Council - Regular Meeting

everybody's coming out and your interest in tonight's proceedings we'll start by the reading and approval of the meeting minutes from june 2nd as everyone from the board had a minute to

we apologize for the delay we're working on the live stream so there's an issue we'll resume in just a moment all right we're good

Oh, good.

Oh, good.

I did. You did second.

All right, we're gonna resume the meeting. The live stream's back up. Sorry about that delay. Moving on, next item onto the agenda, we're gonna go down to the town department reports. I will say for each representative, if there's not something extremely important, you can keep your comments brief. First item is town marshal police department report. I don't know if Josh is here tonight. No, he's not here. Okay, I don't see Josh here tonight.

That's fine. Yeah, that's totally fine.

all right next item was the fire department elissa did you receive a report from the fire department i did not is dan or someone from the fire department here tonight no updates from the fire department next item will be the gym and civic center richard yes um in 12 rounds in june which is quite a few for june as hot as it is as uh

We did receive a large grant award from the Decatur County Community Foundation. We were going to submit a progress grant to the request to Blue River Community Foundation, but we did not get all the information that we needed in time, so we'll be looking at that in the future. The grant we received will repair the stage, the furnace, and some other minor activities. The town funded Restroom revitalization has been completed now and everything's working great on that. And for the gym today, we had court services from the state or county provided assistance with people coming in and doing assistance there. It was cleaned and cleaned up and we we re-examined on some of the things that need to be done in terms of restrooms, flooring, all the sweeping and vacuuming and all the cleaning. And the Civic Center had one rental. You have 15 rental schedules in July. Thanks to The Division One Athletic Academy, who is opening classes every week in June and July. That's it. Thank you.

Thank you. Next item would be water sewer. I don't think I saw a less here tonight. On the agenda, if anyone's interested, you can go online and see the operations report, all the information that you would typically present. Next item is the court treasurer report.

Thank you.

Accounts payable vouchers.

There we go. Thank you.

Let's do that.

YOU SAID THERE IS A BREAKDOWN OF THIS UTILITY?

Sorry. Yeah.

Oh, okay. I got you.

Okay.

Ordinance idea.

so

All right, anything else from the clerk treasurer's office?

Yes, I was gonna see if the council would care if I pay the lady to clean the town's facilities on a monthly basis. Just to maintain the restrooms, vacuum, the gym, here, and the water office.

I think we've talked about this before and I think we've kicked this canner down the road just because many times I think I'm personally in favor of just allowing a list of authorizing a list of find and source the right person to come do that.

She's cleaned it before. Is it your lady with the $20 rate?

No, I don't think she'll be too concerned. She did some volunteer work. She did a pretty good job. So she told me she would be willing to do it. Yeah. Which is not a huge deal, but close the office and come over and clean today.

Do we want to quote or? I mean nothing we can authorize up to what amount? What did she give an idea?

I think we already have appropriate appropriation in the budget, so as long as it's out of an appropriated fund, I don't think we have to necessarily determine amount and I think obviously we will see an invoice. Go ahead. Anything else?

Okay.

All right. Moving on to a new business. So a representative submitted a photo from river bend regarding a manhole emitting sewage filling out. I don't know if someone here from the community to speak about that. So for those that have been around, I think everyone knows this is an unfortunate ongoing issues with the town's infrastructure. where we continue to get inflow and infiltration into our sewer system overwhelms the system and what's causing us to be in trouble with IDEM. So the town has been and is currently looking for additional funding to try and help solve this problem. So I know it's a very expensive repair to fix all of these issues throughout the town. I know Les has been doing some on inflow and infiltration. I think we sent some letters last month, which I know we've sent letters in the past to individuals that had smoke testing on their properties where there was infiltration that was coming through. So we'll continue to try to address. I, at this point, don't have an immediate answer to solve this problem until we can achieve funding to fix it. Anything else from the board?

I did see on a smoke testing map that that had some roofs. Do you know when they came and did the camera test the camera? Was that line ran?

Maybe we can just take a fresh look at that and see. I know exactly where this is, quite frankly. I've drove by it in high water events and there's human feces and toilet paper and women's feminine products running down the road. So I hate it for the town, but unfortunately we're dealing with ongoing issues that we're trying to solve actively, but the town just doesn't have funds to fix an issue at this point. Anything else? All right, we'll keep working on it. Jackson Street, so we had a resident submit photos regarding a property on Jackson Street. I think it's some tall weeds. I saw it earlier. So the town's... has traditionally not gone looking for these types of issues, but if a resident from the community reaches out with a complaint, Lump Town will review and respond. Being that it's been submitted, looks overgrown to me. The rest of the council, thoughts?

Yeah, that's overgrown.

I think we can.

So we have an ordinance for that, right? Tim, we've got to wait to send a letter.

Alyssa will be sending a letter on behalf of the town.

Can you do that for us? Yeah. Send a letter. Okay.

All board in favor of sending a letter? Yes. Aye. All right.

next was a agenda request from a jennifer taylor regarding a town festival is jennifer here today she's not she could not make it but she asked if because time is limited what she wants to do i try to blow it up as much as possible you probably didn't go to rita on there but you can try um

i can i can read it out loud so as i was pleased to see the saint paul festival return in the last few years i would just inform that due to lack of volunteers to organize it this year it will not continue i would like to volunteer as an organizer to continue the festival in september when it used to be years ago without fireworks i'm requesting the board's permission to organize the fall festival on the dates of either september i can't i don't know what dates those I don't know what those dates are. Something.

Yeah, I mean, it much better up there.

What does it say on the first one?

Maybe it's probably the weekend, probably that weekend, whatever that weekend is. Let's see.

Beginning on a Friday. ending on sunday afternoon i believe that the town festival invites community encourages fellowship with permission i'll take on responsibility organizing with all proceeds such as booth rental fees being used for st paul fire department and future festivals um so it's a friday saturday 25th through the 27th so friday saturday sunday

for September 25th through the 27th. So the top date is probably Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the 18th through the 20th. So two weekends or either or.

I love the idea. I will say Mason Henderson, who was part of the organizing party for last year's festival, reached out to me and was interested in continuing the festival again next year. I think we've been somewhat passive as far as direction of what we want. I think it's more just permitting use of the town's facilities.

I think it's permitting use and also

insurance yeah for the days of insurance was more for fireworks is that for fireworks um yeah so she's asking for no fireworks i don't know i wish mason were here i wish we could connect these two people two people yeah so i can uh i'll reach out to mason and let him know i Personally, I think September is probably a better time of year for a festival. I think that's traditional. Isn't that when it used to be? It was in the fall?

Yeah, it was like fall time. I don't remember exactly, but... You guys have thoughts on... Yeah, I guess maybe a little bit more of a scope of what's involved. Are we talking vendors? How large? Do we need streets to shut down? What businesses would be...

I think it'd be... hard to put a festival on in two months. Yeah, that'd be difficult. I'll connect Mason, give him Jennifer's information and see if between them they can come up with a plan then. I think that sounds good. Okay, good with that?

Yeah, I'd like to have a better understanding of what the agenda is, what they would like to do.

But a good idea. I'd love to volunteer.

Is Heather Fowler here tonight? All right. I think we'll just skip on that until next month's agenda. There's a question regarding a manufactured home. Melissa, do you know if she was planning on coming tonight?

Okay.

We'll defer until next month if she wishes to attend. Next item is Linda Baker from Comcast. Is Linda here tonight?

It's me, Lindy. Sorry, do I go up here?

You're fine. Or do I just sit in my seat?

You're fine.

I am from QC Communications.

We are a contractor for Comcast, and we would like to request permission to do an underground directional ward crossing Jefferson Street. The exact location is 306 East Jefferson Street. It's for residential service. We will put the equipment on the customer's property. We will make a board pit and go under the street and go over to the existing pole, run a riser up the pole, and connect to existing Comcast service. And we will install a flowerpot pedestal. I have a copy of the plans here on paper if anybody's wanting to see it. But we'll be crossing that road right there, running up that hole, and attach it to the existing compast. The flowerpot pedestal is flush with the ground. You won't see it. It's just a flat thing there. And it's one foot by one foot. I think that's it. We will absolutely do locates before we even get started. If we need to spot any utilities, we will do an 8-inch. a pothole and a core drill. And the way that we would care is to put the core back in and put epoxy in. Or unless there's a different method that you would have us do for that. I think that's about all.

This is the new one on Jefferson Street. The new construction.

The house that I'm in.

so the town previously has not required permits we don't have permits um for this work so i just ask that you continue to come to the board for requests like this i don't see an issue there i um i would say when you repair i'm assuming they're compacting back underneath sufficiently so we're not dealing with a sinkhole long term so we've had some issues in the past there um as far as placement of those of the actual device is that being coordinated with the homeowner or is that just kind of where you guys put it um I think that's where they're going to put it right there on the corner probably okay it would probably be nice if you try and reach out to the homeowner as far as placement yeah that's the corners of the flower pod

it's just called a flower pot pedestal but it's it's just it's flush from the ground yes just a flat top you won't even see it driving by you'll see it once you're on top of it i'm showing a detail of it okay um i don't think like i said the town doesn't require permits to do that type of work as as of this time um i don't have an issue with it yeah

I'm OK with it does. Will that just provide that home only or can you?

Put that in. I think you're good to go.

You're welcome to stick around, but don't feel like you need to.

Nice meeting everybody.

Thank you so much. Next item is from Benjamin, Indiana, is it Legere? Sorry.

Go ahead. So yeah, we are requesting a release of easement. So in 2011, we granted a two temporary easements and a permanent easement to the town of St. Paul. At the time we were looking at doing some sewage work and things like that, that plan failed to go through and never get completed. And so it was kind of something we didn't really think about, kind of got brought back up. We're looking at doing a few things for some of the water that's sitting in our yard as well. That's a pretty low spot. So we were reminded that we have three easements currently. The easements on the Jason's sides have been released already. So there isn't even really access anymore. And it was granted for a specific project that doesn't exist. So we're just asking for that formal release of the easements.

So you're saying the properties to the east and to the west of this property?

I don't even think they even ended up getting easements on that side because we have a pond there. So I think that we were actually stopped. okay um i'm not 100 sure on that but from what we could tell doing the digging i don't think that there were even any easements on that side but yes um in 2011 roger mccracken and that property uh that easement was released before he sold it on okay

So I've been back in your property before. Where's your pond sitting compared to that easement?

Yeah. So probably right about where his house is. Yeah. Yeah. So he was focused on really digging out the creek that we have that goes through there. And then maybe putting some piping and different things. We didn't have all the project details. And that was a long time ago. I was going to say, you don't know.

I don't even remember exactly. Yeah.

But we, it was brought to our attention that because those were temporary easements.

For a project.

For a project, they don't expire until the project is completed. So technically. Could be forever. Yeah, that was a really great loophole there. So project not done, technically those are still there. i'm not i don't think i'm opposed can you can we get a little bit of time just look into it yeah i i maybe we can look into i don't know what the project yeah what the project was um yeah it was a storm drainage project back in 2011. okay so um and it says that in the easement so if the attached paperwork that i provided for you um does outline that um it would be probably up um on the pages before that so that is the actual document that we signed that speech too but it does outline that they were temporary easements um that would expire upon completion of construction it wasn't so that was through the town yeah they had a representative um his name is actually at the bottom so you'll be able to see um i think it was mr garrison there um And then we had our attorney draw up the release of easements.

And if you look at the parcels next to it, you can see very similar processes were done.

That is actually the property that's owned by the Halls now. So you'll be able to see that. But we had our attorney just draw up the release of easements.

Can you send this to us digitally so we can send it? We'll have to submit everything to the town's attorney to review. Yeah. Yeah, hey, John, would you mind reaching out to Jerome and just see if we can get any detail of what a stormwater, a drainage project would have been in 2011 and see what happened? Never went through. Yeah, so if that project's completely closed, then there'd be no reason for that. Yeah, just give us a minute to look into it. All right, anything else? No, that was it for me. Thank you. All right, Melissa Boyce from the Bread of Life. Hello.

I'm Melissa, and if nobody has ever heard of the St. Vincent Greensburg Community Bread of Life, it's in Greensburg. And we serve free meals to people in Greensburg.

We operate with...

400 volunteers into 7,000 hours, and they deliver only in the city limits. So we've had many calls, you know, about two, one hours every three meals, and they just don't have transportation to get transfer. We don't deliver outside the city limits. So I've been gifted a bus. and we've turned it, renovated it to a food bus. So I would like to help our neighbors and some other parts of the county. So I'm here asking for permission and your blessing if we could come to the park at the gym one day a week And I would like to know what day you would prefer. Because I don't want to be in competition with leaners coming or any other services you may do in St. Paul. I want to be here at 440 to 525 to catch people after school and getting off work. I don't want to camp out here for like, you know, two, three hours. It's just going to be like a 45 minute deal. We'll be here.

