Common Council - Regular Meeting

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[music] [music] [music] [music] Welcome to the November. Yes, it's dark outside already. So, November city council meeting. Will you please stand and join me for the pledge of allegiance?

I aliance 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.

Councilman Parnell, could you lead us in prayer? Father, we thank you for today your blessings, your mercy and grace that is available to us each and every day. And so, Father, tonight we come once again humbly before your throne asking for your blessings that you would give us wisdom, give us guidance. We again, Father, pray for the safety of our firefighters, our police officers, their family, your blessings upon the residents of the city of Portage. bless uh Lord our mayor, his family, and these council members and their family as well. This we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen. Thank you. Could we do the uh roll call? Absolutely. Councilman Alvarez

here. Councilwoman Weidenbach here. Councilwoman Hurst here. Counciloman Parnell here. Councilwoman Vazquez here. Councilwoman Amler here. Councilman Zilly here. Did everyone have a chance to take a look at the minutes? And is there any are there any corrections? Um or is there a motion to approve? There are three sets of minutes. So yes, are we going to do them all at once or I believe we can do them all at once if Yeah. I make a motion to approve the minutes for October 7th, October 14th, and October 21st. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. Hi,

thank you. Communications, correspondence, and announcements from the mayor. We have a long meeting and some of the things might come up later, you know, that I might say. I will just say thank you to all of our city employees, our public safety officials, and everyone who's involved with making the Halloween night and the weekend a success. I just want to say thank you guys all and for the city of Portage for making things so um also um I'm also going to put this out because I know that at these meetings we've had questions about the house on stone and uh county line road that's been checked by IDM. There is asbestous in the building and so now we're in the process of getting the asbestous abated and then proceeding from there to demolition. I don't have a timeline on that Mr. Cherry. I'm not sure if we know at least in terms of the abatement how long that might take. the next 30 days.

So, within the next 30 days. So, that house is eventually going to be demolished. And just to be clear, it's something we're watching carefully. Um, all right. Um, what I will also say is that we have three different opportunities to speak tonight to the council. We're going to have later the um the petitions or monstrances and public input at the early part of the meeting. We'll have a public hearing for the geo bond appropriation and the ordinance for the solid waste fee schedule change. Um to put it simply, I'll just kind of speak ahead of each and make sure that those are structured, but I'll move over to the clerk treasurer's report.

Thank you. I would just like to say a few words. Um Hortage has been in a financial crisis for years, however resilient, although in a reactive way. This administration is endeavoring to be proactive as much as possible. Therefore, before you tonight are several resolutions Oh, several resolutions for reductions in several funds to the 2025 budget. The mayor along with his department heads are striving to continue to be be resilient while also striving to be proactive. 2026 the city is facing a lot of uncertainties with sea1 and it is far-reaching uncertainties with revenue streams inflation and level of service pressures shifting state funding landscapes public tension and mistrust all while while the taxpayers expectations remain as high as ever and rightly so. We need to be be forward thinking and creative to build a community that we can bend but not break. We need to be forward. We need to be forward thinking and creative to build a I'm sorry community that we did not break. Tonight is just the beginning of some of these changes that are necessary including a change to the current trash rates that unfortunately these changes are not all but that will require to make portage successful a long term. In the future, there will be many more hard and difficult conversations. But the mayor has se selected a good team and I am certain that they will rise to the challenge even if resilience means accepting new reality even if it's less good than the one you had before. And I do want to thank my department heads for string stringently working um towards with the mayor, the department heads um to shape

for 2025 and 2026. Even though the budget's going to be a very tight budget going into 20 the end of 2025 and for 2026, again, um the mayor and his team along with my office and my team um are working continually to strive to do better with less. Thank you. That'll get us to petitions, remmonstrances, and public input. If you have something you'd like to come to the council to speak about, it could be a petition to ask us to bring something to your attention. It could be a remmonstrance, any form of public input. Um, I'll open the floor for it. Um, if you could come up there and state your name and address. Um, we try to keep it within about one or two minutes, but we try not to police it too, you know, heavily. All that said and done, um, when I pound the gavvel, if anybody'd like to come up and speak, it could be it can also be friendly like announcements about upcoming events or things you want the community to know about. So, with that, I'll pound and open the um, public input section of the meeting. Kevin Taverner, uh, so I just got a question as far as the financing and everything. Um I know there are certain ways and avenues that the uh state allows for investing funds. So my question is can you take a surplus from one department invest that and then that kind of becomes wash and can be used and divided however it needs to be divided.

That's an excellent question. [clears throat] Um I will write down that you said that. If you don't mind I will open if anybody else wants to come and speak and when we close the public input I'll address that. In the event that I don't address it, well, you do have the ability to say, "Wait a second, mayor." You know, that's not, you know, thank you so much. Thanks. Anyone else who'd like to speak during the public input section?

I'll ask one more time. Not like any like threat, but just make sure they've asked did anyone want to speak at the public input section. Hearing none, I'll close the public input spot and I'll do my best to explain. I had a whiteboard during the mayor's Monday, you know, where I was able to explain it. The technology that we have right now doesn't allow me to draw it. So, please forgive me if you're more of a visual learner and you're watching this meeting from Facebook. So, I think a lot of times people, and certainly I grew up thinking about this, and maybe this is more true at the federal and the state level to some extent or to a lot of extent. I think a lot of people figure that when you pay a wheel tax or when you pay a sewer bill or when you pay a building permit fee or when you pay your property tax, list goes on. You might think that that's going into one bank account or at least one fund that then becomes the city budget that a mayor proposes and then the city council votes on or makes changes to. That would be sometimes I feel like that would be great. And if we had one big fund, and I you already referenced the existence of other funds. I'm just kind of speaking to get to that point for other people. If we had one big fund that every fee you paid to the city went to, and all the different fees and taxes were basically just arbitrary pinches that all go to the same place, we would probably have a very different city budget and probably every city in Indiana would have a different budget than we have. In actuality, under state law, when you start a new city or town, you always have basically your civil city fund, which we often call the general fund. That sometimes gets a little confusing because um there are other entities that have what they call general funds, but usually when you hear us uh colloially refer to a general fund, we're referring to the civil city general fund. That has a property tax component to it. So, a piece of the property tax levy goes there. It's also where things that go directly like uh building department fees end up. Um fees for building a shed, you know, things

like that. Um engineering fees paid by a developer, like if you're building a target, that gets paid into what goes into our civil city general fund. And the civil city general fund is what's responsible for things like uh my office, the clerk treasurer's office. There are some other caveats and if I was given a longer presentation I want to be respectful of the meeting's time but to answer your really good question. It primarily covers basically city hall the police department and the fire department. Now cities have the ability to create a park fund which is also something that can receive a percentage of a property tax levy and then that goes into a fund controlled by a park board. But in addition to that property tax levy, you have um the ability for the park department or what we would say the rep of the park fund being able to bring in revenue from hall rentals or sports activities, what have you. You also have the ability to create a sanitation fund if you want to have a sanitation department um such as we have with our sanitation department. You also have what's called an MVH or motor vehicle highway fund. There's actually a restricted which means that you can't use it for salaries MVH fund. And then there's an unrestricted MVH fund, which means primarily that you can use it to employ, you know, people. And when we talk about the street department, what we're talking about is the MVH fund. Now, the MVH fund, similar to the park, it can have a property tax levy component because a certain percentage of our levy can be assigned to it. And then it also receives money to the state based on a formula. We also have a sanitary fund, which is when you pay your uh sewer bill. And then we have a uh storm fund which a lot of times people will say well why am I paying a storm fund if I don't have drains? Well one it's because we have to by the rules apply it to the whole city and it's not just about maintaining existing drains it's about doing ongoing storm work and hopefully one day getting to every street and solving that problem. So to your question can you mix and match

