2 July 2015 Dearborn County Council SPECIAL Meeting on FINANCING the ANNEX Notes

2 July 2015 Dearborn County Council SPECIAL Meeting on FIANACING the ANNEX Notes

This meeting as held in the 3rd floor conference room and was not recorded. No decisions were to be made. 

Present: Randy Lyness, President, Dennis Kraus. Sr., Dan Lansing, Liz Morris, Charlie Keyes, Ryan Brandt, and Bill Ullrich. 

Also present: Gayle Pennington, Auditor and Kevin Lynch, Commissioner

Paige Samsone and Jason Semler were present from Umbaugh and Associates

Randy Lyness opened the meeting asking about what to do with the financing and the Riverboat Revenue.

Kraus It’s hard to project where we will be with the Riverboat money- All you can do is GUESS and we can do that much ourselves.

Jason Semler- Originally- were asked about bonding. And we asked about what you might want to do is keep the cash and finance this. The trend is that the Riverboat is going down. He thought we could do projections so that we are not so dependent on Riverboat funds. What else are you using that money for?

Kraus said we put about 5.5 million into the operations of county. The SAVINGS would be what we would tap for his- and its about 9 million. 

Lynch said that we are on target to finish the jail on budget. Lynch said that about $200,000 or so is left to pay out. So about $11.2 million is spent so far. 

Lyness asked if Gayle had those numbers- She said she hadn’t gotten spreadsheets from Maxwell or Terri yet. 

Brandt asked about the 12 million for referendum- 

Umbaugh -Jason and Paige - only has to go to referendum if PROPERTY taxes are used to pay for it. You can use INCOME tax or you can even use property tax to back up the bonds as long as you don’t plan to spend the property tax.

Lansing said the admission tax will probably go away. 

Lynch agreed. There will be a switch to a gaming tax. Maybe in the next cycle in the next two years. 

Morris said every county across the state is in the same pinch. The property tax caps- everyone is hitting the circuit breakers. The level of funding went form 70% to 30% range ???

The legislature has not addressed how to make up for the loss of revenue. 

Umbaugh Jason and Paige- Their solution was to suggest people enact Local option income tax.

Lansing- but to operate it- we will have raise taxes in some form or another. 

Umbaugh- Jason and Paige- The CCD ( cum capital development ) fund would be property tax increase.  for example.

Morris- I got a 10% tax cut in my property tax. I don’t think it is right that I got a cut. 

Lansing- You can say that in here but out there the normal person gets a tax cut and they are clicking their heels- ready to go. 

Umbaugh-LOIT. CAGIT, CEDIT are options to adopt  in taxes in addition to COIT. ( County optional income tax- that we already have.)

You can adopt the public safety LOIT without the other two LOITs.

It does get distributed to the municipalities as well. 

COIT can only be done in certain increments up to1% total. 

Kraus- I think we should bring Cum bridge tax up- and commissioners should lead the way by doing that.

Cum Cap development would be what you can do. Umbaugh - Paige- very few counties  are NOT at their maximum levy rate. ( Penningon confirmed later that we are at our max levy rate)

Counties are depleting their balances because of the circuit breaker. 

Lyness- just picking a number- if we needed to bond for x amount could you tell us what the impact would be per $100,000 home/property. (He keeps trying to pin them to an estimated numb here.)

Ullrich- we do not want to deplete the savings we have got. We can use part of this. The bonding - we want to know how much interest we’d pay. The last resort on the bonding would be something to resort to property taxes. 

Morris- Want to use partial savings and bonding the rest with property tax backup.

We could do 10-5-20 year scenarios.

Gayle Pennington confirmed that Dearborn is at the maximum levy

Ullrich talked about getting more business to the county- and the ones that got away are references for more who want to come here.

Lynch- just talked to the Governor and he knows how close we were to getting that company- Milacron. Governor Kasich from Ohio came in at the last minute and threw some more money at it and that tipped the scales. You guys were really smart putting the sewer out there for West Harrison TIF.

Lyness- the intent of this meeting is to decide what scope we want on this study.