We would be close to the shelter over at the gym in the table area.

So I think if people wanted to sit there, they could, weather permitted, but then they could, you know, take their meal and go. So that's what I'm asking.

I love the idea. I think it's awesome. Thank you. I'm assuming everyone else likes the idea. Absolutely. Yes.

Thank you.

That's wonderful. As far as a day, I don't have an opinion on what day.

Is Gleaners out at Cornerstone now? Yes. What day is that? What day is that? Tuesdays? Tuesdays. Third Tuesday. Third Tuesday. So obviously you want to do Tuesday.

I was thinking you want to do it on Monday, Wednesday, or Thursday. So that would be great.

I would say maybe... or or to their discretion based on what other stocks you have to make if we don't really have a strong opinion however it works best in your schedule and you could let us know or when you have volunteers and it would start until um if if you want to keep us apprised of dates and times we'll do our best to spread the word

Thank you very much.

Yeah, I thought I wouldn't be able to get the word out.

You picked a great night.

When we get to October and November and December, what happens is certain days of the week there are youth activities at the gym and the parking lot is full. And those usually happen on... Tuesday or Wednesday nights. So Wednesday is probably out. Thursday, Thursday there is a constant use of the gym that starts early at seven o'clock. So, and Monday we'll get later to the gym is being used. But probably, Wednesday is probably the only day that you mentioned that may not work later in the year, from October on. So you said what, Monday or?

Thank you. Thanks so much.

All right, next we have Clay with the Flat Rock Watershed. A little back story.

I saw on the front page of the Greensburg Daily News

six weeks or so ago a an article about the Flat Rock Watershed tax district proposal so I did some research and the document that I've given you guys is a copy of the document that DNR gave to a group of County surveyors from Henry which is Newcastle Rush Fayette Shelby Decatur and Bartholomew counties to bring back to their county commissioners to sell this tax project. So I live in Decatur County. I don't live in St. Paul. But this affects everybody in St. Paul. It affects everybody that lives on Flat Rock River on both sides. I think it appears to me that it stops the ridge. coming across Mike Richards and over to Germantown, but it affects, I know there's some people here from Walden, it affects you.

There's some people here from Rush County, it affects you greatly because Rush County, the biggest part of Rush County is included in this.

A very significant part of Shelby County is included in this. A very small part of Decatur County, but it includes all of Central. whether you live whether you're living in decatur county or not which is really all i'm here to discuss this really affects you so please listen up i'm here because i got a real problem with this and there is a meeting of the commissioners on july the 20th at 8 a.m it's their normal monthly commission meeting dnr is going to be there to further explain this because our the decatur county surveyor brought this information to the county commissioners. They tabled it because they didn't feel like they had enough information.

So DNR is serious about this.

And it's going to get in your pocket. And I'm going to explain how here over the next couple minutes. This is very real. This isn't going to go away. I don't know that they're going to vote on it on July the 20th. But what I'd like to see is As many of the farmers as I can notify in a short period of time up and down the river that I know, some of the people that live along the river. So let me get into the meat of this. Sorry I didn't print enough copies for everybody, but I spent 120 bucks of my own money to print this, and that's 120 bucks I can't buy car parts with. So if you know me, that's fairly important. uh what the watershed commission wants to do it was created in 2023 by the general assembly it allows local officials to create an entity with taxing authority to finance and coordinate water management activities so they want to manage flat rock river which i'm not mistaken for probably the last hundred thousand years or so has done a fairly decent job of managing itself i am from the government i'm here to help um what that allows them to do keyword taxing authority uh they want to do the watershed development commission is a commission that does not exist and it will have to be created most of those things come with a paycheck not a big one but it's a paycheck guess who paid it people are paying taxes so The only people that are gonna be taxed are people in the watershed district. This isn't a county-wide tax. It's St. Paul and the farmers and people that live along Platte Park Road from both sides. So if you live in Adams, it doesn't affect you. If you live in Downingville, it probably does. But this is only a very small sliver of your county, but it does affect all of you. Stormwater management. drainage recreation. So if they want to make a canoe path along Flat Rock River, you're going to pay for it. What the Water Disshed Development Commission can do, it can authorize studies. So I know these things have happened, so I'm going to throw this out. My neighbor is on the watershed commission and my college kid needs something to do for summer. What can I do? Well, he can study the effect of pro dams on Flat Rock watershed and we'll pay him $15,000. It'll be okay. We'll just assess people around it and they can deal with it. It happens. I know it happens. We can establish wetlands, which is really, a lot of people can do that. Maintain levees, burns, and dams. The dam there, Flat Rock by St. Omer, hasn't been maintained in, I know, 70 years or so. And I'm told that it's on a demolition schedule. But right above that dam, the river has silted in over the years, and it's probably 40, 50 feet from its original channel. They can't come in and dredge that. And then I'll tell you how they're going to pay for it in a minute. Log jams, bank stabilization, stream modifications. So I asked when I went down to meet with the surveyor, has anybody ever cleared a log jam out of Flat Rock River? Ever? And the answer I got was, well, I don't know. Which means no. Why we're going to start now, I'm not real sure. Bridge removal and replacement. The Watershed Development Commission has the ability to remove and replace bridges. That's not a small number. Bank stabilization is a huge cost per foot. How are they going to pay for it? They're going to tax you. And the way they're going to tax you is every residential lot in St. Paul will be taxed $7 apiece. That doesn't sound like much today, but this is the way they're proposing this. So it's $7 a piece for every single building lot in St. Paul today. Agriculturally, it's a dollar an acre. Once you let this thing get approved, those taxes could triple in three weeks. Just because they tell you $7 now doesn't mean it's not going to be $27 in five years. So this really kind of needs to be dealt with now. And then we're going to have to keep an eye on it because this stuff doesn't just go away. It comes back in a different form over and over until it gets passed because people are trying to fight it. The other thing they get to do, so the other thing they will do is... The $7 per building lot and the dollar an acre is just the tax. Then when they do something, they're going to assess you. That's the big deal. They're going to assess you and amortize it over three to five years on your tax bill. That's what's proposed. So these numbers can get really big really quick. And if taxes don't go away, Regardless, if they talk in here, there is some language in here about reducing the paths. I've never seen that happen. I doubt anybody here has seen that happen either. Here's one of the big ones that they think they want. So exclusive authority to perform activities within the channel of the river or the rivers that flow into the surface water outlet and an easement extending 75 feet from the bank of the river each direction. So let's say you live on Flat Rock River and your living room is 75 feet from the bank. You don't own anything. Some scary stuff in here really needs some attention. And what I'm here to ask for is some support because if I go in there alone, I will go in there By going there alone, I'm one guy. I don't think you're going to get the opportunity to do what happened at the, and forgive me if I offend anybody, but at the meeting last week where everybody stood up, I think you'd be better off if you as a group could appoint a spokesperson and but still show up because if we started, if we started having a lot of people repeating each, repeating themselves, you're going to get shut down.

Is there an ordinance that's already?

No, this is not passed. This is proposed.

Is there a written proposed ordinance?

It's this, this is what DNR is proposing. The County commissioners then have to develop the ordinance then it has to get approved by dnr before it becomes looks like the county has to ask for the service the county has to create this but it's not been created yet so the dnr is pitching it to the county correct dnr pitched it to the county service okay rush county as i understand and and this is this is just hearsay covers most of rush county so i know at least last week at the meeting there were a couple folks from rush county i don't know if they're still here or not but if they weren't if they're not here tonight and you know you might give them a shout shelby county it covers a very large area shelby county there's walter and st paul so this is a this is this is a fairly significant group of people from so their proposal they want a million bucks a year, I assume. In here, there's a million dollar budget. They want to get $200,000 of it from Fayette, Rush, and Sue. So they want to get $295,000 out of their million dollars from Fayette, Henry, and Rush. So that's Newcastle, Rush County, and Fayette County. The rest of it, $800,000, they want to get from the rest of us, which is Decatur, Shelby, and Bartholomew.

So this is a little scary.

Say again? July the 20th at 8 a.m. Where is it?

DNR is the one that's pushing this.

DNR is the one that's pushing it.

Well, I'm going to say it by name, that DNR is not our brand. i believe well the commissioner's meeting and you'll have to look at the website i'm sorry i've had some things come up i haven't had a chance to look at the location

It's traditionally in the same conference room as the Area Planning Commission meeting was last week.

Court House, second floor, around the bend. Ask the police when you go in.

Have you researched the relation of this to the EPA's waters of the U.S.? That might be another... trail for you to explore um dnr is probably playing catch up because of the federal epa regulations have disallowed the states to come and clean their rivers up so i think waters of the u.s is on pause right now okay so that's probably why you're seeing that type of activity another one

Right. And then continue to monitor and stop it again. And one thing I'll mention is that in order for any property in St. Paul to be affected by flooding or watershed, Flat Rock River's got to come up at least 25 feet. From here all the way through St. Omer, there's a couple of fields that will flood that the farmers knew they were going to flood. When they bought them, they flooded. the last 100,000 years since Flat Rock found this channel. And if Flat Rock River gets up over 25 feet from where it is now, that's not early.

Thanks for the awareness. I would suggest, I don't know if you're a member of the St. Paul Facebook pages, but.

I don't do Facebook and I would never do Facebook. I don't post on them either, but they get sent to me.

So if someone would like to post it on one of the pages, that's probably one of the best ways to share the information.

So each of the town board has a copy of this. I made copies for some of the folks that I knew that I knew would not be here. it is not on the internet i got it from the county server um because i asked for it and again do you have an extra copy of that and take a screenshot of it do you want to take a screenshot of it and this is all right for the hills the county surveyors are the ones tasked with taking a They are not advocating necessarily. So I don't know what the tone is of the surveyors. I do know that our county commissioners are not real likely to be too happy about this. They're smart enough to see a lot of this. Because they're interested, there's an interesting comment inside the document that says, in order for it to even happen, in a particular county 10 of the watershed area has to be in that county the fact that decatur county does not does not meet that criteria but shelby and rush absolutely so the decatur county watershed area is fairly is very small it affects a very small number of people but it doesn't

So it is worth paying.

Thanks, Clay.

Thank you.

All right, moving on. I think Felicia Vanderbrink is here regarding a GIS proposal.

We did a demo for GIS with Tim and Liz. And we just created a proposal for the different scope of work. So I'll just quickly explain the scope of work. First one was the water and sanitary sewer map. We found that we have the GPS locations for water and sanitary sewers. So we can quickly get into that, into GIS, and we can quickly develop a map for that. but for the storm water, which is kind of an additional service which we have provided, we don't have any map yet or any locations for the storm sewers or where does it go or how does it flow. So what we suggested was that in the proposal, what we are recommending is that we locate and survey all the storm sewer, we'll open the catch basin and we'll look where does it go and we'll make the map out of it. And the third one was just the ongoing GI support, which will be, once we develop the map, it will be like, if you need anything, you'll let us know and then we'll be charged, but it's just not quite seen kind of thing. So yeah.

Okay. I had an opportunity to look at it and basically it's going to show us all the system. we'd be able to put in work orders and repairs and tracking. I think it would be a good asset to have.

In that storm sewer map, we'll also put the sewer televising or any historical data like as-bills or any kind of maps for that particular road.

And you were saying, how many users would we be able to have?

So we are recommending one creative license for town of St. Paul. And you can share us the map with it since we already have the license. So we do not need an additional license for that. So you can just share the map with us and we can edit that map. So for that licensing, we have, it's the S3. We use the S3 RGIS licensing and it's like 700 for now. last what i saw it was 700 a year for that licensing and you can just have for one one for now and maybe in future if you need more you can have uh more of those licenses or mobile broker or your license

Right. And they get a little cheaper as what you can't modify. So like a full one here on the front is 700 annually. If we needed a mobile worker who would be able to do some things like create an order or something, but not be able to adjust everything, be 400. And then of course, viewer and contributor, the viewer really won't be able to do nothing but view it. That would be a separate license as well.

annually per user okay yeah and we start the same point for now we have the segment one creator license and that's it i definitely see the value i think we've talked about this i'll probably defer more to you tim you you've seen the demo um i guess one thing i know we've had a number of main breaks of recent and it seems like we're spending money trying to repair stuff faster than we have money coming back in so i don't know cost wise what your thoughts are i don't have a strong opinion but i think we um obviously you'll have to give us a chance to read all through all this and discuss it but um yeah i know we lean towards need the need for it so

and we'll have to get back with you on maybe next month.