funds? No. There are circumstances where the funds have co-uses. So, for example, and I don't want to get into any trouble. Um, let's say that there's a truck and the truck has a particular set of uses. That truck could be paid for potentially by either the storm fund or by the sanitary fund or it might be be able to be purchased by MVH. Sometimes when you're setting up a budget either within a department or within a city, you got to carefully watch what uses you have. So, for example, Tracy Marshall, our general superintendent of utilities, we say we have a utilities department, but really that is a department created by ordinance that has, let's say, access or oversight over two funds. So, when Tracy needs to pay for something, she's either going to go to the storm board or she's going to go to the sanitary board. Sometimes there are expenses that are only sanitary. Sometimes those expenses are only um storm and sometimes they can be both. And it's a question of [snorts and clears throat] what's the most appropriate place for that to bring that to. MVH is what covers our street department, which gets a little confusing because sometimes everyone calls every person out working on the street, the street department. We have some gentlemen from utilities in the back there who I don't know if you guys have ever been called the street department before, but I know it happens when people say, "What are those guys doing?" All that said and done, you also have a sanitation department. And we say we have a streets and sanitation department, and that's true. But within that department, just like Tracy has utilities and it has two funds, the storm and the sanitary, streets and sanitation really has a sanitation fund that can pay for what the state defines as sanitation expenses and then the MVH fund. Now, I've spoken quite a bit about all these different funds. So, to your question, you can't just pour money from one into the other, but what you can do is try to cross-check where you have expenses. So when it comes to the issues we're looking at tonight, it comes to the fact that with the demise of edit,

what's called the economic development income tax, which is a form of revenue we get from the county income tax, which our county income tax is just edit. When that comes to an end, what was nice about edit is that it's money that can pretty much be spent on anything. I'm not sure if there's an attorney in Indianapolis who might tell me something very technical, but basically Indiana law defines everything as economic development. Whether we're and we're not saying we've done this or plan to do this, but you can use edit from anything from, you know, buying new trucks for the fire department. You can use edit to buy cop cars. You can use edit to buy hats that say portage utilities on them. If Tracy meant to give everybody new equipment hats and we ran out of spots, that's not a situation that's happened. Just a Historically, Portage has usually gotten about 3.6 6 million or more or at least in recent years of edit and edit has been used in our city to cover a number of things. It includes our IT budget because it can be economic development according to state law. And if you're scratching your head saying how, just understand that we're working within the flexibility of the state law. It's been used to pay for things like liability insurance, workman's comp, cyber insurance, which is very important in municipalities these days, especially municipalities that have a utility. but also one to$1.2 million dollars per year depending on the year of edit has been used historically to pay for the city's landfill fees. And to put it really simply, by having edit available to pay for the city's landfill fees, it has allowed us to continue from the sanitation fund, which under normal circumstances would be our only option to pay the landfill fees. We now are in a situation where when we were using edit, we would be able to offset the cost so that what you pay for one can, which gets you two cans, is enough to cover pretty much the expenses of the sanitation department.

So, we'll get more to that when we get to the the fund or the uh the rate spot. But to answer your question, it's not that you can move money around by funds, but you have the ability to try to see if there's matching uses. But there has to be some sincerity to the matching uses because the state really does watch if you're, you know, using sanitation money to pay for something at the park. Sorry if that was a little longwinded, but I hope that helped. Oh, I'm sorry. Well, go ahead and say yes, I think the answer to your question is no. We can't we can't cover We can cover shortfalls by transferring the funds and loaning them, but they have to be loaned back.

So So Trust Indiana investment options that you have. So They took what the surplus of what was in the street department say which there is no surplus at the street department to be clear. Yeah. Okay. That's that's fine. Would you mind coming back up? I could invite you up if you'd like to speak because I again I I promise that you could tell me if I answered or not. And my goal was to answer. But yeah, you can go ahead.

Okay. So any department that has a surplus in their budget, can you take that through trust in Indiana finance or investment options that Indiana gives for local governance? Can you take the surplus from say street department, utilities department, um parks and recreck department, take their surpluses, invest them into a fund and then the interest gained on that, can that be redistributed? I see your question. I So if you The answer is yes. The answer is yes. with you. So, so are we not are we are we exploring that option? Have we explored that option? You have to have a surplus though. And Liz, I mean, we don't even have a rainy day fund at the moment. So, the when at the end of the year and you'll see this actually next month.

Yes. Next month. There will be transfers into funds and emergency declarations because we will have like streets is probably going to be negative what a million dollars or something. No, it's going to be more like 300 about 300,000 47,000. So you say we have no surpluses, but we got these projects that are going on that are coming from what? What where is that money coming from for these projects? Like the park that was built up there by the high school like the the walkway that's being done here behind McDonald's, that money is a surplus. So where did that money come from? And why isn't that invested to get us in the red? So, so just to understand the workout park by the high school that was paid by money with the park impact fee fund. So over the last 20 years,

so why so why couldn't that have been invested and then redistributed? Because we're not allowed to use that money by law for anything other than building a new park. Okay.

And so we h over 20 years the city never built a new park for pretty good reason, which is we had 19 parks. We weren't in a hurry to make the 20th. But when we had the ability to legally do a workout equipment piece by declaring it a new park, we used the funds that we had in an account that could only be used to build a new park to build something that counted as a new park. If you're referencing like the work being done outside city hall to take out that overgrowth between the uh Stra and Vanill, that's not well I mean that's money in the sense that we have employees who are paid a salary, but that's in-house work being done by our field forces who do projects inhouse as city employees throughout the city

and the revitalization that's going to happen with the walkway and everything. What is that? Well, I don't have a walkway planned yet. We're talking about in the future if the land sells. So we have for example a redevelopment parking lot being I mean there's projects being done that it it takes money to do those projects and I'd love to do something

before we start saying that hey we're going to have to raise your trash trash collection fee. I know you guys pay the salaries for everybody here. I know you guys are covering the health insurance benefits for people because they're only paying a dollar. Rather than saying, "Hey, we're going to have to raise your trash. We're going to have to raise your sewer." start looking into creative investing options rather than going back to the people that are already paying all this money out and saying we're going to have to pay more. You're going to have to pay more for these fees now and possibly have to start paying more in taxes. Ridiculous.

To start, we don't control the tax rate as simply as bringing them up and down. That's done by a formula impacted by various municipalities and the way the budgets are. and we're cutting the city budget consistently in the general fund by millions of dollars to keep up with the defunding coming from the state. But to put it simply, you can make a fund, but then it comes down to what are the legal uses. And to Colin's point, you have to have enough of a surplus to legally be able to pay to create a fund like that and grow from it. It's a great idea. We want to get there. And really, realistically, the best way we would have that would be a land sale. So, the redevelopment commission owns land on the north side of the city. as we find buyers for it. It would be wonderful to take money that would go into the RDC's general fund and be able to put that into a bigger investment, but it doesn't change the fact that we have to use the sanitation fund to pay for sanitation expenses and we have to be able to do it within the next two years.

So rather than everybody in this city paying $1 for health insurance, bump that up to $120 a month for each employee, take that surplus and invest that and then redistribute it. I'd like to answer that question. The question is we do have we are a union city so we have to negotiate that with the unions and currently the unions are saying no at least they haven't that hasn't happened in a course of negotiation again in the long run there's lots of things we want to do but we also have to be real about what we can do now. Well with that I know I've pounded already but I'll just pound to be clear you'll have the opportunity to come back for the other two public hearings where as they come. Thank you.

Thank you. That'll get us to reports from standing committees. I'm not sure if we have any, but I don't want to leave anybody out. Nothing from the ordinance committee this month. Thank you. All right. I'll uh skip over the city officials at the moment to be able to proceed with the business, but I will call some officials up at the end based on time. We'll go to the public hearing for ordinance 2543, GEOBond appropriation. Liz or Tammy, would you mind just kind of giving a summary of that?

This is an ordinance that was um presented for at the end of the year so that we can purchase um new vehicles for the police fire pay for a firet truck that's been ordered for I think two years. Chris Cray, correct me if I'm wrong. Has it been ordered for two years? A year.

One year. Okay. It's coming in at the beginning of 2026. So, we wanted to make sure we had the funds available for that. It's a bond that um also pays for a number of things. It's um for different projects, cap capital projects throughout the city. Um it's police cars, fire trucks, paving projects, and also other miscellaneous equipment that the city deems necessary under projects. And useful as it is, I will say we are not allowed to use that to discount uh the garbage rates. Similarly, there's other things we can't use it for, which again, it falls under the laws and then the rules of these bonds. Correct.

But with that, I will open the public hearing for anyone who'd like to come and speak on the um bond appropriation. Um I'll ask three times in the event that people don't come up, but otherwise, I'll ask once and then we'll close when people are done. So, I'll open the public hearing. Is there anyone here to speak on the bond appropriation?

