Zionsville Town Council

Zionsville Town Council March 18, 2024 ZIONSVILLE TOWN COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES FOR MARCH 18, 2024 AT 7:30 A.M. EST ONSITE MEETING 1100 West Oak Street This meeting was conducted onsite. All Councilors participated in person. Council Members Present: Jason Plunkett, President; Tim McElderry, Evan Norris, Sarah Esterline Sampson, and Joe Stein Absent: Brad Burk and Craig Melton Also Present :Adam Steuerwald, Town Council Attorney; Mayor John Stehr; Deputy Mayor Kate Swanson, Mia Riley, Deputy Director of Finance & Records; Amy Lacy, Municipal Relations Coordinator; and other Town Department Staff OPENING A. Call meeting to order B. Pledge of Allegiance Plunkett All right, good morning. I will now call to order the Monday, March 18, 2024 7:30 a.m. Town Council meeting. If you would please, stand and join me with the Pledge of Allegiance. All Pledge of Allegiance. APPROVAL OF THE MEMORANDUM OF THE MARCH 4, 2024 REGULAR MEETING Plunkett Up first on the agenda is the approval of the March 4, 2024 Town Council meeting memoranda. A copy has been posted. Are there any questions from Councilors? I’ll make a motion to approve the March 4th meeting memoranda. McElderry Second. Plunkett A second from Councilor McElderry. All those in favor signify by saying aye. All Aye. Page 1 of 13 Zionsville Town Council March 18, 2024 Plunkett All those opposed same sign. [No response] 5 in favor, 0 opposed. APPROVAL OF MARCH 18, 2024 CLAIMS Plunkett Up next is the approval of the March 18, 2024 claims. Are there questions from Councilors? Sampson Yes. Norris Mr. President, I have one question. Plunkett Sure. Norris On, and this may be a, I don’t know if this is a Finance Department question or a Parks question but on page 25 – APV #6161. There is a, it says possible duplicate will research and it’s a $200,000 claim and I was just kinda wondering if, if I could get some insight into what that’s all about? Riley I have the answer to that. So when we were trying to close out 2023, we had some ’21 and ’22 items that we still haven’t been able to find. Baker Tilley suggested that we make that adjustment so that we were able to close it out. We will research that and we will try to find it but that’s what their suggestion was so that we could get closed out. Norris Okay. Sampson So do we leave it in there but not call it a claim or? Riley Umm, it’s not technically something that we’ve paid out – Sampson Yes. Riley It’s just something that we had to put in there just to get our numbers to coincide. Plunkett So, Mia, is there, so you said it’s not something we’ve paid out yet. Riley We’re not going to pay it out. It’s our numbers weren’t jiving for 2021 and 2022 so we just simply went in and did a manual adjustment so that our, so that we could close out. Stein So it’s going to show as a prior period adjustment basically is what it is? Riley Yes and that’s why we put that we will research it. We think that it was a duplicate entry so we’re just trying to find time to look into that. Plunkett Out of curiosity, what if it’s not a duplicate entry, entry? By us approving these claims does it automatically approve the payment if it’s required? Page 2 of 13 Zionsville Town Council March 18, 2024 Riley We’ll reverse it at that time if we find that it’s, there’s something going on with it and we need to correct it, we’ll reverse it and we’ll bring it to your attention. Sampson So the problem in the audit world is a number that balances could actually be $2 million on the debit side and $2,200,000 on the credit side so can we approve without approving that? Plunkett Yes, I mean, what’s the impact if it’s denied? Sampson I mean, I guess it doesn’t do anything to your checkbook. Riley It doesn’t do anything. It actually made our fund balance – Sampson Yes. Riley When we made this adjustment so we will look into it in the next probably couple weeks. Sampson I definitely think it should be noted that we know about the number and that we recognize it’s not something that we’re paying out. Norris Yes. Plunkett Well I guess my question, Mia, would be if it’s going to be figured out in the next two weeks, what’s wrong with us just approving it without, approving claims without this and then just put it on there again in two weeks. Can we do that? Riley You can do that if you like. Plunkett Yes. Norris Let’s do that. Plunkett I would agree with that. Are there any other questions from Councilors? Sampson I do. I have two other just smaller questions. Mia, the, I saw that the overhead door repair was for a garage