Okay, yeah, sounds good.

So we'll just give some time this month to review and then we'll just put it back in front of the board next month.

What is the future considerations on that second page?

Yeah, so the future consideration was to get the GPS equipment for town of St. Paul itself and so that someone from St. Paul

Do the decreasing device. They will do their own GPS GPSing to update.

Update so you buy that unit for one time purchase.

Yeah, that's what they're looking at on the back here would be. Water and Sarah, this water and sanitary sewer map would be a lump sum for them to get that prepared since they have a lot of that information. It'd be the $5,800, the $8,000 for stormwater because they have no information. So they'll be doing all that work. And then ongoing support would be $5,000 a year. That would be the cost of everything, right?

Yeah, and it's not to exceed. So if you don't use or if you do not need service for a year, you do not have anything to add or anything to change in that, then yeah. No fee at all. Yeah, so that's just an online service kind of thing.

OK, if we also purchased the device, that's 7000. Yes, just. Quick math, that's 18,825,800. If we purchase the device and have. Please agree to break up this with all those services. We have. total and sewage 476, 501.

I just put up the accounts.

476? 476, 501. I think we've had more water main breaks of late. So that's where the money's coming out. So the sewage is, I guess it's one of those things, we could kick the can down the road, but we need to know where everything is even in a future planning project.

Yeah. And I wouldn't recommend right now if you, I don't know, but I wouldn't recommend buying the equipment currently since we will be coming in for stormwater especially and we already have the GPS exact locations for the sewer and water. So we'll put that in the ArcGIS and anyone who is using the ArcGIS can always do from an iPad or a phone. And only the thing is that the accuracy will be less, but you can still do it from the phone. And you can click on, if suppose you are doing a hydrant flushing, you can click on the hydrant on the map itself. So you won't need a GPS location to locate that hydrant. It will be already on the map.

OK.

Yeah. So we don't really need the unit to function.

They'd be doing all the upfront work, so we wouldn't need it the first year.

Is there any additional training by the unit for the operators?

Yes. Yes. They did go into training for that. Is there an additional cost?

No.

Okay, we want a table for next month?

Yes, I don't feel really ready or knowledgeable enough to make a decision on that.

Anything else you have for us?

No, we'll just take anything from time.

Okay.

John.

Mike, keep in your back of your head that the Canter County Highway is going on to a GIS system, and they've invited... all the incorporated areas in Decatur County to join them. I don't know what covers the Shelby County side. It could be worth something looking into. Highway Department? Yes. Highway Department. Tim Morton, Decatur County Highway.

Thank you. I think the next item on the agenda is the- The compliance plan. Do we need a signature on it?

Yes. Yes. That's just a quarterly update for the compliance plan. And just to be brief on that, we did send out the second round of letters in June, January 6th. It's not.

It's the, it's not the letter.

Oh, it's the quarterlies. Yeah. Yeah, it is actually the first one. The first link on the agenda.

Okay. So, yeah, this is just a quarterly update that needs to be submitted to ITEM. And The actions which were taken during this quarter was one of them was sending out the second round of letters, as you mentioned in the earlier meeting. We did send out the second letters in June 2026 to seven property owners. Then town is working and will be working on the new ordinances to pass out. So that's what we have, another item on that. based on the sewer televising, which was done in 2025, the cost estimate will be included in the PER that we are developing, based on the study that we are doing right now. It will be included in that as an alternative and cost estimates. So, yeah.

Okay. I think you just need my signature on this. Okay. um can i leave this with elissa so we have the original copy and then she can send that to you guys or i'll just sign a second copy how about that anything else all right thank you so much all right We are moving down to old business. So there's a number of different ordinances that we have to review here. I will ask, so talk with the town's attorney prior to tonight's meeting, just asking the proper way to proceed through all of this. He asked that we instruct for public comment portions of this, if we can restrict comments to three minutes or less, that way we make sure that everybody in the room has a chance to talk. So if you can restrict your comments to three minutes or less, that'd be awesome. And then I don't know if maybe Tim, if you can, be the timekeeper for that. I think some of these are just regular areas. I don't expect a lot of questions, but later on there may be some additional questions. um first item is the second reading of the annexation ordinance um an ordinance annexing territory in town st quality and a petition of all the owners of such territory pursuant to indiana code i will open the ordinance up to public comment

I can't hear you. Can you tell what area are you guys annexing?

This is just a residential lot that's on School Street that the homeowners requested to annex into the community. Thank you. Any other questions? all right i'll close it public comment i'll open it up to the council for discussion any questions from the council no it's good all right um so i will begin reading if someone would like to make a motion an ordinance annexing territory into the town of st paul indiana on a petition of all the owners of such territory pursuant to indiana code i'll make motion to approve second take a vote all in favor aye aye opposed All right, the ordinance passes on second reading. Alyssa, do we have a copy of that?

Right here. And then also the resolution.

The resolution, we got to sign it. We adopted the resolution.

I know a lot of you don't show up to these. All this is public information that's on the sheet or that's on the website. Therefore, we don't read through it all because we give everybody plenty of opportunity to read it.

Okay. Next item on the agenda is second reading of ordinance 2026-18 an ordinance amending the rates and charges for the waterworks utility i'll open this to public comment sorry which one was it waterworks rates All right, nobody interested, I'll close it to public comment. Any questions from the board? Comments? No.

No questions.

All right, I have no questions. I'll begin reading an ordinance 2026-18, an ordinance amending the rates and charges for the Waterworks Utility, whereas the St. Paul Waterworks- Don't make a motion to approve Waterworks Ordinance.

2026-18, and I'll second.

All right, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Aye. All right, the ordinance passes on second reading. Okay, next item on the agenda is second reading of ordinance 2026-19, an ordinance amending the rates and charges for the sewage works utility. I'll open it to public comment. If you can state for a public comment, you can state your name and where you live.

Yeah. My name is Cindy Bratton and I live on church street. Since this was available and I'm going to guess 50% of the people in here never saw it. When you're talking about the rates, which I really missed talking about the last, could you actually read what the most important part of

Yep, so. Again, this is on the website, so certainly if anyone wants to go read, you're more than welcome to in the appendix is the it shows the rates and what the increases. So for instance, in this. This is treated in gallons, so zero to 2000 gallons. The present rate would be 2472. The proposed rate is 2668, which is a 7.94% increase. and i will also say on the rate increases this was completed a rate study um completed by what's his name steven brock from the third brock third word associates i think so we asked them to come in look at our rates for our utility water sewer and also uh storm and looked at what are our costs what what are our expenses what are our expected costs in the future and just make sure that we're continuing to operate above water One of our utilities was operating at just keep your head above water. The other one we were losing money on a monthly basis, so that's the reason why we're having the rate increase. And it's been how many years since the rate increase?

It's been a while, yeah.

And even with our rates, I will say, St. Paul is well below.

2018, it says here, yeah. We are so low, we can't get any kind of funding.

Yeah. So in order to apply for grants from the state, you have to have minimum rates in order to apply for the funding. In some cases, we're still even below those minimums. So just to kind of give perspective on what our rates are.

Thank you. Yeah, no problem.

Any other public comment? What's the minimum amount, Alyssa? 2,000, yes. All right, any other questions from the public? All right, I'll close public comment. Any questions? From the Council.

None for me, no.

Alright, I'll start reading the ordinance and ordinance 2020 number 2026 dash 19 an ordinance amending the rates and charges for the sewage works utility, whereas the St Paul's in the Mike motion to approve ordinance 2026 dash 19. I'll second. All in favor I I opposed. or mispasses on second reading.

Stormwater and... Let's see, let's see, that's the one we just did. What's that? That's the one we just did. No, okay.

All right, next item on the agenda is ordinance 2026-20, an ordinance amending the rates and charges for the sewage works utility by the establishment of a monthly stormwater user fee. I'll open it up to public comment. All right, I'll close it to public comment. Any questions, concerns from the council?

None from me.

I'll begin reading. Ordinance 2026-20, an ordinance amending the race.

I'll make motion to approve.

Ordinance number 2026-20, I'll second.

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, ordinance passes on second reading. All right, I will introduce ordinance, second reading ordinance 2026-01, a sewer use ordinance. I'll open it up to public comment.

It's ordinance 2026-24.

Sorry, dash 24.

Yep.

Oh, sorry. I think I already opened up public comment, but I'll open it. right i'll close the public comment any questions concerns from the council no comments none for me i'll begin reading town of st paul in ordinance 2026 dash two four two four whereas the town of st paul indiana to approve ordinance number 2026-24 i'll second all in favor aye aye opposed The ordinance passes on second reading. Next item on old business is approval from an invoice from SERPC regarding their grant administration for the comprehensive plan and the amount of $4,000.

So I'll make a motion to approve the invoice. I'll make a motion to approve the invoice with $4,000.

I'm going to go one item out of order here and just go ahead and run through the burn ordinance. This is the second read of the burn ordinance 2026-23. an ordinance regulating open burning.

I'll open it up to public comment. There's a lot.

If you want to, I will.

To prevent from reading the entire ordinance, let's see.

basically keeps air contaminants you know things like that out things that are not going through a stack or a chimney um maybe section two the exemptions like you can burn that those things the normal things there yeah no issues with fire pits or chimneys or charcoal or normal things are all allowed

We're not stopping burning, if that's what you're asking, but we are controlling while just people burning stuff. Basically, everything is going to have to be controlled. You're going to have to have a fire pit of some sort. There's a lot in there. I encourage you to read it. It's nothing. There's nothing that you're going to say, this doesn't make sense, unless you're somebody who just likes to just burn your whole backyard. That's going to have to stop. Yeah.

And you did not all agree.

And it's like, I don't know what's in here as I listen to them.

it's basically complying with federal state local laws you know rules and ordinances kind of aligning us as a town with common sense burning things but it does go into very specific you know toxic things not to burn basically

And in many cases, the ordinances that we read are ordinances that were previously in effect for the town. Well, in effect, they were not in good order. So in order for it to be in effect, we have to have signatures from the board that passed it. And they also have to have signed meeting minutes the following month approving that. So we've had ordinances that were unenforceable because we didn't have the proper documentation. So in many cases, we're just bringing up old ordinances that have, for some reason, come back up before the board, refreshing them.

making sure that they're in good order what's that that's the hope she said so they don't haunt us in 20 more years yeah exactly yeah all right any other questions correct yep any other questions

Okay, I'll close it to public comment. Any questions from the board?

None for me.

All right, I'll read the ordinance. Town of St. Paul.

I'll make a motion to approve the open burning ordinance. 2026-23.

Yep, I'll second.

All right, all in favor?

