PLAINFIELD TOWN COUNCIL. October 13, 2003

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1 PLAINFIELD TOWN COUNCIL October 13, 2003 The Plainfield Town Council met on Monday, October 13, attendance were Mr. Brandgard, Mr. Young, Mr. Ward and Mr. Kirchoff. In PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE Mr. Brandgard said there is a bid opening this evening. If somebody has not submitted their bid, this is the last opportunity to do so. Being no one coming forward there will no longer be an opportunity to submit a bid. CONSENT AGENDA 1. Approval of the minutes of the Town Council meeting of Monday, September 22, Approval to allow Delta Theta Tau to collect toiletries at the Town and Police Headquarters buildings for distribution to charitable organizations. 3. Approval to allow Spring Fling 15K Run and 5K Walk on Saturday, April 17, 2004 between 6:00 a.m. to noon per Steve Huckstep s Race Director s letter. 4. Approval of Halloween Trick or Treating on Friday, October 31 st between 6:00 and 9:00 p.m. 5. Authorize Town Manager to prepare and solicit bids for residential trash collection and curbside recycling for 2004 and Approval of the September 2003 monthly reports for the Plainfield Fire Department, Plainfield Police Department, Town Court and Department of Planning. 7. Approval of the Human Resources Director s Report dated October 13, Approval of Town Engineer s Report dated October 10, Mr. Kirchoff on the first page of the minutes it indicated Mr. Young made a motion for the approval of the Consent Agenda and it should reflect that I will make that second to that motion instead of Mr. McPhail who was not present that evening. Mr. Ward made a motion to approve the Consent Agenda as amended. Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Motion carried. BID AWARD: Southwest Water Treatment Plant Mr. Belcher said there are two items that I would like to talk about, both bids that were received on the Southwest Water Plant project. One being the plant first. There was a bid received from Small Wilson Company. They were the apparent low bidder at the night of the bid. We have reviewed that bid document and found that we believe that there are critical items that were not completed properly. One the bid proposal was not signed. The second was the bid proposal did not have a company seal. Mr. Daniel advised me that was not a large item but that is also something that we found. And the third item was there was a required equipment list that had to be submitted at the time of bid and it was not filled out in the bid documents. Based on that we would recommend that we reject the bid of Small Wilson Company on those grounds as non-responsive. Mr. Kirchoff said I was just asking Mr. Daniel how critical they were and he indicated that the last item was the most critical. Mr. Brandgard said I think we have allowed the proposal not being singed with the condition if it was approved, it would be signed. Mr. Daniel said actually this is a little different in the sense that the part of the bid that we normally allow is toward the end of the bid where there is a place to sign it and a certification. This was actually the initial part of the bid itself. Mr. Brandgard said so it is a little more critical. Mr. Daniel said yes it is.! 1

2 Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to reject the bid from Small Wilson as being non-responsive and authorize the committee to go back and review the other bids. Second by Mr. Young. Motion carried. Mr. Belcher said on the same topic there was a bid under the same project listing of the Moon Road/Hadley Road water main. We received those bids and there were no problems with the bids themselves. But after reviewing now all of the bids, the water plant bid knowing the amount of that and the tank bid and looking at the water main bid we were a little outside our budget. We talked to Mr. Brown about it and he is willing to take that project on with his own forces. It would certainly save the Town money and based on that we would like to reject all bids on that, which we have the ability and authority to do in the documents that we sent out. There is nothing wrong with any of the bids but we would like to take that project on ourselves. Mr. Young said in the interest of a quality project I move that we accept the Town Engineer s proposal to reject all bids and assume the responsibility for the construction of the Moon Road water main with the Town s forces. Second by Mr. Ward. Motion carried. BID OPENING: 2003 Street Paving Bids Mr. Brandgard said the first bid is submitted by Milestone Contractors, Indianapolis. form. Mr. Daniel said the bid from Milestone Contractors is in proper Mr. Brandgard said the bid submitted by Milestone Contractors is $855, The second bid is submitted by Rieth-Riley, Indianapolis. Mr. Daniel said the Rieth-Riley bid is in proper form. Mr. Brandgard said the total amount of bid submitted by Rieth- Riley is $1,067, The third bid is submitted by Grady Brothers, Indianapolis. Mr. Daniel said the Grady Brothers bid is in proper form. Mr. Brandgard said the total amount of the bid submitted by Grady Brothers is $949, The fourth bid is submitted by E & B Paving, Indianapolis. Mr. Daniel said the financial statement from E & B Paving they have signed and notarized the last section of the financial but did not sign the earlier signature part on the same page. We have in the past waived that as long