2 April 2024 DEARBORN COUNTY COMMISSIONERS MEETING NOTES

 2 April 2024 DEARBORN COUNTY COMMISSIONERS MEETING NOTES

Present: Jim Thatcher, President, Alan Goodman, and Rick Probst

Also present: Connie Fromhold, Auditor, Andy Baudendistel, Attorney, and Sue Hayden, Administrator 

Also present: Tamara Taylor- Beacon, Glenn Wright, Council, Steve Gemmer, Council Candidate, Sam Mortenson (filming).

TITLE VI STATEMENT FOR COMPLIANCE was read by Baudendistel as legally required.

OLD BUSINESS

Dillsboro Resolution regarding Building Codes and Standards- Andy Baudendistel, they want to retain Bill Sheldon’s services as Building Inspector. Approved the resolution. They are no longer needing the Planning and zoning services as they have a  

NEW BUSINESS

Update on Work Force development- Kurt Kegerreis- Region 9 Executive Director-There are work force boards in each district in the state. They have key partners on their board and they get federal money. Mayor Mollaun is on board also. Talent crisis now- need workers - and have for past 10 years. Everyone who wants to work is working. Now they are working to get people who aren’t but could be working. JAG- Jobs for Graduates - working with high school graduates. Follow them to be sure they succeed beyond their program. This is at LHS and South Dearborn. Have 10 programs- looking to have close to over 20 programs in near future. Doing things with recovery initiatives with drug addiction and prison system programs. Looking for the best and brightest from those situations. Raised over $250,000 fro private sector for these programs too. Getting mental eats $$ s as they work with addiction issues. Also works with IVY Tech. He said he does not work for the government- he works for you guys- ( the commissioners). Independent agency- they run Work 1 Office.Probst asked about how to measure success. Success is measured by federal measures, and other programs all have their own measurements that they all fill out to keep getting their funding. Board meetings every other month. Goodman is the Commissioner who monitors Work Force 1.

Funding down to 60% because our unemployment is so low. The employers however need more talent, so he thinks that is a broken way to measure success on employment. Goodman asked about why JAG was not at South Dearborn. They are working on that and Rising Sun. 

Thatcher asked about the employment- Kurt’s background is in Gerontology. But he talked about the older generation rearing and then COVID and issues there. Youth overwhelmed, child care issues, transportation issues. Have to identify barriers and knock them down. Invited them to Board meetings.     

Soil and Water Conservation District-  MS4 Stormwater Quality Management Plan- Kyla Dick, Stormwater Coordinator- introduced Sandy Whitehead as new MS4 Coordinator. Passed out the plan that they are required to haven it needs to be adopted. This Stormwater Quality Management Plan was passed out and due by April 12. Approved and signed.   

Programs Activity Updates- John Kruse Board pf Supervisors for Soil and Water-  Native plant sale til May3. Also at Bright Meadows Park with Food donations for Bright Pantry. Discussed getting Farm Bill Passed, protection of nature; resources etc with Congress at statehouse. There should be interstate commerce control for states. Seeing same problems in transportation and medical field. Pumping huge amount of water from Wabash to Indy. Need to work on water issues both above and below ground- need inventory. 

Todd Listerman, County Engineer- 

Temporary Truck Ban-  Salt Fork and Georgetown- for trucks greater than 40 ft. -needed because of SR1 closure closed on or after May15. This will be part of the transportation plan for that closure. There will be signage up there. They will also have signs below the state signs on SR 1 too. Pribble Rd and Kaiser is already restricted to trucks. We get to pick pone route that is the unofficial detour. If they use other roads they don’t count for reimbursement. Georgetown, North Dearborn and Stateline Roads are the unofficial detour. The detour is May15 thru Nov 22. They can get an extension of needed. Commissioners approved the closure, detour and dates.  

2023 Annual Highway/Operational Report-  This gets sent up to LTAP (Local Transportation Assistance Program.) This shows our funds available and where we spent out funds. $13,027,756.01 was total spent for roads and bridges in 2023. 

Just over $11.3 million was in 2022.So the funding is increased in 2023 by about $2 million.

 1/3 of our spending- $4.2 million is from dedicated funding and  about 2/3 of funds - $8.8 million are undedicated highway funds from grants NRCS, Council, Casino revenues etc. There is a significant amount of leveraging to achieve the financial coverage on road issues in the county coming from the efforts pf the highway dept.

Approved the report. 

Request of Support for OKI Climate Pollution Reduction Grant- Nicole Daily, Director Planning and Zoning- this is a fast moving grant program- with monthly deadlines. All money tp be spent by 2030 

$2 million to $5 million grants involved. They need support from the 16 counties that fall under this program. She wrote a letter as director of Planning and Zoning to getting us into the program.