number 4 and I saw this, the amounts in two different funds and it made me wonder do you, do you split expenses? Is that a – one, once I see something that says it was a possible duplicate it made me go wait, I remember there was a duplicate amount. Riley They do split between funds. If you can tell me what page number those are on I can – Sampson I think it was page 7 and page 16. It’s just for door number 4. It was listed in both so it just made me want to make sure that it wasn’t input twice or if it was a split. Riley Page 7 and page what? I’m sorry. Page 3 of 13 Zionsville Town Council March 18, 2024 Sampson Umm, 16. It says overhead door repair garage number 4 I know that. And I wasn’t sure how expensive overhead doors were for the Town but it was the exact amount that’s the only reason I bring it up. Riley I need to look into that one because I do see it as the same exact amount that’s coming out of the same line. The only thing I could say is that one is coming from the, from DPW and the other one is coming from Facilities. Sampson Right. Riley So I would probably say we need to look into that one. Sampson Okay, yes. I would think that maybe just in case it was a duplicate but also that feeds into what Joe and I had asked for which Cindy said she was going to be working on but, John, that’s when we were saying it would make a lot of sense for us to understand the funds, just having information more than just the number so that I could see oh yes, that’s something that normally splits or whatever but yes, if we could look into the possible duplication of that. The other one was I saw an amount for VS Engineering for Oak & 800’s roundabout and it just got me thinking how much more is coming on that roundabout? Are we close to finalizing the expenses that were related to that? Do we still have ongoing projects with that? Riley I can't – Sampson And Lance isn’t here so that’s fine. Riley Lance is not here, I – Sampson What was it like $11,000 engineering cost and I’m wondering at what point are we done engineering that roundabout and since that, it was listed as a May expense, I mean, I’m sorry – a March expense so. Riley I cannot answer the question on how much more there is – Sampson Okay. Riley Left on that one. I’m sorry. Sampson Those are just the things I kinda delved deeper into along with Evan’s point. Plunkett Are there any other questions from Councilors? Otherwise, I would entertain a motion. Sampson Since I was the one asking so many things, I make a motion that we approve the claims for March 18, 2024 but that we withhold approval on the reconciliation number of $218,983 and – Plunkett On the Parks bond disbursement. Page 4 of 13 Zionsville Town Council March 18, 2024 Sampson On the Parks bond disbursement and the possible duplication of the overhead door expenditure of $4,649. Plunkett All right. I’ll second that. We have a first from Councilor Sampson, a second from President Plunkett. All those in favor signify by saying aye. All Aye. Plunkett All those opposed same sign. [No response] Motion passes 5 in favor, 0 opposed. REQUEST TO SPEAK Plunkett All right, up next is the Request to Speak on agenda item. Amy, do we have any requests to speak? Lacy No, we do not. MAYOR/ADMINISTRATION UPDATE Plunkett Okay, up next would be the Mayor/Administration Update. We have Mayor Stehr with us this morning. Good morning. Stehr Good morning everyone. Norris Morning. Sampson Morning. Stehr We’re going to begin the Administration Update today by speaking to the Comprehensive Plan. We all had a bit of a long Saturday in this room but we now have clarity on who’s going to be helping us put together the Comprehensive Plan. I want to thank, first of all, Mike Dale. He did a great job organizing this event for us and I want to thank everyone who gave up their Saturday afternoon to take part in it. HWC will now guide the Comprehensive Plan for the next 18 months or so. The next step will be settling on a steering committee that will oversee everyone’s efforts. I will be working with Mike on coming up with a list between 15 and 20 people to sit on that committee. We’ll also get with our consultants to see how that committee can best be formed and how many subcommittees and what they will be doing as well. We will seek to pull in, obviously, a lot of different voices from all over the Town, not just north and west Zionsville but also different organizations that have a stake in the Town’s future development. This will include at least two Councilors on the committee and I will offer you regular updates so we can all be on