Kevin Tavern again. So, now that you mentioned police vehicles, now in the past, I have seen Portage Indiana police vehicles up in Grand Rapid, Michigan. I looked it up through their contract. They're only allowed to be in Porter County, Lake County, and Leaport County. So, you're asking us to pay for the fuel for these portage police officers to go use our vehicles as personal vehicles. Uh, and you sure Michigan cars? No,

I know what a Porter, Indiana police car looks like. So, I have seen them in the past outside of Lake Porter and Leaport counties. Um, so residents float the bill for the fuel. You're asking us to get a bond to get new police vehicles. How about just uh do away with police taking home police vehicles and use them as needed?

Yeah, I'm going to wait for the public hearing to close. I'll just have our police chief ready. Uh, does anybody I figure that that's a question we'll ask um about, you know, the number of different cities named Portage, but anyway, anyone else here to speak on the bond appropriation? Is anyone else here to speak on the bond appropriation? Is there anyone else here to speak on the bond appropriation? Hearing none, I will close that public hearing. And, uh, Chief Candiano, um, I guess we'll just start here. This can't be used to pay for fuel. This is to purchase police vehicles. Um, I know that there was something said, but I'd like if you could describe what is the city's policy when it comes to best practice with maintaining and then ultimately replacing police vehicles, where we need to be, but then if you could also touch on any issues of cars being spotted somewhere that maybe they either shouldn't be or maybe there's an explanation why. I know we had an issue two weeks ago where someone was like, why was a cop car Notre Dame? It turns out they were participating in an event at Notre Dame like that the police needed to be at.

Yeah. So the cars um we've talked about this it you know after about four years they become money pits and you know as we've talked about today uh had a meeting today you know the budget is getting tighter and tighter. We barely have any funds to repair cars at this point. So it's it's kind of a choice either way. Either we need we need money to repair cars because I mean they just don't last as long as they used to. The driving they're going through they become extremely expensive. Um, we're getting to the point now where a lot of the vehicles, they're not able to be worked on at the street department because technology is changing things. We've got to send them out. So, we either need new cars to replace them or we need a very substantial increase in the budget to repair the cars. So, we're at the point now that if if a car breaks over the next two or two months, we can't fix it. So, we're going to have to park it and figure something out. um because we're out of money. So, if we don't get new cars, then that just continues that trend of, you know, we end up putting more money into them. Um we do have take-home car policy, uh Lake Leaport, and Porter County. It's negotiated in the contract. Um, if we had a car in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that person was completely out of the policy and would be subject to uh discipline. I highly doubt

the guy from running. I'm not listen I'm not here to Well, and just to note, I mean, people people can say all sorts of things. At the end of the day, I'm not saying it. I saw it. I witnessed it. I emailed you about it. You said you looked into it. So I'm tired. So I see him flying up and down. We'll let him go. But so Chief, yeah, abuse. There you go. So Chief, and I just want to state too, we try to replace 10 a year and there's a reason for that rate.

Yeah. It just it's that way we can stay ahead of the game of the repairs. So there's also the issue is with with what we do with them when we're done with them. Um we have to have certain number that are standbys because again if a car breaks like say a car breaks down right now on this shift there's got to be the ability for somebody to go into something. So we have to have a couple vehicles that are at standbys. We also have our reserve division. They get the cars when they're let's be honest when they're in pretty pretty bad shape at that point. They get them. they keep them a little bit longer and then they'll end up at city auction. We also have the ability to um once the cars are, you know, cycled out of the um the police use then we can hand them down to other other city departments which we've done also. So

I've often said the life cycle of a cop car in some cases it goes from patrol to I think detective then code enforcement and then sometimes the mayor.

Yeah, it can it can go many places. Uh, I think I think I think somebody's looking at maybe one for the building department at some time. So, um, and and you know, I've argued the take-home policy back and forth for years. We haven't had too much push back. Obviously, that gentleman was upset about it, but um, you can go to any police department in the country that doesn't have a take-home car policy and look at their cars. Um, when was the last time you saw a decent looking Chicago PD car unless it pretty much just rolled out of the shop? Um, historically, if you go to departments where a car runs 24 hours a day, number one, you know, are you taking care of that car? If it's not your car, I'm super clean. I take care of my car. My ne the next guy maybe, you know, eats in his car, does whatever. Then I get that car. I'm not going to be as conscious of taking care of my car. You You know what I'm saying? like you

when something belongs to everybody, it really doesn't belong to anybody.

And running a car for 24 hours a day is it just you're going to pay either way. You're either going to burn a car out in two years or you're going to burn a car out in four or five years. So, um I'll also tell you we have so many police officers who live in our city. I know a lot of people that also just feel safer knowing that there are police cars in the neighborhood. And I can't deny that that's an important feature of safety in our community. Ditto for anybody who's like a Burns Harbor cop who lives in our city. Not trying to point out where it is, but I mean quite frankly, cop cars make neighborhoods safer and that's something we appreciate and are aware of too. Saturday afternoon I was off um I responded to a crash at Willow Creek and Stone because I was close by off duty and then there was a disturbance at Central and Hamstrom when I was on my way home. Um the vehicle was leaving. our guys were clearing from the other side of town. So, I responded to that in my sweats in a sweatshirt and made sure the car got stopped till our our people could get there. Um, we don't turn in overtime for things like that. That's just part of having the cars out. You can respond to emergencies. So, you know, I think the benefits are there for the city. I mean, if if you want less visibility and and don't want people responding, you know, want call times to go down and things, then, you know, maybe that's an option. Get rid of the take-home car policy. But I just I feel like there's so many benefits to it. Um again, the other individual didn't agree. Um I question the fact that supposedly a car was in Michigan and you know, never heard about it until now at this meeting. Um the only time that we do allow for somebody to go to places like that could be training. For all I know, they had a class in Michigan. Could have been a K9 school, could have been something, you know,

or it could have been portage, Michigan. And sometimes we get calls from people complaining about things in Portage, Michigan. I don't know how they get the area code mixed up, but that happens too. I mean, we have to go down to the academy. They drive their cars down to the academy if they have training. Um, but other than that, yeah, it's it's the the three counties and that's been, you know, that's that's in contract. It's been that way for a long time. So, um, I don't know. Any other questions for the chief? If not, I will ask if Chief Freel, would you mind coming up and just speaking about the importance of the ladder truck? And I know that this council's taken action on the ladder truck before, but I think in this particular matter, just a reminder of how that's been a course plan for us as a city.

Good evening. Uh yeah, so the importance of this ladder truck, uh obviously it would be a brand new vehicle. We know that it's expensive. However, our current ladder truck uh is 26 27 years old. Um we are uh ladder testing here in a couple weeks and this ladder truck is not going to pass um the UL ladder. Uh so we will be without that aerial device until this new aerial device comes in. Um it does a lot of things for the city. It lowers our ISO rating. um it gives us the opportunity to respond and reach areas that we can't respond and reach with um normal ladders. So, uh it is an extremely important asset to have for the city.

And I think there was something said too about and please forgive me because it's been a little while, but this particular truck was important to the department I believe based on the fact that I think it's like the last of a generation of trucks before a new comes in.

Right. So, the motor the motor for this vehicle is a pre-emissions um motor. So, we still have all of the technology and the ability to work on this motor. Once it gets to the new emissions, we don't know uh with what issues we'll have with a first generation emissions motor. They don't even know what issues they're going to have with the first generation um emissions. So this was this gives us the opportunity to have this vehicle with the older style motor that is still a good motor but one that we have the capability of working on. Are there any other questions for the chief?

Well, thank you so much, Chief. I'll note that the geo bond covers other areas of equipment and capital, but I think that these are the most pressing when it comes to how we do it. There's flexibility in there for paving. There's flexibility in there for additional police and fire equipment, but I feel like when highlighting the importance of where it fits in the budget and the long-term financial plan of the city, I think the ladder truck and our ongoing efforts to maintain our police fleet and adequately replace it over time are are key. Are there any other questions from the council or any motions? I make a motion to approve uh the geo bond appropriation. Second. Second. Wait, hang on. Hold on. Are are we still in the public hearing on this?

No, I I believe I closed the public hearing. He closed the public hearing, but we h we haven't read the ordinance. That's all the way. Yeah, that that's coming up. Attorney Mccclure, do I need to redo anything or are they okay to read it? It's further down in the agenda. Oh, I get you because this is the public hearing. So, with that, just in case, I I apologize. I'm not used to the public hearing and then it come in further down. Yeah. I'll close the public hearing in case I forgot and we'll move on to the public hearing for the solid waste fee schedule. Thank you, Colin. Are we going to ever give you like the title of like parliamentarian and put it like on your thing? I always appreciate that. I can count on you for that. Can Yeah, we can make a little stipen. Colin wants to know does he get paid more?