One phase is for low income areas. Green phase for non profit buildings to do energy audits and getting reduced emissions. Transit ride and services phase.  Clean industry phase, Land fill store reduction program and composting and solid waste. Food rescue phase. Tree for me phase- program to increase loss of vegetation in more urbanized areas. 

Sending report to Travis Miller at OKI. (He was our former Planning Director in Dearborn County producing the 2024 Comprehensive Plan) This is OKI’s plan to help facilitate those grants. Approved letter from Commissioners and signed. This allows the county to be a possible recipient  per Probst 

EMS Contracts- Baudendistel- LIT funding distribution with agreements in January is done. This is an addendum to the contracts that have been done. (This does not include Dillsboro as they were not approved by Council.) These are the numbers that were approved by Council. Also Miller York and St Leon as First Responders for $20,000 each. Approved. 

April 8, 2024 Eclipse Discussion- Thatcher said they had discussed plans with sheriff in case there were transportation issues etc. Dismissing non essential employees at noon to let employees off to handle kids that were off school for e -learning and so forth. (Not sure if this paid time off.) Approved.

ADMINISTRATOR – Sue Hayden- payables will see AMAZON invoices as they have been approved as well as Office Depot. Still going thru a single point. The state has approved this. Spendbridge is the central point.They cannot go to Amazon directly. Just letting commissioners know for when they see it on claims. 

AUDITOR – Connie Fromhold  -Claims/Payroll and March 21st Minutes- Approved

ATTORNEY – Andy Baudendistel- working on fixing the legals for the resolution Perleberg had brought in with OCRA. 

LATE ARRIVAL INFORMATION- Steve Kelly- Dept of Corrections-  Annual IN Dept of Corrections 2025 Grants- Community Corrections $ 550,371, Probation Intensive grant $77,725, and JCAP,  $61,005.  Insurance has increased over $60,000 this year   He said that he expects the increases requested to be denied.  Approved to submit grants.

PUBLIC COMMENT- Steve Gemmer- Dillsboro IN- asking questions regarding Dillsboro EMS. He proceeded to read a statement of what he researched regarding the contract signed on Dillsboro EMS. This is nearly a transcript of that interchange:

Gemmer- Dec 4, 2023- Board sent contract that was not the legitimate board to Commissioners. The 3 current Commissioners signed that contract in December 19, 2023. Why did they sign a contract with people who had no authority to enter into that?

Shane McHenry interrupted at this point.Gentlemen do you want me to address some of this?  

Rick Probst said he was comfortable listening to the comments, he did not need a rebuttal unless you want… 

McHenry said, If you are getting false information, you want somebody to..

First we did not have any part of the removal until after the meeting took place. The deputy was called. They presented the bylaws, they presented the meeting stuff. A no trespass order was issued to Mr Codell(sp?) and Mr Witteride (Harry) and the board, OK. To my knowledge it was Harry because he called me the next day and we talked about it. I agreed with Harry- it was more of a civil issue One groups claiming they are not following the by laws, the other groups saying no They aren’t following the by laws, so at this point, there probably needs legal to be involved in this, we don’t need to be involved in this. I sent an email immediately out and said we are not enforcing any kind of trespass for this kind of thing. Later I got an email from Harry’s lawyer asking his to do the same thing and I explained to her what the process was and what we were doing. From that point ( the next day) we were completely out of it and it was for the groups to figure out between the by-laws. 

Steve Gemmer- One point - he did that before the meeting.The trespassing order was issued before the meeting because Harry got there an hour before the meeting and there were 3 deputies there that told him he could NOT go in. There were 3 deputies there and we would like to know who they were. The reason the other ones did not show up is because he called them and told them not to come down because there was a no trespassing order. 

McHenry- I know t  was deputy Surette was the one that issued the no trespassing, I don’t know anyone else - no one told me any of that. The one thing wit the disruption- Iu think you could look by the dispatch notes they made more runs in a short amount of time than the other group had made for the prior few months, so the ambulance wasn’t leaving Aurora taking runs for Dillsboro.

Gemmer- Following that no trespassing order they are now missing the radios, damage to the vehicles…

McHenry- I cannot comment on any of that.

Gemmer- I understand- I’m just saying if they didn’t have had the order none of that damage etc would have happened. They would not be in the mess they are in. Because of that order some of the people they were training are no longer with them.

 

McHenry - I think that would be a stretch to say that were in worse shape, blaming the sheriff’s order that got dropped the next day put them in worse shape. They’ve been in bad shape for a while.

Gemmer- They’ve been in trouble, but Harry took over just before all this happened, and he’s changing that and he loves working o getting people in. 

