Town Council - Regular Meeting

and to revive it for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Call to order the meeting of the Roanoke Town Council. August 4, Town Council meeting minutes. Does anyone have any questions or changes for Sarah?

I'll make the motion to accept the August 4, 2026 Town Council meeting minutes as written.

I'll second that. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Okay. August 26th, 26th, 2026 executive session minutes. I'll make a motion to pass those as written. I'll second that. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? I'm now going to close the regular meeting and open up the public hearing for the Town of Roanoke 2027 budget.

Okay, for public hearing, the budget total is $3,890.19. It is posted on Gateway and copies out there for the public, and then this is the time for anyone who has questions to ask them, if you have any.

Yes, you said 3,000. 3,000, we're going to be a little tight.

So yes, we have questions. Does anybody have any questions? The adoption hearing will be October 6th, which is our next council meeting.

If there's no questions or comments, I am going to close the public hearing and reopen the regular meeting. Citizens' comments.

My name is Gene Lee. I live at 524 South Main Street. I was here last month trying to find out why the town hasn't paved part of the lane that goes in front of my four houses. And at that time, you guys were going to talk about it and to find out why it was designated private and why it hasn't been paid when every other house in that subdivision, I live in the subdivision, I pay membership dues, I pay taxes, and yet my lane hasn't been resurfaced. It belongs to Fort Pack. We don't own it, but four houses sit on that. It's right off of South Main Street. So, is there any additions to that? Why we're not moving on that? Or is something I need to know about that?

I'm just going to go ahead.

Well, the only thing I have is John Stokely, who was here that night, he's with County Council. I was going to look into that and try to find out who actually owns that parcel and I have not heard back from him yet. I've hit him up a couple of times and he hasn't been able to find that. I think I saw it through chatter. Somebody about... Did you want to share what you learned? Yeah.

Yeah, Dean, so I told you the other day. Yeah, well, I want to hear it in front of everybody. Yeah, if council does decide to take that street over, they've got to come up with a name, and then you all have to change your addresses. So your house numbers will stay the same, but you won't be South Main. It'll be whatever streets. Could it be South Main Court?

Could it be South Main Lane? That's an image.

Regardless of what it's changed, it does change your address.

I'd have to change my address?

Yes, with the post office.

So even if it is South Main Corridor Lane, you'd still have to change it to that. So that means I'd have to move from mailboxes from Main Street to our lane?

That's the U.S. Postal Service will tell you what to do there. Your physical address will have to change to whatever new road we call it, regardless if it's Cork Drive, whatever. With your mailboxes, that's something you'll have to discuss with the postmaster.

We have no control over that. My house is brick. I've got a stone thing that's etched with 524 in the brick. That would be a major thing to do to change.

The house numbers could stay the same. We would just have to designate a new street name for that street.

Even though the street would be going the opposite direction. Is that what you're saying?

okay so basically i think if i may summarize if yours 524 you said 524 so yours would be 524 xyz street would have to be the new address okay you know main lane and i don't know the clarification on that as far as lane court drive all right some people have to look at but

regardless what we're saying though is we can't control the post office and have no decision there but your address will change should we take it over and it will no longer be main street okay if you only have your number list in that post then that's not going to change though the number should still be okay yeah and then

When I was talking to Aaron here, he comes to the street then all of a sudden we've got other guidelines we've got to follow, right? Right.

There's got to be a stop sign, you'll get a street sign, probably have to put a dead end sign there as well.

And are there some guidelines on the street width? Because that 15 feet is pretty narrow.

Yeah, it's not. It's supposed to be at least 18 feet between 10 and 15. So it'd have to be widened also, right? Possibly. Why don't we just pave the dog on that then, right?

In order for us to get credit for it, it has to meet certain standards within us. So in order for us to be willing to take it over, there are certain guidelines we have to meet so that we can actually get funding to pay.

Okay, well, I didn't think it was gonna be a big deal since you were in the neighborhood anyway. I mean, paved all the courts, all the streets, I'm in Roanoke Village.