the same page and we will speak more about which Councilors would be involved in that process from the front end. And speaking of clarity, we are getting closer in planning the South Village. I think you’re pretty much up to date on where we are in this process. The Town- Page 5 of 13 Zionsville Town Council March 18, 2024 led PUD is in its final revision and some of the planning pieces are really beginning to fall into place so we will have a final version of that Town-led PUD available by the end of the month for consideration by the Plan Commission and then ultimately the Council. Also, I plan to deliver the State of the Town address on March 27th upstairs in the St. Vincent room that will lay out more specifics on the overall South Village plan. This event is open to the public and it will be streamed for those who have an interest but can't be here on that morning and hopefully you will all be able to come or at least view it online as that takes place. It’ll be first thing in the morning on March 27th. Norris What time is that? Stehr I believe the event, it’s the Chamber of Commerce annual event. It starts at 7:30. I figure I’ll start talking about 8. Norris Thank you. Stehr Also, you may have heard, we had a power surge at Town Hall on March 6th due to an accident at 550 South Michigan near Lost Run Farms. Now we do have a surge protection system here in the building. The building is relatively new but it was a bit overwhelmed and, as you can see, there’s an example of some of the charred wires that we had. We were fortunate that we didn’t have a fire actually and that the damage wasn’t worse. Our battery backup system helped protect the systems and the data but we still have to replace equipment that was damaged and we have an insurance claim for approximately $30,000 that we are working through now with our carrier. We didn’t lose any data so I’m happy about that and all of our systems are back up and running once again but this is a good argument as we move forward for a cloud-based data storage system but that’s something we can talk about as, as we go forward here. McElderry Mayor, is there any opportunity in the future to prevent that? If another accident happened, would we have another power surge or is there any way to protect against that? Stehr Well this was, as I understand it, and I’m not an electrician. It was an unusual power surge that the – well, I’m sure an electrician could explain it better but normally a surge comes in one direction. This came around the back end so it kind of got around our surge protection system. We would not anticipate this kind of surge to take place again but we do have modern up-to-date surge protection. We have all the best protections that are available. This one just kinda caught us. I guess it was a large surge and it was an unusual kind of surge and there you see the result right there. Sampson You mentioned that you had the insurance policy protection. Does that at all circle around back to the accident? If it could be shown to be related to that? Having their insurance pay or is it directly have to come from our insurance? Stehr That’s why, the insurance companies are working through it – Page 6 of 13 Zionsville Town Council March 18, 2024 Sampson Okay. Stehr So, I’m sure our agent is having those discussions – Sampson Yes – Stehr As, as best we can. All right, the next item on the agenda that I have is Finance and I want you to know we’ve taken a deep dive into our American Rescue Plan Act or ARPA spending. As you know, the previous Council gave us a roadmap on how that money was to be spent across all of our departments. All funds must be committed from the ARPA account by the end of 2024 and then out the door by the end of 2026. So we started with $6.4 million dollars and so far around $2 million has been spent, another $400,000 is committed and that means we have a remaining balance of just over $4 million dollars so we will continue to monitor that ARPA account to make sure the money is being used as it was allocated and we will do what we can to make sure our departments use it properly and we do not have to return it because we’re not meeting deadlines. So we are, we are ahead of that and hopefully by the last quarter we will have complete clarity on what has been spent, what is committed and what still needs to be spent. Also, you have a resolution before you this morning that will come up a little bit later to appropriate additional funds of $1.9 million dollars. I just want to point out as, as you probably know, this is from the READI 1.0 grant that