Aye. Aye, opposed? All right, ordinance passes on second reading. Alright, last item on our list is the Saint Town of Saint Paul comprehensive plan. The reason that we're all here for here tonight. So I do appreciate I will give a couple little bit of clarity before we kick off. I know there will be some opportunity for public comment. Again, I do ask that you try to keep it 3 minutes. Obviously we have a large crowd here tonight, so do your best so we can respect our neighbors and give them an opportunity to speak. I am going to try and give a little bit of clarity before we open it up to public comment, so hopefully I can answer some of y'all's questions. Also, I'll give the chance to the rest of the board to give their thoughts prior to opening up to public comment. So I do want to address a couple items. First, as I mentioned, I do appreciate everyone showing up tonight. It does show that the community cares about our little town. I can tell you in many of our meetings, no one shows up. I think last month, I don't know that we had a single member of the public other than individuals that work for the town or representing interests of the town show up to any of our meetings. So I do appreciate everyone's interest in showing up tonight. our meetings are typically a little bit more boring. But I do want to give a little bit of history. So the board has worked with HWC and a steering committee, members of the public develop a comprehensive plan. And this plan was born primarily out of the need to obtain funding for some major water and particularly sewer and stormwater issues. If you've been to some of our board meetings, we talk about this every single month, unfortunately. IDEM talks to us all the time. We get nasty letters and we have to send letters back to them telling them how we're trying to prevent these issues. But so we've kind of done that process. We've had issues with our neighbors being able to flush their toilets or when they go into their home, sewage coming up out of their toilets. As we showed earlier tonight, there's manholes and high water events where the manhole lids, which are heavy steel, pop up out in raw sewage water and everything else that comes along with that is flowing out of those manholes and down our streets. Unfortunately, participation was pretty limited and despite all of our efforts in trying to get people to join these meetings, but ultimately those that involved developed the comprehensive plan that is before us tonight. What is a comprehensive plan? It is a long range planning document and is a vision for a potential future, not a guaranteed future. I will say a couple of things very clearly about what it does not do. It does not rezone property. It does not annex property. It does not require anyone to sell their property and it does not take away anyone's property rights. We all live in a free country and I believe that you should be able to do what you want with it. And for government to come force your hand on that, I'm not a fan of it. Address a couple items that I have seen on social media. One of those, and certainly I understand people have questions regarding the document. It's a large document. I think it's over 200 pages. So I certainly understand people have questions and appreciate that. Regarding data centers, I can say this with 100% assuredly. There have been zero requests made to the town regarding a data center or solar or anything else in that one sentence that I'll read here in a moment. The town is in zero discussions with any developers regarding a data center, a solar project, anything of the like. And quite frankly, the town has zero land available to build any of these type of facilities. So there has been some concern about data centers. I will read the exact language as it says on page 125. Page 125 regarding data centers says coordinate with Decatur County to align local policies for emerging energy and infrastructure uses, including solar energy, data centers, small modular reactors, and battery energy storage systems to ensure regulatory consistency and a long-term economic readiness. I can tell you that this is not creating a policy. Clearly, it says to coordinate. We're not creating a policy tonight. We're not looking to create a policy. I think as any good neighbor should do, we should coordinate with our neighbors, that being Decatur County. This does not defer the community's policy totally to someone else. This is not the town saying, hey, we're just going to do whatever Decatur County says. This very clearly says that the town should coordinate with locals. And for those concerned about this line, about working with Decatur County, I would expect that you would be encouraged that the county has rejected multiple of these type of projects over the past several months or year. So hopefully that encourages you. We're not looking to work with someone who's looking to bring all of these systems or type of projects to the area. We're working with someone who has shown a history of denying those. um there was some comments that were sent to me from social media regarding change of wording in one of our meetings from annexation to growth i was a participant in that meeting and was part of that discussion i can very clearly say that this was not made to disguise the town's intentions that's not how we operate that's how we we've never operated in that manner the term annexation by itself creates fear i can tell you if someone came to me and said i'm thinking about annexing your property i'd be very worried about it we change the language to growth because to prevent the concern from residents that may see their property colored in a map that's we're going to come annex their property we don't have that option we can't force anyone in the annexation so very clearly um just so we're all clear that the committee that was there that night did not change it it was not just the board there were all other committee members from the public that can also attest to that Regarding annexation, as I previously said, this town, St. Paul, cannot force anyone to annex. We cannot force you to rezone, and we cannot force you to change the use of your property. If you want to farm your property, if you don't want to farm your property, if you want to build a house, the town has no control over what you do or don't do. The only way annexation happens is if the property owners voluntarily come to the town and request the change. Like we had earlier tonight, we've had a resident come to us and say, hey, we're already in the town, but technically we're out of the town. We'd like to voluntarily be annexed into the town. And so that's the only way we can do that. If you come to us and say, hey, we want to be part of St. Paul, we would welcome you with open arms. I can tell you, we have spent a bit of time talking about annexation. This is a ongoing issue with the town. So previous boards, unfortunately, allowed people to come hook onto the town's utility system and generate more sewage and more problems for our utility infrastructure, but we get zero tax revenue. So if you drive around town, you'll notice that there's a Dollar General that is literally on the edge of town that is not annexed into the town of St. Paul. Love's Truck Stop is generating a lot of sewage and putting it into our system. The town board, in my opinion, at that point in time, should have annexed them at that point in time so the town can generate tax revenue. um we are a slowly dying community as far as finances are concerned we're a small town i think in the survey it says that our community is declined by 10 so we are slowly dying i've been here my entire life i was born and raised i live on the same street that i was born on and i want to see our community thrive as far as annexation if the town were to grow i think it makes logically makes sense to go towards the 74 interchange If landowners came to us and said, hey, we would be interested in annexation, we would love to talk to them so that we could entertain businesses, i.e., additional tax revenue from businesses, so we're not trying to pull money out of our residents' pockets. And the other item, if there was an annexation that were to ever occur, very clearly tonight we had a public hearing. I paused, accepted comments from the public. That's the only way an annexation can happen. That happens on two separate occasions. We have two readings and we have two separate opportunities for people to come and oppose or provide their thoughts regarding annexation. That's how we operate. That's how we'll always operate. That's how we legally have to operate. Regarding the future land use maps, and I apologize for my long statement here, but I just want to provide as much clarity as possible before. Future land use maps. So HWC did a great job of helping us through this process. None of us have ever done a comprehensive plan before. And they asked us to not just look at St. Paul as it is right now. Obviously, we all know where our borders are right now. But they said, if you look down the road in 15 to 20 years, what would logical growth look like? And as I just mentioned, that looks like growing towards 74. I don't think anybody's looking to grow the other side of Germantown or any other direction. Logical growth would be on the other side of 74. They largely pulled maps from existing documents. This is not something that the town board or the committee just sat around in a group and said, hey, let's take markers and color people's lots in. We looked at previous documents from previous comprehensive plans, previous planning studies that were not done by the town and incorporated in large part what was already there. So we were looking out if the town, and that's a big if, if the town were to grow, what would that look like? But again, that does not enable the town. The town cannot come to someone and say, just because we color your property yellow, green, purple, or whatever other colors on that map, that does not authorize us to take your ground whatsoever. And neither is the town looking to do that. I'm a big believer in personal property rights. We live in America. And for me, as a government official, never thought I would say that, to come and say you have to do this because I'm taking your land, that just don't seem right to me. As far as transparency, I can honestly say I was somewhat discouraged to see accusations that were screenshotted and sent to me that this board has hidden agendas or ulterior motives that we're trying to do something underneath the table and sneak something in. That could not possibly be further from the truth. Literally the only reason that I'm on the board is because I had concerns with how the town was operating and lack of transparency. That's why I raised my hand to join the board because I wanted to create transparency. We are very transparent with all of our proceedings. They're live streamed. The meeting minutes are listed online. This entire process with the comprehensive plan was publicly posted. in a number of places and we did our best to try and get community involvement. And we understand people are busy. You can't always get the involvement that you want. um i will say um i was somewhat encouraged that those accusations came from people that i've never seen at a board meeting in my three years on the board they did not participate in the planning process and i can say this to this day still have not reached out to me personally no one's called me and said hey can you give me more information i don't know about the other board members if they've reached out to them but still to this day they've never been to a board meeting they've never participated in any of the planning meetings and they've not reached out to me personally i'm a board member i serve the public if you have a question feel free to reach out to me i serve it uh the residents of st paul's desire so i to say that we've not been transparent i do have a concern with that um so our the board has a strong desire for transparency um and that's that's our goal and that's what we've done and i believe we've delivered on that That all being said, I do appreciate the public's interest tonight. It's good to see that we have a large group of people here tonight. And I do also understand that other local governments, I've heard the same things that you all have heard, that maybe some other things, and I don't know the details, so I can't tell you if they snuck it through or if they didn't, but clearly there is dissatisfaction with other local governments and trying to sneak stuff through under the table, do things of that nature. That is not us whatsoever. don't we're not them we'll we won't be them if something comes before us we'll operate in a very public and transparent way i can tell you that for sure and i can guarantee you i can't speak for the other board members but i'm sure they would say the same thing but i can personally guarantee you i will never sneak something through or slide something under the table that's not how i operate and i i hope that that's what the public expects out of us I'll end with saying I see as a very large group of people here tonight. As I mentioned earlier, I believe it was last month or the month prior, we literally had not a single person from the public attend our meeting. Our town is small. It's starved for attention. It's starved for people that want to help and contribute to the community. We're doing our best. We are a three-person board that all work full-time jobs. We're doing everything we possibly can do to try and help our community. I would encourage you, if you're here tonight, please come to next month's meeting. Like I said, we're transparent. Come to the next month's meeting and maybe there's something that can come up and you guys can, maybe you can volunteer or maybe you have valuable input that if nobody's here, we'll never hear. So I apologize for my kind of long speech there, but I did want to provide some clarity. So hopefully that answers some of your questions. That being said, I will open it up to public comment. Well, first, actually, I'll ask the board, do you have anything else to add to that? Sorry.

The only thing that I would like to add is understand that we do not have 74 annexed. Nothing out there loves gas station. Currently, we would like to be out there, yes, for tax revenue purposes. But we have no control out there. If somebody wants to build whatever they want out there, that's got nothing to do with the town at this point. The only thing that they would do, we did have another gas station that has already bought property out there, just in case nobody knows. There's a Tiger gas station. They've bought that property that basically separates the northbound, the southbound, that area, and they're supposed to be a little bit bigger than the Loves Gas station. He'd already bought the property with a verbal handshake that we were going to supply them utilities. We told them we cannot supply them utilities, and they were a little bit upset about it. currently at the at the state we're in we that's that was our decision we cannot provide utilities to people that are not annexed into would we have interest to be out there yes would people coming down the county line be interested in annexation to the town it sounds seems like no that's as far as we can go at this time and you know unless there's future where Everybody wants to agree. But my point is, if you hear rumors of things going on out in 74, our hands are tied. There's nothing that we have no control of anything out 74, except when they come to us, we say, hey, we can't provide you utilities. So understand that too, because there is interest out there. I think everybody knows there's interest out there. There's been different businesses. There's been home complexes. There's been all kinds of people that's came through and has had interest out there, but that is not the town of St. Paul's annexation. They do not belong to part of St. Paul. So understand that. And I think,

We're doing everything. We have a giant problem that is before us, and that is our infrastructure, our utility infrastructure. We're doing everything we can do to not make that problem worse and also find funding so that we can improve that issue. And we have a water and sewer line that run out to Loves right now. probably could twist IDEM's arm and maybe they would allow us to let them hook on. But it makes no sense for the town to continue to add to our utility infrastructure problems if we're not gonna be able to annex them and get tax revenue from them. So as of this point, there's nothing more this board can do beyond the town's current borders. We're stuffed there. We've talked to the property owners that are between here and there, and they've let us know that they don't wish to be annexed. And that's 100% their choice. We have no way of forcing their hand. If they came to us and said, hey, maybe we'd be open to talking to you about it, we would love to talk to them. But at the same time, that door is closed, and it does not look like it's going to be open. That's perfectly fine.

as I said earlier if you own your property you should be able to do whatever you want to do with it so I fully support them in their decision there any other I think the only thing I'll add is just in case you're not aware this comprehensive plan represents months worth of work from the town board and a steering committee of 11 people that are all residents of the town and that all worked many hours to kind of go through things. There are certain things you have to cover in a comprehensive plan. So you don't get to pick and choose what you'd like to put into it. I think there are parts of it that have to be included. And sometimes you're like, oh, we don't really have that going on here in our town, but it's still something, it's an item that has to be in a comprehensive plan. So, you know, a lot of those steering committee members here tonight. So, you know, there were many discussions from all age groups and that committee was very hard to come by. You know, not a lot of interest in being on the committee. I personally reached out to many people that I have seen comment on, you know, the political ongoings of St. Paul. and did not get a single taker to come and work the steering committee or help with that. So, you know, did a fair amount of arm twisting to get people on this committee. So it does represent a month worth of work and a lot of, you know, a lot of thought, a lot of time and effort.

With that, I will open it up to public comment. Again, I would ask if you could come up to the front, state your name and where you live. You don't have to give what street you live on. If you live in St. Paul or if you don't live in St. Paul, how about that? Sorry. If you could come give that information, we'll kind of take first come, first serve. Raise your hand. We'll call on you all.

again we would appreciate if you could limit it to three minutes and i live on 800 west which of course is the indicator coming side you are correct you've never seen me in the town meeting i don't live in town so i have no purpose to come right because it does not affect me um the only reason i came tonight is because i truly did not know any of you i see you last week but did not get to see you afterwards otherwise i would have just right grow the town get better things my property is the park is the closest to 74 okay um one thing you mentioned that you reached out to everyone from town 274 you have never talked to me never once i've lived here for over five years and you've never reached out and talked to me about my property right there that's the only thing i'm asking please grow the town i do understand that you do a lot of things for the people in town but When the town don't affect me, it's a shock to see my property on a future map. With the expenses you guys have, I get it for the 50 cent postal stamp to just mail me a letter and say, hey, your property is in my future plan. Would you please come to one of our meetings and give us your input? That would be fabulous. That's all I would love moving forward is maybe just a meller. for those of us who's outside of the town limits so that we truly do know what's going on. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Okay.

And I apologize. I don't believe I stated that we had reached out to everyone.