as they are willing to sign that in the event they are awarded the bid. Mr. Brandgard asked, is there consent? Consent given. form. Mr. Daniel said with that the E & B Paving, Inc. bid is in proper Mr. Brandgard said the total amount of the bid submitted by E & B Paving is $1,102, The fifth bid is submitted by Globe Asphalt, Indianapolis. Mr. Daniel said the Globe Asphalt Paving bid is in proper form. Mr. Brandgard said the total amount of the bid submitted by Globe Asphalt Paving is $1,154, The sixth bid is submitted by Shelly and Sands, Noblesville. Mr. Daniel said the Shelly and Sands, Inc. bid is in proper form. Mr. Brandgard said the total amount of the bid submitted by Shelly and Sands is $1,225, Do we have proof of publication? Mr. Daniel said yes. Mr. Brandgard said the engineer s estimate is $1,022, I would like to ask the bid review committee of Carl Brown, Jason Castetter, Bill Kirchoff and Don McGillem to review the bids and come back to us with a decision of who to go with. I would also like to thank everybody who submitted a bid.! 2

3 Mr. Young made a motion to advance the contract award and issuance of the notice to proceed to the low bidder based on the bid review committee s recommendation. Second by Mr. Ward. Motion carried. BUSINESS FROM THE FLOOR Mr. Mitch Haase at 360 Andrews Boulevard, Plainfield said I m here because a citizen of the Town of Plainfield had a request for the Parks Department. There are three lots on Hobbs Hill that are for sale at this time. Mr. Kirchoff said I thought they were sold. Mr. Haase said it is my understanding of two weeks ago there was a tenured offer on the southernmost lot and the other two lots are still for sale. It was of his interest to at least bring the recommendation to the Town that they might want to consider purchasing the two lots to allow for the continuation of sledding on Hobbs Hill when it snows. It has been done for a long time. I m sure some of us have been guilty of doing that as we all sit in this room. So, I m merely a messenger. I have a citizen that I need to respond to in no particular time frame. So, at least I m bringing it to your attention and due consideration would be appreciated and then I would just need a response. If there would be some kind of response either before or on the next Plan Commission meeting from one of the Council members, that would probably be sufficient to him as to whether the Town would consider it or is not going to consider it. Mr. Brandgard said we will take that suggestion under due consideration. Mr. Ward asked, are both lots owned by the same person? Mr. Haase said I think there are three lots there and at the time they are all three still owned by the same person. That was the indication I was given. Mr. Kirchoff asked, aren t they owned by the church? Mr. Haase said no. Actually at this time I believe they are owned by Beth Groninger who also owns the old Hobbs house, which she has lived in years. The properties adjoin at the base of the hill. She is actively trying to sell those parcels and the church has sold them to her I m almost certain of that. TOWN MANAGER S REPORT Mr. Carlucci said the first item has to do with Opus Corporation. They are requesting a 10-year real property tax abatement to construct a new distribution center. This is a speculative distribution center. They have nobody in mind for the building. This will be, they call it Opus number six in the spec buildings. It would be built on Lots 35 and 36 in the Airwest Business Park. To give you kind of a general idea of where that is located right now Opus is constructing a building for Brylane on Reeves Road directly east of Balkamp. Normally it used to run over to Six Points Road but this building is really southeast of Reeves Road. The new building will be south of that new Brylane building, which is under construction right now. It will be facing I-70. They are proposing to build a 424,828 square foot warehouse that could be expandable to 829,774 square feet. The total value of the building and the land for Phase 1 is eleven million dollars. This is not in a tax increment financing area and neither is the Brylane building. Neither one of those are in the TIF district so those abatements will eventually come off and immediately go on the tax rolls. That is their request. They will be here at the next meeting if you decide to go forward and approve the resolution tonight. They will then come to the next meeting for the public hearing, which would be at the next Council meeting. We will deal with that resolution at that point in the agenda. The next item has to do with the Plainfield Plan Commission. I, Richard A. Carlucci, in my capacity as Secretary of the Plainfield Plan Commission, hereby certify that a public hearing was held by the Plainfield Plan Commission on Monday, October 6, 2003 on the petition of Bob Fulkerson and Panatoni Development for rezoning of 82 acres from R-5 High-density residential and GC General Commercial to I-2 Office Warehouse Distribution Industrial. The Plainfield Plan Commission! 3

