you, Mike. I would entertain a motion to accept the consent agenda as it stands. It's been moved and seconded to accept the consent agenda. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Opposed, the same sign. Motion carried. Is there any public comment on any of the agenda items for today. If not we'll move on to money matters and the first one is the RDC.

Basically they arrived at the realization that last year when they made up the budget for RDC's bond payments They appropriated the bond payments in the wrong TIF fund. So they're just doing this to fix that so they have the appropriations coming out of the right place.

Any questions? It's been moved and seconded that we approve the debt service of $557,000 for the new core towers. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Opposed, the same sign. Thank you. Motion carried. County General, the jail. Hello, Sheriff.

How are you?

I'm good. Yourself?

I'm good. I think it would probably be best if we move this to next month. I don't want to bore you with all the details, but just to give you a little background, obviously our jail DVRs, they're starting to fail. We've obtained a quote from SAS who we used for a vendor for that. The issue is We have 165 total cameras. We have 59 new IP cameras. We have 106 of the old analog cameras, which are original. So talking with Brendan with Edge, the issues are becoming we get a new DVR, the old analog cameras, they don't convert like they should. So we have to buy a port for the new DVR for the old analog cameras to go on. We're just creating multiple failure points for all those old cameras.

So it'll start nickel and diming us to death.

It certainly has the possibility. I'm waiting on Brendan. He's given me a rough idea of what the price would be to replace the cameras as well. I mean, we're looking at about $400 or $500 per camera. I don't know if we buy... a bundle if we could save, but I need to get some more information because the other issue is going to be the storage space for the IP camera versus the analog camera. The IP is going to take up more storage, and I don't think this quote includes that if we upgrade several of our cameras right now. So if you're okay with it, we can remove that from the agenda.

We don't need a motion for that, do we? We do.

We have to have a motion then to remove it and put to table it for next month.

Yeah, I'll take a motion to take a move. Second.

It's been moved and seconded with the table. The county general requests a September meeting.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye. Oppose the same sign. Thank you, Ryan.

One question I got. Is this just for inside your facility, the jail?

It's for inside and outside. Just that facility.

No, this is just at the jail. Thank you.

Moving on to transfer of appropriations, workman's comp. Here we go, Sherry.

Good morning, Sherry Hill, Montgomery County 911. This is just a transfer to add more funds to our part-time dispatcher line. We had leftover funds from our workman's comp budget line this year. We've already paid the bill, and this is just to keep her working for us.

Any questions? Or we got to have a motion first. Anybody want to move to transfer this? It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Questions? It's been moved and seconded that we transfer the workman's comp money to the dispatch money or line. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed the same. Thank you. Thank you. Probation.

Good morning. I have four here. We're looking to transfer money from our vehicle purchase line. This is the excess of what we had within that line to put into specific training lines. We had a specific conference that was going to be paid for from a grant. The conference after we had purchased and did the registrations and everything, canceled. So they are refunding all the money. The problem is I can't pay it from the grant now because the refund process takes too long. So I have to pay it out of a line that I wasn't planning to pay it from. So by default, it'll make those lines short. So I just want to move this money over. We'll get it, and then we'll get that money reimbursed. Did you follow all that? This is . Correct. Correct. We've purchased the vehicle. We had excess in that line. This allows us to cover that. We can't put money back into, we can, if we have a refund. It has to go back to wherever we paid the bill from. My plans were to pay it from the grant. That was the whole purpose. But since that canceled, the credit card refund process is what can take a while. Example, in November of 2025, we had a refund of a hotel for a training. We never physically saw that cash being receded into LOW until May of this year. So it causes problems with my grants. It ended in December, and I'm having to tell the grant entity, No, we didn't overspend. The money's coming. It becomes a very messy mess. So by default, I use my 2100 fund to do this. That way, if it takes six months or however long, there's no problems, there's no concerns. It's a non-reverting fund.

Second. It's been moved and seconded that we allow this transfer for the probation department. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, the same. Motion carried. Thank you. Good luck. and County General Superior Court.

It simply said to pay an invoice, so.

It won't?

The request simply said to pay an invoice, so.

Well, okay then.

Yeah.