What's the cost of paving a street like that? There's a little bit more to it than just paving the street. A little bit more to it. Well, what's the cost of doing it? Because I think what he doesn't understand is we get funding for a major portion of that.

So that section of the street would probably be, if there wasn't any subgrade problems, probably $20,000 to pay for it.

But if there's subgrade problems.

Then there's bigger issues.

So we can get CCMG, which covers 80% of it. Otherwise, it's completely out of pocket.

think that's in order for us to get it on the MDH which is motor vehicle lane miles and get it added so that we can pay to have it funded through the 80-20 split it must have a street name even now if we mislabel something let's say we have vine and we call it Samantha Street and we've applied for community crossings to get funding to pave it and we pave it with the wrong name, NDOT won't pay us. So they're very stringent on asset management and us having every I, dot, and T crossed, or we don't care about it.

Well, we've been Main Streets forever, and Main Street's been repaved several times, and they've never done it.

And that's been a private street. since its beginning, which was done by the developer and prior councils, et cetera, which wasn't us. We're just saying this is the process to move here.

And Brian, that's, I think, to your point, where John was going to try to find a little more history on that whole process. Yeah.

And I also talked to Dick Smart, who was town manager at the time, he's the one that signed the agreement that he brought in about the, uh, about the plowing of the street. Dick was the town manager at the time and signed that, and he said he remembered that, but he also remembered that it was a private drive, but he couldn't for the life of him remember why it became that. It doesn't jive with everything I know.

I don't think any of us disagree that it doesn't jive, but we have to go through the proper channels to get that changed appropriately to then be able to help pay for any future things that need to come with that. And that's where the hang up is right now, is going through that process. be there again from an emergency standpoint you know they're they're going to have to know what what the street name is whether it be the police officers ems fire anything like that as well they've been up there before haven't they yes they know where it is i mean that's not a problem it's just bureaucracy i guess as well this whole thing yeah no doubt about it totally agree so um

Should I talk to John then directly? Would he be the one that you guys would recommend that's got the answers to that?

I'm just making myself known to reach out to him tomorrow. And you can also, but I'm going to talk to him tomorrow. All right.

I don't know, Aaron, what you would want to have, but I figure each homeowner needs to agree that be okay with the street changing to actually giving a name?

I did invite the other two members that live on my street to be here today, and they are not, so I can't throw that. Have you said anything to them about the address change? No, I have not, because I thought that would be something they need to hear in person, not from secondhand information from me.

Maybe we draft a letter saying there's been a request to change to be able to have town take over the road and state what it would require and then have them affirm that they're willing to do it.

We'll get it figured out.

It's been paved, I think, what, 35 years ago it was paved? And now it's deteriorated to where it's really needs some work.

Any other citizens' comments, questions, concerns? Okay, Park Department.

Good evening, I just got a couple things. First, the pickleball courts, obviously there's been a few setbacks, mainly rain. And then upcoming fall festival and the car show. So hopefully third week of September, sometime around that time frame, they'll get started on that. And then obviously it'll have to be finished next year. So the hope was to have it finished this year, but circumstances permit the death. And then also the second thing, I had Sarah email you in case some of you were not familiar with Region 3A. So the park board's kind of looking at them and the reason they, one of the main reasons is looking at the Region 3As for the ability to apply for grants. DNR, I'm sure there's other people out there that require that they have Region 3A data and information so that when you're applying for the grant, you know, it's not rejected and accepted. So, like I said, Sarah sent those to you. If you want to obviously read over those. And then the reason I did that was I'll hopefully have next week Sandra from Region 3A will be here to explain it more in detail, and if you have any questions for her, so in case you are not familiar with it.

Is that for next month?

Next month. Okay. Other than that, I think the park's looking good, and obviously ready for the Fall Festival and the car show, so we haven't had too many issues, so unless Aaron has something or has anything. No, no, no, no. So that's all I have.

Thanks, Dave.

Thanks.

