Montgomery County Council - Regular Meeting

I start right I know, right? speech. All right. Good morning everyone. Like to call the meeting to order. If you'll join me with the pledge, please.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands one indivisible.

Pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you for today. We just thank you for this time together. Um we're especially grateful for our freedoms and those that provided it on this Veterans Day week. Uh we just honor those families and veterans, especially those in our community. And we just ask for your guidance today as we take up to people's money matters. And we thank you for this opportunity. I pray. Amen. All right, good morning everyone. Glad few people made it through the snow and the train blockage. But um first item up is the consent agenda for the October auditor report. Uh the same serious transfer report and the cash balance report. I entertain a motion on those three items. Got a motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying I.

Any opposed? Do we have any public comment on any item that's on the agenda? Hearing none, we'll move on. Remind me, put your phones on silent, please. Um, transfer of appropriations. Shar's up first. Good morning. Those are um transfers that I'm requesting to clean up some salary lines. I believe there are three.

Yes. Sorry, I only have my paperwork agenda. Yes. People change roles. Okay. One was made a supervisor and then stepped down and the other one went back into the role that she had stepped out of and um musical chairs. Okay. Um off that subject, but how we doing just one opening and I'm sorry. How are we staffing wise down there? Yeah, we're down one. Just one. Just one. We have one in training still. Yes. Okay. Getting there. I'll entertain a motion to transfer. Move to approve. Second.

Got a motion a second. Any other questions or discussion? All those in favor sign I any oppos. Thank you. Uh across the track public defender that

let's see um oh well they have to they have to hire outside help from time to time to provide defense. So the contract the amount they had in that contract line mine ran short and this is to cover them through the end of the year on that. Okay. So okay

I'll entertain a motion on that motion to approve. Second got motion second. Any questions or discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? And then commissioners do the commissioner's office. Yes, this is we're working here for the auditor's office. We've got some line items we're running short on. That's why you needed to transfer value. Looks like I overfigured what we had to have. So that was extra. And then if we had some extra in there to transfer to long and short-term disability for sure.

Okay. approve. Second motion second. Any questions or discussion? All those in favor sign by saying I. I. Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you.

Uh yeah, the county elected officials training. Um there are six different departments that can use this fund uh to pay for their state called conferences. And now that we're towards the end of the year and those conferences are over, we see that we need to transfer out of the registration line and into the uh lodging line. So that's what that's for.

Yeah. Okay, I'll entertain a motion on that. Got a motion and a second. Any other questions on that? All those in favor signify by saying I. Any opposed? And lastation. Good morning. Andy, chief probation officer. I have one transfer to do to finish up paying bills for this year, please. This is not asking from you. was coming from. All right.

Second motion second. Any questions or discussion? All in favor sign I. I post. Thank you. Seeing new no old business, we'll move to new business. Uh first reading of ordinance 2025-4 which is the compensation ordinance and you should have gotten a copy of that. We have to vote on this official reading.

No, just introduction only. This is your salary ordinance. It sets your salaries uh based upon your budget adoption. This is first reading. You'll adopt this in December. So study it closely and you can make your decision next time. All right. And I go ahead, but I was just going to say that there was some confusion about the rates, but those are hourly for the non-exempt. I think they're on the wrong line. You think they're on? Yeah. Matt and I looked at it and it looks to me Andrea, I'm just trying to cover your salary. Okay.

I may not know enough to turn off my phone, but I'm covering. I think we I think it's just that the lines are in the wrong order. Okay.

Okay. We will

So that's the that is the chief probation officer. the assistant chief probation officer and then the 244 is a probation officer line under that. So we'll just verify that those amounts are correct. Okay. Okay. We will take another look at those. Thank you. Okay. Okay, we'll make sure that gets correct. We'll run that by everybody for next meeting.

Then next we have the first reading of ordinance 2025-5, which is the Montgomery County solid waste district appropriation ordinance. You should have a copy of that as well. And then tying on that 2025-6 first reading of the Montgomery County Solidways District Compensation Ordinance.

We like that. Okay, so that's all for the ordinances. And next up is the Cargill abatement request.

Good morning, director of economic development. Um we are really excited to be here and be able to present this this project to you all. Uh as you know, Carville in London has been a longtime corporate citizen and um excited that they are looking at expanding. So, what you're going to hear today is they're looking at $17.5 million in total capital investment and the retention of 20 employees. Um, they are requesting a real property tax abatement. So, your property tax statement committee is going to make a recommendation that will be presented by Councilman Nelson. But first, we have Seth Vancraftoft, who is the plant manager here at the Wind facility, and then John Barrett, who is the regional operations manager out of Lafayette, to do a short presentation, go into more details about this phased in multi-year expansion project and then answer any questions that you might have.