Anybody want to touch that one? Well, it says psychiatric evaluations. That could have been any of us, you know.

so you don't they just said it was office supplies on the transfer paperwork it literally just said to pay claims or to pay invoice so that's the only I lied to pay Amazon claim. So that's what I have. That's all they provided.

Are they out of money for office supplies?

Must be. yeah let me I can tell you if you want to give me just a second

Why did you say that?

Just to note also this is a transfer so this is not an additional appropriation so they are still below their approved budget.

It's been moved and seconded that we allow the transfer for the Superior court number two. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed the same. Motion carried. Thank you. Okay. Brent. Okay. Moving on. That would be Mr. Bolander. Jake is here concerning the innkeeper's tax.

Good morning.

Good morning. My name is Jake Bolander, Commissioner, and I serve on the CVC Board. So today we're requesting to increase the innkeeper's tax from currently at a 3% rate up to a 5%. I'll go ahead and walk you through this. It's not on the screen. Or I don't know, do you have a slide of this, Tom? Well, go ahead and... So our current situation here today, we're gonna struggle to get through 2026 without an increase. Our receipts are 165,932.85. Expenditures, 269,938.50. Unexpended appropriations, 314,661.50. I'll let you guys read through the rest of that. So this shortfall in a way was kind of planned A few years ago, we had a really big cash balance, a couple hundred thousand dollars, and we wanted to give the Bureau additional funds to market and advertise for our county, but we wanted to eat into that fund balance before we would ask for an increase. This has been a really big year for the CVC. We've had Motorcraft of Nations come here this last October. We've hired Stephanie in the last couple years, and we've spent a lot of money on website and additional marketing. The estimated amount of increase of revenue at the 5% innkeeper's tax rate would be an additional $221,000, $243,080. Estimated amount of increase in revenue at 5% using average of last four years would be $240,000. And this next page is a graph of all the states or all the counties in the state. 5% is more of the norm, as you can see. We're one of the lowest in the state at 3%. So just for reference for you all. So our proposed 2027 budget for innkeepers tax funds, we have a total budget of $440,800. Our CVC budget is $405,800. The other for $35,000 is for our Strawberry Festival and Taste of Montgomery County. Correct, Heather? That's out of our budget, not hers. So with this additional funding, what could we do with that? We could attract more events, tournaments, conferences, support local festivals and attractions. Increase tourism, marketing materials, and advertising. Develop new visitor experiences. Create or expand signature events. Improve trails, public spaces, and tourism infrastructure. Provide grants and tourism partners. Invest in visitor research and data. And build a fund for future tourism opportunities. So in this last piece, I want to... This last... But what I want to touch on, so with Motocross Nations coming this October, that was a big event that's not a reoccurring event. So we took $70,000 and gave them a special grant for this big event, which is also kind of what put us in the position that we're at today is we ate into that cash balance. So if Motocross Nations said they wanted to come again in 2028, then we're kind of in a spot that we can't really do anything special for that. So... And the last page, total innkeeper's tax collected for the last four years. So our funding mechanism is, you know, it's a percentage off of the gross dollar amount of the stay at the hotel. So our avenue for increasing our budget is increasing the tax or for our community to build more hotels, Airbnbs, cabins, et cetera, so. Any questions for me?

Do we have any idea what a motocross event brought into our community last year?

In terms of like dollars or people?

Dollars. Oh, people. They were everywhere.

I've not heard that, Heather. Have you heard? Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, we are still waiting on some final, but I mean, it's, you know, we had probably 15 to 20,000 people here for that, um, and this multimillion dollars. So we're kind of waiting on some final, final numbers to come in, but I mean, definitely a positive impact in our community. And I think our community showed it can handle big things. Um, so we were looking for that, those opportunities to either welcome it across the nation's back, or if there are other events that might come back or might be interested in coming to our community.

So, yeah, I don't have a dollar amount, but it was a big impact, clearly.

I think you, I mean, a lot of the impact we might not really even see. I mean, some of the businesses and stuff in the community, we don't really, aren't going to get exact numbers or anything like that. We're going to hear from them, but we're not going to see all that. Saw the impact. A lot of people did. with all the excitement and the people around.

So you represent the commission. The commission recommends this, correct? Correct. What's the city's position? What's the mayor's position on this? Do you know?