4 voted five to one with one absent to make a favorable recommendation to the Plainfield Town Council to rezone said property as described herein on attached Exhibit A. I have dated this the 9 th day of October For the people in the audience who don t particularly live in Plainfield Bob Fulkerson s property is on the north side of Stafford Road directly to the west of the Bridgefield Subdivision. As a matter of fact, his property abuts up against that. The 82 acres were zoned prior to the 1997 Zoning Ordinance. Mr. Higbee said it was that way when I came to Town about five years ago. Mr. Carlucci said so it was already in place as a Planned Unit Development. Bob Fulkerson and his son have been long time residents of the Town. Panatoni Development is out of Sacramento, California. So, they are looking at developing this property so the rezoning is their first step in that process to move this forward. I have provided both Mr. Kirchoff and Mr. Young a copy of the Staff Report. The Council at this time would normally accept this recommendation or reject it. I have provided the Council with a Rezoning Ordinance. They were both sent to you via and a copy placed on your desk tonight. Mr. Kirchoff said as I looked at the site, I was trying to put in my mind where the proposed access road would possibly lie on here? We have had some discussions about the western access. This site is south of that so it would not have an impact at this point and time of where we had the proposed location for that access. Am I saying that right Mr. Belcher? Mr. Belcher said right. Mr. Kirchoff said we have had some discussions about where that should come in. I looked at that little access point. I don t know where it is. I thought maybe we were south so that is why I asked you where we were. Mr. Carlucci said Andy Gerdom from American Consulting Engineers is here tonight as well as the Fulkerson s. Mr. Belcher said I recall talking about that in the zoning phase. They said they would be willing to cooperate with us on any kind of potential connection to the north. This is just the zoning phase so we haven t gotten as far as knowing exactly how the site would be laid out. If they were to cross that hurdle, we have some communication from them that they would cooperate with us. Mr. Kirchoff said now that I look at the fire station, was that Clarks Creek Road that accesses there? So, we will have to take a northerly route, if that access stays there. We have had discussions about perhaps moving north. This helps me. Mr. Young made a motion to approve the Plainfield Plan Commission s recommendation. Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Motion carried. Mr. Carlucci said as you know, I had attended a couple of weeks back the Mid America Trail Conference. That is made up of five mid western states including Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. I was also a presenter. I was asked by Diana Virgil of Brownsburg to be a presenter at one of the workshops. I had agreed to do that and also we had scheduled on September 21 to have a workshop where participants bring their bikes out and ride our trails. We would first meet with them. We had Butler Fairman that was going to be there. Mic Hickam was lined up for his part of the trails and we were going to let them ride the trails in Plainfield. As you know, Labor Day pretty much took care of our trail ride in Plainfield. Actually I was not scheduled to talk and be part of that panel until one o clock. Diana Virgil kept on me about every 15 minutes and I finally got a hold of her and called her back. She was pretty insistent that I attend the luncheon. She has been a friend of the Plainfield trails from day one. I said okay and went down there. While I was there they were giving out brochures at an awards luncheon and there was a brochure at my table. She immediately took the brochure and said you can read that later here comes your lunch. So, she took the brochure and put it aside. I was totally clueless to what was going on here. Every year at the annual conference, whether it is in this State or another state, they award one project from each state and one individual from each state for a! 4

5 trail award for the recognition for the work that the community or individual has done to put trails in their state. Unbeknownst to me Diana Virgil had submitted the Town of Plainfield s trails system. I got to go up and receive on behalf of the Town Council and the citizens of Plainfield a trail award for the Town of Plainfield. This is a very prestigious award. Ray Irwin is ahead of the Indy greenways and one of the most respected greenways director in the country. What this award is it is a local artist in Broadripple who did a painting of a trail and bridge over the canal. Below it is it has Mid America Trails and Greenways Conference 2003 outstanding greenways project Plainfield greenways. There is a little history of the artist on the back. I can t tell you how thrilled I am and I know everybody here is happy because we are building a trail for our residents. You never think of getting awards because that is not why you are doing it. You are doing it because you want people to be out and meet each other. I will pass this along. I don t know if any of the Council members have seen this yet. While we are on trails Mr. Brown has begun work on the White Lick Creek trail under U.S. 40. If you go by there tomorrow or some other time this week, be quick because he has already accomplished a lot down there and so have some of the other employees. Harmon Steel has already welded the eyelet back onto the bridge. They are starting to tighten up the bridge and straightening things up. We hope to be open in one way or another within the next five to seven days and maybe even sooner. It really depends on the bridge. If