Town Council

Rocky Ripple Town Council Meeting October 17, 2023 Rocky Ripple Town Board Chair, Mandy Redmond, called the meeting to order at 7:34 pm. Town board members Megan Hulland and Randy Sanders were present. Julie Smith, clerk treasurer, Mike Kiefer, town marshal, and Sarah Guffey, town attorney, via Zoom, were also present. Welcome Community! Town board chair welcomed and thanked those who were present at town hall as well as those who are joining us for tonight’s meeting via Zoom. Clerk Treasurer Reports Minutes – September minutes were presented, Megan made a motion to accept the minutes, Randy seconded. All were in favor, motion unanimously passed. Treasurer Report for September 2023 – We had 3rd quarter payroll for board and clerk treasurer, also paid invoices for park toilet and mowing services, and signage for new truck. Proceeds from sale of old snowplow were received as well as insurance refund ($545) for insuring old snowplow. Ending bank balance for 9/30/2023 was $139,261.73. Randy motioned to accept the Treasurer’s report and Megan seconded the motion. All were in favor, motion unanimously passed. Water in park has not been turned off. Portalet will be called in to be picked up after the 29th of October. We will pay the original street paving bid amount that Baumgartner submitted of $60,554.00. If they had proactively initiated conversation as to why they needed to spend more when paving a section on Clarendon Road, we might have considered the additional requested cost. Randy will be adding the playground equipment to the capital assets sheet due to an opinion received from SBOA regarding the matter. 2024 Town of Rocky Ripple Budget – signoff/submittal – Budget was adopted. Form 4 will be signed by town councilors at this meeting. Clerk Treasurer will upload to Gateway. Old Business Community Association Updates – Festival Results, Other – Best financial year to date for the festival. Numbers are not final, but net is in the $11,800 range. Best attended festival. Many compliments. Parking was an issue. Many residents did not know about the tape they could obtain to mark off areas. Will need to address better in future. Will send communication out earlier to those who do not want parking in their yard. Next year’s date is September 28th, 2024. Three trees have fallen, broken off, or crumbled either before or since the festival in Hohlt Park. RRCA will hire an arborist for advice on what trees should come down and what could be planted in its place. Need is not immediate since it will soon be winter, but by springtime there needs to be a plan in place. Halloween Parade is Sunday, October 29th at 5 pm. Meet at town hall and walk to town park. Holiday Bazaar is on December 2nd from 10 am – 3 pm. Clothing swap at the town hall on November 5th from 3 – 5 pm. Rocky Ripple Flood Protection: DPW Updates, ILA – No update on our floodwall. When Mandy asked for updates on the Northside Floodwall, they directed her to the new website for the Indianapolis North Flood Damage Reduction Project located at this link https://www.indy.gov/activity/indynorth. FEMA has accepted the city’s latest response as of October 2, 2023. The latest draft been sent to FEMA’s mapping department. Once draft maps have been received, FEMA will provide copies to the Army Corps of Engineers and DPW to review. Then it will go through a round of final reviews, and once approved it will be sent off for final processing and issuance. After issued, they must publish and have an appeal period. If there are no appeals, then they will set an effective date. A minimum of 4/5 months before completion. Only then will the city of Indianapolis get back to our project. The board met with Sarah Guffey, our legal counsel, to review and discuss the Inter Local Agreement (ILA) updates from DPW. The ILA is general enough that the board feels like they could respond and say we are directionally comfortable with the language but there are a few areas of concern they would like to address and continue discussing with the City. Megan shared her three top requests to be in the ILA. The commitment to rebuild the town hall, maintain as much of the tree fringe as possible, and inclusion of a quit clause for the Town of Rocky Ripple. The town board will not sign until they see exhibits. Section 10 outlines the mechanism for Rocky Ripple to notify the City or the City to notify Rocky Ripple if there are issues. There is another section that discusses negotiating and having remediation if necessary. A resident raised a question of whether the city must listen to our concerns. Mandy said currently there is verbiage in the ILA that says that Rocky Ripple will be presented the designs and plans, and Rocky Ripple has 30 days to respond. Sarah agreed that we have clauses in there that protect the town’s interests. Resident concerns were raised about what it will cost when they finally are able to turn their attention back to our project in a few years. CEG STEP Program Update – Mandy keeps asking about grinder pump statistics but has not been provided any information. The grinder pump has a 2-year warranty and then you can pay $18/month to continue it. Replacement cost is $3,000. No cat litter, no coffee grounds, and no paint should be put down the drains. Mandy has asked for a list of where are all the clean outs on town property are/will be located. 100% of phase 1 have had their grinder pumps installed. No bill received by anyone yet. CEG is still on track to be completed by February 2024. 73-77% opted into the project. Speeding Cars in Rocky Ripple/Related Safety Concerns – The marshal heard back from the insurance company and their response was that it would be up to the adjuster who would determine who is at fault if a claim was filed for damages from speed humps. INDOT ADA and Title 6 Compliance Plan – No update, but we are currently in compliance. Town Manager/Marshal’s Report - 2023 Road Paving – No reports this month. In regard to CCMG, the marshal will be working on another road inventory and road asset management plan which needs to be submitted by December 1st. Baumgartner and CEG worked well together so they were not in each other’s way during paving. Town Web Email Migration – Randy will send an email to the state and check all the pricing for the conversion, addresses etc. and compare it to the pricing from Town Web. We will add another email address for Rachel and archive Mandy’s email for at least a year. Cost for email is approximately $5.50/month per email. Whether we stay with Town Web or go with the state, our email will migrate over to Google. New Business Plan for Transition of Clerk/Treasurer Duties in 2024 – Town Board and clerk treasurer will meet in the next few weeks to put some structure around what needs to be done going forward. Megan asked if clerk treasurer could make a list of duties and a calendar of report deadlines. To lessen the need for a person to unlock electrical box at pavilion we will change out the lock to needing a code and not a key. Will change over the town hall lock to a wireless entry. RRCA is looking into installing a notice board for general park information and availability of pavilion. Community Concerns No additional community concerns were raised. Randy made a motion to adjourn, Megan seconded. All in favor. Meeting adjourned at 9:09 pm. Respectfully submitted, Julie Smith