was awarded for an engineering study on what was then known as the Gateway Project. Now, for clarity, the Gateway Project has now taken on a larger focus which we are calling the South Village but the money was appropriated in late 2023 but the contracts were not fully executed by the end of the year for a number of different reasons so that needs to be appropriated, reappropriated now. The money can only be used for this purpose and this is not an additional expense to the Town. Any questions on that? Okay. Well, let me go into the updates then. As you know, there has been ongoing concern over the intersection of 400 South and 875 East among Council members and among some folks who live in the area. I recently met with Councilors McElderry and Norris to talk about this along with DPW Director, Lance Lantz, and our engineers, George Lewis and Alec Fair. Everyone in the room agreed that there are visual impediments in that area including several utility poles, a large communications cabinet, some trees and even some road signs that might be distracting to some drivers. There has been a higher-than-expected accident rate there and DPW has responded by installing extra signage. Now the accident rate has gone down since then and they do not have any other plans for any future short-term changes. However, this has been on our radar and the intersection is one of 21 identified in the recent Road Impact Fee Study that could meet the minimum warrants over the next 10 years that would call for a new traffic signal or roundabout to control the intersection. Now normally this list is not ranked in an order of priority but given the heightened concern over this intersection, I think it’s reasonable at this point to prioritize it over some of the others and the first step in that is to determine the Page 7 of 13 Zionsville Town Council March 18, 2024 cost. So to get that started, I asked the DPW to reach out to an engineering consultant of their choice to look at things like the cost of land acquisition and utility relocation in that area. Now the Town already owns the southwest quadrant of that intersection which may be used for a future fire station, we’re still trying to determine that, so the impact on public safety is going to need to be considered here too. We should have some numbers to look at in April and I will report back to you when I get those numbers. One important point is that if we enter the construction phase on this intersection, we would be able to fund 100% of the construction through the Road Impact Fund but getting there will take time. It is too early to put a timeframe on it, just know that it’s on the radar and I appreciate the interest from Council members and also people who live in that area. Also, under updates – the golf course. I’m pleased to tell you this morning that we have reached an agreement with a local group to manage the Zionsville Golf Course. The group is calling itself Zionsville National and its principals are local residents, Pete Prust and Paul Kite. Golf course manager, Mike Wall, will continue in that role as will all of the course’s key employees. Now the agreement is still under legal review. We hope to have that ready with the I’s dotted and the T’s crossed this week but the highlights include this: All current season passes will be honored in full. There will be no change to any course fees in 2024 and only slight changes tied to the consumer price index in odd numbered years after that – so ’25, ’27, ’29, etc. Schedules for all league play will remain the same. Both of our middle schools will continue to use the course for practices and matches. The summer camp schedule will remain the same and the new operators plan to offer increased options in concessions and in the pro shop as well as upgrading damaged areas, drainage areas that, that need attention at the course and also facilities in collaboration with the Parks Board which can provide matching dollars from the current golf course fund. The course did open this weekend even though we’re not fully signed, sealed and delivered on this agreement yet, the course did open this weekend. It was a lovely day Saturday. They had a full tee sheet. As far as I know everybody’s happy and the transition to the new management team will, I think be pretty seamless once the agreement is signed. Does anybody have any concerns or questions about that? Sampson Oh, I’m just relieved. Stehr Me too and I know a lot of people are. This is a high interest item. A lot of people really care about our golf course and I agree. I think it’s a gem for our