I think you were saying for purposes of annexation. So we never make it very far out of town because the first people we come to say no. So we have no purpose to go farther because the first people we say, can we annex your property? And they say no. So then that's as far as we've made it.

yeah so and that's probably why you know yeah like your wording i took literal right yeah i apologize yeah that wasn't a statement on my behalf i apologize so in the future definitely like i said i'm all about growth and when i was in rush county i was on the medc so i know about economic development okay um but for those of us who are rural and don't normally track town themes because they don't personally affect us it would be great just to get a click miller hey current st paul a dressy or having a meeting that may concern your property in 10 years if you would like to participate. That's all I would like to ask. Okay. All right. Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much. Thanks for coming. Thank you. We appreciate the positive reaction. We appreciate that.

Oh, absolutely.

Hi. Hello.

I don't know any of you. That's okay. My name is Naomi Crowder. I live just north of town on 550. Shelby County, Waldron address, but St. Paul affects us more than, you know, than Waldron does for decisions made. We haven't lived here very long. We have, we just moved here a couple of years ago. So I apologize when you move, it's just kind of, you know, keep your head down and try to get it all organized. So we haven't paid much attention. And honestly, Kim, I've heard, I don't know you, but I've heard a lot of good things about you. Thank you. And I've heard good things about the board. So I want to thank you for all the hours of hard work that you have put in. And I'm not here to try to stop, you know, obviously St. Paul has a problem, so I'm not here to stop it. Yeah. I do have a couple of questions, though. Will OKRA approve this grant if you do not align yourself with the EDC and establish a TIF district? Do you know?

Will OKRA approve?

Because they're the grant that you're going through.

We've already been approved for the grant.

OK. They have approved. They funded this project. OK. Yep. So my next couple questions, like how's the grant going to work? Like when does it go into effect?

We've already received the grant. There's no additional grant money coming. We've already received the grant to pay for the comprehensive plan.

Oh, how much? It was 50. I was thinking 40. 40 for the, we paid 40. 51 is in change. 51 is in change, okay.

Yep. And that will cover it all?

So that is for help writing the comprehensive plan so that we can align ourselves for Oprah grants. It helps with grant writing. So when you go to apply for future grants, then this comprehensive plan kind of, and correct me if I'm not spelling this out right, but it helps to have this plan to say, this is what we see happening for the future or possibilities, you know, to show that we're dedicated to using funds that we would receive in a way to benefit the town that we're going to use these monies, if that makes sense.

So the money that's coming in is just for the comprehensive plan.

That's not so far yet. Correct.

Okay. So when do we expect to see grants for Obviously, that's a problem.

We will apply as quick as we possibly can. Right.

I just know those things take time.

They do, yes. We just were awarded a large grant for roadways. We got a matching grant. We just got $800,000 and we contributed $200,000 so that we can work on roadway issues. What else? The gym. We do.

So grants is our survival method because in many cases we can give 20% and the grantee will give 80%. So that's how small towns like us survive is by getting grant money. And so the state federal programs don't want to loan money to communities that don't have some sort of plan, that have not looked at themselves and put a plan in place.

So that's why we did the comprehensive plan.

this will make it much easier.

It's been difficult without it because we've tried and not been successful.

The grant writing process is a lot. So this just helps facilitate it a lot easier, if that makes sense. The bulk of it all together.

I mean, if you're going to start a business and you want investors, they're going to want business points. So I get it. Do you know how much it's going to cost for this project?

Not at this time. We're gathering information.

We're doing a study. So Felicia Vanderbrink right now is doing a study to see, yeah. We have representatives from, yeah. So Lori's leading that.

Part of what we did tonight with our rate changes is aligning us to be able to apply for those grants. That's a minimum requirement. You have to be, you know, where you need to be the baseline with your billing so that you can show that you're doing your part. So, you know, we're kind of putting things in position to be able to.

Does the town board have the ability to restrict the TIF district?

So the TIF district statement, you'd like, you want to say something? No, go ahead. the statement in there, and maybe you can read it for us. You know where it's at. Is it 125? I think 125.

It was 90 something. So 90 something. Yeah.

Page 95.

95. So there's a couple items here. This plan does not create a TIF district. This is one of the recommendations as part of HWC, the recommendations of things that we could implement. This does not create a TIF district. That is a whole nother process that would require public hearings, similar to tonight's meeting where people could come and have for or against provide their input on. So it tells us this tells us that we should adopt an agreement between St. Paul and Decatur County. So it's not this is not adopting agreement. It's telling us we should develop an agreement with them. And then there's some other items. So petition to initiate a joint study regarding that. So there's items there, but this document is not creating a TIF district. Obviously the town council would have a lot of say so over what would be created if there were to be a TIF district created. And I'll be wide open and tell you, I'm not an expert on TIF districts, so if if we go down that path of TIF districts, you know we have a. We've got a lot more studying to do before I would ever, you know, like speak for myself before we'd ever implement anything.

I guess my my next question. If you align yourself with the CDC, though, doesn't that create a TIF district? Maybe that's.

no we would have to we'd have to create a tiff district and there would be public hearings none of that's being done at this point um do you have much longer wait you went well over the three minutes maybe for fun i don't want to if there's something you need to address something that i want to address i'll just skip to the end um i was going to ask if you would not align with the edc

but I will skip to the end. If you choose to go through with this comp plan, we ask as the citizens for a very protective data center ordinance to protect us in case of future town annexation before you go through with this comp plan. I just, I really,

and for you to remove that verbiage of annexation so that we're so that everyone understands too our water sewer all of that currently does not support you know anything of that nature and even if we were to get grants to build that we're talking years before we would even be in a position to have any kind of utilities that could.

Yes. And let me clarify, it sounds like you guys have the best interest of the people in at heart. What is to stop a future board from proceeding with annexation if that opportunity is to rise. So that's why I'm asking for that to be.

Well, and, Part of that is, you know, like we said, as property owners, you still have the right to refuse annexation. Right. Right.

And I'm not worried for myself.

Yeah. And for people in the county or in bordering counties, you know, this is inside the limits of St. Paul. So unfortunately, you know, we, as far as our domain, what happens outside of the town, it has really nothing to do with anything in this comprehensive plan. So I know that it is a concern and I understand why, but the comprehensive plan is not, that's not, You understand what I'm saying? That's not really the thing that is making or breaking future with that kind of thing.

And just so we're consistent, sorry, as far as time goes.

I'm sorry.

No, you're fine. I think for future speakers, if you have a list of questions, if you can just come up, run through your list of questions so we make sure we get all of those. And then the board can choose to respond. I think we just kind of did a call and response here. I didn't think about that. Yeah, you're fine. So if you can go through the list of questions, that'd be awesome. I think where we are right now, there's a small blurb in our comprehensive plan that talks about planning and coordinating. Unfortunately, I think there was a little bit of online. There was a bunch of vendors that got interested. And I understand that data centers are a very hot topic. I understand that. I, unfortunately I think St. Paul little town of St. Paul's comprehensive plan. So we can go get money to fix our sewage issues has been ran into a data center or solar or whatever on the project. And so those two have been mixed and I'm of the opinion that they should not be. We have a small blurb in our plan that says that we would coordinate for, uh, yeah, I think coordinate is the term. So it's not that we are establishing tonight. We're not looking to establish. We are, like, strictly, let's do a comprehensive plan so we can get money so our neighbors can flush their toilets reliably. So, like, I understand.

I'm just concerned for that. And I get that. Because other counties have run into this issue.

Yes. At the Decatur County meeting. I don't know if you were there the other night. Yes, I was. Clay Hargett made a statement that, you know, future boards or what will happen in the future. I mean, it is hard to say. And we don't know. We can't forecast out. We don't know who will be. in these positions or what their opinions will be or what the laws will be. All those things are ever changing. I guess that's why it's important that we all show up You know, we are present in what's going on around us so that we can help shape that future, you know, and not just sit back idly. But Clay kind of said that it's hard to say, will we allow data centers in 10 years? He said in 10 years, a data center might fit in this room. And we have no, you know, technology is ever changing and very quickly.

Right. So my thought is, though, if you were to take the verbiage out, there's always amendments. Like you could have an amendment then to allow it. you know, if it was the size of this room, you know what I'm saying? So that was my reason for asking to not have it in there because we can always put it back in and we get to that place. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Again, if there's, if anyone else, I'm sure someone else would like to speak. If you have a list of questions, if you can try and go through that list of questions early, and then the board can respond to each one of them. We would like to keep it to three minutes. Thank you. Anybody else?

I just really wanted to make a couple of comments and then I just have one question so I read through the online surveys and the most interesting thing was is repeatedly throughout the entire thing people said I love the small town I love the friendliness and Um, but again, I love that small town field. Um, and I understand this is not about a data center. So please, I get that. You don't have to be that anymore. That is we get it. Um, but what I do have to say is I want, I would like to know, do we even have to put industrial on there? I understand that this is just a comprehensive plan that we have to do. Fact point, got it. But the community has said, I love that small town deal. And I think that is what the comprehensive plan should do. The people are asking to keep that. So do we have to have industrial on there at all to have our project? Additionally, I keep hearing, well, this is 10, 20, I don't know, it's time down the line, right? I've looked here. for well over 15 years. The people who responded to your survey, almost all of them have been here for over 15 years. So it is a real thing for many of us in this room. I also understand the annexation. I do have to point out, while rare, you can have your property involuntarily anonymized. So I keep hearing that's not possible. It is, it's rare, it's hard. Yeah, you start talking about those other things. I get it. But you're creating this plan. And I also listened to the meeting. Decatur County, you know, hey, they're like, we can't say one way or the other. We just say whether or not it meets the plan. So once this plan is in place, it is a footprint. So. do we even have to have industrial is that going to make or break us because i don't even want an amazon center down there unfortunately industrials also loves gas station that's considered industrial so any business is an industrial so what you're saying is we can't limit in any way that's not commercial that would be considered industrial correct yes so what can we do and I think that's what most of us are asking it is your job to help us figure out what our rights are we don't want huge industrial buildings down there so how do we keep how do we do that and I think that that's what most of us are asking I mean my answer is we show up one at a time as things become available

We come to town meetings and gather the facts and work through them one at a time. There's no way to have a magical and kind of foresee like every problem that could come our way. And we end up having to deal with what does come our way. So, I mean, staying actively involved and being aware is, I mean, I don't see another line of defense as far as forecasting out what could happen in 10 years, five or a year, I totally get what you're coming. I've lived here over 25 years. So I feel yes. Like, and I feel like we've had that small town feel when I was a kid growing up outside of this town too, you know, I don't want to lose that either. And, um, and, and I really, you know, it's, it's not about like growing St. Paul into something that we don't appreciate, you know? So those conversations are community conversations, but trying to figure every aspect of it out at one time, I don't even know how we would begin to do that. As far as the maps, Is that what you're kind of saying? Like the colors on the maps and things?

Yeah. I think that this is setting the tone for what we want.

A lot of that was preexisting. So it's that the comprehensive plan has just brought it to our attention. And so we didn't go through and like,

You know, I'm talking about the future one. That's what she's talking about.

That's what I'm talking about.

Yeah, that's like 18 years old area of industrial. So let's change it. It doesn't have to be all industrial.

Yeah. So I think, I think a couple items there. One, because it's colored on a map does not mean that's what it's going to be. If it's purple and someone next month, you don't have to come to the town. goes to the county and says, hey, I want to build a house right here, the county more than likely is going to let them build a house there. So this is not saying that, hey, industrial is going to go right here. Quite frankly, if the property owners came to us and say, hey, we'd love to be annexed if you'll put a housing addition there, we'd probably be like, let's make it happen. So this is not us saying, hey, this has to be industrial. This has to be commercial. As far as like, should we show that as growth? I was looking back through and. You know, as far as everyone loves the small town feel, I've been here my literally my entire life. I've got a St. Paul address. I have multiple small kids. I love the small town feel. My kids ride their bikes through town. I love that. In an ideal world, we can keep our little bit of our small town feel. and grow out towards 74 we can maybe some business can come out there we can generate some tax revenue keep our small town feel i don't think anybody's looking to build a large industrial anything within the little town of st paul there's no place to play and i do think the survey i was looking back through 78% of the survey results viewed I-74 as the key part of the town's future vision, identifying it as a primary area for potential growth. And I was just reading through it earlier today and that just stuck in my head. So, and I think long-term, if the town were to grow, the 74 interchange makes the most sense. But again, we have no control over that.