I haven't spoke with him recently. It's a couple years ago this also came up and I asked his opinion at that point and he didn't really have a

opinion no okay and i that that has could have changed in the last two years but thanks if if we did this and what raised another what 165 000 is that what i think it's more than let me look It says on the back, it says estimated total revenue for the year is 26, 165,000 times two. Whatever that number is, are you still going to be a deficit? I mean, are you going to control the spending? So you're not spending more than you're bringing in? I mean, that's a well that always runs dry if you're going to spend more than you're bringing in. That concerns me. I mean, why do, I guess I'm looking for a reason why we're spending more than you're bringing in and you're running into a deficit. That's my question.

I mean, nobody can do that.

Right. So, me and Bob Pass were just talking about that this morning. I think since I've been involved in local government, this is the fourth or fifth time innkeeper's tax has come up. So the last time it came up, Not all the board was in grants that we needed to raise the innkeeper's tax because we had a couple hundred thousand dollars there. So from that, we said, all right, going forward, we have this money, we're gonna eat in this cash balance. So we're going to add marketing, we're gonna add a position. We had some special grants we gave out. We did that with intent to help better market our community. The whole goal of the CVC is to get people to wanna come visit Montgomery County and to hopefully come eventually call call the county home.

Also, I should point out, the budget for 2027 was $440,000. So if you maintain that budget, and we have revenue estimates between $550,000 and $600,000, you would have enough revenue to operate your budgets if you maintain that level and build a fund balance too.

Yeah, that last page here, that was this year's budget. So if we went to 5% in 2027, that would increase that.

Yeah. And Jake, you say you capture hotels, Airbnbs, the KOA. Does KOA and the campground, do they pay as well? I think the cabins. Stay there. Yeah. So you're capturing all that. Any idea of any new hotels coming in that might be building? Have you heard anything on anything like that you have?

There's actually one. It's the Fairfield Inn and Suites. That'll be just north here behind. We're hungry. Howie's is now that and the Commerce Park. So it is in progress.

Okay.

And that started actually, I think, 25, 24, 25 timeframe, but that is coming. And then obviously, um, kind of wide open of, you know, we've got space and all of that to, to get, you know, more spaces for people to come in. But, um, you know, your, your question on, on the mayor, he is supportive of what we're doing and understands, you know, that we help the economic development of our community, um, with tourism. So, um, I mean, he does seem to be in support.

And the other thing I have is when we go travel somewhere, the people in this room, people from Montgomery County, we pay a tax to be there. And the people that are going to be paying this tax are going to be people that are a lot of times not Montgomery County people, but people that are coming in to visit with us. So this is a way of capturing money from the outside that everywhere we go, they capture money from us. So it's not like on my end of things, the people of Montgomery County having to pay this. It's going to be people from outside. But I do agree with you that we need to be frugal with what we do and how we do it and do it in a proper way. And it doesn't hurt to have a If it goes to 5%, we keep a balance. I think it's a good thing for if something does come in.

We've even talked about the board of what are some different events if we had some additional funds that we could potentially do. Like an air show at the airport was thrown out. That could be something. We've got the airport. It's a great resource for the community to where if we had some additional funds. Just using that as an idea, but And then also, too, I think the effect it has to the person wanting to stay at a hotel. If it's a $200 fee to stay in a hotel, you're looking at $4 per room per stay. So pretty low impact when it's brought to the individual level. Then you get the sheriff to pay the innkeeper's tax.

I think in a way you do.

I've been against it in the past, raising this, because it didn't appear to me that there was really a plan to spend it. It was an idea of raising money and then figure out what we could do with it after we got it. And it looks like, to me, that you are branching out and spending money in new investments, air shows kind of thing is an example of that. I think it's a great thing, actually. I really do. This brings more people. fills the community with tax dollars that don't otherwise show up. And the other thing is they drop their money here, and we appreciate it, and then they go home.

I move approval. It's 5%. Okay. This needs to then be as an ordinance for next meeting. We don't vote today.

Right. So what we're, yeah, this is the innkeeper's tax contained in your county code, so it has to be an ordinance. So in a moment, I'm going to introduce that ordinance that would have the rate, and then you can vote next time.

Or you can suspend the rules and vote today.