All right, spent some time in the office this month, which was fun. Got our new Maxon biocameras set up, so we're getting ready to send the old ones back. Those are getting put in service now. We have all our radars in our cars and our handheld radar certified. Everything passed, so we don't have to replace anything there. We've got Alan's guns purchased from the Sheriff's Department and transferred over. Went through our budget and we were able to purge some old software that we have been paying for that we don't need anymore. So that's going to save us about $500 a year. We got our online training through First Forward set up so everybody can do their continuing education online without having to find classes and go to them. Looking into some different options for our department issued cell phones, T-Mobile offers a for first responders through a government agency, zero cost cell phones. Their data plans for the cars are a lot more, so we may stick with AT&T on that, but trying to explore the coverage options, see if it's comparable to what we have now. I've got by-crash set up, so that is through LexisNexis, so if somebody gets into a car accident, they're calling us or emailing us, trying to get their crash report information, well, From now on, they can go direct to Bicrash. Their insurance company can purchase it. We get part of that money, but we don't have to sit in the office and dig everything out and try and get it sent to the right people. So that'll save us some time. Dean Young, who was with the Roanoke Police Department, resigned. He doesn't have enough time anymore. He's full time at the airport police department now. So he called in and he can't help us anymore. So he's no longer part of our department. School zone seems to be going a lot smoother now. We had some hiccups along the way, but I think people are starting to get it. We still have a few, but it's much better than it was before. We've got a first grade tour coming up. They're going to come to the police department. They do the fire department. I don't know if they're doing a town hall this year or not. They'll do the tour. We'll talk to the first graders. That's on September 17th. Obviously, the car show and the fall festival is coming up, so we're going to be Nice and busy with that. If anybody has any suggestions for parking for the Fall Festival, the Disaster Team can't do it this year, so they're looking for another organization to take donations to park cars. Anybody got any ideas? No?

And then obviously... Have you reached out to like the Heighten North JROTC?

I talked to somebody with a band and choir. They're going to look into it, but such short notice.

isn't going so well so the disaster team will be here for the car show and they should be available for the fall festival they just don't have enough people to do the festival this year so that's why I was wondering because I know my daughter used to be in JROTC and they have to have 40 hours of community service each year and a lot of times they'll volunteer for those types of things yeah I'll contact them as well because we're just trying to find somebody would be the contact probably. Okay. I'll get a hold of them also.

I can connect you with Canterbury. I have to have 60 hours of community service.

Perfect. And the pullers are willing to make a donation to whatever cause to do it. And then obviously our bridge on High Street got hit by a vehicle that all has been sent off. So insurance and we don't own the bridge, right? It's the county's, the county's. So they will deal with that as they see fit. It's our bridge, but it's not. Kind of like the one at the park. So, other than that, any questions? You got a schedule in our call report up there in front of the office.

Any questions for Brent? All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Superman's going to have operations.

okay the first thing i've got um is our commitment letter for the upcoming community crossings grant um the next project for 2027 would be west second street curbs and sidewalks was third curb and sidewalks and fourth remain from fourth to sixth with curbs and sidewalks An estimated project cost is $1,250,000. So we have to commit 20% to that, plus our real tax. So the letter of commitment is $252,170. So we need to plead for that.

I make a motion to approve our financial commitment letter to the Community Profit Crossings Matching Grant in the amount of $252,170. I'll second that.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed?

Next I got, so update on review number two. Finally after four months of waiting, we finally heard back from IDEM. They want to see some quality control, different quality control tests from the lab. That should take about seven days. but they'll pay within the rest of the evening with the green pile so it'll have to be moved to treat what's underneath it but we don't have to haul it outside so that should save us a lot of money.

Can you quantify that?