That's next year's salary ordinance. Well, it was a jokeless. So,

on that note, we'll turn over to the um public hearing for the ordinance on the solid waste fee schedule. Randy, rather than having you present now, I'll wait till we're actually at the the voting portion, but what I'll state is at basic this is a proposal to right now as a city, we charge for one can and it's $20.25 for that one can, but it comes with a free extra can as well as our bulk day. This proposal makes shifts to the to the schedule. What it does is it maintains the bulk days um throughout the year, but what it does is it allows you to switch to being a one can household, meaning you no longer are choosing to have the complimentary, if you will, extra can. And there's a history how we ended up there, but uh switch it to be um one can for $18 a month um and maintaining the disability um senior and veteran qualifying discounts, which would actually bring the discount down to $15 a month. Or for those who are maintaining two cans, switching to become officially a toucan household, the bill would go up to $30 a month or 27 with qualifying discounts. There's also a fee set from there for three totes and four totes as advertised. But what I'll do now is I will open up the public hearing for those wishing to speak on the solid waste fee schedule. So I'll open it up. Is there anyone here to speak? Oh, come on up. Uh Michael Cooper, 5455 Clim Road, uh apartment one here in Portage. Mayor Bond and the common council. I'm I'm really perplexed by this gamble that is being presented uh in for our sanitation fees. The way I understand sanit expenses for sanitation is based upon the tonnage of garbage not on the uh proposal uh as this proposal is on the number of totes distributed across our city. Um I mean reality you know uh two

half empty totes uh colle collected by a city costs the city the same in tonnage as one tote that is uh going to be packed full to the brim. Uh the gamble with revenue that the that is being put forward is that enough of the residents will keep two totes at a substantially higher rate rather than taking the uh small reduction to go down uh for going down to one. Uh and this is a kind of a widespread 40 to 60% um which according to the mayor the future sustainability of our sanitation depends uh and that's a ratio calculated by accountants based on dollars and not based on actual human behavior. Uh each of you know your con constituents. You can estimate the percentage of your constituents who will go down uh to just one uh tote. The council, I believe, is a representative set uh of our city. Perhaps a straw poll. You know, we already know that the mayor is not going is is going to um reduce down to one. Um

I'm already using one just for the record.

Yeah. Um so, you know, we're taking a gamble here, you know, with the rates with the uh revenue that the city receives uh from sanitation. uh collection. Y you know each of you um you might I asked if you y'all would let that your constituents know if you're going to go down to one or stay with two. Um I mean this plan could work as the mayor suggest. Uh but it could also has the potential to crash uh the revenue of our sanitation department. You know if uh like most people will probably want to just squeeze what they normally put in two totes into one. Uh but the city is going to be incurring the same expense uh while redu reducing the revenue collected for the service uh the same expense because this is not a waste reduction plan uh which is what we really need in our city. Uh this plan it's a plan for increasing revenue that's based on a we hope and not on uh I believe sensible fiscal management. Uh the only way I can see to recover the difference for this plan uh the uh is going to potentially cause would be to for the city to fully enforce the fines uh when one tote is overfilled. Overfilled totes uh I think will be a new reality uh in portage streets uh under this plan. So, the only way that this gamble works is if the city enforces uh that current policy in a code which assesses $10 fine if totes are filled. So, the lid is not completely closed. Uh or I think $40 if there's a extra bag on top. The code that I don't I don't believe is being enforced by a sanitation department. Um if so, then perhaps not consistently

across the city and only in the most egregious cases. uh and not as the code says if the lid is sitting um not sitting on the tote because if sanitation department did you know that your constituents would be calling you and asking you why did they get a $10 fine for my tote lid being just an inch open or why did they get that extra $40 fine for one bag of extra garbage on top of the tote. Uh if they did then the board of works I'm sure would be uh an hour longer uh with appeals. If they did, uh, your sanitation, labor costs for stopping to take a photo, documenting fee assessments, and answering billing complaints would increase. I understand that there is a balance sheet problem. Um, but I'm asking uh y'all not to turn it into a bookie sheet. We need a better solution for the long-term sustainability of our sanitation department. Uh, I asked the council, if you are considering taking the one tote option, I'm pretty sure that you can assess that your constituents would as well. Uh, and so I'm asking the council not to vote no on this 4060 gamble proposed by the mayor. Thank you.

Thank you for coming up. I'll have I've taken your notes. When we come to the vote part, learning from the last public hearing that we just did, I'll bring that up some of your notes. Is there anyone else to come and speak on the proposed schedule? Is there anyone else here to speak on the proposed schedule? Is there anyone else here to speak on the proposed schedule? Not hearing any, I will close the public hearing. and we'll go into uh new business. Um first order of new business is ordinance 2547 uh D20 2025 salary ordinance. Um Councilman Parnell, would you mind reading that one for us?

Thank you so much. Salary ordinance budget years 2025 ordinance number 25-47 an ordinance established in the amount of salaries and compensation to be paid to all appointed employees and officers of city of portage border county Indiana hereby uh be it and hereby is ordained by the common council of the city of portage Indiana as follows. Should you want me to read the entire section, mayor, or just the Attorney Mcclair, is it uh good for what he said so far? Good. Okay. Thank you. Let the uh record reflect that the ordinance has been read in its entirety.

I'll just uh state really quick what this is. Um within the um different funds as mentioned earlier and within what we call the streets and sanitation department, we have a motor vehicle highway fund which covers the street department expenses and we have a sanitation fund which covers the sanitation department expenses and as noted by an earlier question that was answered, sometimes there are overlapping things you can spend on. So historically um the superintendent of both departments can only usually get paid by one fund. So, he's been paid by the motor vehicle highway fund. As noted by Councilman Zilly earlier, although not only by Councilman Zilly, we're all aware. We are trying to make sure we secure as much available funding in the motor vehicle highway fund as possible. So, the proposal is to move not Ry's salary, but for the remainder of this year and going into next year where Randy is being paid from. So, moving it from the MVH fund to the sanitation fund to free up MVH.

Make a motion to suspend. Second. Second. Liz, if you record your second. Um, who who would like I'm hearing Wilma as I don't I I don't think that was the council woman. Oh. Oh. Oh, I thought you said Wilma like like for what kind of joke are you trying to make? She's right there. I gotcha. I just realized you guys have the same. Sorry. [laughter] This is going to make election science funnier one day.

If that's noted, Liz, could you call roll? Yes, I can. Councilman Alvarez, yes. Councilwoman Weiden, yes. Councilwoman Hurst, yes. Councilman Parnell, yes. Councilwoman Vazquez, yes. Councilwoman Amler, yes. Counciloman Zilly, yes. Unanimous. Motion to adopt. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I. And I didn't hear any opposed. I think that's also unanimous.

Thank you. That gets us to ordinance uh 254. I'm sorry. No, it's not. Second reading of ordinances. Ordinance 2542 uh zoning change. Um we Scott, do we need to read this again? Yes. Uh Victoria, would you mind reading it again for us? Just the title. You don't have to see the map. I get the treasure map. Hopefully there's no mess and

Oh, darn. Ordinance number 25-42 and ordinance of the city of Portage, Indiana, amending chapter 90, article 5 of the city of Portage Municipal Code entitled zoning map. Let the record reflect that the document has been read in its entirety. So, I don't know if we have a petitioner here. Um, Tom, do you mind just giving a just a brief description of what this is from the last meeting? I'm sorry, Tom. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I wasn't sure if we actually had the petitioner here. I believe so.

Uh, this is a parcel that's uh primarily landlocked behind. It's kind of in between multifamily apartments, um, town homes, and office commercial. It's kind of in the middle. It's two parcels that the owner has, and one is, uh, zoned properly for what he's seeking. He's changing the other one. So, it's kind of a So, it's one property, two parcels. Two parcels. Yeah. One owner, two parcels. one is zoned uh appropriately, the other one is not.