Town. Not many towns have a great 9-hole course like that so we’re pleased that it’s going to move forward in a good way. Sampson I was impressed with the amount of people that passionately wrote in emails and even text messages so, well done. Stehr Well thank you. Thank you. All right and the final item Town dog. We have been gifted a therapy dog who is entering the room right now. She will be available to our employees in Town Hall and situationally in all of our other facilities. She will also be available to constituents as sort of a Town ambassador at many activities throughout the year. Page 8 of 13 Zionsville Town Council March 18, 2024 Now this pup is 18 weeks old. She has a very high level of training including time in hospitals and schools as a service animal and she has a safe citizen certificate which is important to our insurance carrier. They like to see that for liability so that’s good news. She’s also non-shedding and hypoallergenic and Megan Ray who works in our Parks Department as an event planner will be her primary caretaker and handler. Now I’ve specifically not given you her name because we haven’t named her yet. I think the first thing we want to do is introduce her to the Town, have kind of a name the pup contest. We’ve been calling her girlfriend to this point but this is a generous donation from a long- time Zionsville area resident so it will be cost neutral to the Town and that’s a good thing because this is probably a $20,000 pup sitting here with all of her training – Plunkett Wow. Stehr And breeding and everything so. We are happy that she begins her tenure with us today so. We’ll have a chance for everybody to say hello to girlfriend before you, before you leave the room. McElderry Do we know the breed? Is it a doodle of some type? Stehr She’s a labradoodle, an Australian labradoodle. Swanson The naming contest starts today on Facebook. Plunkett Ahh, so Kate says the naming contest starts today on Facebook. Stehr We’re going to, we’re going to get a naming, yes, we’re going to get a naming contest out there. We have a few ideas that people have suggested, staff has suggested so. Plunkett Yes, cool. Stehr It’ll be a Zionsville-centric name that she will emerge with so. McElderry Councilors also get therapy from the dog is that, are we? Stehr You, you are eligible – McElderry The staff? Stehr As a Zionsville resident, you are eligible to have – McElderry Thank you so much. Stehr Therapeutic services from the pup, yes. Sampson He mentioned that we get to walk her if we want so. Stehr She’ll be available for walks along the trail during the day. Page 9 of 13 Zionsville Town Council March 18, 2024 McElderry Excellent. Stehr Is there anything else? Plunkett All right – Stehr Or any questions? McElderry I guess I’ll just add real quickly since I’ve been kind of a vocal proponent of any type of change at the 400 South/875 East intersection – just thank you. Thank you for your willingness to listen. I know our residents are, I’d lived here for 20 years before I ever even drove through that intersection. Stehr Yes – McElderry So there’s many people that probably don’t know anything about it but for the people that do live near it is a concern of theirs and I’m glad that we’re looking into things – Stehr Yes – McElderry And I would just urge the public to please be patient. It does take a long time for something like this to happen and in the meantime, we will monitor it and if there’s anything else that we can do in that time between when any type of corrective measures are made, we will do that but I think this is just a wonderful example, again, of the type of collaboration that’s happening between the Council and the Mayor and your staff so thank you. Stehr Well, I appreciate you saying that and we will certainly keep, keep moving forward in that direction. Thank you. All right. Plunkett Thank you. Stehr Thank you. TOWN COUNCIL UPDATE Plunkett Up next on the agenda are Council Updates. Are there any updates from Councilors? OLD BUSINESS Consideration of an Ordinance Amending the 2024 Salary Ordinance (Holiday Schedule) Ordinance 2024-07 (Final Reading) Plunkett All right, moving on to Old Business. The first item on Old Business is Consideration of an Ordinance Amending the 2024 Salary Ordinance. This is the holiday schedule, Ordinance 2024-07. Councilors, you’ll recall, this is to adjust the holiday schedule for the April 8th eclipse. So, are there any questions from Councilors? Otherwise, I’d entertain a motion. Page 10 of 13 Zionsville Town Council March 18, 2024 Norris I’ll make a motion