How soon would you be able to capture? When would they start and be able to change this from the three to the five? Will it be immediate or does it have to wait?

I don't know what the laws are, but our request of the board would be asking today to where it would be effective for the 2027 calendar.

So you're thinking next? Okay.

Okay.

Just to introduce that one that's about next month instead of going through the hassle of suspending the rollout. My suggestion is, excuse me, that Dan introduces it and then we just vote on it next month and not go through the rigmarole of suspending the rule.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jake. Nice job.

So 2626-1 would increase the rate of the innkeeper's tax and make other technical corrections to that to conform with changes in that law. And again, as Jake just mentioned, we believe the request is that the effective date be on the 1st. This is actually administered through the Department of Revenue, so there is some lag in terms of effectiveness. So that will be on your agenda for next time.

Thank you. Moving on, Mindy, you have a report for us.

I think everybody received a copy of this in their email, but yeah. We're going to go through the first one.

How do we get this? Windows to display the whole screen. I don't even know.

I'm going to bring it up. Why that one word?

Did I do it all right, Tom? There we go. Okay. All right. Okay, great. All right. Just a quick little glance at where we're sitting fiscally after the first two quarters of the year. I think I've talked about this before, how really we don't see a lot of changes from the first quarter to the second quarter not a lot actually goes on fiscally that's because we only get tax dollars twice a year in June and December so the first thing we'll look at here is a little look at the property tax revenues and where we sit in relation to what we were planning on receiving or our levy The actual numbers of this are in the last page of your presentation. But as you can see on all of the funds that we look at that are fed by property taxes, we are at the midpoint or better. Except for the new core TIF, And the reason for that, like I told, like the additional that we had earlier today, that plays into this because it was looking at the wrong fund. They set up everything in the original new core TIF fund. In reality, we now have four new core TIFs. So they had to move that around. So our original estimates from last July have changed and we're changing the budgets to go along with them. So we're actually fine in the new core TIF, it's just a matter of how the original budgets were set up. Any questions about that before I go on? All right. The next thing that we look at are miscellaneous revenues. A big thing that you'll notice right off the bat is that our intergovernmental revenue is way above what we anticipated receiving and the biggest part of that there are two when we initially did our estimations last summer we were not involved in the public defender reimbursement program so that is now being counted in here And also we received a pretty hefty amount of supplemental lit distribution. So those two items have taken that way beyond what we anticipated receiving, which is a good thing. We always like for our revenues to be a little higher than we anticipated, at least I do.

So Jan, if you look to the next, you know, to the end of the year, last two quarters.

Mm-hmm.

So we've got to be up a couple hundred thousand?