And to put it just kind of simply, this is accessible only by the new River Trace neighborhood. So, what you have is River Trace has the same zoning of one of the two parcels. The only way to get to the property is through River Trace. And so, what he's asking is to match the zoning because I don't necessarily think you're I mean, to be fair, I don't know of what other use you're going to find there besides what's already there. But that's why it's a zoning change petition. Yeah. To keep it off as commercial back there. There's no exposure to Willow Creek. There's it's just it's landlocked. So So the zoning change would be OC office commercial to M2 multifamily residential for the second vacant parcel directly south of Breen Ridge Apartments off Loot Road.

I'll make a Okay. I'll make a motion to adopt uh 2542. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? Oh. Oh, no problem. So, we have one opposed. I promise I'll always ask for the opposed after.

And on that, I believe it passed. That gets us to ordinance 25 um 43, geo bond appropriation. Um Penny, this isn't a punishment for voting nay. I'm just going down. Would you mind reading that one for us? Ordinance 2543, Ordinance of the Common Council of the City of Portage, Indiana, authorizing the issuance of general obligation bonds for the purpose of providing funds to pay for various capital projects and incidental expenses in connection therewith, and on account of the issuance of the bonds, appropriating the proceeds thereof, and all matters related there too. Let the record reflect this has been read in its entirety. I'll just note that we had the first public hearing there and as noted that includes the police vehicles and the fire truck, ladder truck, you know, for reference. I mean, I definitely strongly support this to be able to continue our public safety planning and additional equipment expenses um as they need, but of course, I'm open to any questions from you guys unless there's a motion.

I'll make a motion to adopt. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? All right, that gets us to and it passed. That gets us to ordinance 2545, solid waste fee schedule. Councilwoman Widenbach, would you mind reading that for us?

Ordinance number 25-4, an ordinance amending chapter 70 of the Portage Code of ordinances to repeal the existing solid waste fee schedule and adopt a new fee schedule as exhibit A. Let the record reflect it's been read in its entirety. So, uh, I'd like to just speak to what was said in the public hearing. Just for the record, I am already a one can household myself, so I just don't have that much trash. In regards to the idea that this is a um, gamble, I would say quite frankly, there's a lot to be said for the fact that this is being proposed as a new rate structure that we ran by numbers both from the sanitation department, considering all the routes. Sanitation is the only department that visits everybody weekly, you know, throughout the city. We acknowledge absolutely that it's possible that our estimates could be off. That's the reason why within the budget, what I've proposed is $645,000 in one section that is marked as paving. But as noted when we passed the budget, that's money that's being used as the edit money to cover a deficit. When it comes to the idea of how things go, I mean, I could elaborate, but essentially, if this passes, certainly there'll still be some people that stick with three totes or four totes, but I think the majority of the city is either going to fall in the category of switching to one tote or maintaining two totes. Now, for people who switch to the one tote, a lot of them are people, not just myself, but a number of people who are already utilizing one tote already. And for a number of people, you're going to have them getting a $2, you know, price down, whether they're on the senior or veteran or disability discount, going from 17 to 15 or going from the 20 um 25 to $18 to start on this schedule to get a discount for what they already have or what we're already doing. It was noted that our bill comes from tonnage and that's absolutely true. And I don't remember, I'm sorry, I don't remember if I made this reference at the last council meeting, but if you

remember the episode of the Jetsons where George asks his wife, um, why is our garbage bill so high? And she says, it's all the junk mail, you know, that we throw out. They charge it by the ton. It would be very nice if we had a way to just weigh everybody's garbage can. When we pick it up, we build people exactly by the tonnage as we're build when we bring it to a transfer site. Um, when Randy comes up, we can talk about how practical or not practical that is. But because of that, we have to figure out the overall tonnage and calculate what's the best flat rate per can. In the event that we have, as we estimate, somewhere between 40 to 50 or 55% of people switching to one can, the amount that's going down is actually pretty small in revenue. What changes are for those maintaining two cans who are also providing I'm not trying to insult anybody but the larger amount of garbage that goes to our bill that leads to a higher contribution for paying that bill in the course of a year. You're also going to have people like uh Tom Cherry and not to put him on the spot but like my dad who said I'm planning on paying for two cans anyway because even though I don't use two every day I'd rather have them for when I need them. There's also going to be some people who might switch to one can, but then over a holiday or a big weekend or something where you have a lot of trash, you're going to call the street department, sorry, sanitation department to schedule a special pickup for a fee. Factoring all that in, we believe that this will be enough revenue plus our bulk revenue to be able to close the gap. If we're off, and we've accounted for the possibility that we're off, I don't think that we're going to be off by $645,000. I think that we're going to be off potentially somewhere in the $100,000 to $200,000 range. If we're off, we also could be off the other way around, which is if more people stick with two cans, then revenue goes up. And Liz might panic when I say this. I might feel guilty and say we need to lower the bill because we made it higher than we needed. I don't think you'll let me say that though, Liz, or Colin will either.

But I think to put it simply, that's also why we're doing this now and why we're not taking a gamble by doing this as a vote in 20127 ahead of 2028 when edit goes away. By doing the vote now and going into next year, we have enough money saved in the budget to cover a deficit in the event that a deficit still comes. And then if a deficit still comes, I'll have to come to the council and ask you guys to appropriate some of that saved money to cover that deficit. We'll have to make a change. I can assure you that'll be on me on the executive side in terms of responsibility because we did our best to create an estimate of what we thought this needed to be to allow a more affordable option for people who are already using one can or who believe they can switch to one can. um while also maintaining the fact that as a city it's not going to be financially sustainable through the sanitation fund to give everybody a second can for free. I'm happy to talk about the history, but I also don't want to over talk.

I just have a quick question, Randy. Is the new trash startup fee, the $100 per tote onetime initial fee, that's is that new or have we been charging that? Uh no, that that is completely new for new construction only. So if you buy an existing home in the city, you wouldn't be paying a new fee for it. But if you build a new house, say in uh Bower Farm or in Providence, you'd be paying that fee for your new can, right? And I assume the developer is just going to pay and pass it on, right? Is that how we're structuring this? Whoever builds the house is going to pay it as part of building department fees. I imagine that's going to be set up some way or another where it's going to be covered in the closing costs.

I have two questions. Um I understand being charged for the second can. Um, but looking at the rate increases for a single can only be a dollar a year, but having two cans, you get $3 a year. So, the thing to understand is that we're charged per ton and that tonnage amount goes up each year. So, right now it's $60 a ton, Randy. How much is it next year, the following? It's $60 a ton. Correct. Right now,

ultimately, we have to get to a point where we're able to cover the increase in tonnage as we're build for it by our current three-year contract, which our current three-year contract actually reduced the amount we had to pay by $200,000, I believe, Randy, in over the course of three years. Well, I do have some numbers from August when it was 66.82. And uh just in August, we spent about $106,000 that month for landfill costs. And then when we went to the $60 um term, it went down to 90,000. So So that was a reduction of almost $16,000 in one month.

So Gina, I had the same question and then the way I I kind of looked at it is because we're reducing the rate currently for one tote from the 2025 to 18. Starting in 2030, that's where you start getting the parody. So it's $22, but two totes is 44. Three totes is 66 and then 88. And then from there it stays to where it's double the rate for every additional tote. So the way I thought about it was eventually the rate catches up with itself to where two totes is double the cost. Three total cost. Four totes is four times the cost because you have

double, triple, and four times the amount of garbage. But that takes several years to get to that point.

Yeah. And I think it wouldn't if we were leaving the current rate in place, right? If if we were saying, "Okay, you have one tote and you're going to keep paying the 20 or we'll make it $21 because then there's an increase, right?" But in order to catch to make up that shortfall of the risk of people going down to one tote, in order to make that up, you have to increase the cost for two initially and then that gap gets smaller until it's double the amount. I I mean, I'll admit I I also had some concerns about this from the beginning. um that what if too many people do go down to one tote and I I guess what I've been thinking about is we're already in a deficit. I think the the likelihood of so many people going down to one tote would be ve it's just hard to see that we would lose revenue. We just might not get as much as we had hoped. I don't see a scenario in which we're getting less money than we are today. Right, Randy? But we may, this may result in us not getting as much as we had hoped for if we had just left the current rate, but there's really no risk of us getting less than we are today in terms of actual fee collection.

Right. That's correct.

