Town Council - Regular Meeting

Start with the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God,

All right.

Can we please start with the roll call here?

Here.

Here. Moving on to claims 2.1 approval of APBs 29136 to 9171.

I'll make a motion that we approve APBs 29136 through 291

7-1 as presented in our backup materials motion do i have a second i'll second that great job terry any discussions all those in favor say aye aye opposed and that carries moving on to the adoption of minutes i'll make a motion to adopt the town council minutes for may 20th 2026.

I'll second that motion.

Terry's on a roll today. She's going to second that one. Any discussions? Additions? Attractions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? And that passes as well. Moving on to public comments. Three minutes time limit for items on the agenda only. If you wish to talk about something on the agenda, please come to the podium and speak into our microphones. Outstanding. So we have no old business or new business, but we'll move straight into continued council conversations to see if there's anything that the council would like to continue to discuss or bring up.

I would like to bring up one thing. Earlier this evening at the RDC meeting, there was a brief discussion about the possibility of the town council approaching adjoining property owners and both to the east and to the west of the current town limits to ask those property owners if they were interested in voluntary annexation. So I offered at the RDC meeting to bring that issue before the town council to see if the council wants to approach adjoining property owners to see if they're interested in being annexed.

I'll say that we've talked before about, and I heard the meeting as well, if somebody would like to be annexed, that's our preferred method. I don't think we have an agenda that I know of, or in my opinion, to force annexation unless there's a pretty good reason, which I can't really think of one right now. I think most people that would develop there would want to annex to be part of the town, but I think we could probably address that as it comes up. I think Additionally, we have reached out to some residents talking about sewer, right? Didn't we do that recently? Send out letters? Yeah. So I think we could probably do something similar to send a letter and say, hey, adjoining properties. The hard part is, as you know, if the person next to town doesn't want to, but the person down does, now we're into a conflict, right? Can't do it. It's kind of a big... what-ish scenario that plays off in a lot of different pieces. Thoughts?

I concur. Great job. Great job. You brought it up.

Yep, I just was the messenger. I agreed to bring up the issue, so I wanted to do so. And it doesn't hurt to send somebody a letter and just ask, are you interested? There's a big difference between that and forced annexation. If somebody sees the benefits, i.e. sewers, then I think they would approach us.

have an outstanding sewer if anybody would like to come see it we're giving tours um but i i have talked to people randomly about annexation i think there's a lot of things they don't understand or don't know about it um i think most of us found this out when we were running for office a lot of people thought they were in the town of new palestine and said i'm going to vote for you and then come out like i don't even live in new palestine you know what i mean so i think there are portions of that and the more we can educate people

i'm sure we could send something out to the people who touch town limits and see if they're interested cool thank you if i can add something just um and it could go along with that educational piece um something to keep in mind as you approach uh possible um annexes i guess it would maybe be the word one-eighth of the parcel has to touch the town so maybe some properties may be immediately immediately eligible to be annexed and then you could sort of puzzle piece those in if that makes sense. So one parcel could touch one eighth and then a parcel that doesn't touch the town could then become an accessible if that makes sense. So just something to keep in mind as you approach. I'm sorry, it's copperstone.

Okay, it was pieced together up that way. Gotcha. You're gonna be in charge of the one. You're just gonna go out there with a ruler.

Sometimes it's close. It's tight. And in those situations, probably a survey would need to be done to make sure it's good to call.

Awesome. Any other conversations? Weather's great. We'll keep it moving down to legal updates.

Just continue to working on some code enforcement issues working well with Brian counselor read on identifying those and getting letters drafted and sent out. Nothing further.

If you don't know, the town is doing our trash day. It's coming up. So if you get a letter because you have some code violation due to trash or need some help, please use that service that Terry I'm sure we'll talk about later. Thank you very much. Uh, department reports, Jim, let me know this morning that he would not be here today. So, um, I told him to let me know if there's anything big to pass and he said he sent most of it in emails to us already. So nothing to to pass there. So, Steve, uh,

you're familiar with yeah that's kind of funny because I'm not gonna name the person but they told me that it's funny when they drove past a sign it doesn't register the speed it just says slow down and I kind of chuckled I said well it does register the speed you just have to be go good going below yeah yeah I said when I drive past it it says 20 so I don't know how fast you're going but I They didn't realize that it actually posted the speed on the sign. It was because they were driving too fast.

Well, I was walking our new Corgi puppy in there. He's only five months old, and we were coming up to it, and it said 16.

And I was like, holy cow, I didn't realize there was a car coming behind me. So I thought we had a really, yeah, I thought maybe I was moving faster than what I thought, but the puppy really impressed me. But it wasn't the puppy. That new knee is really working out. It really is.

At any rate, yeah, that's a good, we're just going to stop around. going through there and repainting all those for Summerfest. Did Jim talk about the intern last week?

Yeah, it was an exciting thing. I think we're going to talk about it when we start budget talks. Make sure we earmark something in there. Hopefully we can find somebody who's interested in government and takes over for us.

Yeah, I think we do have another applicant.

Yeah, it's a good thing. If it's a high school kid or whatever, college age kid, Thank you, Chief.

