City Council - Special Meeting

She's on her way. Yeah, she texted me when I was on my way over. She'll probably miss the gavl in gabble out maybe, but she'll be here for the important. One moment. We are recording. One second.

Okay, go ahead. Good evening and welcome to this public hearing of the Terote City Council. It's 5:15 on Wednesday, September 24th, 2025. Um Michelle, will you please call the role for us? Council person Azar, council person Boland, present. Council person Chaos, present. Council person Devon, here. Council person Dinkle, present. Council person Henton, council person Loudermilk, present. Council person Nation, here. Council person Thompson here. Seven are present. two are absent.

We only have one order of business at this meeting and it's public comment uh concerning appropriation 15 2025 which is the 2026 city of Teroot sanitary budget. Is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak to the 2026 sanitary budget? Hearing none, I'll accept a motion. Move to adjurnn. Second. It's been moved by Councilman Dinkl and seconded by council person uh Bulland that we adjourn. All in favor of adjourning, please say I. I. Opposed. We stand adjourned. We'll start our U budget hearing it at Five.

Got some stuff.

Okay. Good evening and welcome to a special meeting of the Terote City Council. It's 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, September 24th, 2025. Um, roll call, please. Michelle, Council Person Azar, Council Person Boland, present. Council person Taos, here. Council person Deon here. Council person Dingle, present. Council person Hinton, present. Council person Limill, present. Council person Nation here. Council person Thompson here. Eight or present, one is absent.

Thanks, Michelle. This is a discussion between the council, the mayor, and the controller and department heads as needed uh concerning the proposed 2026 budget. There is not public comment at this meeting. Uh however, there will be public comment allowed at the meeting next month when we um vote on this budget. So on that note, I'll turn it over to the mayor. Welcome.

Good evening, Council President Nation and members of the Terote City Council. So what we're going to do here today is very quickly I'm going to do an executive summary over the 2026 budget. I'm going to hop into our uh budget expense comparison binder that you've all uh received and do about 20 minutes of explanation from that after the executive summary. And this touches specific departments, but let's start kind of at a overall mountaintop view. So the 2026 budget consists of 35 total funds and these have been submitted for approval by the city council and then subsequently DLGF, Department of Local Government Finance. 27 of these funds are general operating funds. One is an enterprise fund, your wastewater treatment plant, and seven are redevelopment funds. What's important here is our uh revenue is projected to be $127.8 million and this does not include our redevelopment revenue. Uh our increases include a very small marginal increase through property tax. Uh again we are capped with that maximum levy growth quotient which is a fancy way of saying if your assessment goes up to here we can only recoup a small percentage of that. I know that question often comes up uh and granted that is a county and state form of government. The biggest reason why we saw an increase in revenue uh was the Teroot Casino Resort. Uh I will admit when I was wrong in last year, I said, "Hey, you know, we could expect 3 to 4 million. Looks like we're on pace for about 7 to 9 million this year. We anticipate 9 million next year." And my philosophy with casino dollars uh will always be you can budget for 2/3 of it, but you have to hold back one/3. uh each time we hold back one-third of casino funds, it's essentially the equivalent of our almost our current cash balance in the general fund. Why is that important? Well, here's why. Due to the upcoming impacts of Senate Enrollment Act One, uh also referred to as Senate Bill One, we maintain the position that it's best to be conservative in our revenue

projections. Uh acknowledge that some of our select accounts will use cash reserves and we'll adjust the levy the next two calendar years to make up for that. And the reason being is we will begin to feel significant impacts from Senate Bill 1 2028 to 2030. That is if the city's growth doesn't continue at the rate that it's going. However, the last two years we have seen substantial growth uh specifically with our businesses and those are capped at a 3% property tax cap instead of a residential at 1%. So when you look at this growth and you're trying to maintain it, which I think we are doing a good job at doing, there are some national and state economic trends that cause you to say, hey, you know, can we maintain this growth? Which has been great for Terode in the current time being. Our general fund last year increased from 4.3 million to 4.7 million, the surplus. So that's what we had at the end of the year. We're very proud of that 10% increase of about 400,000. And something that I always like to point out when Jessica and I bring you revenue and expenses for the year, there's a little bit of a gap. There's always about a million to a million and a half gap, which makes you say, "Oh, we haven't brought in enough to cover some of these expenses." That gap is purposeful. We budget our expenses on a worst case scenario, sorry, on a best case scenario and our our revenue on a worst case scenario, right? We acknowledge that if we go in with conservative revenue estimates, there is this gap and it allows us to really tighten some of these budgets from July to December 31st and start pulling back levers month after month for a six-month span if needed. U miscellaneous revenue, nonpropy tax revenue accounts for $90.5 million of the city budget. That is very important because a lot of folks say, you know, it's the the the government, local government is increasing our property taxes to run. Well, folks, our property

tax revenue is only 28 million. So, that was an increase of 2 million from 2025. Um the miscellaneous re revenue is made up of our sanitary district, solid waste fees, EMS non-reverting, which is those ambulance mills, permits and inspections, economic development, income tax, CAD, intergovernmental revenue. So that's grants anywhere from uh the state level, the federal level, or the private foundation level. And interest revenue. Of note, as of August 31st, uh we have pretty much exceeded expectations for interest revenue already 8 months into the year. Jessica's done a remarkable job at using our cash balances to grow our cash. Uh it used to be 300 to 600,000 a year. Folks, we hit almost $700,000 in our operating account interest by August and 400,000 in the sanitary operating account year to date. With those numbers, of course, with four more months to grow, and we're very proud of how we've invested our money, casino revenue, uh we've got an estimate of 9.3 million. We did do a study uh with Bose McKini Law Firm to look at casino revenue. And really, you see this increase from year 1 to year five. you see a flat line that begins to decrease either years 5 to 7 or 5 to 10. It depends on the casino. So, what we do know is we're kind of in this build range, then it's going to sit for a little bit and then it's going to come back down. And that's really important because when you look at what operational expenses are from that casino budget, you have to have a plan within two to three calendar years to pull it out because as that casino revenue starts to taper back off, those operating dollars have got to be pulled back into a general fund or another revenue fund because your revenues got to go down in your casino. And so that's part of our long-term budget theory uh which we've seen happen in a number of

cities. The total proposed 2026 CA terote operating fund expenses is 129 million. That is a 1.47% increase. That is a very very I mean you guys know inflation's at 3% and right off the bat we cannot increase our budget to what inflation is, right? We were only able to do a 1.47% increase and we're very proud of that. The general fund is increasing at 2.83%. Uh we do have salary raises for non-union employees at 3%. Uh we will do a quick union negotiation update later, but it's looking like, you know, more than likely about an 18% increase for base pay for public safety. Uh their contract is looking like a year 1 increase and then year two and year three at 0%. So it's a three-year contract with the bulk of it up front. Our other unions are looking at pretty much a 555 um with some very minor uh differences and discrepancies. Our many of our union employees that are not public safety and our city hall staff have downsized to to make these numbers work. So there were people through attrition that we are not filling their positions to make some of these salary numbers possible. Our largest uh decrease within the general fund this year is the engineering department. That increased by 36%. Why? Because they've moved a lot of their positions to engineer non-reverting. Because of the work we've got going on, because of our permitting system and our inspection system for road work, especially, we are able to recoup some of those federal and state dollars given to us for road projects. And that allows that department to be more self-sufficient and help the general fund. uh something to point out. How do we make a lot of this happen? Our health insurance for the first time in many many years saw a 0% increase. So that alone was able to help us really manage the general fund budget.

The casino uh on paper is a 91% increase, but granted it's because it's going from 3 million to 6 million because our revenue has gone up. So that's why you see that jump. I do want to point out something we've done is we have put $1.5 million of longevity pay in the casino. So, as I said a couple minutes ago, the general fund grew by 2 million. We expect it to grow from 1.5 to 2.25 the next two calendar years. So, what you do is you shift that longevity back over over a 2-year span. So, we're pulling that operational expense back to the general fund, right? Then we start looking at that general fund increase, some of those contracts. How are those numbers projected to go? And it looks like over a threeyear span, we pull that back away from the casino and the the general funds beginning to operate and continuing to operate, continuing to grow surplus. And we adjust the levy to build back some of our departments that are going to use their cash balance, specifically uh cemetery a little bit, but also parks. Our parks has a pretty decent cash balance. It will be spent down. was this year, next year, and then starting in 2026 and 2027, you adjust the levy so their cash balance goes back up. So, every now and then we start playing with that levy in and of itself to utilize some of those cash balances. The only cash balance that we don't do this for is the general fund. Our target as a municipality should be a general fund surplus of 6 to 8 million. Why? That essentially means you can go anywhere from about two to maybe three yeah about two to three paychecks without having to pull any other money. So in the event that property taxes did not come in or they were delayed because of something that happens at the county level of government or state level of government, you have the time, the breathing room to handle that in your general fund instead of loaning from

redevelopment or loaning from yourself or Lord forbid loaning from a bank. So that's why we kind of really shoot for that 6 to8 million target. Uh you will see a 47% increase in casino services and charges. This includes demolition, paving and sidewalk projects. We did have to increase paving that comes from the casino budget as a result of House Bill 1461, which is the new road funding bill, which essentially took community crossings from 1.5 million from the state, the local government down to a million. So instead of passing a wheel tax to recoup that and have quote skin in the game, we decided to use casino funds instead of levying an additional tax on the people of Teroot, which would have doubled tax folks, which I don't believe in and think if we have another way to do it, we should pursue that. Expenditures uh increased by 52%. One of them being the Deming Park pool and the YMCA. The reason being is instead of stretching the Deming Park pool to three calendar budgets, calendar year budgets, it's now two and it's paid off in cash next year. And the YMCA went up from 500 to 750 knowing that we will lower the amount that we need for the YMCA in 2027. So that's the similar plan that we've discussed. We just moved some of the 2027 amounts to 2026, which is good news. that frees up some of our casino expenditure projects for two additional projects in 2027. We are looking at an expansion to the Booker T. Washington Center, hoping to add a few more basketball courts. It is located in District 1, Councilwoman Hinn's district. We've seen some business expansion. We've seen some residential expansion, and we're really, really looking forward to all this kind of coming together along the 13th corridor.

CCD, we did see an increase. However, we have to reertify our net assess value. There were some issues uh with what the county submitted for the certified net assess value. Uh our financial consultant and Jessica did catch that and they worked with the county to get that correct. So, there's going to be a reertification tomorrow. So, watch that CCD number. It might come down a little bit. Um but we use cumulative capital development to really lower some of our expenses in our other budgets. So we we were prepared to operate without that happening. So it it is of no increase to us. Continuing education that is one of our police department budgets. Uh we are now budgeting all of those. State board of accounts had brought that up for years and so we started doing that this year uh which we budgeted for last year and we're going to continue to do that. Engineering non-reverting the expense side increase because we pulled some staff and personnel over but so did the revenue side. And then you will see an increase in the Ray Park budget. Uh starting January 1st, Eddie Bird will take over as our golf director and Kylie will take over as our superintendent for the parks department. So we'll have an updated organizational chart for the council, really also for the community. Um Eddie's done a good job already for his possession next year trying to work on advertisement revenue for these golf courses. And we are seeing pretty good revenue in Ray Park. If you take their revenue and home and links and combine these two budgets into one spreadsheet, it is still in the black. Uh but what we want to do is continue not just to grow the game of golf, but to improve our public health in our community. And we've decided to add a little bit more management over there with a core focus being to increase uh the revenue of these courses. Many other municipal courses are doing well partially because their revenue is not just green fees. It's renting a clubhouse. It's hosting golf outings. advertisements and sponsorships. So, we're going to grow

that from a business standpoint starting in 2026. Um, the good news is our long-term control plan was approved as of today. So, we have 25 years as of this date to uh finish the long-term control plan. That is the EPA mandated uh projects for storm water and sewage. There's a handful of designs that we will get the construction estimates for in February of 2026. Ohio Street, Chamberlain Road, the main lift station, Celyville Interceptor, uh Lincolnshshire Woodshshire, drainage and sewage replacement, as well as Locust Street. Here's why this is important. Based off the numbers of those designs and those projects, there is an opportunity to use our edit cash balance and some of our sanitary district cash balance to help delay a storm water increase. If those estimates come lower than what we think they are, we can execute that course of action. If they come in what we think they will come in, we'll have to have a conversation about a fixed flat increase to meet the mandates of the federal government. Uh, however, I personally do believe in the science behind the EPA's long-term control plan. I think it's very valid and it makes common sense that frankly poop and water should not be combining in infrastructure and the United States of America, right? Uh, but that does come at a price. And what I always point out to folks is we are not a private utility. We are a public utility. We don't have individuals who are making billions and millions of dollars. Our staff salaries are available on DLGF. They are paid a very modest wage. They do an excellent job and the money that we have sitting in our account is used for projects. This is a local utility. Uh we don't do 17 to 35% increases every 2 to 3 years. And folks wonder, well, what did I pay for?

What are my upgrades? The upgrades that we bring to the city of Teroot will be communicated through the sanitary district, through the city council, and through our social media channels in the event we need to have a conversation around a rate increase. That closes out our executive summary. Let's go ahead and look at our budget expense comparison. We're going to start with the general fund. Uh the fire increase is 2.8%. The police increase is 7.11%. Now remember there is longevity in the casino and there were some changes to the EMS non-reverting budget which I will touch on a little later in the presentation. The board of works budget had a 6% decrease. It had a 1.98% increase. Engineering non-reverting has a 35.91% decrease with those expenses uh moving to the engineering non-reverting fund. Animal control, uh, EPD code enforcement is a 3.75% increase. Legal is a 2.55% decrease. In the controllers's office, we are going down in terms of personnel. So, they have an 8.44% decrease. I think Jessica's done a remarkable job managing that department. They believe that uh with their current staffing model, they don't need to hire a person who had always kind of been budgeted for in the city of Teroot. I think our staff's getting more efficient. So, you'll see a decrease there. Uh, the clerk has a 5.46% decrease. If you have specific questions about the city clerk and the judge's department, I will defer those to Michelle, but we've worked pretty extensively and I I'm feel confident briefing the overall numbers. The judge himself has a 1.32% increase. Um, now you will hear, "Oh, misdemeanors, those are going up back over to the county." Yes, but our judge is doing an excellent job uh handling ordinance court. And there's been an

increase there. Uh number of reasons why. So there is a strong case load that still requires the city judge's uh department to be staffed the way that it is. The city council is at a 7.47% increase. The mayor's office is at a 3.09% increase. The maintenance department is at a 1.11% decrease. Human relations is at a 2.42% decrease. So overall the general fund increases uh by 1.38 uh%. And then at the bottom you can see it's showing you obviously in the black is an increase and in the red is a decrease. So I think overall we've done a very solid job of analyzing our general fund, removing positions if we can through an increase in efficiency and presenting a a balanced general fund budget that will help us grow our surplus. Let's move on to the uh wastewater utility. There's a 7.42% decrease. Remember, a large reason why there was a decrease is uh the city council as well as the sanitary board authorized us to use some of our cash balance in the sanitary district to do some of the uh lift station projects. Park lift station and Honey Main lift station. Every time we use the cash balance, the money we already have in the bank, we do a sewage project without a rate increase. So I will expect I expect to bring a similar dollar figure of 38 million to the city council for 2027. After 2027, that cash balance starts to decrease to a point where we need to have a conversation uh about those rates. But my personal philosophy is if we have money in the bank, if we have revenue from previous years, we should use it towards these projects that we're required to do because if we delay it with the cost of

construction, the cost of inflation, it's only going to cost more down the line. Edit, we have a 2.83% decrease. Uh parks has a 12.53% decrease. However, a lot of the expenses there, a lot of the expansions in the park system that is uh coming from gaming revenue in the casino account. So, yes, this account is going down by 12.53%, but I that doesn't necessarily mean the quality of our parks is decreasing by 12.53%. EMS has a 22.80% increase. There is a substantial increase in revenue that will be updated to reflect most of that. Uh the waste and refugees is a 3% increase. Uh if you look, thanks to the city council's work, that account is slowly balancing itself out. We are finally collecting what we need to fund our trash program instead of subsidizing it through property taxes or through the sanitary district. The casino because of essentially increasing its revenue right from 3 million to 9 million, the expenses went up from 3.4 4 to 6.5 to keep in line with our 2/3 1/3 theory. So on paper that's a 91.83% increase. Motor vehicle highway there's a 6.61% decrease. Transit has a 5.32% decrease. Really do want to complement our entire transit department. Uh ridership still continues to grow at a I mean pretty much month after month it's a 100% increase some months even more. yet they're still able to do that based off the same operational chart. Uh our transit director, Debbie, done a remarkable job creating a program now to help hopefully certify drivers so we can add to our staffing. The budgeted amount that this council's already approved, but that will help keep our buses flowing at a safe level. Public safety lit is at a 5.61%

decrease. Going to pause here for a second. Uh usually when you analyze state and economic trends, one of the things you look for at municipal government is when is a lit or food and beverage tax projected to flatline or decrease. Our income taxes are expected to stay the same, not increase. Because of that, we brought it down by 5.61%. So we have a little bit of a cushion. Uh granted, consumer spending is still high even with some of the economic trends. So food and beverage tax uh is growing at about a uh earlier today it was reported a 5% increase September sorry July of this year compared to July of last year but we're really paying attention to the food and beverage tax number and the any income tax number because those are pretty big you know signs for the overall economic picture. Usually what you see is those income taxes will flatline and then begin to decrease. The next trigger is a decrease in consumer spending which at the local level you can really start to see in food and beverage tax and inkeeper tax. Police pension uh decreases by 21%. Fire pension increases by 12.09%. Motor vehicle highway restricted is a 1.50% increase. Engineering non-reverting is a 44.97% increase. That's to match the revenue that they're pulling in. That's also to relieve the general fund. So that's why you saw some positions pulled there. Local road and street has a 27.02% decrease. Part of the reason why is uh we are shifting some of the equipment purchases to help modernize that street department from casino through the purchase of equipment line and that's allowing us to reduce that line spending. We have needed to do that for about 2 to 3 years now because that cash balance had slowly tricked it down and this allows us to get that cash balance back up to a healthy level.

Homeman Links has a 7.30% increase. Uh the cemetery department there will be a personnel decrease there. Uh they did just get a new uh workers shed area so we fixed that building and then next year we want to fix uh the front office building and start some renovations to Highland Chapel. So there is a long-term plan to address the facilities there as well as some of the infrastructure there. Uh we are improving our cemetery year after year and I'm very proud of what Brent Nie has been able to do on a very limited budget with some help from uh gaming revenue uh when time permits as well as help from Ed Stewart at our wastewater uh department as well as the street department and kind of really managed by Jesse Thill our director of public works. The Ray Park is a 26.21% increase. Granted, the clubhouse is going to open. We expect more revenue. We have a golf director. So, there's very specific reasons why uh CCD as of now is a 96.18%. That number is calculated based off of certified net assess value. The county is reevaluating that certified net assess value. So, there's going to be a change to that number. Any decrease there stays in the overall property tax levy. It would essentially just shift over to the general fund. So, just some kind of tips to the trade there. Fire contractual services, non-reverting, 1.89% increase. Fire training academy, a decrease of 4.91%. CCI is no change. Uh, continuing education, partially because we're we're correctly budgeting that, you see an increase. Opioid restricted, you see a 2.41% increase. Granted, I'm very proud of the work that our social worker uh team has been doing uh thanks to this council's support. We added a second social worker uh community mental health style director, not community mental health director, sorry, community health liaison kind of officer and I'm very impressed that what Chris and Jarm are

able to do, just the two of them, frankly, is dwarfing the efforts of some other organizations in the community. And thanks to this council, I'm proud to continue supporting them. Fire inspection 9.09% increase. Uh clerk's perpetuation uh 2.95% decrease. Abandoned vehicles non-reverting. That's a 100% decrease. However, because of how we handle towing, that's why you see David Thompson, the budget officer for the police department, come up and get those approved by the city council as that revenue comes in. Really hard to kind of budget that one, revenue and expenses. So, we play that one almost out quarterly uh with you all, the fiscal body for the city. All of the funds are available on uh page eight, and you'll see that's that 1.47% increase from 2025 to 2026. A number of other hooser cities in the state of Indiana. They are having to really either decrease or stay at 0%. The reason why Teroot is not is because of gaming revenue. Uh had we not had the casino, we would have had to really take this number instead of a 1.47% increase to decrease the entire budget by 5%. I expect the this general plan and figures to continue for 2 to three years as we then begin to flatline as of the results of Senate Enrollment Act One. After that, you're going to see some form 1BS. These are our budget estimates. The next big section uh is your form 4Bs. These are the the forms that we submit uh online to the DLGF. And granted, what I tell folks is we have to budget the maximum expense-wise, right? And because we're conservative in revenue, sometimes they'll say, "Well, that's that's not going to balance or there's an issue there." Well, that's what it looked like last year, and we did end with a $400,000 surplus. And again, it's better to show what the worst case scenario is than towards the

end of the year react because the worst case scenario has happened. So you'll see a uh form 4B for each of the departments with ending cash balances at the bottom. Then I've got a uh property tax uh worksheet in my binder. Something I want to point out, uh the result of Senate Enrollment Act One, what it costs this community in its first year uh was a million dollars. And that million dollars would have gone to the general fund. So the general fund is about four to 5% lower than what it would have been because of Senate Enrollment Act 1. And we expect that figure the loss figure to slowly grow over the next several years. Uh our circuit breaker loss uh estimate for 2026 after conversations with the state board of accounts, DLGF, and our financial consultant is 42%. Uh for those who have been in the business a while and for those who are new, the circuit breaker loss is the amount of money that the city could have received but because of the property tax caps does not receive. Uh that amounts to 20 million 290,677 NAV growth. We will have to update you guys at a later date because of the fact that we're we're reertifying our NAVs. Um, and then from a solid waste standpoint, our our trash fee, we continue to stay right at even, fluctuates sometimes month-to-month, but we're we're seeing very good improvements there. So, with that, I will kind of keep this binder open to entertain any questions. I have also attached a budget summary kind of slide deck for you all that you can use to communicate the work that has been done uh to your constituents within your district. And also in front of me is basically a binder that I update every year. It is our five-year projections,

revenues, expenses, property taxes. Each year we go through this to evaluate what are some potential areas of concern 3 to four years from now. And as we update this after the work that we do each year, the numbers have slowly started to look better and better. So we will update our 5-year projection after the passing of this budget. and then I'll meet with you all to show you kind of what the updated numbers look like. Really quickly, let's turn to the slide deck. The proposed budget prioritizes public safety, improving our archaic infrastructure, quality of life projects, and modernizing our city equipment to improve efficiencies. Uh, no debt at this time will be issued that is tied to property tax. The majority of the budget increases came from increased casino gaming revenue. So here at the bottom, I've got that 1.47% increase. From a community development standpoint, there's $30 million that's dedicated to community development. That that's really your edit funds, your gaming revenue funds, the sanitary district infrastructure projects, redevelopment, CCD, local roaded street motor vehicle highway. What are some of these, you know, gaming revenue projects? Uh, one is we're going to do a 4% increase to our purchase of playground equipment. So, it's going to be at 235,000. The YMCA project increases by 50% to 750,000. But that is uh with the fact that we will decrease the 500,000 budgeted in 2027 to 250 again because we're trying to finish that project uh basically closing the construction timeline so delays and costs don't hurt us long run. Uh the Demi Park pool project that's going to be 1.15 million next year and we're paying for the bulk of that this year about 2.2 million. Just going to let you all know and I've spoken to the news media as well on this topic. Plan for the Deming Park pool to be closed

next year based off construction, how much work's going to be going on. I've just been saying, "Hey, plan for it to be closed uh on the off chance it opens before." Great. We love that. We love when construction's under budget and ahead of schedule. but do not plan for it to be open. Uh there are some further upgrades to Highland Lawn Cemetery. There's increased paving, sidewalk work, and demolition. And I am proud to announce finally uh the city is getting to a point where we can get back into our neighborhoods when it comes to road paving. So Brad and I have a meeting to kind of start tightening our shot group for next year's paving schedule. I hope to send you next year's paving schedule in December, even though it won't take place to the end of spring, summer, and into the fall, but I hope to get it to you guys in December so you can communicate that to your districts. The good news is we're finally off some of the main streets into the side streets. We're finally getting back into the neighborhoods. We are finally exploring a program called pavement preservation. So, we'll spend a4 million dollars next year on pavement preservation. What is that? That is treatment that we can do to a road like popppler for instance to extend its lifespan by 10 years. So instead of using all of our paving funds on one single road, we can extend things out a little bit longer if we treat it a little bit earlier. So a little less than 10% of our paving budget actually will go start to go to preservation with 90% being you know complete and total repair which is what we are used to seeing. Uh we are going to do a pilot neighborhood grants project. Uh we teamed up with Indiana State University and some students there. They're basically going to develop a grant program uh for neighborhoods and really I say neighborhoods, residential areas uh to be able to apply for and that will be kind of handled and managed with the input of our district council members. And so basically it's about 75,000. We'll parcel that out and we'll use that to say, "Okay, hey, you have, say, Councilwoman Louderdermilk has two

individuals who don't just need a sidewalk, they need an ADA compliant sidewalk." And while we do that work, we can do storm water and update this specific stop sign. That's a small enough project that we can slowly start to have conversations about at the council district level member, with the engineer, with the mayor, but we're going to create a formal program to do that first. So that way it's really codified. And this is something we see in, you know, your Southbends, your Alcarts, and and actually at Indianapolis, it's a much larger budget, of course. But this gives our district council members, uh, the ability to when they're meeting with constituents about a very, very specific issue, the ability to work directly with the mayor's office, uh, as well as the city engineers office on a appointed topic. I am a firm believer that our projects I look at them as we've got to pay for them in cash and complete them by 2028. Uh why? Because at 2028 when we really start to feel the heat from some of these Senate bill uh one impacts. So I would expect a lot of cash projects till 2028 and then that project list is going to be significantly smaller and we'll have to be a little bit more aggressive on what's getting cut and what's getting funded. So you're going to see a big push for work to be completed by 2028. We'll bring up that casino cash balance that'll carry us through 28 2028 to about 2031 2032. And that's when it's kind of okay, we have now felt the impacts of Senate Bill one. What does what do municipal services really look like long term? Project progress updates. Sidewalk funding will be increased uh to a total of 900,000. That's a 12% increase. Blight elimination funding will be increased to 850,000. That's a 21% increase. Uh, and road paving funding, even with a decrease of half a million dollars because of House Bill 1461 in the state legislature, will still increase by 4% to a total of 3.85 million.

Some other project progress updates. Uh, the downtown facade grant program, uh, we've got we've got a plan to, uh, take that same program for facades to 12 points. Uh 12 Points has had a very targeted development plan. They have seen some success. Council Jay, we do have that building that is on track to get cleaned up. Don't worry. Um the 13th and 8th Avenue overpass, the overpass that is uh older than I am, I might say. The overpass that survived five presidential administrations and I think almost six mayors now. That goes out to bid. Knock on wood. I think I'm sitting in a a white tabletop here. uh in July of 2026. So, new governor, new president, new folks at INDOT, new folks at federal department of transportation. That really triggers a delay and a review that did create some issues with our MO, which is our local metropolitan planning organization. And so, we've got some funds rolled over. We've got a plan. We've communicated to the state and federal government, and we feel confident this time that it will go out to bid next year. We are already doing some work now, some rideway work, some property acquisition. So, while the physical large-scale construction of this project is not out to bid, it does not mean that we're not doing the little things to build uh build some momentum as we go into 2026 as it pertains to the 13th and 8th Avenue overpass. 550,000 is planned for traffic improvements and guardrail repair. Uh think like updating some of our signal boxes, and you've seen some work in and around town. I I certainly hope you have. Uh this does include our audible crosswalk program. Uh the big one that we've just kind of really wrapped up and are still doing some final tests is an audible crosswalk uh over by Teroot South at at Davis. Uh they actually have a number of students who train who are uh impaired to a certain degree who use that crosswalk for training. So, we're very proud to continue to work with our uh different members from the deaf and

blind community to add to some of our opportunities for them to be able to safely walk uh in and around our community. This same budget line includes guardrail repair. Uh and again, guardrails, sometimes you don't repair them and sometimes there's a little bit of a vehicular motor motor vehicle accident. And so, we've got a fund in there to take care of some of those. From a public safety standpoint, I'm proud to say that uh the current administration has offered the highest increase for the police and fire department uh in what I think is Teroot history. I do have some historians looking into this, but this will bring their base pay up from 58,000 uh to 68,000. And then in year two, we will increase their rank pay, the percentage of what it would have gone up with an 18% increase uh to help with those who have rank. We were not able to do all of that in one calendar year. So the rest of that gets taken care of in year two. This brings us to a more competitive rate to some to some municipalities our size. Uh but when you look at longevity, when you look at base pay, we are doing what we can with the the city budget currently to help get them uh the support that they need. Uh investments will be made into new technology and we are doing our best to replace outdated equipment when able. The bulk of those purchases come from uh PSLIT and EMS non-reverting. The last thing, sorry I forgot to hit on this one earlier, folks uh that I wanted to hit is with this council support and help, we have used some additional casino gaming revenue number uh dollars to pay off leases early. Uh, one of the reasons we do that is it frees up a couple hundred thousand dollars for the next couple years in other budgets, but it also translates to real savings. Uh, so I'm very passionate about cleaning up the city's debt, short-term debt and long-term debt. And that's not fun. That's not sexy, but it's the the little steps that you have to take in municipal government to increase your credit rating to to show fiscal responsibility.

So, because of this council support when it comes to casino lease payoffs, uh we are going to save from interest alone $200,000 from the actions that you've taken. Not to mention, we've freed up dollars in the next two to threeyear budgets that we can now use to handle things like improving equipment and taking care of base pay. So, a little bit of everything there kind of in that opening monologue. At this time, I'll go ahead and uh leave the binder open and open this up for any questions from the council. We do have some department heads with us. So, if I need to pause for a specific question and chat with them, I will and then I'll come back and do my best to answer. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Um, council, anybody want to ask any questions?

Well, let me start then. Um, first I I appreciate the uh level of detail and I see that there's um you know there's you covered a lot of ground. Um the first thing that I would like just more of an explanation of is we've heard a lot about the requirement to um pass a wheel tax at the local level uh for uh to be able to pull down community crossings money. I you did say that we instead of passing a will tax, we're going to use uh casino revenue and I'd like just a little bit more explanation.

Uh Michelle, okay, thank you.

I'm just going to go ahead and leave this one on because I tried to turn this one uh off and on and it didn't quite go for me. Okay. So, House Bill 1461, 2026, still it's a million dollars matched through community crossing, right? City puts in a million, state puts in a million. Starting in 2027, thank you. There are different buckets. The first bucket is community crossing. These cities each get a million. The second bucket is $50 million directly to the city of Indianapolis to take care of their roads. The third bucket is based off the lane mileage in your city. You get what's called a direct dispersement. The revenue projections are not finalized to show how much a city will get for their direct dispersement. We are not eligible for this third bucket unless we pass a wheel tax. And let me pull one number here real quick. I did a projection to see how much our wheel tax revenue would have been. So, say we do a $7.50 wheel tax and sir tax. It comes out to about $330,000. So, we get $330,000 from our people, right? Our local skin in the game. Here's the issue. That would make us eligible for a direct dispersement. If our direct dispersement is not over a million dollars, the math doesn't map. If our direct dispersement is say $500,000, we through community crossings can only apply for $500,000. So whatever this direct dispersement number is, they decrease your community crossing grant dollars. So I'm waiting to see what those revenue projections look like because if the number frankly just does not make mathematical sense, right? If it's not worth it to ask someone who lives in the city of Terote

to pay a county wheel tax and a city wheel tax because they live a block in the city limits, just getting through that question does not pass the common sense test. And unless it is worth unless they're going to look and say, "Hey, young man, according to the direct dispersements, it was a really good year." Right? So, not only are you getting well over a million dollars, but we're able to say that your people who gave $300,000, you're going to get an extra $600 or $800,000 of road paving. Unless that question can be answered with clarity, with facts and data, it is not worth uh not just the the risk, right? The risk in terms of politics, but the sheer common sense test of asking Hoosiers to continue to pay more. So in 2027, we've created this system with now these three buckets and it triggers conversations. So you'll see some municipalities say, "Well, I I have to pass a wheel tax, right?" Okay, what's your lane mileage? Do you have enough lane mileage? Do you know how much is going to be left for that third bucket that it's actually going to make sense for you? And for some of them, they'll still be at this $3 million figure. Some communities have to do that. But because we've been very smart with edit, the engineering department has uh Brad has done an excellent job with paving and we have gaming revenue. We are still able to maintain the paving levels from this year. And this year we spent more on paving in a calendar year than we ever have directly on paving. We can still maintain that without a wheel tax. So my personal uh opinion and professional opinion is wait till 2028. Look at what 2 years of this direct dispersement data looks like. Be able to come to our constituents with a clear plan explaining why an additional tax even needs to be discussed before jumping right into it and doing it now.

That's great. Thank you. Um, so the other piece of this is we're using casino money instead, right? Um, as I look at my binder and I I'm on like, you know, budget form one looking at the riverboat casino, where do I find that ex that that money uh that line item within the budget? I see sidewalks, paving paving, $700,000.

Give me one second. It would be uh it ends in 432018 demolition. In 2025, it was 300,000. In the 2026 proposed budget, it's 400,000. So, it's under demolition in casino budget.

Sorry, it is under paving. I apologize, Councilman Nation. It's under paving. Uh the exact account number ends in last 31 0 going from 400,000 to 700,000 in the 2026 budget. And so granted a a large reason why that has to go up by 300,000 and we had to increase it within EDID is to recoup the 500,000 that we now no longer have through uh Governor Hulkcom's great program of casino of uh community crossing. So that's kind of one of the reasons why we had that big of a jump. I will find the exact page within the budget form number one for you. Uh, and I think I'm looking at it, man. Uh, it's page one in your uh, budget form on one's.

Uh, thank you. Starts with casino and I'm looking at um 700,000 a $700,000 p. So that's the that's where I find it. That's that's where you find it. Um,

and that's where you find the amount from just the casino. Um, and this isn't for you. This is for for some of our our newer folks on the the council as well as some of the folks who are watching online. When we say 3.85 million is going to paving that includes the casino paving and edit paving. What it does not include is projects through redevelopment. And so the CBDG program, which is the work we've been doing in the 13th corridor, there's like $1 million a year done of paving, storm water, and sidewalk work. On top of this, there's a $6.5 million paving project called New Margaret that is in a tip district that is tied to the bond that the council passed. There's the $5 million repaving of Hunt Road and the beginning of College Avenue, that extension. So, those are, yes, there's paving inside of that, but those are overall infrastructure projects where we don't just do paving, we do the store water, we do utilities, we do sewage. So I it gets a little bit confusing when you talk paving verse project, but that's why these are kind of all in different accounts and and under different names.

Thanks for that explanation. That that helps and that kind of holistic view of paving, for example, how it's spread over many places in the budget. Um if if you could just spend a little bit more time um on this casino riverboat SB1. um just going going down the casino line because this is still a new area of the budget to those of us who have uh served on the council and you know to the newer people too.

Um and you know that's you've already made the point that this is our biggest this is what's keeping us from uh our budget from uh from going down. Uh instead our budget is rising a little bit. It's because we've got uh $6 million roughly.

So, let's go top to bottom. Um the first is longevity. That's that 1.5 million longevity uh for years of service. A number of our departments uh get an extra financial amount and this is for police and fire. This longevity amount over two years is pulled back to the general fund. Right? We were only able to do this for one year to do this increase. Next year though with a 0% increase for police and fire, we're able to grow that general fund and that increase can take moving this back to the general fund. The second is overtime. Um well, I guess we'll talk about this here. The overtime here is for a program that I'm going to start called the uh safe neighborhood and property crime initiative. What that is is during select months of the year, we increase our uniform officer presence uh in select neighborhoods that have high property crime as well as downtown. Uh and this is a proactive policing policy uh that we are going to implement on the local level. One of the reasons why I'm doing that is I am sick and tired of state officials having the audacity to look at these mayors and say, "Well, you're not doing enough for crime." All the while they're cutting prison beds at the state level, pushing state prisoners into local prisons, practically going to fault because they failed to pay some of these local jails. Great story, David Grankkey and the Tribune Star. Um, but this type of proactive policing model shows uh cuz we did this this summer in and around downtown and we saw a huge decrease in 911 calls and and and this is something where it usually happens at hours of the night and it usually happens in neighborhoods where we've got some frequent flyers. We do not control the judicial branch of government. We don't control the courts. We don't control the jails. What we can do is put out a professional task force

to proactively show our neighbors, our friends, our fellow churchgoers that we have a plan to address crime in neighborhoods where it has increased. So this task force, we've got one month where we're going to do it this year here in the next couple of months and then I'll do a closeout presentation showing, hey, look, you'll probably see an increase in arrest at the beginning because folks are out in certain areas of the community where they used to be able to do that because we were limited on some of our police officers, but over time you then see the decrease. So we're going to do an official presentation of the fruit of that labor uh later this year about some of the work we've done this year. This 50,000 is a placeholder. 50,000 allows us to operate this for one month. Uh and you really need to do it three to four months throughout the year. So what I want to do is say, okay, here's the one month where we really need it. And as we underspend in other areas, how can we quickly do an out of series transfer through a council to say, okay, the task force did well. Let's reauthorize another month. Okay, we're seeing the numbers that we want. Let's reauthorize number one. uh the let's reauthorize the task force or we can say hey we've done it a couple of months property crimes decrease we're good right it provides an offramp uh to us as well as a fiscal body office supplies is 6700 um services contractual is the neighborhood revitalization grants demo 400,000 paving 700,000 sidewalks 400,000 remember there's sidewalks and edit as well and we do two sidewalk work orders instead of one. So, it used to be we did the sidewalk work order at the beginning of paving season and that was it for a year. Uh now we kind of do two separate orders. It allows us to not just double our efforts but really be more efficient with some of the crosswalks and sidewalks that we're working on. Civic promotions is 22,500. I pulled

that out of the general fund because this program uh should in theory go away. Like if there are budget constraints and it needs to go away, it is in a place where it can go away. Civic promotions are sponsorships that the city does uh for nonprofit events or community events. And so in the event that the general fund can't stomach it and casino gaming revenue goes down, this isn't a place where it has a natural off-ramp. Building improvements here. Uh, okay. We did our cemetery workers building this year. Uh, and then 100,000's in there for Highland Chapel. And then our transit shelters. We're looking at doing five transit shelters. And then the police department's looking to do a pole barn for some of their larger tactical equipment that's currently at the fire training center just sitting out in in all the elements. So, uh, there's three really big projects there. Next, I have purchase of equipment. So, this is uh the street department is slowly upgrading their fleet. Uh we do have a new loader and plan for that. Uh and we did need to put a placeholder for the Diesel Wise grant that we got from the state. So, we're upgrading some of our equipment uh thanks to a state grant and this is where that placeholder is. And we're just going to do a buyout for our golf carts just to get away from two leases from two separate courses. we're able to just buy a fleet outright and that reduces funding over time. Purchase of a computer equipment. Uh well, actually this is a great time uh to discuss some of the really good work being done by our IT department. So what happens this October, Windows 10 goes bye-bye. Uh so to a lot of organizations that means the entire the entire IT infrastructure system needs to be upgraded. Uh but what we're doing, our IT department is not just upgrading computers or desktops. Uh we're going

through we're updating, you know, cables. We're updating how our IT communicates through some of our other city departments. We were very decentralized parts, PD, fire, wastewater. They were all in charge of really their own IT. This forced them to do this through a services contractual agreement within their departments. By bringing a lot of those services inhouse, we're able to do these major upgrades, pay for them in cash, not have to hire consultant and do it with our employees. Some purchase of office equipment in there. Uh that's for the clerk and the controller. For parts, 235,000. That's our uh playground equipment. And these purchases here is you know when you see us do our neighborhood playgrounds uh Maple Khallet Park for example that the tennis courts there the Booker T Washington playground set those type of projects that are smaller that's it comes from there. Those aren't the 2.67 million Hurst Rose Park project for purchase of vehicles. This is for our parts department to upgrade their vehicle fleet. For the last 15ish years, their equipment is handme-down equipment. Handme-down equipment continues to break and it's really adding uh to their labor, to their time, and it's costing the city. So, we're going to upgrade uh their vehicle fleet to help make them more efficient. We got some license and leases. Then the Deming Park pool project 1.15 million with the bulk of that being spent this year. We're going to encumber that. So that means we take the contract and the funds are paid out next year but it's using money from this year's budget so that way it doesn't add to next year's budget. The YMCA project which we discussed so principal and interest on notes. What

we did there is we pulled some of the lease payments from some of our departments to give them a year of breathing room. Uh anytime we pull a lease payment out of their budget and put it into casino, that means of course the gaming revenue covers it and their budget has breathing room for uh equipment or projects in and of itself. That's another example of hey, you do this so you have an off-ramp because if you need to stop this now, you're able to completely stop it and then reduce things in 2028 and 2031. Uh does that answer?

That's great. That helps uh me. But there is one other question that I'd like to ask for everyone's edification, including my own. Can you briefly speak to the three different buckets of money that the uh that the casino generates for the city and just give a kind of an overview because when we talk about casino money, I think that there's often a lot of confusion, especially with the my constituents about all right, so which pot are we talking about and how many pots are there and who's in control of what?

Yeah. So, um Disc is going to pull up our supplemental wagering and our wagering report. How this works, the casino has a wagering tax and supplemental wagering tax. The majority of those funds go to the city. Some of it does go to the county and a very small amount goes to the schools. Outside of that, there is a foundation that's created. That's the the I think it's the Terote Casino Foundation, I believe, is the name of it. I have two appointments to that board. That is Kelsey Hankitz and Mark Blade. They are reviewing a plan to see where their dollars could go. uh and and I am, you know, of the the mind and and in in the group that says if you're getting money for a foundation you what is your transformational project? What's the one thing that we need to improve that we don't have enough local government dollars to improve? And that conversation is around our schools. So, they're looking at can we use the money from the casino foundation to help offset the costs for the schools. The other bucket of money is through property tax. the casino uh is in a tiff district. So in that tiff district, those dollars have to stay there. Instead of burdening the entire city and adding utilities and roadways out east and saying, "Hey, everyone has to pay for that." We took the casino's 4.7 million projected uh property tax amount, used it to pull a bond for $22 million to add infrastructure and utilities to all the green fields around the casino to connect some of our parcels out east to continue the 6 to 10 building permits we see a year in and along State Road 46 and to take care of Hunt Road. Milestone moves, Hunt Road goes downhill, right? very large trucks are on Hunt Road now. Well, instead of taking all of our road paving funding from our three smaller buckets, we looped it into this bond of 22 million

bonded off of one single entity, the casino. And now this bond, which I believe it's a 15-year bond, we will be able to pay off in seven in seven and half the time. What's impressive about that is that is the type of municipal math you need to do to increase a city's credit rating, which frankly has been abysmal for since the time I was about 12. And I'm looking forward to paying that bond off so we can finally increase our credit rating because the better our credit rating is, it helps when we have conversations about bonding for other municipal projects or projects tied to the sanitary district and sewage. And it's a lot harder to bond with a bad credit rating through sewage bills. So you got to find a way to increase your credit rating. And that was the second and third order effect of how we tied that all to one parcel. So three total buckets. Bucket one, supplemental wagering and wagering. Bucket two, foundation, and bucket three is the property tax tied to the tiff district.

Thanks. And bucket one is what we just went over. Yes. uh in that's expressed in our budget and then the other two you just summarize the plans for us. Thank you very much. Um I feel like I'm monopolizing the uh the conversation. I'd like to open it up again to my to my fellow council members. Council Council President Chavis. Um, this is my fourth non-consecutive term on the council. And, uh, one of the things I learned years ago from some of the older councilmen and my dad being mayor for four terms, right, is that anytime in a budget and anything changes by 8% one way or the other, it's worthy of being questioned.

Yeah. But having the opportunity to talk to you quite a bit about this, right, I realize the casino has been a a wonderful thing for us. I get it. But there's a lot of red in here, which tells me that you've sharpened your pencil a lot, right? So, I quickly realized that there's been kind of a massive restructure of how things operate, you know, and one of the things that that means to me, which is not the way government always works, right? That's allowed us to stay out of the pocket of our constituents. You just mentioned not going right into wheel taxes and things of that nature and seeing if there's another way to do things, right?

So, let me be very direct here. Had we not increased the casino expenses because the casino revenue was increasing, that expense budget is closer to a 24 million instead of 129. And then right off the bat, you've decreased um and and granted we we could do that, but then that casino revenue money sitting in the projects that we're talking about are only going to rise in cost. So, it's really important to say, you know, and I tell folks, had we not had the casino, you know, there would have been some very, very difficult conversations, uh, not just about scrapping scrapping projects, but conversations with people. Uh, and it's allowed us to actually have a 1.47% increase, which again is very marginal with inflation being at 3%. Um, but still basically kind of maintaining flat, right? Absolutely. But part of that is also the restructure and saving the money that we have. Um I had a quick question because we've had a lot of things that are happening. I mean I've had a lot of positive things and people talking about the positive things

with this budget. Um and the changes, how do they align with your priorities for 2026?

You know, I definitely think um we do see a very strong priority with public safety and it's not just the the salary, right? It is. Hey, we have very specific task forces like IAC, right? Going after uh child predators online, like safe neighborhood and property crime initiatives, like an FBI task force. It does address improving our archaic infrastructure. So, some all right, for example, Ed Stewart and the wastewater department found a way to do a lot of things inhouse that we used to pay consultants and companies to do for us. Those savings get rolled into drainage improvements and that's how you help upgrade our quote archaic infrastructure. Those are the little internal decisions that you see that sometimes only translate to 10 more feet of sidewalk or to improve storm water drains or one extra park with playground equipment. But every time, you know, Jesse calls Eddie Birdie says, "Hey, I need help with the parks." Okay, well instead of hiring a contractor, let's see if Brian Kotti and some street department guys can do it or let's text Ed Stewart to see if his guys can do it. You start seeing different line items go down and the savings there can instantly get repurposed back to the consumer which is the constituents. So those are how those little things add up when it comes to archaic infrastructure quality of life projects and something that I'm very passionate about is uh modernizing our city equipment to improve efficiencies. You look at, you know, some of the equipment that they've had. We're talking not just dump trucks and loaders and street sweepers, but basic lawnmowers, weed whackers without the plastic to actually trim the weed. I mean, those are decisions that have made us more efficient. We can cut grass faster because we've improved equipment. We can use software to schedule who's going where, who's doing what pickup to save our employees time. Uh and and that's

the very difficult thing that you see in in a lot of governments, right? People say, you know, we we got to stick to the status quo. No, sometimes you have to go in there and and kind of follow the tenants almost of a startup and and analyze every single piece of equipment, every person, every organizational chart to see who's communicating or who's going where. We have a trash task force that runs like November till about April and May, right? Because from April to May to October is grass cutting season. That trash task force was only able to be done because we made ourselves efficient and we looked at people's time and calculated opportunity costs and were able to staff it internally. Uh and and that's why sometimes in those spring and winter months, the city does look cleaner, right? Because we are able to add a task force without adding labor using our internal teams and organizations. So, that's some of those little things that folks might not see it, but they might notice. Hey, you know, the guy got one extra sidewalk down there. Wow, I never thought my residential street would be paved cuz I don't live on Wabash, right? Or I don't live on Popppler. So, those are the little things that we do and and over time they they add up, but uh it's definitely a long process.

Well, I'm sure. And I love the pay as you go philosophy. Yeah, too. Um I do I do think it frees up from all that interest. the phrases up from bonding and um those things that accumulate in our budget over time also and I think some of that's being cleaned up on there and I can see that on here too. So I appreciate it for now.

Anybody else? Cool. You touched on this a little bit ago, but I think it's worth rement mentioning. Um the the it seems like we've become less reliant on consultants over the last year and a half. And I think that really deserves um recognition. I know it's often easy just to go out and hire a consultant to do the work. But as you go through each of these lines, you can see the cost savings through various department being creative in that. So I just want to commend you on that. Um, talking about the golf courses, when we had the the financial report done last year, there was concern that uh particularly that Homeland Links was in the red. Um, it's my understanding that Ray Park is now in the positive. Do we foresee

a time in the near future where our golf courses will be out of the red?

Uh, for Ray Park, the projections show within I want to say three, but really four years, then that one's clean. for home and links it's a little bit longer but what we have found is there is an opportunity to increase revenue there through advertising and sponsorships um but we did test home and links for oil uh and we have started some negotiations with country mark about that uh and that could be used to help offset the revenue but here's what I'll also say uh Councilman Dinkl is from a business standpoint it is very easy to say well well home and links is in the red okay well what's Thompson Park What's Deming Park? What's Fairbanks Park? They in theory are all in the red because they're not necessarily bringing in revenue, right? Their revenues provided through tax revenue. So when you look at home and links, I always say to it was very unfortunate almost that that budget was pulled out and separated. It should be just one Gulf budget in my personal opinion. Uh which we will look to do in the future. But we cannot treat that differently than we treat our other parks. It is providing a benefit. You go out there in the summer uh to the first tea program uh where kids are able to learn the game of golf for free. You go out there, you see our high schools that all use our course, our colleges play, you see some of the outings that we have, the amount of people that it comes to town. So yeah, it's very and I understand, right? It's hard to to make a profit at a municipal golf course, but I don't run Fairbanks Park to make a profit. I run Fairbanks Park for the people of Teroot to enjoy a quality of life asset that any American should be able to enjoy who lives in a city. Can a city have a park, right? That's one of the reasons why people uh move to communities. So I understand that the business side of it um and I do see a way forward on the business side of it, but there's also a this is one of those instances where the private sector,

right, their fiduciary responsibilities to maximize shareholders wealth. Well, for the public sector, it's to provide the same benefits to all of its constituents minus the net externalities, right? It's it's just there's a slight difference between business and government. And this is one of those examples. No, I I totally agree and I I think it has been unfair. I mean, we could make any budget look like it's any department look like it's losing money depending on how it's structured. Um, and I mean, I'll say when I was

13 years old, when I first decided, hey, I'd like to try golf, it was Ray Park that I was able to go to cuz that's what I could afford as a 13-year-old. So, I think I totally agree there. It it plays a necessary role in our community. I think it's a bit unfair to say, well, it needs to, you know, turn a profit. Uh that's not what municipal government's for. Uh my last question is just a specific um a couple of expense lines. We we talked about the civic promotions that were moved to uh the casino. Yes. There are two lines in redevelopment, two different departments. Uh one's in home program for 200,000 and then there's a million in the uh 46 tiff. Yes. What are those used for?

So the 46 tiff, you see the civic promotions line there used as a placeholder for infrastructure projects. And I keep that there because um for example, the 12th and Wabash uh apartment project that we close on at the end of the month, instead of them saying, "Hey, I want a developer back bond." It's like, "Well, let's negotiate. What if I do a set amount of infrastructure in and around your site that helps improve the conditions for you to build and it translates directly into a building permit? Uh we used this uh plan this past year when we connected a water line out east. Just by connecting that water line, uh it led to six total building permits in some of the restaurants that we see today. So I'm very very specific though on those infrastructure projects for that civic promotions line because it needs to have a return on investment. Uh that is a strictly business decision like what infrastructure project are we going to do that grows the tax base for the home program. That $200,000 is for our CHO certified organizations. One that we work with you've seen a number of their projects is Habitat for Humanity. Uh, so I do not anticipate them being able to use that full amount, frankly, because it's very difficult to, you know, they would need a very large labor force, but I budget about double what I think they need in the event that another CHOT comes online to be able to build lowincome housing for our community. And those dollars are uh issued through HUD, Housing and Urban Development. And uh it's very rare that folks like Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden all agree on something. But something they all agreed on is that the federal HUD dollars through the home program requires organizations who receive those dollars to be CHO certified. I think it's C H O. And that basically ensures that they are a nonprofit. They are fiscally stable. and they can use

government dollars to deliver on either incomebased housing or low-income housing or housing like Habitat for Humanity uh which basically creates a home and allows someone to live at it who simply would not have been able to afford it because life has dealt them a different set of cards. Thank you. Council President Thompson. Uh just briefly, um under uh law department, um there's 60,000 budgeted for settlement payments. Um what is that for exactly?

So those are through like insurance settlements or claims. And Councilman Thompson, it's super frustrating because one year you'll be like, "Oh, we didn't have any claims." Then next thing it's like, "Oh, I just got a claim from 2023 and 2025." Um so that's what that is used for. Um, and someone trips and falls in a sidewalk and sues the city kind of situation. There's a number of situations that it pertains to. Um, so that number fluctuates year to year. It can, but the the budgeted amount is pretty stagnant. Um, but the expense line over the years does vary. That's it.

And now we also have a a good insurance policy and there's a lot of conversation with the insurance policy. So I do I want to add that Anybody else? Council President, Council President LMO, um I know, mayor, you've talked about Senate enrolled act one quite a bit in the next couple years and and um well aware of of having the casino revenue to get us through for the next couple years to try to

help with that and then shift stuff back. Um, and as Councilman Chlo said, as we've moved stuff around, I mean, I'll be the first one to say that you don't understand government accounting. It's a shell game. It's definitely a shell game. Um, my question to you is in the next couple of years with Senate Enrolled Act One, I know you said we're going to have to have some talks. What do you think we're going to be able to s sustain the salaries and budgets that we have?

That's a really good question. The salaries as they are today. Yes. Right. We would not pass a salary increase that we wouldn't think we could pay 3 to 5 years from now. The conversation at hand really is 3 to four years from now, what do the next round of increases look like? Because what Senate Bill one really does is it affects your growth. Correct.

And if you can't grow your general fund, you're essentially staying at a flat amount year after year after year, which might not be apparent two years in to the the full effects of Senate Bill one. But 5 years in, it is. Why? Because one, you lose talent to private sector organizations. Uh but two, the natural conversation of costs increasing of costs that increase through a number of things, tariffs, inflation. I mean, just do life, right? Uh, and something that's very frustrating is the state legislature, one other problem that they've hit us with is they are asking employers to pay more for state pensions. Correct.

But instead of the state helping to be that employer, they push it all at the local level. So if you look in the uh general fund budgets, the amount that the police and fire pension has increased is because the pension went from 1723 to 27 from 20.3% to 23.3%.

Right? That alone is a $758,000 increase to the city's property tax expenses. And granted, I understand the point of the legislature trying to say, "Hey, you know, employers got to help out." But when you're asking us to help out while reducing our budgets, it's like, well, eventually as that number goes up, you're going to have to pull from something else. So, what do you want us to do? Right? And and what I think is interesting is if you look at some of those pensions, they are self-fundable. Like right now, if every police officer in the state of Indiana retired, it would still have a multi-billion dollar cash balance. So, there is a we did uh explain this to our uh state treasurer, Daniel Elliott. He came to meet with me uh and the number one thing we talked about was this pension conversation. He's going to come back down uh to meet with our police chief, fire chief, and myself again. And then we've got a couple other cities that are going to work this problem with him directly to actually create a plan to bring to the legislature. Cuz what him and I really agree on is well, we can't just say the system's broken, right? let's find a way to recreate the system instead of just complain about status quo and then bring that to our legislature to see if they will entertain it.

And then the last thing is I guess um since I had the privilege of sending in on a few of the negotiations um if if you'd like to just give an update or having an update to the council.

Has everyone signed their contracts? Are they up to vote yet? our two of our bigger ones, uh, one's currently under vote, one will go up to vote this weekend. Um, and then our plan is to have them all finished and signed at the October 14th board of works meeting. Uh, with most of the other ones have been scheduled or communications have gone out and they're working on scheduling. Is there that chance that the one that's not gone to vote yet, if there's still some language waiting to be discussed, that it'll affect the salary ordinance because right now you got a scheduled to do the salary ordinances October 2nd and they're not being passed by the board of public works till the 14th.

I at this time I don't see concern. I realize that there's still one out there that there's still some language that might be Now, at this time, I I think we've got a a good plan. Of course, we're getting close to the wire, but I see no cause for concern. Uh, in the event we would need to, if needed, we would have to amend the salary ordinance, but I I don't see that being an issue today. Okay. All right. Are you anybody else? I just had one question. Council person Bullet. Um, so the two social workers that we're fortunate enough to have right now, one of them is played paid out of the police department fund, right?

Yes. And one's out of the opioid lit litigation fund. What What are other uses that we're perceiving to use that opioid litigation fund? I mean, I don't know what the balance of the account or anything, but one thing I will say, there's a really good Indiana Capital Chronicle article about what not to use them for because the mayors around the state and councils have gotten in trouble for that.

About 80% of the opioid funds are quote restricted. So, they have to go to uh basically something that the legislators defined that helps with uh the opioid problem. uh you have seen things is uh assisting nonprofits or uh creating a grant program. But what's very difficult is looking what other cities have done. It's not sustainable. It's a one-time one-year benefit. Uh with our current social worker model right now, if we got zero revenue, we can fund that position for 12 more years, right? And so that is a you know we see the benefit of our two social workers uh on the streets uh daily the the work that they are doing in and around the community. Uh we we look forward we've got a I did send an email to yourself um Councilman Thompson and Councilman uh Councilman Chaos about our warming center uh working group this Monday at 9:00 a.m. helping not just the homeless problem but on mental health calls and sometimes even helping guys within the department. Uh and we would not have expanded the program honestly to two social workers unless it came from the department. Uh and a lot of folks on the department wanted that program to expand. Uh it is in my personal opinion significantly harder to be a cop today than 30 years ago. Uh you go into some of these rooms into some of these calls and you're not just a law enforcement officer. uh you you're almost a second parent uh a social worker, a paramedic and it just adds more and more and more the problem because there are more problems that are prevalent today uh than decades ago. So this is really helping them close that gap. Uh they do it a lot of training as well to keep them up to speed. But I I'm I treat all of our dollars restricted and unrestricted as restricted uh and use it to fund the program for for the next 12 years. and but we are still receiving revenue. So, we'll continue to update that number.

Okay. I just heard in a couple other meetings that there's a big pot of money at the county level and we're looking to use it for something a big project maybe instead of doing it out. I was just wondering where we were at with sustaining that social worker that's coming out of that opioid medication fund. Yeah. All of our all of our budgets I really look for uh really longevity. How can you sustain operate? And that ties to Councilman Lauderm Milk's question as well. And uh simply as it pertains to the county government, I I'll just say no comment. Oh, I I had no comment either. I just wondered where we were at with a long-term plan. So, thank you. I yield.

Well, thank you. Um Michelle, can you remind us of the uh schedule for um P for voting on the budget? I was just going to ask you if you wanted me to. October 2nd at 6:00 p.m. during the regular meeting, we'll be voting on the um salary ordinances and the uh general fund budget. October 9th will be the sanitary budget voting meeting during the regular uh meeting at 6:00 p.m. So no additional special meetings at this time. Great.

During regular meetings. So that means nobody has to text me asking me if you have to show up on a certain day. Right. Well, if that's it, I would entertain a motion. So moved to It has been moved by Council Person Hinton and seconded by Council Person Bolan that we adjourn. All in favor, please say I. I. Opposed? All right, we stand adjourned. Thank you, mayor. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you, everybody who came. That's