And there's a point, and Liz can speak to I mean, you've done some amazing things with your office with getting more people in compliance in the event that they're not paying. I mean, we've had people who haven't been paying their garbage bill in years, and your team worked very hard to address some of that. But all all that and thank you. all that you know said and done there is a point where if drastically like I don't think this is going to happen but if 90% to 100% of people switch to one can on one hand the bill would go down but that would also mean such a number of people would be committing to giving less trash or paying for a bulk fee or special pickup when it comes it changes our overall bill as a city I don't expect it to be that extreme but just to note there is at least on paper a possibility that could happen but I don't think that's what's going to happen. But just noting that somewhere between what those numbers are, how many people switch to one and how many people stick with two, and then again, you throw in your threes, your fours, all that said and done, that's for us to review by the month, you know, next year. And again, I certainly agree with Colin. I don't think we're going to lose revenue from this. I think we might get less revenue than we expect with our estimates. That's why if so, we've saved so much to be able to cover a deficit. The example I've used is being off by somewhere between a hundred to $200,000 and in which case we might have to make another adjustment which I don't want to do but that's why we're starting here and giving ourselves one year to watch but also two years so that we could spread out that adjustment without putting pain if need be.

I also had a second question. Was there on the damaged um cans? Has there always been a charge for that? And that we only take neglect. So, if someone sticks charcoal or fireworks in there and melt the can, uh, only through neglect. I mean, if a vehicle hit a can, damaged it, or we damaged it, we replace that absolutely at no cost to the resident. Somebody goes by and they hits your can hit your can and ran it over. Again, it's not resident neglect. That's probably an accident. So, we do not charge the resident at all. It's only due due to resident neglect. Thank you,

Randy. If I could ask you before you start, too. I just want to make sure that I'm I know people asked about the limb pickup because I think we just repeated what was already in the ordinance when it comes to that. Am I correct? Oh, the limb pickup. Um I believe our policy is maintaining.

The way the policy is is when we go out throughout the neighborhood and we pick up limbs, if there's someone that has excessive limbs out to the curb, like let's say they cut down two or three trees off their property and they put it down there, the first load that we load up is literally 20 cubic yards of limbs. And that's free. When we have to go back to that resident's spot, that second truck is $200. If we got to go back again that same day until all those limbs are cleared, it's $200 thereafter. I know there were some people that reached out because I think when they and it's no fault of the advertisement, we have to advertise it, you know, as it's written. But I think there were people who read that as a new fee and I explained it's not a new fee. It's the current code.

That policy has been in effect since I think 2014. I think a lot of people don't ever end up in a situation where they have to be charged for limbs. And so because of that, I think if you're reading the policy for the first time, you might have mistook it as a new fee. It's a very rare situation, but we do run across that. Randy, you wanted to present?

Yeah, I just want to thank the mayor and the city council for allowing us this opportunity to present uh what we do in the sanitation department. So, let's see if we get to it right now. All right. Some trash facts. So, the city has 162.4 roads or miles of road. All right. We got about 13,000 residential service stops that we service weekly. That is 676,000 stops every year that our department uh does. So, there's approximately 17,000 collected uh trash tons we do every year. And that's uh been that's been slowly going up as our community uh grows. This averages 2,615 pounds per household. That's 1.3 tons of trash per stop in one year. We got 19 full-time employees, one crew leader, nine drivers, seven laborers, and two techs. The techs are actually mechanics. Um to service uh the routes, we use six uh sidearm trucks, three rear loaders, and two grapples. The sidearm is an amazing machine. I could pull up into a residential stop. Sometimes you've seen that. Uh it's about probably 30 seconds per stop in those tight neighborhoods. So that driver will cycle that arm 145,000 times every year. The sanitation department, like the mayor said, is the only city department that stops at every home 52 times a year to provide trash removal services. That's why when we audited our routes, who do I go to? I go to the employees and we take um surveys, guys. What do you see on your routes? These guys know the routes like the back of their hand. They've been working them for years. So, our trash volume and that that's

what we're really talking about. We're not talking about um totes, even though it is totes, but we're talking about what actual users uh throughout the community use in their trash volume. So, we give out 96 gallon totes. All right. The household service tops continue to increase and new depart uh new developments added to our community. The city growth is always positive, but it does add services across each city department and this includes the sanitation department. This also increases the volume of trash every year. Click it on. So our current situation and it's it's no surprise, but our current trash fee is has never been sufficient in meeting the department operational needs. So when we look at the trash volume, we want we want to propose this. The number of totes should reflect the monthly fee for the trash service based on volume. Okay, so as we go throughout the city, these are just some pictures we've taken. Um, one, two, there's three totes. So trash fees should equal to the volume by the user. And when we look at this, uh, we want to look at the the trash service impact. Our city is uh has challenging financial hurdles in the next couple years with SA EA1 affecting all municipalities and counties throughout the state. The current monthly trash rate right now does not sustain the operational costs of our trash service in our city. And just like we've mentioned it today in this uh board this council meeting that edit is currently being used right now to pay landfill costs at over $1 million yearly. And that's been happening for the past four years. So these are the proposed rates that we we're basing uh the volume pricing on as

uh we've read in the ordinance here. So $18 19 and it goes up all the way to and it's going to freeze this at uh the year 2032 and the council at the time will have to vote on what it is. Now, I want to remind everyone that these numbers that are reflected in this schedule, there's a $3 discount for seniors, veterans, and disabled off the top of these rates here. So, I want to go into what we actually service and what I want everyone to really picture what volume is. So, our next slide here, this is a one tote home. I want everyone to picture this. I could take my 96gallon tote and I could dump it into a 20 yard dumpster 52 times and it'll fill that dumpster. That is the equivalent volume of one tote. And also our 40 foot square foot uh area that we use that people could use once a month and place trash out there, that is another dumpster. So, they're actually using two dumpsters, the volume of two dumpsters for a one tote service. That is an excellent service. I don't think there's anyone, no, there's there's not another community in Northwest Indiana, probably not even in Indiana, that has what we got the 40 square foot rule, the um pres-scheduled bulk item day uh for 12 times a month. So, as we look into like a two tote, that's three 20 yard dumpsters in volume for the price of $30 a month. It's it's like incredible. But that is what we offer in our service to the residents of Portage. And when you go to a four tote or a three tote, that's actually four, including the 40 square foot uh that we put at the curb 12 times a month. And then your your four foot. And we do have residents in here. We have one resident that has seven totes.

Seven totes. And six seven of them are absolutely full. Absolutely full every week. So through our department and our study and what we've audited on our routes with the tote numbers and volumes by users and sustaining the future, we believe that the proposed adjusted rates here based on the true volume of trash produced by each residential stop. We have calculated increased revenue that would greatly reduce the dependency on edit for landfill costs in 2026 and 2027 should have an operational budget that is self- sustaining and um this will eliminate one more fiscal challenge for our city when SEA1 takes effect in 2028. I just want to thank you for this opportunity.

Thank you, Randy. And I just want to say too, u we appreciate your presentation. I know there's like pictures showing and I just want to be clear. If you're a city resident and you're using our service, we have no trouble with you using the service. We want to be able to offer the best price possible and we want to be able to offer the best service in the area. So, uh, all said and done, Randy, thank you so much. Are there any questions from the council? So, Randy, I mean, I I know the answers to the questions, but I'm going to ask them anyway. Um, let's go back to 2021 when we were suspended. Um, you only had one trash to begin with, right? Like residents only had one toar that they could legally put trash into.

That is correct. Up until basically what, August 2023, I think is when our contract was up. um August of No, we had Republic Services for a while there until um Right. Do you mean the contract with Republic that involved recycling? Yes, correct. Not the switch from Republic to the other company. We actually did not have a actual contract of recycling. They started charging us for our recycling at some point. I think it was August 2020. Yes. in the renewal of the contract at which point we just I mean we weren't going to come and take everyone's recycling totters. It was already going to the landfill anyway as recycling. So

the city just left you with two toers that turned into garbage toers. But originally when this whole plan started in whatever 2013 whenever it was you only had one trash to begin with. Only one trash. So re I mean if you look at it that way if you look at be when we had recycling you only had one trash to we're just reverting back if you give up your recycling to right and you're getting a discount for that now your bill is actually next year going to go down what $1.75 a month correct

if you're going by what's currently scheduled it'd be 250 or 2050 next year so $250 yeah so you're actually Your bill is going to go down to return back to the one trash to you had in 2021. Yes, that is correct. Okay. Thank you,

Randy. I think we're good. Good with you, I think. Unless there's any other questions for Randy. Yeah, I I think one other question I have, um, do we look at what the average trash rate is around us? I mean, I know it's astronomically higher than what ours is currently. Um, yes, we did. Municipal and private. Did I mean, I assume we looked at both. Yeah, we're we're about just below average. A lot of municipalities have already gone up to uh 26 28. I could start mentioning some towns, but

I'll tell you a story about a certain mayor. I won't say the name unless it happens with Randy, where a mayor told me, Austin, we pay $13, um, twice a month. And I'm like, "So 26 a month?" He's like, "Well, it's $13 twice a month." And I'm like, "Right." But and you guys have an amnesty day once a month. He's like, "Heavens no." I'm like, "Okay, well, you know."