to approve on final reading Ordinance 2024-07. Sampson Second. Plunkett We have a first from Councilor Norris, a second from Councilor Sampson. All those in favor signify by saying aye. All Aye. Plunkett All those opposed same sign. [No response] Motion passes 5 in favor, 0 opposed. Consideration of an Ordinance Amending the READI Grant Fund Number Ordinance 2024-09 (Final Reading) Plunkett Up next is the Consideration of an Ordinance Amending the READI Grant Fund Number. This is Ordinance 2024-09. This is the final reading. Mia Riley is here, Deputy Director of Finance, if we have any questions. Councilors, you’ll recall that this was at the last meeting just simply a numbering issue with the READI Grant funds that came through and just correcting the number on the docket. Are there any questions for Mia? McElderry Just a minor question. I noticed on everything including the actual paperwork that it is referred to as the Gateway Project. I know we’re now calling it the South Village. Is there, do we need to keep it the Gateway Project in all of our documents because that’s how it was initiated? Riley The way we have it set up is it says READI Grant so probably for spending purposes we may change it to South Village but for fund purposes it’s going to be referred to as the READI Grant. McElderry Just READI Grant? Riley Yes. McElderry Okay. Thank you. Plunkett Any other questions from Councilors? I would entertain a motion. Stein I move to approve Ordinance 2024-09. Sampson Second. Plunkett I got a first from Councilor Stein, a second from Councilor Sampson. All those in favor signify by saying aye. All Aye. Page 11 of 13 Zionsville Town Council March 18, 2024 Plunkett All those opposed same sign. [No response] Motion passes 5 in favor, 0 opposed. Sorry about that Tim, I didn’t mean to throw those off the table. McElderry It’s all right. NEW BUSINESS Consideration of a Resolution Regarding the Appropriation of Additional Funds (READI Grant) Resolution 2024-09 (Public Hearing) Plunkett Moving on to New Business, we have the Consideration of a Resolution Regarding the Appropriation of Additional Funds. This is READI Grant Resolution 2024-09. We have Mia here to answer any questions. Mia, just for clarity, I guess this is just another step, right? So the last meeting and then this meeting we passed the Ordinance to change fund number and now we have to get the money out of that fund number. This is not a new expense, this is just simply checking boxes. Riley No and you guys did approve this last year. Plunkett Yes. Riley Unfortunately, there was no spending, there were no contracts in place so we couldn’t encumber the funds so we’re just simply asking again to be able to spend it. Plunkett Yes. Let’s see, all right – so this is a public hearing. I have proof of publication of the public notice of the public hearing. At this point I’ll open the public hearing. If there’s any members from the public who would like to speak. Seeing none, I’ll close the public hearing. Are there any other questions for Mia? Otherwise I would entertain a motion. Norris I’ll make a motion to approve Resolution 2024-09. Plunkett A first from Councilor Norris. McElderry Second. Plunkett A second from Councilor McElderry. All those in favor signify by saying aye. All Aye. Plunkett All those opposed same sign. [No response] Motion passes 5 in favor, 0 opposed. Page 12 of 13 Zionsville Town Council March 18, 2024 OTHER MATTERS Plunkett Up next are Other Matters. Are there any other matters from Councilors? Norris Just with the spring break schedule when our next meeting – Plunkett Tuesday, April 9th. Norris April 9th. Plunkett At 7 p.m. Sampson And the Town Hall will be closed on the 8th because of the holiday? Plunkett Yep, I believe so. Norris Hope to see everyone at, at Mulberry Fields for the big Town event that day so on April 8th, the eclipse. ADJOURN Plunkett All right, anything else from Councilors? I will make a motion to adjourn. Stein Second. Plunkett A second from Councilor Stein. All those in favor signify by saying aye. All Aye. Plunkett All those opposed same sign. [No response] Motion passes 5 in favor, 0 opposed. The next regular Town Council meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, April 9, 2024 at 7 p.m. in the Zionsville Town Hall Council Chambers. Please note the switch in days due to spring break and the solar eclipse holiday. Final notice will be posted in compliance with the Indiana Open Door Law. Thank you. Respectfully submitted, Amelia Anne Lacy, Municipal Relations Coordinator Town of Zionsville Page 13 of 13