On the intergovernmental? Yes. If I remember correctly, we get about, I think the first quarter we got 91,000 from public defender, and the second quarter was 94,000. So, yeah, it'll be another couple hundred thousand. We're above expectations on that. All right and now we're looking at the financial institution tax commercial vehicle excise tax licenses and permits and fines and fees. And this is literally not something that we can easily predict. Financial institution tax. I don't know if you know what that is but that's basically a tax imposed on banks for how much cash is sitting there at a certain time of the year. So. When we do our estimations, we're going off of prior years. Apparently, it's been a little more flush than was happening in prior years, and so we got more taxes from that. Fines and fees were slightly above expectations. Licenses and permits also. That's basically building permits is what comprises that, and we're above what we estimated there as well. Any questions on that one? All right next we have gas tax and wheel tax. Gas tax we are at the end of June our estimations must have been pretty conservative because at the end of June even after having received a break from some of our expected revenues we're still above what we the halfway point of what we expected to receive wheel tax we knew we were going to go above what we anticipated because of the lag time in the receipt of that money we're always four months four is it four or two two months behind on when we receive wheel tax so estimations are always pushed off a little bit. Both of those good things. The thing that did happen in July is that we received the reimbursement from the missing gas tax. So the next couple of quarters will be above what we anticipated receiving in that. And this is on the local road and street revenue side of things. Again, above the middle point is where we like to be halfway through the year. Income tax revenue, these are, I already discussed that. We have three funds that benefit from that general fund, Public Safety Lit and Public Safety Lit Public Safety Access Point. And those are above what was anticipated. due to the supplemental distribution that we received. General fund expenditures. We are almost exactly half of where we're supposed to be in the middle of the year. This is what we like to see. There are a lot of payments that come out of the general fund that only happen in the first or second quarter such as insurance premiums and my mind just went blank on them but a lot of the contractual payments that we have to pay out of county general happen in the first couple of quarters. So the fact that we're halfway through the year. We've paid many of those and are still sitting at the halfway point on our planned expenditures. That's also a good thing. Sitting right at the middle on the RDC-Temper TIF. Hume Bridge is, oh, I would say about a fifth of the way through where we have budgeted. CCD, oops, at a third of the way. Public Safety LID, we're also below that 50% mark, so good job, Sheriff. EMS, sounds like you're about to change all that though, so it's okay, it's okay. Oh, he's wanting to take it out of County General. Never mind, never mind. EMS, you know, that's going to be probably about halfway through because, you know, we pay that twice a year based on what we receive in income taxes. The same thing is true with health. We're a little bit below the 50% mark. PSAP lit right at halfway through and reassessment also at about the halfway point as well. So things are on track as far as spending with those. Motor vehicle highway and local road and street. The unrestricted, we're at a little below the halfway point. The restricted, we're a little bit above. And the combined puts us at about the halfway point. So again, right on track for that. Local road and street. We're a little bit below the halfway point at this juncture. The general the county general fund cash balance where we sitting the. Yeah the raindrop column is where we started off the year into quarter one. We dip down because of course our biggest revenues in county general we just get twice a year. So then this gray line indicates what we received in our property tax collections as well as the supplemental lit that I referred to. And then here's just a 10,000 foot view of some of the other major funds. MVH combined you know we're below where we started at the end of June but as I said as we continue to get those reimbursements on the gas tax that was rolled back I think we'll see that even back out a little bit I hope we see that even back out a little bit local road and street We're doing okay on the cash balance there, new core as well. Temper also, that TIF fund is gaining a pretty healthy cash balance this year. CCD is also up after the property tax settlement. Hume Bridge is up. Public safety lit way up. Also from that supplemental lit distribution, EMS, Again, we get taxes once a year for that. Health, the same PSAPlet. It's just about back to where it was at the beginning of the year and reassessment also up at the end of quarter two. And then this one is the budget versus expenditure comparison. You know, we adjust the budgets. That's what you guys spend the first half of your meetings doing about every time. And so, like, if you look at county general here, the original budget was $17,062,000, and they cut off my last number, but $17,000,000, and then we've adjusted it up to $17,157,000. I don't know why it cuts off my last number on this display. and then the same is true you know this is just kind of showing how we've adjusted the budgets over the first two quarters most of them have stayed pretty level but the you know couple of the ones that get used a lot get adjusted from time to time so MVH public safety lit those are slightly adjusted you can see that with the blue line and then the yellow line is just our year-to-date expenditures compared to the budgets so we're looking pretty good on all of those items does anybody have any questions about that i also always include the actual numbers in case you want to go down into that rabbit hole that's on the last three pages of the report that i send out and um Yeah, the numbers are looking pretty good. Our forecasting is good. We had some unexpected reimbursements that we learned about after the forecasting and so don't let it make us complacent but we're doing a good job.

Thanks, Jen. A question on additional appropriations. I know you're tracking additional appropriations. Yes. We've talked about, do you plan on sharing a report with us?

Oh, I thought we had already started doing that. I'm sorry. The additional appropriation report? I saw one of those go through. Am I just imagining things?

Sorry about that. We'll get you that.

Yeah, we do. We have to track everything for... I mean, everything obviously gets adjusted in our budget, and then it's all put out on the Gateway. So it's all always available. Everything we do is always available on the Indiana Gateway if anybody ever has any questions. But that's a big part of our jobs is the transparency side of things. So we will go ahead and pull one down for the next meeting so you can just see the actual numbers.

Okay, thanks.

Appreciate it. I'm sorry, that slipped my mind completely. Any other questions?

You can ask a lot of things, so you're excused for forgetting something. Thank you. It's fine. Any other questions then for Jennifer? All right. Budget estimates, Mindy.