Good morning. I'm John Barrett. Uh I just start out by when when the ethanol plant was built in Lynon in 2007, it was built on 100 million gallon capacity and that's about 100 trucks a day. And today we're running about 146 trucks a day through there. So we have to take uh 146,000 grind across the belt. So we have to take 200 trucks a day in 5 days a week in order to meet grind because we don't receive on the weekends typically. And so that's that's caused some issues of backing out on the roads and things like that up there and u and so come time that we need to upgrade and and that's where uh this this project originated from. And if you can go two slides right there that that kind of shows kind of a phased in approach over a multi-year plan here a couple three years. Um, and what the intent is is that we we did try to acquire some ground for staging up there, but with the price of ground and the amount of ground someone wanted us to buy, I needed 10 acres. They said for 45,000 an acre is what I offered. They said, "We'll sell you 80 for 45,000, but not 10." So, so the other way to solve this is to push trucks through the plant faster. And that's where this project's kind of originated from. And so in in that where that red box is is kind of where our office currently sits. And that's the first phase of the project is to is to move that office away from the center of that plant where all the grain kind of comes in and distributes out. And so that's what we're working on now is an office plan to move that down to where that purple box is. That's where that office would move get out of that geography. And then in the second phase where that red box is, that's a new receiving pit and boot pit. And then two new bins that are 400,000 bushels each to receive corn. uh come in and add some additional capacity. So, we would increase the 76% capacity proceeding there uh through

this project. And then back in that staging lot in the back, we would revamp that so that we can get more trucks back there. So, we're anticipating 20 to 30 trucks, more staging on the ground as well as a 76% increased capacity of the rate in which we can put them through the plant. And then the last phase of the project which I don't know if it has a direct benefit to that is more from just looking at handling is on the green lines coming down is redoing the conveyance across the top of our bins to currently those are open belt conveyors today. There's an emissions uh limit that we have on those and by closing those it's better for the community uh and uh it allow us to pick up a little capacity on how we can fill those bins. So that's kind of the phased in project. it it it would go kind of end in July of 29, right before harvest of 29. Uh, and then we have to go through corporate approvals on that after we secure this. This goes into our calculations on our corporate approvals. So, is there any questions you have for me?

We appreciate your interest in asking. Great. Uh I know 1100 worth is this. Is that issues breaking down stages? Will this move the trucks off the road? That's that's our intent. Yeah. So what I was telling the city uh the city uh council the other day was um

it's hard for us to determine if 400 trucks are going to show up at the beginning of the day. Right. What we've done is we've taken steps to start buying our grain in two week windows instead of monthong blocks. So a lot of grain elevators around they'll they'll contract grain for the uh December delivery, right? So it's all the month of December. If all those trucks show up on day one, they don't really have control over that. We've broken that down to go buy the first two weeks of December and the last two weeks of December. That's that's helped out a lot until we haven't had as many issues out there. So by continuing that and then increasing the rate in which we can get trucks through, could there be a couple trucks that get off the road right at the beginning of the day so they're not sitting out there for 2 three hours? Hopefully they're off that road very quickly. And and and I hope that our our our belief is that we will not have trucks going all the way down to that intersection cuz it would get so long it would go I mean a mile long the line out there. And so I think we've alleviated a lot of that through our contracting strategy, but I think we can get get completed with this because where our thought is somebody told me that you're going to start giving times like you can have so many deliveries in the morning. Is that

there's been talk about that, but we don't I don't see that happening. Uh I should I should mention this too when we talk about the staging on there. One of the projects when we do this uh office is a third lane coming into the plant too. Um I I had I had an Ontario candidate one time I was covering that and uh and they would schedule trucks within an hour time time frame but it never worked right cuz cuz you have people coming in now you're penalizing them for coming in. it it just didn't create a very good environment for the customers. And so we could take that approach. We took the other approach of saying let's increase the capacity so that we can get them through faster. It creates a better experience for the customer, alleviates the road issue on the road um and allows us to to get back because we're typically working on the weekends and stuff like that trying to make grind because we can't dial fast enough to where we're at today. So we felt that this was a better approach than doing that right now. I'm not saying we wouldn't if time's gotten there, but we just aren't there yet. I think when you go up to Lafayette, um, one of our competitors does that. Lines are super long. They're sitting there for four or five hours in line and customers hate it, but they get paid a bunch of money to deal with the the weight, right? So, um, so they still get their grain, but they pay a huge premium to do it. And we'd rather create a better experience for the customer. So, that that's the approach we took.

Thank you. Sounds like a lot. Yeah. I was just curious. Are you planning on adding employees with this as well or do you know?

No. No. What we are doing is uh we currently have a regional office in West Lafayette that we rent from Purdue. And uh a lot of our trading and merchandising folks as they've been as they left or we've replaced them, they've been officing in Kansas City. Jack, that staff has gone down. We still have a few people up there. We're going to close that office and move that to Lynon where we'll bring those people down to Lynon and then that will become more of a regional office for us. But we won't need any more employees to handle the grain. It's just that we're going to handle the same amount of grain in a short amount of time. If I might because I know initially we were thinking that the regional office folks from Lafayette that were coming here would be new but as we found out in working through the project they are already being paid out of and accounted for out of the office. So theoretically they are not new because they're already in that 20 count on retention. I just wanted to clarify. Thanks.