Harman can t get the new railing in, then we will ask them to try to bend it back or move it back and open the bridge and put some temporary railing in so that we can get people on that bridge again onto the trail system. REPORTS Mr. Kirchoff said I attended the Plan Commission meeting last Monday night. We talked about the north/south corridor task force. I had forgotten that they have scheduled a meeting this Wednesday night. I didn t know if you had been notified of that or not. Mr. Brandgard said no I had not. Mr. Kirchoff said it is Wednesday evening I believe at 6:30 at Danville. We are supposed to have a revised contract and a proposed bid from HNTB. Mr. Daniel said on the Dan Jones Road project we have all of those eminent domain cases filed for right-of-way for the Dan Jones Road project. Those are set now for next Wednesday the 22 nd for the initial take hearing. I have been in contact from some of the owners and their attorneys. Obviously, that is a right-of-way take. We are not buying a whole piece of property. Some of those are smaller amounts than sometimes we deal with. In an effort to expedite that I wondered about the possibility of Council member Kirchoff signing off of those. He is familiar with the appraisals and project. Could the Council authorize him, in the event we get a settlement that he thinks is appropriate under the circumstances, to accept that and move on that rather than spending a lot of time going back and forth to the Council with smaller items like that. Mr. Brandgard said we have done that before in various areas. Mr. Ward made a motion to authorize Council member Bill Kirchoff to act on the Council s behalf relative to any possible settlements in Dan Jones Road project. Second by Mr. Young. Motion carried. Mr. Young said it would be my request that I relinquish my minutes to Chief Brinker for the presentation on an initiative from the Plainfield Metropolitan Police Department. Chief Brinker said after working with the police commissioners at our last meeting we had discussed the possibility of trying to go ahead and establish a traffic enforcement unit within the police department. This is one of the things that I had originally listed in my goal of 13 plans for the upcoming administration. The main thing that we want to do with this is to provide accident investigation traffic control and better ordinance enforcement through the traffic division. This would be where we would set up officers that would specifically respond to those needs. The reason that we are in need of this at this time is the increase in the size of! 5

6 the Town, including the population geographic size and business community. Our daytime population right now has drastically changed compared to what it was 5-10 years ago. We are no longer a bedroom community. Actually people are coming here in the daytime. Our road miles in the daytime have drastically increased over the last several years. Especially when you look at the fact that we have U.S. 40, which is four lanes; SR267 and Perry Road. As we keep watching things keep expanding for us, we have a need for higher visibility in order to prevent accidents from happening. There is a lot of research that has been done that the more that the people see the officers out on the streets running traffic patrols that they tend to pay more attention to what they are doing as they are driving. We have had a greater call for enforcement of our Town ordinances governing traffic patrol. So far this year we have had 551 traffic accidents in the first nine months of the year and estimate 750 for the end of the year. Through our 2002 year-end report we had a statistical analysis that showed that we were going to run about 750. So, that is still within the amount that we figured on. That is about double what we had back in The traffic unit is going to be available to enforce the ordinances regarding the weight and debris problems that we have had. This is one of the things that we have been trying to work with Mr. Brown in getting enforcement in order to help save the roads that he is trying to put down. Last month we wrote 37 tickets and warnings regarding over-weight and debris limits. We also had the seven spills that either the Town had to help clean up or we got those who were involved to take care of that. Through having a traffic unit that is dedicated to taking care of this that is going to free up the rest of the officers on the shifts to respond to calls. And to provide the additional services that are going to come along with the new recreation center and the shopping malls. With our traffic unit what we are proposing is to introduce motorcycles to be used as the traffic enforcement vehicles. The law enforcement has for many years been involved in using motorcycles. We also here in Plainfield had a motorcycle unit back in the 80 s. The reason that it is going to work this time and it wasn t as successful in the past is that we truly believe that we have the policies and the attitudes and the responsibilities to make sure that this does go and goes very well for us. In the past it was used much more as a public relations tool. We intend to use it as a traffic enforcement tool. Through our abilities to do it and make it work include higher visibility, lower operating costs, the maneuverability of the motorcycles and the ability to go where patrol cars are not able to. Again, uses for the motorcycle is we have