Okay. Good morning. Let me get... A few things here. I'll get a little closer to the mic. We have obviously been about knee deep in budgets. We have everyone's budget. Just as I'm pulling this up, I will tell you everyone submitted for 3.8% as requested, so there were no surprises there. I have almost finished the salary ordinance that will show, um, that will show all of that detail, but we'll look at a high level here. Um, this is, this is Lau. This is our financial system figured this would be the easiest way to show you. Uh, and I will also be sending this in an email, um, after the, after this meeting. Our 2027 general fund budget is sitting at, as requested, $19,830,552. Last year's budget was $16,476,687. So it's an increase of about 7.67%. Overall, all budgets, we're sitting at $51,501,091. Last year, we were at $45,857,018, which is about an 11% increase. So some of the major funds we look at, I'll just go to the levied funds, if you will, Cambridge is requesting 2.9 million. Last year they requested 2.1. CCD is requesting 1,015,000. Last year it was at 820,000, so that is about a 38% increase. My apologies, 33% increase. Cambridge was a 38% increase. Let's see what else we can look at here. NVH is asking for 4.8 million. Last year they asked for 4.5 million, so... I'm not sure why that's saying it's a decrease. Oh, it's from the, yeah, it's a total requested, yeah. Is there a fund that you specifically want to see? Let me look at the 1170. So that would be the PSAP, or I'm sorry, the Public Safety Lit. They are requesting 5.4 up from 5.3. And I was gonna look at the PSAP. Pretty much cover your big ones. PSAP is going from 1.3 to 5.3. 1.7 last year to 2.1 this year. Like I said, overall, everyone did the 3.8%. We are over the growth quotient from last year, but we're just starting on the analysis of everything. And as people present, obviously that will adjust. But right now we're looking really good. Like Jennifer said, our revenues are in line with everything. We're working on our estimates for next year. We have the budget meeting tomorrow with the state to discuss, to go over our budget in detail and then give us some guidance on what we'll be getting as far as our levy goes. But we're really in good shape right now. We need to get down deep. We've got the high-level stuff. We need to get into the analysis stuff. And we will have more of that, obviously, when we have our budget books and everything ready for you guys for the August 24th meeting and after. So right now, it's just a high-level view. Again, we're at 51%. $51,501,091 for a request. The only guidance that I would ask is on your budget, if we were doing the longevity, if we've had any discussion on that, because that was, I think, I don't remember what I told you it was, but it was just a little above. But do you want me to keep that in the budget for moving forward for right now? Yep.

Hey, Mindy, what is our total payroll? Is it around $11 million?

For the year?

Yeah, I don't know.

It's about, let's see, it's about $500,000 for a pay. Well, I'm told. Yeah. But that includes HSA and everything, so that's kind of hard to say. Yeah.

I guess where I was going with that, if our payroll is around $11 million, 3.8% increase, you know, that's almost $4 million of our overall increase. That doesn't include the increase on benefits. So I was just trying to get from that, what, $45 million to the $51 million?

Yeah. I mean, this year, the appropriation request for salaries is at $16,518,000. $16,518,146. And the longevity is estimated at 262,000. I believe last year was, well, I can tell you what last year was. Last year was 15,873,717. So not that much.

Just a couple items that Mindy mentioned. The Kuhn Bridge Fund, the reason why that's going up is we have some major bridge projects that are coming up next year, so we had to do a larger budget for that, but we do have a large fund balance. And then CCD, you saw a big jump there too. We have some one-time IT purchases that have to happen for our cybersecurity and our servers and software, so we'll explain more about that, but that's just a one-time large increase because of those items.

Okay, thank you. Moving on. Last month, I wasn't here, but you all decided that you wanted to move $1 million to the general fund. In front of you, you have that resolution, and so Mindy asked that we do this as a resolution and vote on it at a meeting so that it's in the minutes. So do I have a motion to accept the transfer of funds to the rainy day fund? It's been moved and seconded that we move $1 million to our rainy day fund. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed the same. Motion carried. Thank you. And then the tax cap and budget and the levy recommendations, that's just something that we have to vote on so that we have to notify, or Mindy has to notify the different units as to the amounts. And so this is just a procedural.

Yes, we usually, the recommendation is usually to ask that the taxing units stay within the growth quotient, which is 6% this year.

Okay.

And then I'll send out notifications to everybody on behalf of the council.

