22 July 2022 SE Indiana Regional Port Authority Meeting
Roll call:
Aurora: Mark Drury, Benjamin Turner (Treasurer), Derek Walker
Dearborn County: Jim Thatcher (Chairman), Tom Palmer (Secretary), Eric Kranz
Greendale: Alan Weiss (vice Chair), Al Abdon( Absent), Angie Walters
Lawrenceburg: Kelly Mollaun( absent), Lennie Fryman (absent), Sarah Jordan
ANNOUNCEMENTS- none
APPROVAL OF MINUTES: May 27th Meeting- approved
FINANCIAL REPORT/INVOICES:
CORBA Golf Outing reimbursement $440.00, already approved 5/27/2022- not addressed as already paid.
Votaw and Schwarz Invoice for Baudendistel’s fees- $1,680- approved
BNL Invoices- final bills for Beam Longest and Neff- 3 hours billed plus 2 hours- $780- Approved
GUEST SPEAKERS:none
NEW BUSINESS:none
OLD BUSINESS:
Libby discussion of Grant Submitted- walkabout the 2 tasks they have been working on since May.
She talked about Railroad Transload Progress. It was roughly 86 acres but only 40 acres were usable for their access. Carey Transit was looking for a sit. The West Harrison site is off the table for them. There are other Rail sites with Developmental Potential.
Walker asked about working with sites here and see if current property owners might be interested. Libby thought that having a say in this would be good as we are the locals and know what is available and have connections. This is a dormant task for now per Libby.
American Marine Highway Grant- aimed at taking trucks off the I-70 interstate. There are 5 partners- Ports of Paducah, Louisville, Henderson, Owensboro, and Ingram Barge and Vanderbilt University. Potential Partners are Port of Granite City IL (St. Louis) and Pittsburgh. We did not make the deadline and there was a glitch with them recognizing us as a unique address for getting our SAMS #. There may be interest in more areas along I-70. Looking at Ocean containers and moving them on the inland waterways. Economics associated with short haul.
They were looking at One Dearborn to help to get this but decided against that due to where the money would land. We can put our application into the next submission opportunity. This grant was to identify sites within SIRPA jurisdiction. And then the costs of it. Then the next grant could be used to get the site prepared, The other task was to understand the free flows and service schedule that Ingram would set up along the river. They want modeling to understand the flow of equipment. There is a box plant going in at Henderson. How to get resources to Henderson and then getting the boxes back to Amazon. One of the original OKI applications was to look at steel from Nucor. She’s looking for other examples of things like this. She talked to CORBA about having a more active role in what we are trying to do this. The Ohio part of this doesn’t have much available to handle something like this.
Next steps:
Confirm SAMS #
Plan on 2023 submission
Continue with CORBA
Identify more sites
Meet with OKI to insure freight study includes SIRPA interests
Host MARAD ( Maritime Administration) round table for this. Meeting space and catering and labor to do agenda- grant funds can pay for this - otherwise SIRPA pays for this. Ingram was excited about this.
MARAD is the Marine administration at the Dept of Transportation. They have funding that will help. In 2018 the application process changed. She asked if Ports of IN would want to be part of this process to show they were active. They were only under the old application process and the new one required them to show they were active. Joining us would help them do that. Many of the old projects were not networks. This process under CORBAs goal of taking trucks off I-70 corridors would be a network. Not just a single line such as pointA to pointB. We need to be sure that our projects are in their priority list.
The money won’t come in to 2025 for the grant if we get it in the 2023 round.
Balancing federal gov’t and shippers. She wants to have us host a round table with MARAD. She thinks with all the partners there would be 35-40 people. IVY Tech would be the location and there is no charge to non-profits. She wants to look at others like Monroe that hosted one and mirror that to see what the agendas are and also the people to invite. The box factory has been silent.She wants to work with CORBA for Sept -Oct. And then do this in early 2023. Weiss noted that OKI and CORBA had to be with us. In first qtr of 2023 we will hopefully have more people involved to bolster our application.
Thatcher asked Krantz if he’d followed up with OKI and the EV stations. Libby said she will follow up on that to see what OKI is thinking on this and this would give SIRPA a venue stream. She noted we have to find an IN source for that funding. OKI came in on July 7 and talked about the VW settlement money used for this. They did not have anything at the state level. A handful of power companies are involved to try some of this too. IN has not done this like OH has. OKI has an intern for IN to look at our EV situation. OKI has money for OH and KY for this but IN seems to go unnoticed. Rodoshi Sinta is the intern assigned to IN for EV. Libby will get with him and Robin at OKI regarding the 3 different finding programs.
Libby wants a contract or task order for her tasks that SIRPA to continue with her tasks. She cannot invoice without a contract.
PUBLIC COMMENT none
CONFIRMATION OF NEXT MEETING Scheduled for August 19th , 2022, 9:00am
ADJOURNMENT: 9:55 AM
Christine Brauer Mueller
Lawrenceburg Township