traffic enforcement; regular patrols; special assignments; parades; escorts and public relations. One of the big things I think here in red is you can see park and school patrols develops a relationship with the kids and all of the citizens. A motorcycle helps provide that type of contact. If you were able to speak with the two Speedway officers, I think they addressed that. They have had people just standing along side the motorcycle doing traffic patrol and people come up and walk up and talk to them. If you are running radar in a police car, I can almost guarantee no one is going to come up and want to speak to you during that time. Again, we are not selling this as a public relations program but it is going to inherently have that involved. It is going to be a major addition to the Town. Again, they are more approachable and it helps to strike up a conversation. We can justify a motorcycle unit because of the nature of the vehicle. It allows you to respond quickly and efficiently to crashes and any other events. It creates a roadblock on a major roadway. Traffic is worsening and will continue to worsen. Motorcycles let officers get through that traffic. The image of the motorcycle is very strong statement of law enforcement present. These were two quotes taken from the Law Enforcement Technology Magazine and just reiterated everything that I felt about the program. We are very fortunate that the Indianapolis Police Department agreed to provide Plainfield with the required training of this program at no cost. It is by far some of the best training available in the United States. We have several agencies from the area that are currently using motorcycle programs, which includes Speedway who is! 6

7 with us tonight, Indianapolis, Greenwood, a Marion County Sheriff and Delaware County. The accredited agencies involved with it are Carmel, Ft. Wayne, Evansville, Anderson and Kokomo. I was surprised to see that there are 3,600 departments in the United States using motorcycles already for traffic enforcement programs. What we propose is, and it says two to three up here, everything that I have said is two to three and I m going to break that to two. In law enforcement everything that you do is almost three. We have three shifts, three this, three that. We couldn t put it together this time so rather than do it wrong we are going to do it right and we will expand the program down the road. What we would do with this is each of the motorcycle officers would keep a previous fleet car. So, you would have a brand new motorcycle but you would have a three-year old police car. That way they would have that vehicle to use for the inclement weather months. Again, motorcycles would be used about nine months a year but during the time when the weather would break during the bad three months we might still be able to pull them back out. They will respond to all calls to service focused primarily with the traffic. When you are not on the motorcycle, they would still be traffic enforcement officers. We researched and came to find out that the Harley Davidson motorcycles can be purchased and ready to roll as we had displayed out front tonight for around $17,000.00, slightly under that. Now the cost of one of the new cars we are budgeted for around $23, What we are proposing then is take the money to buy the new motorcycle. We are not going to save money because we will lose about $6, in the resale of the car that we are going to keep. To say that this program is going to save money it is not going to save money. Initially it is going to cost the same so that is why we are not here asking for more money. But we are also not going to sale it tonight as a cost-savings program in the beginning. The other idea with that is after the motorcycle has had its use and it reaches a certain mileage we have an agreement with one program director that will take and buy the motorcycle back. We pay $1, In addition to him taking the motorcycle we get a brand new motorcycle to start the next cycle with. I showed you all the good things but with every great program there are some bad things. I have always said that. Mr. Young went out and he did a lot of research on this program and talked to some people and came up with some things. People have mentioned that motorcycle officers can become arrogant and tend to show off. Sometimes that is a public opinion that some people might have. We need to address it and up front we did. These motorcycles will be run in the daytime, the middle shift. The administration will be there to watch this. We are going to make the program succeed. We are also going to be able to have the cameras on the motorcycles, which will be great for the officers because then they will have something to turn into the court when needed. Plus it will give us an opportunity to monitor what is going on. It is an expensive way to run a public relations campaign but that is not what we are doing. We are running a traffic enforcement program. The public relations is something that is going to be a by-product of it. So, therefore, it is just an enforcement tool like the canine program would be. Motorcycles are dangerous, more dangerous than cars. Again, going with the Indianapolis Police Department the training that they put on is exceeded by none. The officer will come out knowing exactly what he is doing. We will be as safe as possible on that motorcycle with no problems. One person said that