Yeah, please

Please let him know we appreciate him doing that. I think it's one of those things that doesn't get a lot of recognition, but going out there and finding some money for a small town like us is a pretty big deal. The New Pal K9 golf outing is June 25th. Great job. And if you know anybody who would like to donate anything for... door prizes or raffles. We're really in need of that. I think we are full at this point, so that's awesome. And we need some raffle prizes for Mark to win all of again. So if you know of anybody, please let them know. Yvonne? The only thing I have to say first is in the middle of our coming Couldn't notice. The new report looks the exact same. Thank you guys for going through that. I know it's a challenging time, but really appreciate all the work that you guys put into it. Public comments. This can be any topic, because we didn't have much on our agenda. This is your chance to come up and speak. Please come up to the podium. Tell us your name, organization, or where you live. The microphone will not project. My mother is in the audience, so she won't hear you from the microphone, but I'm sure anybody else who's watching may.

Mark Gillibrand, 5201. Thank you. First off, happy 50th birthday, Chad. Second off, we got with our, the other business, our neighbor, about cars cut through parking lots and after school the kids coming down Elm Street. We're trying to see if we could come up with a solution. Elm Street.

It's just great.

They're trying to see how fast they can get up to before they have to stop. That's all I've got.

What are your thoughts on that?

I get asked that a lot. I am not for speed bumps.

Can we put our radar out there?

We could put the radar out there, but for every person or two that won't speed bump, I get phone calls tell me you don't like them yeah i got a bad back my car suspension this and that um there are other ways to and if i if i if i did do one it would be in say a subdivision with a really really long straight away where they can really get going uh understand but uh yeah there are other ways we could set that radar thing make it one way the other way

We'd have to do a study to see, right?

We've thought about that. I mean, taking a, you know, just a street out where we can kind of just like walk through that area, but assuming we can try and do stuff one way would be amazing.

Amazing.

How is this possible? Take the street out.

Not take the street out. No, make it one way.

Chief said to a...

Let us look at that. That might be something we can look at. And the data from the radar, if we put out there, would tell us some information to support that decision, right?

Correct.

That thing was a great investment. I just need access to it.

Honestly, it might be like in Mr. Hartley's neighborhood. I think the kids would try and see how fast the radar gets up to.

I know back in my day, I was kind of that way. Not anymore, but...

I think the reason I'm saying to do that is because it'll start tracking it.

So we can start to see, like, okay, on school days, yeah, people are flying by there.

Hey, maybe there's someone you look at. Yeah, so it'll break that data down, and then it can narrow that time band down to where chief would then know between these times if there's an officer available. He'll just post an officer there. So out of that 24-hour period, if you can break it down within 30 minutes to an hour on when to put an officer there, you can help.

They've been there before, and when he goes to pull somebody over, another kid comes through, doesn't see the cop. So the next day, he's doing the same thing.

It's just a parked car. One of the pooled cars. Thank you. Appreciate it.

I know speed bumps are, I know you don't like them, but I'll tell you what, going through Crystal Heights slows me down. You said it slowed you down too, right?

I don't speed.

I already told you that. Those were here when I got here, and again, they are in a really long stretch, a straight road.

Okay. Any other comments?

I actually had a conversation with Jim about that today and was copied on an email thread with some landscaping options for that. So I'm actually having a conversation with Jim on that. I agree with that. I had a conversation with Jim about why it's not asphalted yet and landscaped. Jim and I had that conversation literally today and was copied on an email thread. So I am following up on that, and that will be done soon. Thank you. You're welcome.

Anybody else? All right, we'll move on to council comments. And, Bill, you're first up.

I'd just like to say congratulations to the class of 2026. Have a safe summer. That's all I have.

Brian? I want to congratulate the girls softball team on the regional champ victory. I want to congratulate my daughter for graduating Ball State. I should have done that at the last meeting, but better late than never. I appreciate the patience of the ladies in the office on dealing with the new software issues. I stopped in earlier this week and didn't stay long. But it was busy in here. I live in a house full of girls and have for a long time, so I knew that I read the room. I stopped in, made my presence known, acknowledged that I appreciate them more when I left. And I want to wish Chad a happy 50th birthday.

Happy birthday, Chad.

Thank you.

Appreciate that. It's up to me, so thanks a lot, buddy. Yeah, the class of 2026, four valid Victorians, so that's pretty awesome. I think it says a lot about our school and that class, so I'm really excited for them and everything they do. Please pass word for raffle items for the golf outing. We would like to have an awesome turnout and need a lot of ways for people to spend their money so that our canine program can continue to be 100% funded by the town, which is a pretty awesome thing to say. So thank you guys for all of that. And with that, I'll pass it to Terri.

Thank you, Ted. Just today, June 20th, please partake in that because we really want to clean the town up. And if you have things that you want picked up, please call by June 17th and put things up to curve and we'll pick them up. We'll look on our website. I believe Bridie have a list of what can't, that flyer's on the website. Oh, is it? Okay. Yeah, this flyer, prohibitive items. And on June 13th, the week before, there's gonna be a collection event here from 9 to 12. um electronics it's a recycle it's uh hancock recycle hancock county is doing it and um it says five dollars carload of any electronics not including tv and it has other stuff so there's this i believe it's on the website as well okay and um We'll be getting our flower baskets hung within the next week or so. Talking about beautifying the town. And happy birthday, Jeff.

Thank you. I'm going to pull Terry and go again because I forgot to thank my mother who watches on camera all the time. If you're a regular, you know that she's an avid watcher. But yeah, thanks for coming out, Mom. And with that, I would love a motion to adjourn.

I'll make a motion to adjourn.

I'll second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Thank you.

We're out.