McHenry- I just wanted to address the things that were incorrect in your statement. 

Gemmer- Not a problem - not a problem. But it just makes me wonder why the Dearborn County Commissioners signed that contract with someone who wasn’t there that shouldn’t have been there. And there is a letter dated Dec 14, 2023 a letter by the attorney for the legitimate corporate board was sent to the Dillsboro EMS to one Jason Willoughby that outlined why he was not authorized to be in charge of the Dillsboro Emergency Unit and to step aside and let the authorized board resume their duties. There is a letter dated Jan11, 2024 from Jason Willoughby, the one who entered the illegitimate contract with the Dearborn County Commissioners, stating he is resigning from the Dillsboro EMS and which also states he is dropping a trespass order against Harry Witteride, the only authorized captain and the authorized board member of the Dillsboro Emergency unit Inc. That is one of the reasons I questioned about dropping that order, because everybody that is involved thought that the no trespassing order was still in effect. Up until January 11th. You know so the question is - did the Dearborn County Commissioners ever receive this letter from Jason Willoughby?If you did, when did you do it? And did our Dearborn County Commissioners bring it up in any of the meetings?Did the Commissioners make this known to the Council members who were voting this LIT ( Local income tax) so that they would have full knowledge of situation? Did they share this letter with the committee that they created to disperse the LIT fund? The one you were just talking about earlier. Again- its a little troublesome here. Why do Commissioners  who put together this committee to disperse LIT money have the sheriff on there when the committee should have been aware that the sheriff was responsible for removing those legitimate board members from the Dillsboro EMS and put the illegal and illegitimate group to operate the Dillsboro EMS. 

Probst- Steve- Can you come to the point in this? We are strict on the time for public comment and I appreciate your comments and the background information. 

Gemmer- My point is that it doesn’t seem like people knew about this going on. I didn’t know about it the last time when I asked about a contract and you said you did not have a contract with Dillsboro EMS.But you cancelled a contract with Dillsboro EMS that you said you didn’t have in then first place. We were told in that March 12 meeting that the committee would work with Dillsboro EMS. Mr Goodman and Jared were part of that committee and told this would happen and then you guys pulled the rug out from under them on March 16th.You said it was because of the letter you had sent- but that letter was not sent to the legitimate people , because you had contracted wit the illegitimate people. You were asked by the attorney for the legitimate people in February when she sent you all a letter to negotiate with the legitimate board. You have yet to do that. Why? Why is Dillsboro left out in the cold? And why do you think will help the county? You have the ambulance in Aurora about to break down and the one in Moores Hill is not running very well and they are having trouble. Dillsboro has 2 brand new ambulances they bought and paid for themselves. They are working to have people on this and I know that they have people in school and they are paying for it themselves and yet you won’t deal with them. So how is that helping the county? And how is it helping the county that you almost have money to an illegitimate organization? 

Thatcher- One thing you are leaving out is they only made 12% of their runs.

Gemmer- That is the old regime.

Allen Goodman - Harry is part of the old regime. He’s co-captain and has been co-captain for a long time. And you misspoke - it’s not a committee- it has never been a committee- it was not formally organized by the Council and it was not formally organized by the commissioners. And you have been told that multiple times Steve.

Gemmer- BUT in that meeting you called it a committee and everybody in that meeting called it a committee - you did in the beginning. And when he (Baudendistel) came up and told you something - you started calling it a group.

Silence

Baudendistel- I’ll just say this - the commissioners do a lot of contracts and they are not privy to or scholars in by-laws of all these non-profits or who the elected officers are at any given time. When the termination letter was sent to them, it was the fact that there was a question about leadership in Dillsboro - it was highlighted in that letter from the county to Dillsboro, right? And I will just note as someone who is licensed to practice law in the state of Indiana, that the letter from the attorney that Dillsboro has hired - her own letterhead says she is not licensed to practice in the state of Indiana. So that is an issue. I think the office that she works for has an office in Indiana, but she is not licensed in the state of Indiana. But the issue about who was proper is highlighted in the letter.

Numerous voices talking together-

Gemmer Is there any way you will negotiate with them or is it a dead deal? 

Thatcher- We are discussing it with the city of Dillsboro on how they want to move forward with this issue.

Gemmer- Really? 

Thatcher- That is correct

Gemmer- When I talked to them yesterday…

Thatcher- I told you that I was discussing with them before… 

COMMISSIONER COMMENTS- Probst- Hope all enjoy the eclipse next week.

Goodman- Be safe in bad - weather predicted, Upgraded to another level so keep that in mind today. 

ADJOURN- 10:20 AM

Christine Brauer Mueller

Lawrenceburg Township