So our first bid that we had that was 5.6 million SME seemed to think once they started hauling that hazardous debris to a special landfill we were probably looking over 10 million dollars So it's probably going to save us $70 million, not having to fall that off. Which gets us closer to the original estimate. Which gets us closer to the original. SME said they should have it ready put out for bid by end of May. And then we have a proposal from SME for the groundwater sampling for Green 1. If you remember, that was originally a 30-year term. Uh, last year we wrapped it up and I put a cover letter stating that. I can say we're not done yet. So SME is going to take it over. Um, they, you know, PLC was originally doing it. When I asked for SME to take it over, they said just continue your sampling. They don't really need us yet. Um, now we're at this stage, they want to have a meeting with IBM to find out, okay, why exactly are you wanting us to solicit it, but where do you want to be going? So, it's a, Quote for $7,500 for time and materials for them to dig into this and have a meeting to tie it in. They will even do the sampling if they have to as part of this.

And it looks like it has needs and basically enough to see something's up.

Yep.

I'll make a motion.

I'll second.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed?

The last thing I have. So as you know, we've been looking at meters. We've got a few new ones in. We looked at replacing everything at once and having a private company do it. The price was astronomical. So instead of us buying a box here and there and doing it, I'd like to buy 100 meters so we can just get on it and get rid of some of the bad ones and get the business attached to it and things like that. A quote for that is $41,950.

And remind me, you guys can do that installation yourself, right? Yes.

The private company is nice because they can do it after hours and some Saturdays. So they would have had it all done in four or six weeks, but it's just too costly right now to do that. We'll start with this, see what happens, maybe we can knock these out. Typically when it comes to replacing meters, whether it was a different brand or the brand we got now, we would buy a box or two at a time and just use an SMT. I'd like to get 100 and just hit the ground running.

I will make a motion to approve the quotes at $41,950.

All those in favor say aye. Aye.

All opposed?

I think that's all I have. The lift station is completely done. They hit all the checklist items from last month. So the final check is going to be sent to them for that. Everything is going well. They did some adjustments on a couple things. Real world problems. We just don't know until it happens again. Until the power goes out. But they think they got everything figured out. Also, September 14th, the American pump is going to be in here, and you train on control cabinets for the guys. I talked to them last week, just brought it up, and they said, yep, we can go through the control cabinets and teach you what they need to be done with.

Okay.

Thanks.

If you want someone to meet, shall I go?

Um... So I wanted to discuss or bring up the accessible parking in front of the business on High Street that we previously discussed. I talked to them further as well as some concerned business owners. I think the resolve was that I'd like to make a motion that we make that spot in front of that business handicap accessible. When they first leased that building, they were not aware that Medicare was going to require a space right in front of them. When Medicare came out to do the site visit, they said it must be there. We do not currently have an accessible space on High Street. In addition to that, the Largo Plaza and their parking directly behind the building on private property, they've added an accessible space as well. So they'll have access there as well. And also, the more I dug into it, people were under the impression that the three parking lots that are owned by the Largo Plaza, someone for some reason thought they were a private lot. are not waterfield plaza has said those are public spots anyone is welcome to use those so outside of copper still the two spot two lots back behind waterfield plaza directly next to the patio are public parking so there is access there they also indicated when they upgrade their signs next time they'll add something that says public parking so there's no confusion to town so my motion is that we update our ordinance to make that space handicap accessible

What about in the fire department?

Oh, in fire department, their second space would go behind the post office building and street parking, and that one would be designated as emergency fire department.

That's right at the corner. So across the street from the side, not around the corner like we talked about.

Correct.

I will second that motion. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? thank you for doing that yes thank you the only thing that's under my part of the agenda is i want to discuss the historical preservation commission a little bit more the town attorney looked at state code There has to be five members, they all have to be residents of the town. One has to be an architect or have architectural background, it's a three year commitment. I'm not opposed to this commission, but what I wanna know is before we spend more money to have the attorney do all this, are we gonna be able to find five residents? Well, with an architectural background, that'll make a three-year commitment to do this. Also, it can't be a council member because of conflict of interest. So I just want to get the council's opinions on if we are going to be able to find five residents.