Yeah. At this point in time, that'd be county. Yeah. a County decision and could be Shelby, could be Rush, could be Decatur, because we all come together there. So, you know, the person that has the Waldron address, Shelby County, you know, those of us that are, you know, Decatur. So it's on our map as potential growth area, but until we would be able to get out there to annex it, we have no control over it.

if this is just purely hey if and could it possibly ever be what would it look like in a perfect world unfortunately we don't live in a perfect world it can't be exactly as everyone intends it and you know again at that point in time if something were to come the town would be very involved in discussing what that would look like if it makes sense um and you know i'm sure i think we're all very reasonable people we would definitely accommodate any concerns or questions we're not creating a road map for someone to do anything industrial um of you know hey we know this is coming this is what we're going to do and the decatur county board is very uh they're old school they're like let's keep formally and formally i'm like if you've ever gone to any of their meetings they

know they're hard to say they've made it clear we're on their point of data centers yes and i know that for right now which is all right now yeah you're right you're right and solar right yeah all right next public comment i have my family owned property

also on 421 just east of Love. I want to be put on record that I oppose these zone areas. I oppose any annexation. I've been through this with St. Paul on that line that went out to Love. I told them it was a bad idea to start with. They threatened to take my property to put it in. The same thing happened with Rex over there on 421, that big gas pipeline. They took the imminent domain and took it. Nothing is to stop the next town board from doing this. If you don't get this language out of that plan, it'll be coming. They said at the Decatur County meeting, the place to change it was here. And do it here. Thank you.

And he did remember that Love's was supposed to build the holding tank out there. They told us that many years ago. And they also promised that they would pump at night when people in St. Paul were asleep so that it would not affect any of the sewer or water. The plans all disappeared. so that's why we are i don't know anything about that yeah lux is hooked up to the st paul sewer and water correct correct is there a contract or was that done with the previous board several years ago and there's no records of that now or just one there and then i'll go ahead with the rest of the questions how much sewage or vapor uh permitted to dump

and are they dumping more than they're allowed to and what about your town council has that been involved thank you all so i can say loves was prior to any of us being on the council i i can assure you like we had another truck stop come and ask to be hooked on we've said no um i i would not have move forward in the same procedure that they move forward it just doesn't make quite frankly it don't make sense to the town they're just generating more more problems for the town and and i say you know i'm not trying to point an ugly finger at loves the town has issues with our infrastructure in the town there's no issue from the line from loves to st paul we're not saying that it's not an ugly finger of they're the big bad guy But the town has aging infrastructure, and that's what's causing the issues, and we're not generating enough revenue to fix those issues. And so that's why we're trying to go through this process. So that's the issue. As far as contract, I mean, they obviously have utility bills that they pay on a monthly basis. the town doesn't require anybody to enter into a contract in order to provide utilities other than like a deposit or thing of that nature. So there's not a contract with the town. As far as what the council at that point in time then discussed, I have no idea. I don't have access to that. Or maybe I do, I just have not seen it. So it might exist somewhere. We'd have to try and find that if it was. I apologize from my seat that someone on the town council previously did something against your wishes. I hate that. That's not us. That quite frankly sucks. So I wouldn't proceed in that way. Unfortunately, what's done has been done. I will say, as I mentioned earlier, just to be really clear and i'm i'll meet you for lunch i'll spend as much time with you guys as you as you could want i'll stay late after the meeting and talk through it but just so we're extremely clear this even the language as it is right now does not change the zoning It doesn't change the use. It literally changes nothing. It is a map of a group of individuals that were in a room that referenced some other maps of what would future growth look like if it were to go there. I understand you guys have no interest. It's a family farm. I'm sure you're probably passing it on to someone in your family. I understand that you have no interest. I 1000% support you in that decision. As a representative of the town, I would love it if you guys came to us and said, hey, we're open to some discussions to see if we can make something work. But you don't owe us that. And I understand if you said, no, we're just not interested. But we're not looking to annex. And this plan does not change that whatsoever. As it is written right now, it doesn't change the use of the land. It doesn't change annexation. It doesn't change zoning. It changes none of that. It's literally a map of if everybody's hopes and dreams were to come true and what could this look like? It's an initial draft of that map. It's not saying that that has to happen on your land or that's exactly what's going to go.

But you don't feel like you can remove that. You feel like the process is too far gone or it would cost you money to remove that verbiage. That's the only part I think we're trying to understand. Why would you not remove that?

We are on a strict timeline. You were at the council. If we do change things, we have to go back. We have until like, what's the end of August? I thought it was like middle of August. So in between us having to do that, we'd have to restructure everything. We'd have to bring it back here to approve it. Then we'd have to bring it back to them to approve it. By then it's going to be August. And then we may miss our deadline. and now we're starting over.

They did make a date. They hadn't planned for that. So it is possible it would be a pain in the butt for everyone involved, but it is possible.

Is it impossible? I don't think it's impossible. My honest assessment, and I hope, like I said, I hope I'm very clear on this. We're not changing one thing about your property. We're not trying to change anything about your property. Does that make sense?

Okay. Hold on.

Hold on. Just hold on one second. Yeah. Hold on one second. Did that answer your question?

not really i understand if you were changing things but if you were deleting it really changes nothing as far as your grant and everything else so that's like and i did i did reach out on that regarding that process of if we my hope was we can just delete something the county the county said yeah good it's okay unfortunately

if we change the change it we have to go back through the process so it's not a simple you know certainly certainly if it was just a simple process i i definitely would and especially so last week that it had to be more than 80 change in order for it to have to be received and he asked if you guys went back your town asked you to change would you have enough time to change the verbiage and still get it turned in by the end of august you and you both said yes and the town And Decatur County went ahead and passed it because they said eliminating data center, that word, or moving that color on the map is not sufficient enough change to have to be presented back to the county. I understand what you're saying.

Okay. Okay.

One, we've given you a chance to talk and I apologize for even having to say that. Okay. There's other individuals that asked to speak before you spoke back up. So one on that second, again, you're questioning if what we're saying is honest, I'm telling you, I have email exchanges.

that show that if we change the plan that we do have to go back to them so i maybe they spoke out of turn i have no idea certain there was there was conversation of having to check yeah they were uncertain they thought but when we delved into it maybe you can speak to this haley yeah um it's all spelled out in the indiana state statute code for how to adopt a conversation

We didn't say it wouldn't work. We say we're running out of time. I understand.

sorry also there's somebody else that also just to be clear um a member of the steering committee herself has property colored red so yeah sorry you go ahead uh like i said i'm sorry if you could state your name connie lindsay and i'm from shelbyville okay and uh i'm yeah i'm probably no i'm sure But what I would like, first of all, I wanna say, I love what I'm hearing from you folks. I truly believe you really do care about the people in the town. And that is refreshing, I will say that. But I would also like to say, you must be very careful because there's a very slippery slope that Shelbyville has fallen into. And that is working to the comprehensive plan. We had a comprehensive plan for Shelbyville. And when somebody came knocking on the door, they not only took the comprehensive plan that was in place, but they added one more mile to it. So you need to be very cautious on how you work this comprehensive plan. And since I'm a realtor and so is that I would say, be cautious because what you can do is change it from industrial. This is what people want, bring it in, whatever the people want. And then if an industry does come knocking on the door, let them come to the board that's at hand and ask for a change. That's the right way to do it. Shelbyville didn't do it that way, and they're gonna regret it. But again, thank you. You folks are doing a great job. Great job for the town.

Thank you.

I have several questions, so I'm just gonna kind of wing this one, but I think, I'm Gina Jackson. gmail masters masters cascading family have deep deep roots here in st paul so this little town is pretty near and dear to my spirit i grew up in pleasure valley on the flat rock river but the gentleman was speaking about the dnr proposal is very devastating when you talk about things like that and so you know much of the concern with this comp plan there are positive things about the um the preservation as a heritage, the nature environment of it, but there are several concerning alignments with the EDC and the RDC and the TIF district. How many of you have actually researched the TIF district? and what it does.

I mean, I know this, I know a little bit about it. Yeah.

Maybe just if you want to get all your questions that way we don't run out of time. Sorry.

Okay. Yeah. What is your level of familiarity with a TIF district? Do you know if you have the ability to restrict the TIF district if this comp plan is signed as is? do you as the town board have the ability to restrict the TIF district?

I feel like the TIF district is not formed. Not yet. In the future.

I think the message is resoundingly clear that going into this agreement is screaming alignment with the redevelopment commission in decatur county there are really good intentions and there are really bad intentions in decatur county right now and i say that as a broad including the city um as far as representing the needs and the ones of the people and so to directly align with the redevelopment commission or the edc it just takes the town board out of the picture alignment. They'll be like hawks coming out here. New parcels of ground to redevelop.

It's a plan of the state. Which within St. Paul, there are none. Just, you know. Yes. Yes.

So it's all happening.

We have no right to redevelop.

Again, and I'm asking you to be forward thinking. Forward thinking. You have the best of intentions. We've spoken before, Pam, I feel like you guys honestly do have the best of intentions and that's very healthy. You have unfortunately ran into some prior boards that didn't have the best of intentions and had abused their positions. And so moving forward, what if the board that you're trying to recover from were to step in again and the townspeople experience that type of a setback? uh my other question is regarding to um just to clarify loves is on city water correct yes yes okay help me understand my brain can't wrap around that if loves is attached to the city sewer and the septic or the in the water why are they not held to certain standards of discharge and and who is doing that and why is the town council not holding LUVs accountable if there has been an excessive sewage discharge to create this big problem.

So we'll respond to all of them. Do you have any other questions?

Okay.

All right. Thank you. Thanks for coming. As far as the LUVs discharge, I don't know that anyone, I don't know, to be honest, that there's even a meter that would say how much discharge they're using. I don't think anyone meters sewage. know from house to house so just do it by the water though how much water yes yeah yeah yes they regulate it that way right yeah so we we do meter water um but as far as sewage i have i don't i don't know what that is i don't know that there is an agreement and i don't know that we can suddenly just go four slugs into agreement and say hey some town board in the past you know granted you access to our soup system but now we're changing the case i think we would I would guess we would open ourselves up to legal problems. I would also suspect that if you cut the line between Loves and St. Paul and disconnected them from our sewer system, we have the same exact problems, whether Loves is attached to it or not. Our major issue is inflow and infiltration. And so our problems become much larger when we have large rain events. So that's what causes it. It's not Loves. Yeah, I'm not trying to... i said earlier i'm not trying to point you know big bad wolf finger at loves they're not the cause of our problem but if we continue to add more and more users onto our system without upgrading it you know it's going to cause more and more issues so idem has asked us not to connect new users so there's that um as far as alignment with the redevelopment commission or edc um i don't know that Obviously, there's some language in here about coordination, specifically It says, as far as the, this is the solar, coordinate with Decatur County to align local policies. So there's no coordination with the EDC or Redevelopment Commission. So we're not trying to set up something with them. This does not set up some certain alignment i think the uh as any i would suspect as any good council should do if there is something going on we should coordinate with other local government organizations and so for instance and you know we kind of keep going back down this path of if someone were to come to us and say hey we want to hook on out there we can't do it. So we're dealing with a lot of ifs, what ifs, buts that we know here and now that we cannot do that. So I don't know that there's any specific of, hey, this plan requires us. Obviously there's recommendations to coordinate and make sure that we're in alignment, but I don't know that it's a, it's set forth an edict of, hey, you have, St. Paul has to align itself lock, stock and barrel with whatever the EDC or RDC tries to do.

So could you delete that number two on page 92?

While you're looking for that, just be careful while you're thinking down into the future here. I've seen this, and I know you're trying to do what's right, and again, I really appreciate it, and I know the people here appreciate it, but be ever so careful, because just because you think they're not gonna come knocking on the door, like you say, the sewage can't handle it right now, if a certain level of development would come, they're liable to come in and say, we'll pay for it. Oh, absolutely. We understand that.

But like on line two on page 92, work with Decatur County to establish a tax increment financing district. That's work with Decatur County. This comprehensive plan is not establishing a TIF. If a TIF were to be established, it there's a whole nother process that would have to happen and a whole nother process of public hearings so the language that would be in that tiff i i hope all of you show up if for whatever reason someone decides it's a good idea to create a tiff i hope everyone shows up and this same feedback but you know this is kind of a directional of hey if you If it's going to happen, you should work with these individuals, which I think is the most logical thing to do. I don't think we should ever enter into anything that's going to affect our larger community with just narrow eyes and say, sorry, we're not working with you. We don't want to hear what you have to say.

That would come across our desk with or without a compliance plan. If Decatur County wants to investigate a TIF district, we're going to hear about it as part of Decatur County. Same with Shelby County.