So what we have to do is make a motion to signify that she needs to do that. So is there a motion?

I make a motion to signify that you do that, to send out the date, to stay within their growth quotient, but they don't have to spend the full growth quotient.

I think you've added that sentence before. I think it's in the standard. I'll second it.

It's been moved and seconded that you send out the notification with specifications that it not go over, that they don't need to spend 6%. So those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Oppose the same. Motion carried. Is there any old business to come before the council? Being non-funded organizations. Department heads. Good morning, Ms. Monica.

Good morning. Monica Nagel, Purdue Extension. In May, you all received an email that Purdue is going through a transformation. So I brought with me today Dee, who is going to tell you more.

Good morning. Like Monica said, my name is Dee Nicely. And through the end of May, I was a 4-H educator and county extension director for Tippecanoe County. And then June 1st, I became one of the new positions for across the state for Purdue Extension. those are regional operation leaders and what that means is it's a we are going from a county um based your where you would only receive services from montgomery county and now we're in a shared services model there are 12 regions across the state and in region 5 we have montgomery we also have tippecanoe we have fountain warren benton and then we have park putnam Vigo and Vermilion. So I have the honor of working with Montgomery and then Vigo, Vermilion Park and Putnam. So I'm excited to go through this process as we start to move to the shared services. So the nice thing in your region, you're gonna have 18 educators plus specialists who will be working to provide your programming. 4-H will stay county based, but then we'll also offer the youth lots of regional opportunities to attend as well. So I look forward to working with you.

Welcome to Montgomery County. Thank you. We look forward to working with you also.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Big supporter of 4-H. We appreciate that. Me too.

I did food preservation yesterday. I didn't have to taste one thing.

No tasting. Thank you for doing that too.

I saw a lot of salsa and tomato juice yesterday.

Thank you.

Thank you and welcome.

Thank you.

Any other elected officials?

I have a question. What is rainy day fund balance now?

I want to say it was closer to 300 and some. It's low, especially in comparison. Let me look at the.

I don't need the exact number.

Yeah, I think it's around 300 and something. Yeah. I do, if nobody else is going up to the mic. One of the other fun things we've been working on, Mindy Byers Auditor, sorry, are certifying the net assessed values we have submitted to the state. We have not heard back, but they are buried, the state's trying to keep up with all the things. So I just want to give you a heads up. These are preliminary, again, not yet approved by the state, but we For pay 27, our adjusted net assessed value is $3,065,207,906 and change. Last year, we were at, I don't know why I keep taking my glasses off, $3,032,576,941. So we are up about 33 million. So not really that big, I mean, that sounds big, but it's not a huge increase in our net AV this year, but it is an increase. So that'll obviously affect budgets, levies, all the things. So we are anxiously awaiting that approval.

I got a few things for you. Tom Klein, County Administrator. First, just a reminder that the must committee meets August 26th at 1 p.m. It'll be in this meeting room. Just a reminder, that is the committee that will meet representatives of cities and towns city and towns in the county to discuss the new income tax income tax scheme Public is invited to attend and it will also be on our YouTube channel Regarding the new core overpass project. I think I've mentioned this to you before Our goal is to have the project let in January We should know more tomorrow if that is on schedule. We are waiting for state federal review of the environmental documents and if we don't get a good determination of the review by September we may have to push that project back later into 2027 on a good news item we did receive notice that we are getting our reimbursement from the state for the new core water line project that's about 1 million dollars or more so that should be coming to us if you recall we asked for a additional appropriation to pay that And then now we're getting reimbursed. So we should have that back into our cash balance. The housing program grant, which is $1.1 million is ready to be implemented. We're having a committee meeting of the steering committee. We'll be meeting here, I think tomorrow. And then we have a website ready to go. We're working with Thrive West Central to get the information out. Just a reminder that is a grant for new housing, infill housing and downtown housing throughout Montgomery County. developers can apply for a grant i think between a hundred thousand and two hundred fifty thousand dollars for assistance for infrastructure improvements also yesterday the commissioners approved to make a request to the county council for an additional appropriation of two hundred fifty thousand dollars and that would be for the demolition of the alamo gym uh... that property was given an unsafe building notice that the owner was given until last week to demolish the Alamo gym and that has not occurred. We will be applying for a grant from the state to provide the revenue for that additional appropriation. And the deadline to apply for that grant is I believe September, October. We have to do two steps for the grant application. And then just a reminder as well, Mark Bonwell is working on The roof bid specs for this replacement of the roof at the government center, we estimate that may be $500,000 or more. And so as you recall, when Mr. Peters was here doing his financial report, we would be coming back with a recommendation for an additional appropriation to pay for that work on the roof. Thank you. I also forgot, sorry, Mike's not here, but Mike Davis, our mapping director is retiring this week. Friday is his last day. And I think I mentioned at the last meeting that Joey Jenkins is our new mapping director. So Joey has been getting training right now and has been doing a great job. So we just want to thank Mike. I think he's been here for 20, I think 29 years with the county and we appreciate all of his service for the county. And he's looking forward to working on his 10 trucks he has in his garage. And we're looking forward to Mike, Joey helping us out in mapping. So we appreciate all that. Also want to mention Becky Peach, her father passed away this weekend. So I just want to send our condolences to her family. And I forgot also, I think Mark Bonwell has a birthday at the end of the month as well as I think Jessica Brigette. So Mark stood up yesterday and we sang happy birthday to him. So it's a new tradition. So happy birthday, Mark and Jessica.