I I just say that there have been um some meetings with John and his team with the county commissioners to talk about the traffic issue and we think that uh we're satisfied that they're this uh these improvements will really help and also that they're willing to take u they're willing to work and help the county out on that road issue. So we appreciate that. I don't think the council that just happened last week. We have a good meeting. So, I just want to relay that to you as well that they've always been good partners. We kind of think they just continuing to do that. But these changes of how fast they move the trucks through where they can stage them and their increased capacity should help that out. It has been better up there with the change in scheduling, but we we would see this as again part of the solution to the road problem also. Is this going to create anything for women as a town? Are they going to any consideration of that on water or any kind?

Yes, that's a great point. Have they signed off or thought that this is a good thing? We have had conversation. We currently are on a well and septic and we would move to city water and sewer and and we staff's had conversations with them. They're all in favor of that. Um, and so yeah, that's already been in the works.

Just a reminder to the council. So the abatement process two-step process you you begin by consideration today of this declaratory resolution which says that we want to make the uh parcel at Cargill eligible for tax abatement and preliminarily approve the tax abatement as requested in your resolution is the schedule of abatement which is a modified schedule. There's uh cargo has changed it so there's never a 100% abatement. So year not 100, it's 95. Um, and then the auditor will provide public notice and you actually make your final determination at your next meeting. So today, it's just gets the process started. It gives taxpayers notice of what you're doing. It also allows Cargill to feel their assurance that they can continue to move on. And so, but really the final approval will be next time. Okay, we have a motion and a second for sport to go through this process. Any questions?

Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't think I don't know if there was a when we got them came in and we did some upgrades and I don't know that I wasn't here but that's what we have a motion second. Any other questions or discussion? All in favor signify by saying I. Any opposed? Okay, thank you. We'll move forward with this.

Okay, so we just did. So, and then you'll talk about this one. Okay. Sorry, just working out a number detail. Um, okay. So, that's all for the agenda. Staff and elected official reports. Any funded organizations, any department heads?

Well, thank goodness for that. Thank you. Go ahead, Don. Um, as you guys know, tomorrow is Veterans Day. The parade is at 11 o'clock down Main Street. Um, and as is our tradition, we like to recognize the county employees that are veterans. And so I, if you're okay, I'd like to read out the names of the county employees that are um, veterans in the sheriff's department in the Merit Division. Ben Fenwiner, Army. Derek Punky, Marines. Ethan Stonereaker, Army. Matt Roberts, Army. Zayn Heen, Army. Shane Clover, Navy. at the jail. Christian Brown, Army. Enz Allen, Army. Chandler Cornet, Marines. Brandon Kenner, Army. Michael Gatis, Army. CT Bailey, Marines. Joseph Jenkins, Marines. In the Support Division, Dell Wilson, Army. Laren Meyers, Army. Jamie Cilla, Navy. In the public defender's office, John Drier, Army. In the prosecutor's office, Rick Kennock, Navy. Andrew Salter, Navy. In probation department, Patrick Gilland, Army in the Highway Department. They're all out there plowing the snow today. Um, Ed Beavers, Army National Guard. Mike Adams, Army National Guard. Cody Low, Army National Guard. Brennan Renard, Marine Reserve. Tanner Dirks, Army. Kevin Gustafson, Air Force at Dispatch, Clint Jackson, Army National Guard. And in the veteran services office, Joe Ellis Army. Um, I also would like to point out that the commissioners this morning did appoint a

new VSO, veteran service officer for us because Joe is retiring at the end of this year. and they appointed Nick Kosan to replace him. So he'll start here towards the end of end of the year and next year full time. Thanks Tom. Any other elected officials ready to get out? What you got Brett? recing. Nick Kashan is uh very excited about having that position. I talked to him at the Legion the other day and he's he's ready to roll. Uh the other thing is the Legion has golf carts available. If anybody knows a veteran that wants to be in the parade, contact the Legion and they'll get them in the parade and let them ride a golf cart in the parade. So, if you know anybody, contact the Legion. I just reiterate that thanks to all the veterans that serve.

Yeah. Um, you know, one of the things that, uh, I'm a firm believer in teamwork and, um, I just like to throw an idea out there, see if there's any, uh, interests of the council of, uh, having a joint meeting, council, commissioners, RDC, talk about visions, planning, strategies for 2026. So, I want to thank our veterans. Thank you guys for coming to the council. I appreciate all the hard work.

Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. I always say that when it gets to me, but my dad served in the army, so I'm proud of it. Yep. Um, yeah, of course. Obviously, thank you to the veterans. Um, come from a veteran family as well, as many of us did. Um, and thank you to Cargill for just investing in our community. um big or small, we we we're just glad that people are are looking at McGomery County to to invest in. So, thank you. And with that, uh oh, almost forgot. Dan wants paid and so does Mr. Peters. So, I'll entertain a motion for those two claims.

Second. Motion a second. Any discussion or questions? All those in favor signify by saying I. Any opposed? All right. Next regular meeting will be December 9th right here. And with that motion to journ. All right. Thank you everybody.