All right. Any other public comment?

Yeah.

Yes, sir.

I had no talk tonight, but I'm going to. Well, thank you. From perspective, John Parker is the name. I am one of the property owners between here and 74 that woke up one morning and found that my ground was zoned industrial. i'm awake yet more than 10 cups of coffee trust me absolutely uh and and i totally get what you're saying about okay well this is a suggestion as to mike what maybe what will be that comes forth down the river uh but i'm sitting back here listening to all this i'm hearing more and more things that prompt more and more questions and i guess the first question uh well i'll say this i understand what you're saying is okay this is not our intention this is not our intention guess what you guys won't necessarily be the town council in five years down the road 10 years down the road we don't know what those people sitting in your seats are going to be thinking so that makes me wonder well a comprehensive plan let's say you adopt it with changes or as is is a comprehensive plan a legal document that the town must follow or is that a plan because of all the plans could change and so you know i start wondering all right you know if this thing gets adopted 20 years down the road when someone does want to come in and maybe make my ground industrial is the town stands going to be well yeah we've got to entertain that because you know that's the way the comprehensive plan is written or is this a suggestion that just as easily could be you turned around six years ten years down the road and and you don't necessarily have any requirement to follow it i mean i wonder how legal a document are we talking about here uh answer rhetorical question yeah the uh the other thing i'm thinking more and more about is when they start talking about making changes and potentially having enough time to make changes it really is a kick in the gut if you're the property owner that wakes up one morning and sees your ground zone purple for industrial that'll wake you up again I would say, all right, well, look, if this is just a plan, and I understand that St. Paul isn't the one who would do the designation of industrial versus residential, right? That's the county. I get that. I'm on the Shelby County side. But it seems to me that if that opportunity were to ever arise, say you have some industrial outfit come in and want to talk to you about it, well, I'm thinking by that point, And again, I appreciate the fact you're doing the comprehensive plan to begin with is simply to be able to qualify to get funding to fix the current problems you have here in town. I get that and I applaud you for those efforts. But what I also see on the back end of that is once you guys get your streets and sewers and water problems all fixed, now guess what? You're in a position where You might very well entertain anybody and everybody that wants to come along between here and 74 and offer you lucrative opportunities to help them develop all this ground between here and 74, which again, with all due respect, isn't St. Paul. I understand why you would see that as a wonderful opportunity, and I applaud the town for chasing it. But you've got to keep in mind The people like Jim Neal and you, you live along the line. People like me, Matt Davis, I can name all the names and rep out of UPS Farmland between here and there who aren't going to be really excited to have that opportunity thrown in the doorstep. And I say opportunity because a lot of people who are not those landowners will say, oh, well, they could be offered stupid money and be rich for the rest of their lives. Well, guess what? Having more money you never know what to do with isn't the most important thing in life. I would venture to say every property owner out there, myself included, would much rather have the ground that we're standing on now as opposed to having a gazillion and a half dollars in the bank. I mean, I can sit in my kitchen window and look south and I see St. Paul and I see all the farmland between me and there. And when I see this plan, know having all of that zone purple industrial you know i'm like looking thinking okay i'm going to be looking at a warehouse somewhere because the comprehensive plan sets that into potential play so my point that i would ask because i know i've overdone my time my point is if it's possible to make a change all i would do is say okay look if you want to have suggested purple industrial areas Leave that area up around the interchange itself. For God's sake, leave all the farmland between Fish Pond Road and St. Paul as something else. Future development, unknown, not determined. That would make all of us feel so much better because the way it is now, It's going to be the suggestion, the roadmap as to what needs to happen in the future. Well, we could make that a lot simpler if we just got rid of all the purple altogether and didn't call it anything. I mean, and again, it gets back to the county is the one who zones it anyway. So why do you even need to have all of that in there? I think the engineering firm that put all this together, they thought, well, this looks good. It's great. It's colorful. It's good eye candy, you know, but it's not necessarily anything more than a suggestion.

Yeah.

So that's the case. Let's get rid of the purple. Let's get rid of the yellow. Let's just leave it all TBD.

Thank you. Thank you very much for coming, Juan. And I should have said this earlier. I will acknowledge and I'll apologize on my behalf. I think we probably could have done a better job of communicating. I don't think we could have. We could have done a better job communicating with residents out there who, you know, got colored over with a purple yellow or green or whatever color marker so i i apologize that you woke up and you know someone shared a map and you know because without the information it i can understand why it would generate a lot of concern of oh my god you know a giant warehouse we can't because we're dealing with adaptation

you know we didn't have any need to go any further north side of town well guess what you know you're talking about our land yeah and us yeah so yeah it would have been nice to have some sort of notification that this was easy to be put together because we already parted yes and i i certainly understand that so i'm from my my part you know

We should have called that. So I apologize that we didn't communicate that sooner. As far as you were kind of, maybe it was rhetorical question. You were asking, could this change? Absolutely. Comprehensive plans change. I know Decatur County has had a comprehensive plan. They're going through a new process of a new comprehensive plan. right now i don't know where they are in that process but they're going through the same process that we are we're just ahead of them so plans can change cans plan edit so i think as i said earlier because it's colored purple does not mean that that's what's going to go there whatsoever

one yeah and that looks more like that because you see the people 20 years 15 years about 10 years five years pick a number they're not going to know what we said in this conversation They won't know what your attitude was. They won't know what mine was. They won't know anything.

They'll say, oh, this math just comprehends the plan.

So this is industrial.

And I would hope that whoever's elected to this board is elected because people have put their trust into them and that they will act in the best interest of them. That's not always the case, unfortunately. But that's how our, I guess, our politics are designed is, you know, But I don't want to sit here today and say, you know, kind of similar to what Kim said earlier of, you know, we say, I think Clay also said it at the other meeting. Right now we're saying, no, we don't want a data center. I can be in agreement with that, absolutely. but who's to say in five years that a data center couldn't fit in this room or in a closet in this room. And we have language now that says no data centers. And so what could be something that would go in easily and the residents 15 years or 20 years from now could easily get behind. If I'm just addressing, if I'm addressing language in here, and saying strictly, no, we cannot do that. I think that's unfair to the future people. I certainly understand your concern that we may not be sitting in these same seats in a couple of years from now. But I think the important thing is, again, we're one, we have no path forward on this. The Mr. And Mrs. Meal have indicated that they have no interest in doing this. And as am I correct in saying that probably that your, is it your grandson or probably also has no interest, right? So, you know, we could know we could go through a lot of work and change this potentially to just change colors of a marker on a map we we could go through that process and generate more work for uh for this council which you know we can do it we can discuss that if that's something we want to do and then send it back to the county and then send it back to the council plus the time to do that i don't i i I don't think that we're setting a precedent tonight that says, hey, in a couple of years from now, because this was colored purple, we're going to suddenly put a big industrial complex there. That's not the case. This was purely as part of the meeting of, hey, when the people that are gonna give the grant money are looking to who they're gonna give grant money to, they want to know that they have thought forward and what would future growth look like? So yes, there are, homes colored on a map. Again, I apologize. We didn't communicate that to you sooner, but I can say that does not mean that that's what we're doing. And like the question of, you know, you're cracking the door. I don't know how we're cracking the door. That's just to be by coloring a map of one color or the other. To me, that does not crack the door. Obviously, anything that would come before the council, this council or any other council, or if it were to be rezoned, there's rezoning hearings. There's so many other hearings that would have to happen before anything like that happened. that there would be more than enough time for not just this council, but the county council also to intervene on residents behalf.

So. I think Jim said it best. I would like to go on record saying that I disagree with the fact that my property is colored purple.

Yes, and I respect that.

If you could change it, I would. If you can't, well, I guess I just have to understand.

Thank you for coming.

Do you understand that if you keep it purple, that you could end up in a lawsuit with somebody knocking on your door and you say, no, we don't want industry because that's what's happening in Shelby, don't you? It's happening across the state. I would check into that with your county attorney or your city attorney. That's what's happening across the state.

Sorry, go ahead.

Sorry, I didn't get your name.

Chad Crowder.

I live in that area where I've got a boulder and a dress.

I'm more with St. Paul. I live in Shelbyville, Shelby County. Three things. First of all, what Shelby County did, raising the heckles on everybody. We're watching. You say one thing and you're doing something else. You can say, we got the best intentions. are you willing right now every single one of you are you ready to change that we're asking you are you willing to change it now because the council that we went to they said if you're going to do it like mr neal said if you're going to change it they will change it you have to ask them to change it we're asking you right now yes or no Are you willing to change it right now?

Are you willing to change it? I think we'll discuss as a council. Are you willing to change it? I'm going to discuss it with the council members. Are you? We have to vote.

So right now we're hearing comments. So let's hear all the comments and then we'll talk about the plans.

So you're going to go behind doors? Nope. We have to. Okay. So you're ready to vote right now?

We're still hearing comments, but then we will, yes.

There's two things that need to come off of there that work with Decatur County getting rid of the TIF. And the third one there, the utility capacity. It's just that second bullet, right?

What page are you on there?

And why in the heck would you even put in that you're going to have a modular reactor? My Lord. I'm passionate. Do not be mistaken. I've said this before. We're watching. say one thing, do something else, and it leaves a bad taste in our mouth. And that time when you guys are, nobody's watching, trying to sneak things through, times have changed.

That's also quite offensive because if you've been here, you would know that we're very hardworking. We have not done anything undercover. So don't come at us with a lot of vinegar, okay?

I really do understand. I really do.

i don't think you do i don't think you do understand the amount of work that's no i do understand the amount of work we take our jobs extremely seriously let me speak for a moment we gave your time we take our jobs extremely seriously we represent our uh the people that live in this town very passionately and we want to solve the problems that are in this town and it's perfectly fine for you to have concerns but to come in that manner it's it's pretty aggressive I would love it if people came to our regular board meetings on a regular occasion and provided feedback and questions. We look for that. And then to come that way and tell us that you're watching us. Listen, there is, to be very clear, every single one of our board meetings, that door's unlocked. It's the first Tuesday of every month at 7 p.m. Anybody's welcome to attend. It's live streamed. All of our meeting minutes are put online. So legally... I could get in trouble if I have backroom meetings. I can't even vote if it's not in a public meeting. So I appreciate and I hope that people are watching us.

Yeah, so do I. And as that matter, it's not meaning to be offensive, okay?

Let's feel that way just so you understand.

It's not meaning to be offensive. What it is meaning is that one is, it's the first time. When I heard about this, that was the first time I heard about it.

it was not for lack of trying on our behalf to recruit people, you know, that Kim went through that earlier. This is not a case of we're trying to be sneaky and sneak something through. Could we have communicated something a little bit better? I will give the community that. But to say that we're trying to be sneaky or to do anything of that, that is pretty offensive, to be frank. That's not what we are. Everything we've done has been very public.

I am not accusing you of that, but I am saying when something like that does happen in another county, and the people there are fighting through it, and then all of a sudden, something kind of, it just raises the heckles. It brings it up and it says, whoa. And I acknowledged that earlier. We don't want that to happen here.

This is not that. As you saw in the first picture on our slide, our sewer problems, we have waste and feminine products in our roadways. so we're getting to the bottom of town issues and we understand the concerns we're hearing the concerns right now yeah publicly and we will vote and you know and we'll get it all figured out but yeah i think just you know it is it is hard to hear from someone that shows up and hasn't been involved in the process It's posted everywhere as well. So come to the meetings. We have requirements that we have to make along this whole process. We're guided through it legally so as to protect ourselves from making mistakes. We're not trying to make mistakes, right? So we've hit all the marks, all the timelines, all the agenda items, all the things we had to do. you know, and it's an unfortunate timing that Shelby County has had this happen. And, you know, I feel like we've been lumped into data center talk as a result. And I understand why, you know, I understand why, but also just realizing that this is a little town of less than a thousand people, you know, and we have worked together on this for a lot of time. So, you know, We're just asking for a little bit of respect in your tone and in the way you communicate your feelings.

And is there, I don't know, does anyone else have a comment? All right, you're welcome. Thank you.

I was hoping you could possibly explain the benefit.

If you could, sorry, state your name.

My name is Renee Filey, and I was hoping maybe you could explain the benefit of having the teeth language in there.

the benefit of having a TIF language.

Yes.

So why have it in there? So I don't know, Haley, can you help us with that question?

Yeah, so TIFs are really just one of the primary economic development needs that communities need to help fund infrastructure projects. So we know that there's infrastructure wanted and needed out there, and if and when the community, county, Now, whoever is interested in developing that, that is a tool that could be used to help fund the infrastructure. That's not saying that they will, that's just an option for them to explore.