it sometimes leads to distention among members of the department. I could turn it over to those in the crowd but I think that we all understand we are not going to let that happen here in Plainfield. We have several excellent programs already in place. We have never experienced that before so given the ideas that people had as to some of the drawbacks to the program I think we have pretty much reviewed and looked those things over. The one thing that we couldn t argue with is you can t transport prisoners and you are limited by the weather and the answer is yes. That is just a fact of it but when you weigh the negatives against the positives, I think we can clearly see that it is definitely a positive for the program and a need for it at this time. I m going to stop at this time and if you have any questions, I can answer them or we have the officers from Speedway if you would like to direct anything to them.! 7

8 Mr. Young said I would like to hear from the officers who are proponent. The philosophy was that for this to be successful we needed to examine very critically the negatives. In the area of the transport of prisoners normally the officer calls for backup anyway. So, calling for a support vehicle that would be able to transport someone would not require any change in our normal operating procedures. That one was quick to defuse and was actually done in front of the Board of Commissioners in that presentation. I have mentioned for many years our department runs by a general operations manual. We don t run by the whims of individuals. So, the operations manual would be expanded by a special order, , which then clearly outlines that this is strictly a law enforcement tool used for that. It is not used for anything other than serious business of police work due to the expanding nature of police calls for service in the community. So, I think this program has a much higher chance of a success rate than previous programs that have been attempted without this prior preparation. But having said that what I have asked the chief to do is build into the request a review at one year to analyze it critically to soberly put together a committee of users and non-users. They would be people who are interested and people who are observers so that if this program doesn t have the maturity built into it, we could either change the general operations manual, expand the program or discontinue the program depending upon the success of the first year. I feel that this Council needs to know that the type of preparation is built into any request that comes later in the evening. At this time I would like to hear if they have anything to say. Sgt. Alexander with Speedway said another plus for the motorcycles is that the perception to the public with the motorcycle is they actually think there are more police officers out there. They are seeing motorcycles. They are seeing police cars when actually it is just reallocation of manpower. We are very successful in handling a lot of traffic complaints in catching the speeders and the people who are running the stop signs. Sometimes, if we were in a car, it is almost like having a billboard out there. It would make it very difficult to do that and obviously we are after the safety of the community. When they have complaints, we want to address them. Sometimes it is just impossible because there is no place to put a car. Obviously, with motorcycles you can. Our ticket rates are very high. We have been very successful with really no negatives. One thing that I would offer when we are talking about attitudes of the other officers, I have seen personally with one of our officers just recently somebody that has been on our department for about 16 years. He became actually stagnate, if you will, and is a very good officer but I guess with this opportunity that came up he is one of our hardest working, highest writing ticket officers that we have. So, I think that is another positive of giving an opportunity to other officers, another avenue to be a part of. I can t say enough good about the motorcycles. They are very much of a plus to Speedway. We handle our ordinances from it as well. Pretty much everything the chief has said is right on target. He didn t leave me too much to say other than it is a great program and it works very well. Mr. Kirchoff asked, how many units do you have and how many cars do you have? Sgt. Alexander said now we have 33 cars total but that is counting our detectives. As far as many we have on the street I honestly don t know. I would say probably 17. We have a total of four motorcycles. Each officer on motorcycles we have cars as well. Like I said our program sounds a lot like the chief explained but we are out on those motorcycles weather permitting and our success rate I think is very positive and very well accepted by the public. It is nice to be out there running radar and actually have somebody that you wouldn t have the opportunity to talk to to come up and pat you on the back and say I m glad to see you out here. I wouldn t have that in a car. It does seem like you are approachable, which the chief touched on. That happens a lot. The community is very receptive to that. The only other thing is if you had a helicopter, I think they would think that we had the town blanketed. But it is just a great tool out there. Mr. Kirchoff asked, what kind of negatives have you had? Sgt. Alexander said honestly I haven t had any. It has all been positive from the community. There has been no complaints. I have not received one complaint on a motorcycle officer. The one thing that the chief addressed is that attitudes, as far as the officers, I think in! 8