Right. I think I mean, yes, if you currently are using both of your toers for trash, you were probably throwing trash in it when we were recycling to begin with. We just There was no reason for us to tell you to stop doing that when we weren't paying for it, right? any anything that was in your recycling to up until or mid 2023, we didn't pay for it in landfill fees. We started paying for it at which point it's like, well, you don't need to recycle anymore. It's all going to the landfill anyway. Um, so I mean, we we were incentivizing people

to continue recycling in the hopes that we would get the program clean enough and just was not we were never going to get to that number that Republic needed us to get to. Yeah, we uh the private sector looks for 10% or less in contamination and we were more like at 30%. Yeah, we we were never going to get to 10%. I want to say it carefully. We confiscated about a thousand totes off of our routes when we were auditing. So I remember it was at least six, seven years ago when you did the whole presentation of even the surrounding cities and I was

we were definitely lower. Any other questions or about this? And no changes to bulk pickup? No, we're going to remain with the 40 square foot rule. Uh 12 amnesty days a year. A lot of communities, our neighboring communities are charging for everything, including the bulk. So just talk to our neighbors and I don't need to mention their names, but they do charge for bulk. One more. Go ahead.

How do people get rid of their second toar? uh that is we have individuals right now uh you could go online we have a form that's already completed so it's very easily on the website there and also we have a form in paper so we could easily email like a PDF or you could come into the office uh we will make sure that the city all has those forms as well so but those forms must be completed you must uh check off the necessary boxes and sign the bottom is there any way to digitize that

so we have a uh you mean digitize the signup Yeah, like make it easier. Can we create a Google form or something that people can fill out? Yeah. Some like I don't want to like I know there are a lot of people that are not going to know how to fill out a PDF and email it back. If we can digitize this in some way and just make it easier. Pick up the tote from their house. Correct. Yeah. Yes, we will pick up the tote once the form's completed. And uh Randy, we also have a flyer trash talking ready to go by mail if it were to We don't have it paid for yet because we need to see if this passes. But we have the setup for the flyer ready to go. Let's put a QR code to it. Google form can easily fill out. We do have a QR code. Don't forget the stickers.

When would this take effect?

So, and I'm sorry. Uh that would take this would take effect in January. So, January 1st is a city holiday. So, whatever the schedule there is, we would have if passed, you would be changing your stuff and having your totes switched out by January. I will state that there is something a little bit hercuanian to that and that we have to make sure that we're getting things picked up, but we're ready to do it. Um, if you guys are ready to approve it and as noted, I don't consider this a gamble. A gamble would be doing it in 2027 and banking that everything's going to be completely correct in 2028. I think that what this does is it's a planned deficit reduction that we hope we get right the first time and we think that we can adjust if needed from there.

I just want to uh briefly voice my concerns about the proposal. Um I'm concerned that residents will be intrigued by the possibility of a lower bill and uh will revert to one can. But as we know, uh, trash, uh, varies, you know, based on output, based on household, based on season. Uh, we have the holidays coming up, you know, people get another couple boxes from Amazon and then next thing you know, uh, without a second can or without enough space, uh, they find themselves in a predicament. And I just want the residents, people who are watching at home to just be mindful of the fact that if you do make this decision uh to reduce uh your trash cans from 2 to one, uh just be mindful that you may find yourself in a position where trash uh is overflowing. And we don't want residents to be unhappy. We just want them to make a mindful decision. Um but also having the option to have a reduced uh fee um is good in its own sense. So I just wanted to

I appreciate that your voice is so soothing by the way like you could be in the commercial like if you're a resident you're like an attorney like have you been impacted by the re trying to be serious here but [laughter] Ferdan on that front is you don't have to get rid of your second toar until after Christmas.

There you go. So, this is a this is a Christmas 2026 problem. But I think and I mean I I was I had my concerns about this up until this morning really. And I think if you remember that prior to 2023, you actually only had one trash can, unless you were already paying for two or paying for three or paying for four or however many seven uh people have. You for eight years, you only had one trash can to begin with. You had a recycling can and a trash can. For the last two years, you've just happened to have two because we hadn't gotten to this part. But I I mean realistically the city two years ago could have come around and collected everybody's recycling can because you were only paying for one trash can.

That's correct. Since we instituted this change in 2013. Like the the residents have only ever been paying for one trash can. And they got two because the city just decided it was not worth the effort to go around and try to take away every green to that's still out there. And what I would say politely too is we believed we had the funds to do it through edit um in 2024. I don't think anybody could predict that edit would be going away under something like SCA1, right?

Whether or not, and believe me, I mean, we've talked about things up until SCA1 happened and then we really started talking about things. It probably would have been a good idea over a period of time to gradually increase the bill or change the structure in such a way that we free up edit. Sea1 really doesn't give us a choice. It takes what maybe could have been a four to eightyear plan process and it's turned it into a two-year process. But we're trying to create the least amount of pain as possible. And to quote Kurt Kudson, for those who remember Kurt, and I'm for the record, Kurt has no endorsement in this. I'm just borrowing his timeless quote. Sometimes you have to pick the best bad plan. And I believe that this is at the very least the best bad plan. Randy, is there anything or clerk um Modesto, is there anything to prevent a resident, say they take the option of having one tote, but they know like come Christmas in September, October that they request a second tote and it get prorated of any sort. uh well if they let me explain it like this if if I go down to a one tote and I find out late months later that I need to go to a two tote I go ask fill out the form request that second tote there is a one-year obligation to keep that second tote and that's consistent with other policy but that's where I also tell people two important things one you have the ability to schedule a special pickup separate from your trash day or a bulk that is a special pickup so in the event that you have a Christmas type situation. I love how we're all thinking of Christmas 26 already. In the event that you have a Christmas situation, you have the ability to say, "I have this trash coming." You could even put it, to give you an idea, if you have your own trash can at home, even currently, and you put it next to your trash can, that's still a bulk charge. So, if you want to be able to take trash out in a container and order it for a special pickup, if you're a one tote household, you'd be able to do that. and you'd still be paying an overall smaller bill than what you'd be paying in the event that you switched to cans. Now, if

someone has an emergency situation in the event like they've gone up to three and they signed up for a commitment, there's ways to address that through the board of works. But I think that what I would advise anybody is if you're heading into Christmas and worried that, you know, the Christmas season for 26 is going to be heavy. I would recommend planning a special bulk pickup unless you want to be like my dad or Tom and keep two cans, which you're welcome to do. And then to also just reiterate from last month, this does not take away any of the discounts for the senior citizens or veterans. And you can still pay a year in advance in January the full trash amount at a discounted rate of 10%. Correct. Yes, that's correct. That is correct. What about tenants from rental homes? So, Liz, you got that one?

I'm sorry. Is it about tenants? If you're renting a home and say the um the owner keeps the two cans, but they're charging you. Well, that would be a business dealing between the tenant and the landlord. And simply put, we can't weigh in on that. I mean, but I would think that if I'm a landlord, I wouldn't be telling the tenant you have to have two garbage cans. I mean, not speaking for every landlord, but ultimately that's a business arrangement between the two between them. There is a solution, however. or it may not be too Christian. The uh months that you find yourself with extra trash, you can in the wee hours of the night creep over to your neighbor's totter, throw it in there, sneak back home, and then ask God for forgiveness.

Bob, what I thought you were going to say is someone with two cans might charge their neighbors rent for the other CAD if they don't use it a lot. The mayor does live a couple blocks from me, so be aware. I do it to my across the street neighbors all the time. So Randy, I I a little humor here, huh? To get back to Victoria's point, if if you were to go down to one, decide to go back to two, you are going to pay the $25 fee, right? To

No, there's no uh there's no processing fee. There's no processing fee. The $25 uh fee that you're speaking of is a return service fee. So when we say when someone calls up and says, "Hey, it's 10 o'clock. I just got up out of bed. The the sanitation trucks have already serviced my my block. Can you come back and get these two to That's a $25 return service fee. So, I didn't know that was uh at the end of the day, what we do is we um we make that list up and then we send a truck back out and we reservice those. So, we in that scenario too, we would not also charge you the $100 for a new tote?