Thank you. All right. Any other public comment?

Haley, in your experience with comprehensive plans, What does it look like? Have you had anyone want to remove the language that we're talking about tonight or the maps? What does that look like for them not to be included? How is that perceived from, you know, OCRA standpoint, getting grants? How does that reflect on the town in our ability to, you know, move in the directions that we're trying to move in?

Yeah, so the future land use map is required as one of the key components of the apartment as a plan of right to stay strategy. So you have to have a future plan in there. It's up to you all on what that plan says. I guess my question kind of back to kind of what we've heard from tonight is if you don't want that purple in there, what is the appropriate color for that area? And can you all agree on what the desired use of that area is if it's not purple? So I think that's something to consider And then in terms of the timeline, it is doable to make changes. If we run out of time with the grant, all we're gonna have to do is ask for a grant extension, which is doable. We can definitely do that. I will say Oprah doesn't like to give a phone grant extensions. It kind of puts a ding on the community that they didn't do what they were supposed to in the time that they were supposed to. So if the town were to go through and apply for another what about removal of the language that's in question so i feel like the biggest questions from what we heard are the tiff district language

and the sentence that includes data centers and solar power, that whole blurb on 125, I think it is. What are those components? If they're missing, how important is it? What's your opinion?

I think if you all felt comfortable doing so, you could remove both of those items. It would not be a huge impact on the community. The 10th district is, again, just an economic development tool that they could use if and when the opportunity came about. But nothing in this plan, there's no, it's not legally binding. There's nothing to hold anybody accountable. So St. Paul could do all of this and they would be fine. St. Paul could do none of this and they'd be fine. It's a guidance document. It's truly just a vision for the future.

All right, thank you. All right, last call of public comment.

I have one quick addition. If that language on the data center is in alignment with Decatur County and there are no standards in Decatur County, the town board is speaking that we are in alignment with no ordinance. And the downfall with adopting this is actually, I will pose a question. How forward-thinking has the board been on future ordinances? If you have thought about those ordinances, I know they've been lack thereof for the last several years. Has the board thought about ordinances you would desire to have and do they align with the Responsibility Comp Plan? and data centers is there's no protection in there against data centers because the care county currently does that okay any other public comment all right i'll close at the public comment i think you have to register the time

I mean, I do feel if it's not detrimental to our comprehensive plan that we would consider those three main changes of removing the verbiage about data centers and that whole sentence basically, and removing TIF district verbiage until we get a better handle on what that means. and uh you know if we could reach an agreement tonight on the map colors for people that are here to represent that are concerned um that we entertain those ideas and when we were at the county meeting the timeline would be we would have to submit the changes i did not ask if there's additional fees or if that's included in for you to make changes at this point can make the changes um we will not be able to attend um kind of future planning commission meetings we're kind of tapped out on attending meetings okay so if we were to make changes we would have to put it on the agenda for the their meeting is the day after our proposed meeting i believe um so in order to make that happen i think it would have to be a situation where we change the night of our meeting or call a special meeting. That's my opinion.

Tim, your thoughts?

Listening to all you guys, I understand that the industrial thing scares you. I would like to make a suggestion to change industrial to future growth. um the data center thing i don't think it matters if it's in there or not if you don't want it in there i don't see a problem taking it out if we're going to make changes um the tiff thing i don't know enough about it seems like it may be important for us to keep in there at this moment but i'm willing to because i don't understand it enough um i'm willing to let my other people, their opinions, maybe direct mine. But I do understand your guys' concerns about the wording, and I don't think it makes or breaks us, but it does seem to harm you guys and your world. So I'm willing to do that.

Who who here? Sorry love you spoke who here tonight owns property that is colored. Purple colored on this map or has property adjoining.

OK, I'm sorry if you those.

Those of you that have property that is colored. Can you raise your hand again? So obviously I think your opinions matter most in regards to what color that is. I still, I do believe that if we were to pass it tonight, that it's changing nothing about your property. I strongly believe that. So I'm not proposing to make a change because I think that it would affect you. But I understand that the color on the map has caused you concern. if those individuals that have their property colored a different color on the map if each if one of you says i i feel so strongly and i really don't trust um for whatever or maybe you just feel strongly then i i'll vote no and we'll adjust the color i would like for those of you that have Those of you that own property that is colored. If we're going to make a change, I would like. If some of you in a moment, I don't know if the board is open to this. If those of you could come up, we could take a look at the map. And then decide on what color that should be. That's that would be my proposal, because I think you own the property. Your opinion matters the most. Other opinions matter, but your opinion matters the most. As far as the establishing of a TIF, I don't... I still don't know that we're not establishing a TIF. This tells us to work with the county to evaluate establishing a TIF. So my opinion on that is I wouldn't want to just pull that out because we're not establishing a TIF with this. This is just an action item that we as a board or a future board could do is go talk to the county about establishing a TIF. my my personal opinion is i don't know that that has to be removed um regarding paige that statement again what page was that on the tiff statement 90 95 isn't it i keep forgetting all our 95 pages here do you understand how it works

within the TIF. within the TIF district.

And I think the key thing there is within the TIF, if tax revenue is created within the TIF, it benefits the TIF, i.e. improvements to infrastructure. So I think in my mind, it makes sense to leave. Obviously we're not establishing a TIF, tonight there's a lot of if we were come back to public hearings you know we're not trying to do that but if a tiff is established then it would that would happen if this board initiated in partnership with the county and then tax dollars uh and At that point in time, we can have the hearings, and we, as a board, find more information out and decide, hey, this is a bad idea, or the public doesn't support it. We can make that decision at that point in time. But I think to remove it from this, we're not establishing a TIF. We're not doing that. This just gives us a directive of, hey, go look. Do a study. a joint study defining the boundaries and then adopt an agreement. So, you know, obviously that agreement would be very public. Obviously we've shown willingness to change if, if, and when at some point I envision way down the future that that is intended to be created. we'll have all the public hearings in the world to establish that. But I think TIF, if we were to establish a TIF out there, funds in that TIF would go to the development of infrastructure to support that TIF. So my opinion as the board is, I think we should include that language. I don't think there's a need to change that. As far as page 125,

What alignment would the board have?

Sorry, the public hearings over. So we're as a board talking about this. So I've already previously stated, we have no alignment. There is no alignment. You had, all right, sorry. We'll continue on. As far as the other item, Page 125, coordinate with Decatur County to align local policy for emerging energy and infrastructure uses, including solar data centers, small modular actors, battery energy storage systems. I don't care if that language is in or out of the plan. I don't think that there ain't gonna be a data center in St. Paul. There ain't no place to put a data center.

Do you agree with that, Tim?

To get rid of that?

That language, yeah.

Yeah, we can get rid of that.

So all three of us are on board there, okay. So on page 95 with the TIF district initiative, what would it look like to change some of the wording instead of to establish a TIF to something that would talk more about becoming educated and investigating the options for in that in the idea soften it up a little bit we're not agreeing to establish but we're open to a conversation about um learning about what what that means and

I hear 100% what you're saying there. I still am of the opinion that we're not establishing it with this. This is a plan of items that we could look to do as far as our long-term thing, long-term growth. Again, we all know as a board that that's not going to happen anytime in the realistic future. And so we could change language there.

Just real simply, instead of work with Decatur County to establish a TIF, to investigate options, including, or just take, I mean the established word, I think is what maybe is the biggest, And then in the next project overview, this project establishes a dedicated funding, blah, blah, blah, all that part there. Same thing maybe.

I'm open to.

If we're making changes anyway, and we have a lot of unhappiness with aligning with TIFFs, I mean, if it's important for, because I see it's one of our project initiatives, right? So... And we don't know if Decatur County will have that same thought in their plan at all anyway.

Yeah. What would that language look like? Work with Decatur County to review options for establishing? Review options.

Understand options.

It's 10 o'clock, my brain slowed down.

We need the thesaurus. Thank you. TIF district initiative. Maybe be willing, be available for open communication with Decatur County.

For future TIF opportunities.

for opportunities to fund necessary utility and infrastructure? Do you want TIF in there or just the idea? So it could be inclusive, but not naming.

Yeah, I think including it does not hurt the plan and it's not establishing one, but the wording here reads as if we're establishing one.

Yes.

When in actuality, this is, how about work with Decatur County to potentially to- Explore. to explore opportunities that's why she gets the big bucks right there we paid you all that money for that work with decatur county to explore options regarding a future death

This project establishes a dedicated funding mechanism for infrastructure without raising taxes on St. Paul's current residents or straining the town's budget. By partnering with Decatur County to create, to explore a TIF district.

I'm okay with that language.

The town can capture a new property tax revenue. So we're not... I mean, we are not initiating a TIF district.

This is just solely to be in alignment with Decatur County's- This tells us to go explore it and gain more information, and then we can make a decision based upon that.

We've taken out the word establish, soften up the language a little bit. The rest of it's infrastructure stuff. I think it reads pretty well from then on, right? So explore instead of establish in the first sentence. And then instead of. establishes under the project overview this project a dedicated funding mechanism for infrastructure without raising taxes on st paul's current residents or straining the town's budget i think that's okay by partnering with decatur county to explore a tiff so two explorers instead of establish and create.

i like that oh yeah yes okay all right two things done it sounds like we're in favor of removing the data center stuff line completely data center yep modify the language and then would you guys be in agreement and if you are a property owner if you would come up and spend a few minutes with us we can recolor the map to accommodate everyone's concerns

Yes, we would also ask that when we go back and forth in front of Decatur County and we ask for their blessing, that you would support us because we will have zero time left at that point. We'll have to call a special meeting and all of that. So we would ask for your support at that county level that your concerns were heard and accounted for. And, you know, hopefully everyone can feel a little bit happier, may not be exactly what you want, but it'd be closer in the direction of what we want. from the people here at this meeting tonight. Is that a, I see a lot of head nods.

Town Board, I want to applaud you.

Thank you.

Thank you. I don't know when that meeting will be.

They announced it, but let me look, because I don't trust my brain right now. That's what I was thinking too, because it was a Wednesday and ours was supposed to be on a Tuesday.

I will forewarn you. we probably will have to call a special meeting of this council to approve just this. That's not us being sneaky. It'll be posted on the front door of the building. It'll get printed. It'll be put on our social media page.

It would be one of two options. We would either push our normal meeting to a different night, or we'd have our normal meeting on Tuesday. Decatur County has their meeting Wednesday, and we'd have to have a special meeting. So either way, but we will post it. so thank you say that again social media forms to communicate town has a facebook page

It is not the unofficial.

It's not the unofficial. Oh, you're getting into deep politics now.

Hang on. I'll tell you the name of it, actually.

The town actually has a page.

There's two groups. There's the unofficial and there's one other one.

It actually says government. It actually shows that the government organization, it's called the Town of St. Paul, and it has that nifty little I don't know if y'all can see that very well, but it looks like that, town of St. Paul, and it does say government under it. So that's the only one that we share news on or communicate on.

I don't think you would have to call a special meeting. You could pass a resolution if everybody's in agreement that your next regular board meeting even though it's before the same commission meeting based on

So you wouldn't have to have a special meeting.

So we could say, given that the plan will be approved tomorrow or if the plan is approved tomorrow.

Passing the next day at the county. So therefore, you wouldn't have that special meeting.

So August 4th would be our meeting. August 5th would be the next, would be the Decatur County plan.

You would just be passing yours based on them giving you

I will, I'll just triple check because this is important to a lot of people. I'll check with the town's attorney of can we approve it in lieu of them approving it with that that language.

So, yes, because I did clarify the county's attorney today and. after the area plans okay that's good information like final as long as they say if we've approved it

all right um can i invite one because i'm sure we'll lose some people here i i genuinely would request that people come back to our board meetings i i think it's clear that we have ongoing issues and we're just three people if you guys have you probably know stuff that we don't know it's way more interesting with y'all here let me just say I can 100% guarantee you a very boring night when you come, but it would be appreciated. Or watch the meetings online, send some feedback via email. I think all of our emails are listed on the website. If you have a question or are concerned, send it to us. If you just want something brought up on the agenda, submit it on an agenda request. Obviously, we're very open to change and accommodating residents' requests as much as we possibly can, but our goal is just to help our little town. Thank you, everyone, for coming out. If you are a property owner who has an area of color, if you guys wouldn't mind coming up and gathering around, I would appreciate it.

It might be easier to do it on a hard copy if we have one.

I think we'll have to close after. Haley, do you have a hard copy?

I'm not a good math person, so.

You too.

I'm by your house all the time.

All right, Jim and Debbie.