24 January 2017 Dearborn County Council Meeting

 24 January 2017 Dearborn County Council Meeting Notes

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

Also present: Gayle Pennington, Auditor and Terri Randall, Administrator

Liz Morris- Moment of prayer for Ryan Brandt’s father who passed away.

Title VI statement also was read by Morris as required by law.

REORGANIZATION

Election of President and Vice President-  Liz Morris President and Ryan Brandt Vice President

Appointment of Boards and Board Seats:

Plan Commission (Dan Lansing)

Convention, Visitors and Tourism (Ryan Brandt)

Community Corrections (Liz Morris)

Juvenile Advisory Board (Liz Morris)

SIRPC (Dennis Kraus)

Southeastern Regional Development (Dennis Kraus)- no longer in existence- so this will be removed

Solid Waste (Allen Goodman)

Personnel Advisory Committee-(Dennis Kraus & Liz Morris)

Community Mental Health (Allen Goodman)

Emergency Management Advisory (Bill Ullrich as president’s alternate)

Redevelopment Commission (Allen Goodman)

OKI Board of Directors (Liz Morris)

Citizen Board Appointments- all 3 reappointed below

PTA BOA (Bill Hartwell)

Alcohol Beverage (Glen Huismann)

OKI (Mark McCormack) 

PARK BOARD?

PAWS- Sandy Carley- Annual Report- tabled until a later date as it wasn’t ready yet. 

Jason Sullivan - received approval for a grant for EMA that they do annually that he has to apply for by March 1. No county monies are involved.

Judge Humphrey- called earlier-  adults who have no POA or next of kin- has a grant that will help with them- no county monies involved. He brought it to Council attention as a courtesy to get approval to pursue it. Approved.

Jason Sullivan EMA and Jared Teaney 911- presented-  RAVE offers a unique product to offer as SMART 911 service. It’s available in many areas and you can have citizens sign up for it and they can provide info and data to 911 from their phone when they call in. Morris said that families can use it for autistic children that might wander off for example. SMART911.com is where you can enter your personal profile. It is private but only shared when you call 911. No charge to citizens, but the county has to pay to have the software here in the county. You can call in form landlines or cells. They have been in existence for 12 years. Colleges use this system. Notifications go out multi-modally. Anecdotes given as examples of uses for this service. They can help market it to the public. People can sign up for alerts also. APP known as RAVE panic button that is available on phones. This is useful for schools. Price tag is $3350 for initial set up. Annual contract is $20,000. This does more than Rapid Notify. And it costs more as a result. This is an unlimited messaging package.This can come out of the state 911 budget. County has to ask for it. They are going to see how this gets covered. No approval tonight. They will have to come back with that info. It would be important to get people signed up for the alerts per Morris. 

Discussion of Weather Warning Sirens- Morris asked Jason Sullivan about using RAVE and Smart 911 to use instead. $5-10,000 per year on siren- about $370/siren to maintain and keep our 36 sirens. New ones cost $900,000 to replace all of them. Oldest one is 1979 and needs to be replaced in Dillsboro. These were originally purchased with funds they Jaycees raised. This old one sounds and doesn’t rotate. Sullivan says you need redundancy in this system. He hasn’t heard anyone except Council talking about removing the sirens. Morris wants him to find out how many of IN 92 counties have sirens. About $24000 to replace a siren. 

ADMINISTRATOR- Terri Randall-  Told Council that there was an outcry about the sirens when it came up last fall. Hoped to have more input from them in this. Some people were panic stricken about it. She said the Commissioners would like to make a recommendation to Council about it. They are also in favor of SMART 911 and RAVE that was presented.

Randall passed out update info on the Courthouse project. here was an executive summary. Project timeline is proceeding well. They will need another $2 million drawdown in February and will last until May.Occupancy is set for early 2018. Items cost more in some cases and less in others but there were some significant savings with value engineering. They do change orders with the architect and Maxwell. ADA was changed with Humphrey and the director of juvenile area as being less needed so they will use the other entrance when ADA is needed for them. Gravity feed sewer system was able to be used and a pump eliminated. Some costs were added such as transformer which had to be increased in size. The IT work is more costly than anticipated. Morris asked about increasing parking for tax payment time in May. Building should be enclosed by April 2017. How much higher was the steel than the estimate- asked by Dennis Kraus. $500,000 additional was given for that. Randall will have to check that. 

Park Board- Morris said they cannot act on their requests for improvements.

Auditor- Gayle Pennington- Minutes from November 22, 2016 were approved. We are in budget review- and our DLGF rep left so now we are in the last 3 to be reviewed. Should be in by mid February. Next meeting for Council will be Feb 28th at 6:30 PM per Liz Morris. Additionals are already advertised per Pennington. 

Charlie Keyes- wants to have Council consider health insurance for employees after they retire. Discussion centered on costs, funding etc. Pennington will check COBRA costs and also see if they can pay the county rate after they retire. No sense of urgency- but look into it a bit. 

Park Board Appointment- Question by Chris Mueller-on the one  appointment made in November. It had come to my attention that Judge Humphrey needed a Democrat for his 2nd appointment and the Council did also. Council had appointed Jim RedElk again at their November meeting on the recommendation of Terry Stephens per Liz Morris. I showed Council all the voting records of the 5 Park Board members. None of them voted Democrat in any elections going back several years. Only the ex-officio member from County Extension- Mike Hornbach had voted Democrat and only in the last primary. The law states that the board has to be politically balanced. Council was advised that there were at least two Democrats who are thinking of serving on that board. No decision was made- but Council has been advised on record that there is proof that the board is not “legal” by  the state code rules and that Judge Humphrey has left his position unfilled until he can do so legally. Council may decide to get together with the Park Board to resolve this dilemma.

Meeting adjourned at approximately 8 PM

Christine Brauer Mueller

Lawrenceburg Township