No. Okay. Can we safely assume that if you do not fill out the form or call and you have two toers that we will the city will consider that you want to keep the two toers and charge you accordingly. Yeah. There's nothing that you need to do at this moment if you have two totes. It'll automatically default to 30 January 1. So you have to take action to lower your bill. Yes, you do. Okay. And unfortunately, I mean, there's no perfect way to reach everyone, but we're going to do everything we can to make sure that it reaches people and there's going to be no reimbursement if you call in late, like if you call in after the first.

So, that speaks to due diligence. So, if we do our due dil I'm young enough and old enough old enough to remember this. I mean, I grew up before everybody had a cell phone, right? like how did it work in the 80s or '9s when you did a rate change and people didn't read the paper, right? But all that said and done, in today's day and age with all calls, with flyers, with mailers, um with the mayor going door to door, putting a sticker on people's um trash cans, which may or may not happen, but you know, I'm trying to see if I can get the whole place covered. If we do our due diligence then legally there comes a point where someone might I mean I hope this doesn't happen to anybody but in the event that somebody gets charged in January they still have the ability to make the switch come February March you know where that comes

correct but they will be charged that January fee as long as we do our due diligence which we will and Randy just to ask um just so that it's stated as a question somebody decides to go by go down to one tote and in March April they want two totes and they're now committed to the one-year contract. Is it safe to say since it's not been said there isn't an ability to have an early cancellation fee and return that tote and pay a fee or penalty for cancelling early on that one-year contract? I would say an appeal to the board of works could be done and they can make that decision

and that's the current policy already. So, right now under the current code, if you have two totes and you sign up for a third or if you sign up for five or seven, that is a one-year commitment. And so, there's not a cancellation fee or ability under the current policy. But in an emergency, when there's an emergency, call the board of works and we assess it. I'm not sure what that was, that noise, but but it was it was adorable. Whatever it was, I just hope it wasn't a bad one. So, it sounds like that there is an option somewhere, but it's in a process. Yes. of how a resident would have to do it. There's no fee. There's no fee.

So, um I know the answer to this, but I'm going to ask anyway. Um if you're on autopay, you are going to have to go in and change your actual bill amount no matter what, right? Yes. Okay. There's no system out there that would automatically change your Okay. No, there isn't. You have to I mean, there are, but they're probably expensive. We don't have that system currently. So, so if you're listening and you're on autopay, you have to go in and change the amount you are going to pay in January. Otherwise, you are either going to be short or you're going to pay the city too much money. You can give us an interest free loan or an interest free loan if you would like. We we we will take it.

Are there any other questions? And let me just state too, and I I can't stress this, every municipality in Indiana is being impacted by SCA1 in some way. whether that's the property tax loss end of it or whether it is the um edit or other you know countybased tax loss to it almost every city in Indiana I'm going to say almost but I mean I I would venture to say every city has some unique financial circumstance some sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul that they have done historically for years to make things work that this major change in how cities get funding is impacting for us it happens to be garbage but for other and I don't and I mean literal garbage like our tonnage of trash. For other cities, it's different problems. Some more complicated and some less complicated. I want to know I know we've had some good moments because sometimes um when you're dealing with a big situation, sometimes humor always creeps through. This was something that we've taken seriously from the start. Once we understood that sea1 meant that edit would be going away. We understood that there was a time bomb with our current. There were lots of people who told us to just fight the bullet and raise the cost on everybody. We didn't think that that was fair because of so many people currently already using one can, especially those who are most vulnerable, people on fixed incomes, seniors, and even the mayor who just um has never happened to use one can or more than one can. On that note, I appreciate you guys looking at this so thoroughly asking your questions. And of course, if you have any more, but I just want to thank you guys for how much consideration went into this. I want to thank Randy and his team, Vern, and everybody at city hall and Liz's team because I know when I came to Liz and said, "Hey, Liz, I got an idea. What if we lower the price per can? You were like, Austin, that would make the problem worse. And I'm like, well, hold on.

I will make a motion to adopt ordinance 2545. Second. We have a motion and a second. Uh, Liz, could you please call roll? Councilman Alvarez? Yes. Councilwoman Weidbach, yes. Councilwoman Hurst, yes. Councilman Parnell, yes. Councilwoman Vazquez, yes. Councilwoman Amler. Yes. Councilman Zilly. Yes.

Passed. Thank you guys. Do you guys want to go immediately into the resolutions or you want to take like a 5m minute break? This felt like forever. No worries. No problem. No problem. Gets us into the introduction of resolutions. Resolution 2525, additional appropriation sanitation. Councilman Alvarez, could you take it away? Absolutely, Mayor. Thank you. Resolution number 2525, a resolution of the city of Portage, Indiana, additional appropriation for the Portage Sanitation Department, City of Portage, Porter County, Indiana. Let the record show that the proposed resolution has been read in its entirety.

Okay, on this one, this is going to require public meeting. So, this is the first reading on it, and the public meeting will be at the December 7th or December 2nd meeting. Thank you so much. That gets us to resolution 2526, reduction of the 2025 budget MDH. Uh, Councilman Zilly, would you mind covering that one for us? Resolution number 25-26, a resolution of the common council of the city of Portage, Porter County, Indiana, approving budgetary appropriation reductions in the motor vehicle highway MVH budget. Let the record reflect this has been read in full. Uh, Liz, is this another one with the weight? Okay. No, this does not. this. We can vote on this one. [clears throat]

Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? Believe that passed. That gets to resolution 2527 authorizing CT transfers, MVH. Um, Gina, would you be able to read or would you rather I skip over to Bob because I love you to death. I just don't know if you're ready. I'm fine. Resolution number 2527, a resolution of the common council of the city of Portage, Porter County, Indiana, authorizing the clerk treasurer to transfer certain city certain city of portage bud budget funds into certain budget categories. Let this be shown that it's been read in its entirety.

Liz, is this one we need to wait? No, this one we can approve. Attorney, is that correct? Yes. Make a motion to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I. Thank you. That gets us to resolution 2528, additional appropriations police department. Uh, Councilman Parnell, would you mind taking that one?

Certainly. Resolution 25-28, a resolution of the city of Portage of Portage, Indiana, additional appropriation for the Portage Police Department, city of Portage, Porter County, Indiana. Let the record reflect that the resolution has been read in its entirety. And again, this is the first reading because it's an additional appropriation uh public hearing will be held on December 2nd. Thank you. That gets us to resolution 25 uh 29 reduction 2025 budget general. Um Victoria, if you could.

Absolutely. Resolution number 25-29, a resolution of the common council of the city of Portage, Porter County, Indiana, approving budgetary appropriation reduction in the general fund budget. Let the record reflect that the ordinance has or the resolution has been read in its entirety. This one is we need to wait or we're good. No, we can make a motion to approve if you guys want. Yeah, I'll make a motion to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I. Any opposed?

That gets us to one of these days a fly is going to go into somebody's eye and we're going to say my eye and I'm going to count it as anyway. Resolution 2530 authorizing CT transfers general. Um Penny, could you take that one for us? Resolution number 25-30, a resolution of the common council of the city of Portage, Porter County, Indiana, authorizing the clerk treasurer to transfer certain city of Portage budget funds into certain budget categories. Let the record reflect this resolution has been read in its entirety. Uh Liz, same question for Yeah. Motion to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I.

And if I didn't get lost when I turned my page, we're still on G now, right? So, that gets to um resolution 2531 authorizing CT transfers for Hey, that's me. Um Mayor, Councilman Alvarez, could you read that one for us? Yes, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Resolution number 2531, a resolution of the common council of the city of Portage, Porter County, Indiana, authorizing the clerk treasurer to transfer certain city of portage budget funds into certain budget categories. Let the record show that the proposed resolution has been read in its entirety. Motion to approve. Thank you. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I.

Any opposed? Think that passed. Any other matters? not already considered before the I'm sorry by the council hearing none. Is there a motion to adjurnn? Motion to adjurnn. Second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? Love you guys. Thank you. And we're closed. [music]