I think my personal recommendation is to have the group go back to the group that is looking at the preservation commission.

explain the reservations and see if there's a different way i just don't think right now there's i don't think we have that level of expertise in town to do that right and and my other concern was we are i mean we have difficulty getting volunteers for other things and this is a three-year commitment so like i said i'm not opposed to having a commission it's just my concern of spending more money on something that's not going to work out so and i had also reached out to greg who's

kind of heading up that committee that brought this to us. And the group that they've been working with is an organization called Indiana Landmarks. And what Mike's telling us, the state code is not the same as what they told us. And he had said that if what Mike's telling us is true, it's probably going to be a non-starter for them anyway. So I would say, from our point, table up for now and don't spend any more money. Agreed.

Yeah.

Then we got a, this is not on the agenda, but we got a special event application for a block party in the Clayburgh addition. I just wanted, Sarah sent that to everyone today, I just wanted to know if everyone reviewed it, had any questions. Of course the president's not here, but if we don't have any questions or concerns, there's no money.

Oh, that was my question. Since it's just a cul-de-sac, they are technically closing it through the street.

Yeah, I thought there was some permission to shut it on their cul-de-sac for a couple of hours to have it.

And Aaron didn't have a problem with it, but definitely wanted to get you guys this. I would love to do that. I want to make sure that Grant and his team aren't very much away. Sounds good.

He knows where to go. Yeah, it's a chili cook-off, so. With extra controls. For my chili, though.

so obviously we have two of the three departments do we need to confirm that with the fire department then as well just for uh for purposes of if there would be an emergency during that time period i mean you hate to think that way but you never know right i assume they're just using a couple of labels to block it off yeah i just think awareness from the fire department anyway it sounds like we got approval from the the police department got approval from the street department so I think also to stay consistent with the application process and procedures. I think that'd be the appropriate avenue to go down is to confirm with the fire department as well. So approve the pending fire department move?

I'll make a motion to approve the special event application for the Claiborne block party pending approval from the fire department.

I'll second that.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? That's all I have. Hold on just a second. Great question.

Okay. GFL is our current trash and recycling. They're three-year. This is the third year. So we have two options. They have offered a one-year extension for a 3% increase. The other option is to take it to bid. This does take some time, it'll take some money, because it has to be advertised in the newspaper, but that's why we're starting this now. We kind of need to know if we are in Senate to bid, because then I think Erin will need to start working on that in the next few weeks. So I was just trying to get your thoughts on what you're thinking, if you want to continue with GFL for another year, or if you want to put it out to bid. Is everybody pretty okay with GFL? I mean, I don't have any complaints.

I haven't seen any complaints on the Facebook bottom lately, so we must be doing okay.

We have a lot less complaints regarding GFL than we ever did with Republic. I mean, the only complaint that I hear is it costs extra to have items picked up and it's not cheap. But then we just recommend outside vendors to do that.

But other than that, we really... Yeah, I think they've been responsive to those complaints or whatever as well as far as trash not even getting picked up. They come back the next day, those types of things typically. So I personally don't have a problem with a 3% increase and not go through the big process. We're going to have at least that much of an increase when we bid this out anyhow, personally.

So you need a motion for a one-year contract extension?

So I'll make a motion to extend the GFL trash recycling contract with a 3%, not to exceed 3% increase. I'll second that.

All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All opposed?

Okay, and then Halloween, I know it's September 1st. But in a couple weeks, we will have people start asking. So I've seen it on Facebook. Have you? OK. So I just thought I would throw it out there just to set you guys a separate date and time.

My thought is Halloween's on a Saturday this year. Just make it Halloween. The only thing I would like to change, having sat on my porch the last two years, is that last third hour, you hardly get any kids. I say we shorten it to two hours. Just make it six to eight instead of five to eight, or five to seven. But I don't think we need three hours. That's just my thought.

Six to eight. Six to eight? I don't have a strong opinion. You can always turn out your porch light. That's true. So consensus? Six to eight?

Yes.

Okay.

That's all I have. Any old business? Presentation of bills and utility adjustments. I will make a motion to pay the bills and utility adjustments as presented.

I'll second that.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? I will make a motion to adjourn the meeting. I second it. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed?