5 June 2012 Dearborn County Commissioners Meeting Notes

5 June 2012 Dearborn County Commissioners Meeting Notes

Present: Jeff Hughes, President, Tom Orschell, and Shane McHenry

Also present: Gayle Pennington, Auditor, Teresa Randall, County Administrator, and Andy Baudendistel, Attorney.

OLD BUSINESS:

Payroll Schedule change- Tabled again

Gary Hensley, Assessor, Approval to send out Annual Trending RFP- commissioners approved. (Terri Randall presented for Hensley who was out of town on business.)

NEW BUSINESS:

Steve Renihan- Regional Sewer District- Mt Tabor Allocations-Brett Fehrman presented -  SDRSD is leaning to taking this sewage to Aurora. Wolpert estimated $4 million to fix all the problems in the area. They think this will be done for around $2million. Cost per home is about $16,000 including the grinder pump. They are thinking of a long term payback – like 40 years for the homeowners. They use as an incentive- offering the grinder pump for those who hook up early. They don’t force people on. There are 54 homes if they go to High ridge and 49 if they go to Aurora. They haven’t figured in Walston’s Trailer Park yet. They are hoping to decide Thursday at their meeting. $869,691.89 is needed out of their funds. Commissioners gave permission to go to Council to seek the transfer of those funds.

Hughes spoke of OKI Ramifications on the 208 water quality plan. Now we don’t have any representation on decisions made by this board. He has some issues with municipalities carving out territory in areas that are in county unincorporated area. OKI did the study with IDEM granting money to do that. OKI clouded the boundaries that IDEM had granted previously to SDRSD. Hughes said he has lost confidence after that last meeting. Orschell said that people just voted on it as they had to decide and it was 10 PM. Hughes said OKI said they had to move it along for legal protection. Hughes said that was a scare tactic. He was not in favor of that. He wants to know if they would like to send a resolution to OKI to ask them to amend the map to the original boundaries. What would be the ramifications if they decided not to join with OKI on this anymore?- Hughes asked.  Baudendistel will check with Frank Kramer before doing this and he remembered they did  a resolution at a previous meeting. Hughes hopes they will listen this time.

Maintenance for Dearborn County Vehicles- Terri Randall said this has been discussed before. She wants to evaluate how effective we are being with maintenance. She is trying to determine what we are spending now on maintenance for vehicles. She wants to send an email to all depts. to see where they are getting it done and seeing if they can bring this in-house. The other option is to put it out to bid with local maintenance companies. She thinks to put a few more controls in the process and see if we can save some money. She thinks controls need to be in place for gas usage on county vehicles too. Budget hearings will be a good time to discuss this. This would include sheriff’s dept. There are depts. without line items for fuel and maintenance. Listerman said this would be a good idea. Commissioners gave Randall permission to do a vehicle maintenance usage analysis.

Mike Rozow- Dearborn County Economic Redevelopment Commission- Redirection of Funds- Paul Kunkel told commissioners that they’d spent part of the money given to them for land purchase in West Harrison area. They have companies lined up to fill the Business Park, $500,000 out of the $1.35 million left to use as incentives for a company that will come in. This will leave $850,000 for future land acquisitions. The commissioners granted permission for Kunkel to go to Council to get that money transferred and be reallocated for incentives out of the land purchase fund.

Bill Black- Director of EMA- Signatures on EMPG grant- $38,538.61 reimburses half the salaries of 3 in the dept. Grant signed. They also signed off conflict of interest statements as they are partly state employees also and have to do their ethics education. More state money coming in but can’t be used for salaries per Black.

Bill Black- Elected and appointed officials workshop – July 11 from 5-9 PM It’s a good program and informative on where the buck stops when disaster strikes. Commissioners are ultimately in charge when that happens. This outlines everyone’s responsibilities. Applications need to be filled out by officials – he hopes they all come.

Bill Black- AIS system – automatic identification system – a company (Maritime Information Systems)  has asked if we would put an antenna and a couple transmitters to track our boats on the river if they are responding to an incident. It tracks barges and their cargo. No cost to us. They furnish, install, and maintain it. We do the power to it and the internet connection.  Baudendistel said this company can sell this information to 3^rd parties. They do give us a free subscription to their reports per Black. This is not time sensitive. Baudendistel said he could look into this for the commissioners. They will check to see if any other government agencies have used this.  Tabled.

Black is trying to get some fill from the city to fill in behind their building. There are big holes in the building parking lot drilled to check soil for the jail expansion and so they will need access to the back. Randall said she would like to coordinate that with the construction manager.

Dennis Kraus, Jr. – Surveyor- Signatures on Council Ordinance 2012-001- Authority to Sell Plat Books- Pennington presented this. Baudendistel  drew up a Home Rule Ordinance for Council and they approved it at $16 as  a reimbursement to county general. Commissioners signed off on this.

Ratify signatures on Adult Protective Services Grant-This is thru the Prosecutor’s office as a hub for 3 other counties around us also.  Commissioners ratified Hughes’s signature on this.

HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT:

Todd Listerman, Highway Engineer- Got with Irwin on the ROW offer ( see previous meeting notes)  and Baudendistel mails the agreement tomorrow. They’ll know it’s OK when the signatures come back.

Bridge 102 on North Dearborn ROW has been acquired.

Council funded Lower Dillsboro Rd project.

Whitewater Canal Scenic Byway-Listerman said with our concerns he asked INDOT and received a letter from INDOT saying that if we pledge active funds to them in their TE project, then we cannot get other bridge funds. TE funds are used for historic bridges. We cannot get any federal aid for a slip either if there is an active TE project in the system. Bridge 138 and Bridge 24 will be the next ones in the system after Collier Ridge. Some of these slips are $1,000 a ft to fix. This is a NEW RULE for this year. INDOT said if we do the Whitewater Canal then we cannot apply for any others. They need to call the Whitewater people so they can find another sponsor for their project. Commissioners agreed and officially voted stating  that they need to rescind the offer to be the sponsor and not  be lead agencyand let the Byway people know. This is no reflection on the project- just the risk to the county. Listerman and Randall will notify her. Listerman will be at IHS next two days then off as his son is getting married.

Tim Grieve, Highway Superintendent- passed out a start to the plan for highway maintenance. He shows the roads that have been improved and those that aren’t. These are being done with millings on low traffic volume roads. Small roads up in the NW area are on his list. He thinks it would be a good idea to do this to save on grading time. He also wants  to do Cambridge that is outside that are but is gravel. They will have to chip seal some. He’s asking for money. $750,000 to do millings to update a lot of the roads and chip seal the ones we have already done. They are installing culverts on Weisberg so they can start paving with the money that council granted. Todd said there is an issue of the quality of the millings sometimes too. Grieve said it’s hard to get some millings. Recycled asphalt paving- RAP- can be stockpiled. Shipping costs can be too high if further away. Grieve has found a place to acquire millings for the NW quad roads. They will do 10 miles of the 40 miles needed. Baudendistel said , joking, that his only concern was that Washington St in Guilford wasn’t on it. Commissioners approved Grieve to go to Council for $750,000.

Grieve said that he wants to identify the worst areas that they have. They were hoping to talk to Lawrenceburg to get a match for county money to fix these. McHenry said he’s talked to Lawrenceburg- and they are more like an 80/20. Randall will help with the negotiations and they have specific task for the money. The best time to do this is at their budget time. She would like to get it together by the June 19 Council meeting before we go to Lawrenceburg. Council has to support this first. Commissioners approved Grieve, Listerman, and Randall moving forward on this plan to County Council first.

ADMINISTRATOR: Teresa Randall gave an update:

Hoosier Square Project Update- she said that Council has approved her request with the caveat that she keep the cost reasonable and return any part of the $65,000 not used.

Maxwell $25,400 for drainage project on Hoosier Square as low bid. This could take 2-4 weeks and they will have to find other parking during the repairs. There were 4 bids returned. Commissioners approved Maxwell.

The staircase rebuild will be sent to 7 firms for that – due back by June 15. Commissioners approved her moving forward on this and award it to low bidder as long as it is under $20,000. 

Fiberoptic funds were allocated and she attended a PC meeting to see if they can help and heard that AT&T might be installing fiberoptics soon.

Jail Expansion Architect RFP and Interview Process- sent out to 8 regional firms that do jails. RQAW and DLZ are included. (Brett Dodd of RQAW went to work for DLZ.) They will come back on Monday. They will put together an interview team. They want to do this the latter part of next week. She wants this to be a neutral process. She wants some more county people to be on the team. Hughes said he shouldn’t be on the team as he probably won’t like any of the firms.

She has a lot of work on statistics on the jail and wants to put them on the county website. She’s trying to get statewide pieces to compare. She will post those when she finishes.

Fire and EMS Study Update- well attended- good discussion. They need to take next steps and get the task force back together. Some additional statistics have come in. The work is moving forward.

Surplus Vehicle Auction- There are 15 vehicles. She researched the right way to do this. She’s researching the online method and she wants to include the locals also. They get an additional 7% from the buyer for the online auction company.

Votaw and Shumway Demolition- put out an RFQ for an engineer to handle that and be sure it’s covered correctly.  She’s hoping it’s under $10,000. They have $130,000 still from Lawrenceburg to help with that. Art Wenzel may be able to help with that. Randall got approval to move forward with the RFQ and bid. She wants to have someone LOCAL doing it. It’s not a big project. [NOTE: Why not use Maxwell- the Construction manager- as the Destruction manager on this? They are engineers.]

Randall wants to set up a peer review process on incident reports on accidents in the county vehicles etc. Baudendistel said they need an ordinance passed first for this. He’ll look into that.

AUDITOR: Gayle Pennington:

Claims and minutes from May 1 and 15 approved.

Consulting Services Agreement- GFC contract- financial consultant that helps prepare for budget. She asked to table this to include another item in the agreement. TABLED.

ATTORNEY: Andy Baudendistel- copy of agreement between the county and Tucker development to be signed. They will be taking over sections 1,2,3 of Seldom Seen and Tucker will be paying $10,000 and  turning over FROW for Stateline road project.

John J Frick and Associates sent a professional services release agreement back with signature and witnessed. This ends our association with them as lobbyists. The commissioners signed off on this.

COMMISSIONER COMMENTS- McHenry said he’d spoke with Mr. Steinmetz and they will be working with them on their road situation.

Orschell said Bev Carpenter wanted a 5 K run again- and they will come in to present that. This is the family of Jack Carpenter- the 3 year old in Bright who was killed when hit by a car a couple years ago.

LATE ARRIVAL INFORMATION- none

PUBLIC COMMENT- none

Meeting adjourned at 8: 15PM

Christine Brauer Mueller
Lawrenceburg Township