Hey, Tom, will they put a lien on that Alamo property to get money back from that?

Yeah, it's an unsafe building enforcement. So, yeah, once the work is done, a lien will be imposed. The cost will be certified to the treasurer, and that's how you collect that. So we may have to foreclose, and we may own that for a while.

Well, you know, it's in downtown Alamo, so. It's prime property.

Actually. Destination.

As Mark Bonwell could tell you, and it's his birthday this month, the gym is actually not in the town of Alamo. It is in the county. Or we wouldn't be, you know. Involved if it wasn't for that.

It's actually just outside. Across the road, right?

And when I played baseball there, I tell you, you could hit the ball into the corn and the ball was in play. Yeah.

And how many eons ago was that? Also, you had sent us something to the council that there's a meeting tomorrow at 10 about the mosque. It was invited by... Yeah.

Yes, the Association of Cities and Towns called AIM is having a meeting of the city and the town representatives to educate them on the must committee. And the mayor did invite anyone from the county that wanted to attend as well. And that is at 10 o'clock at Fusion, I believe.

So Mike, you can be real busy. You go to that and then you come out to the other meeting.

I do plan to attend.

I hope they don't need you at work. Okay. For the good of the cause, Mr. Cady.

Well, I want to personally thank Mike Davis for all his years of service. I know he's looking really forward to golfing and spending time with his boys. I remember when he came out to work at the old county farm. And I was working with Larry Utes and Missy and everybody. And so it just seems like yesterday, but he's done a good job. And I want to thank him for all his work. And the only other thing I had was for Dan. I've been getting a lot of questions about the townships, towns, fire departments and with this Senate bill and where they're going to be and where they're going to be captured at it. Any updates on any of that kind of stuff?

No, the state is establishing a formula and so some of our, some small townships may be required to merge. We don't know yet, but we have two townships, Scott and Sugar Creek, which seem to be among those on a list the state is looking at. And so if they cannot satisfy that formula, then they'll be required to merge. It would seem to me it would be those two that possibly, and then they have to figure out who they're going to merge with. And again, there has been a lot of discussion about that, but I don't think we know anything for sure yet.

Sorry. Thanks to Jake for coming in with the CDC, to Heather and Stephanie as well for joining us, as well as many of their board I recognize there as well. And just thanks to everybody else in the county doing their good jobs.

Pre-budget workshop tomorrow, is that right?

Yes, at 11.

Yep, okay, thanks.

Okay, then I thank all of you for being here. It's really nice to work with such a congenial group, and I made it through this meeting. Any other public comments? The next regular meeting is September the 8th at 9, but I will remind all of you that we will meet on the 24th at 4 right here and the 25th at 4 to present budgets. And Mindy will be sending out when you're up, when you're presenting, right?

Yes, I've already done that. The departments that report to the commissioners are on the 24th, and all other departments are on the 25th.

Good to know. For the good of the cause, is there anything else? Is there a motion to adjourn? Second, thank you. It's been moved and seconded, we're adjourned.