Brandt- what would it take to run a 10 year study. 

Umbaugh - Jason and Paige- we can have it in a week.

Kraus- The more we pay off with cash- the less interest we have to pay- want to avoid that 

interest.

Morris- What would you do for this fee?

Umbaugh- Paige and Jason - we would go out and find a buyer for your bonds. Then put out a booklet for all local banks etc, Then get their best rate by a certain date. 

The bond  fees have to be paid by  the bond funds. Issuance cost is $150,000 - but we have to get their fees. The big payment is the interest..

20 year bonds at less than 4%. We can have less interest with less years. 

Lynch- maybe we could reach out to others or place bonds with them. Like the hospital or conservancy district. Conservancy cannot some thought. We don’t have to go out to the open market. If they are going to do something more favorable. Karl from LHS was present and said Conservancy can.

Lawrenceburg Conservancy and DCH- Umbaugh- Jason-  will check with bond counsel for that. Library bonds maybe to.

Umbaugh-Paige we can prepare all budget documents from start to finish. We usually do two years. Then also budget analysis. Price was a NTE of $8500. This would do the 2016 budget and out a couple more years form that. 

GFC- Government Financial Consultants. We use now- per Gayle- That is Frank Cummins.

Brandt- if we can get an additional analysis with this company. 

Morris- I’d like a fresh set of eyes and a reputation through out the state like Umbaugh. ( They plan to switch from Cummins to Umbaugh.)

Lyness- we need different scenarios and a 10 - 15 year plan. I’d like to see all those options. Gayle can get with Leah and see how much we’ve got. Then we can see what it would cost per $100,000 of assessed value. 

Pennington- everyone had to have their budgets to her by today. 

Umbaugh- Paige said they could do it f they had that by end of July. 

Lansing- would it make sense to look at these scenarios to look at these after we see where we are at with budget.\?

Lyness - we need to tell them what e think we need and they can give us a number and then we can decide at the July 21 meeting. 

Umbaugh-Jason - if you want us to just do the budget- then we can do that and you see if you want us for the other study.

Lyness- no no- we want to get the bonding scenarios figured out for the annex. 

Lynch- did not want to speak on their behalf without having a couple council members with me. Terri and Shane meet with Roger Howard ( at DC Hospital) on a regular basis.

Conservancy is Dave Lorey now. 

Baker and Daniels does some lobby and legal work for the county. Pittman works at Barnes and Thornburgh now.

Umbaugh-Jason- Is there a time you wanted to start construction?

Ullrich- design in- but need commitment to the funding first. 

Pennington asked about a county that had helped LaPorte with bonds.

Umbaugh-Jason-  it would be cheaper- less interest if you could bond with these county options - so we’d do a different scenario.

Lyness- Gayle has the money appropriated in her budget- so she could make the decision- it’s up to her.

Kraus- normal procedure is for us to tell her what to do. 

Gayle said- we can’t make a decision tonight. 

Umbaugh-Jason and Paige  it would save you money to do a comprehensive financial plan for $25,000 because it is in the budget plan too. This would only do 10-15 of our funds- that are our main funds tat do our services. You have  a few more main funds because of all your different riverboat funds. This would save $10,000. The study goes out 5 years. 

Lyness- what if RR goes out- is that one of the scenarios?

Umbaugh- Jason- Once we get the model built we can add scenarios. This could be updated on an annual basis. That won’t cost as much then. Once you get past the 3 years it is more of a guesstimate.

Put it all on next agenda for July 21 so they can make a decision. 

2016 would be $8500. Annual updates NTE $15,000 including budget. It costs more if you don’t update annually because we have to start over.

Keyes wants to have the refunds to general fund tracked- can they do it? Instead we take it out of Riverboat.

Gayle- I can send you the statute so you can quit losing sleep over this. 

Keyes really does not like the way refunds get put to general fund and then spent on other items,

In reference to their proposal Paige asked-  does it hep that I’m a grad of LHS? Laughter

ADJ OURNED at 6:40 PM

Christine Brauer Mueller

Lawrenceburg Township