9 anything you could probably have that. But I know at Speedway we are very fortunate that all of our officers have a great attitude. And they take the time when somebody comes up to say thank you for being out here and if they have a question about the motorcycle, the officers are super. Not everybody can be a motorcycle officer. Not everybody wants to be. You will find that the people that are are usually very positive about their job and what they are doing and also with the public. Because you are out on that front street basically. You are going to be approached before anybody else will. Mr. Young said I would like to add that since we have tried it and discontinued it it was to analyze reasons, a root cause analysis. When we did it before, the chest protection vest weighed three to four times what it weighs now. So, when you put an officer on a motorcycle out in the sun with no protection, body heat and the physical strain on the officer at that time was a lot tougher. Now the gear and the vests allow more comfort for the officers so that I feel that this was something that we analyzed as to learn from our past and try to build a program that has the greatest potential for being a successful program. Mr. Kirchoff asked, what is our timetable for implementation? Chief Brinker said with the purchase of the motorcycle if we were able to get this approved and start looking toward the purchase, it takes about three months to get them in. I would think early March would be our earliest that we would be able to begin. Mr. Kirchoff asked, are you able to use it for more than a ninemonth period? Sgt. Alexander said for the most part nine months is probably a pretty good estimation. Mr. Ward asked, is training done by the IPD for the motorcycle division? Sgt. Alexander said they do most of our training. We have had a couple of officers go through Marion County. We pretty much go through IPD and they do a super job, both agencies do. The other thing is IPD does theirs on the west side of Indianapolis. Marion County does theirs out on Shadeland way out on the east side. Mr. Brandgard said I appreciate you coming out this evening. Mr. Young said we have had a program that has been predicted by the chief at the time of his hire. We have had the preparation of a program. We have had an analysis of a program. It is within budget and it has been mentioned by this chair several times in preparation for tonight. I want to thank the chief and the officers attending for assisting in the presentation. At this time I would like to move that we support the chief and the commissioners and allow them to proceed with the initiative of a special vehicle traffic enforcement initiative that was presented tonight. Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Mr. Kirchoff said I would assume the motion includes a one-year review. Mr. Young said yes. Mr. Brandgard said we have a motion and a second before us this evening. I again want to express my thanks to the chief for putting a fine presentation together. I think you have hit all of the hot topics with it. I think the biggest thing we have going is we do have a better rational for doing this and a program to follow that. As I recall with the other one, I think the bicycles have kind of picked up with what we are attempting to do with the motorcycles the last time. I think this has a better chance and with the traffic such as it is if you get a traffic stoppage, it is difficult to get a car to that site. So, this is an appropriate time for the initiative. Mr. Young said one other thing that was mentioned was we have a concern in our community for providing life safety to our trail system, for which we received the award for both health and crime investigations. Even though there is no attempt for this vehicle to be used in high-speed pursuit there is no attempt for this vehicle to be used as a routine patrol of trails. It will allow an officer to get to a trail system into those times of high stress and need. That is built into the general operation! 9

10 [Tape 1 concluded at this point and resumed as follows on Tape 2 as follows:] with Mr. Brandgard speaking utilizing two motorcycles and also part of the motion is to do a one-year review to see what is good and what is bad. If there is no further discussion, all those in favor signify by aye. None opposed. Motion carried. Chief Brinker said after having you passing the program I greatly appreciate your support in this but I would ask one more thing. Because there were two items that I failed to mention that I wrote in the speech. I didn t get to speak on them yet but you have already heard them and that is because Mr. Young has put a great deal of time in this program in helping us and supporting it. I would now like to request that the evaluation committee consist of one of the Plainfield police commissioners, one Plainfield motorcycle officer, the chief of police and Mr. Young. If that would be okay, I would like to go ahead and establish that as our review committee. Mr. Brandgard asked, is there consent? Consent given. Mr. Young said I had one other thing on my report section. In the minutes we did mention Monday night, the 20 th. We have done this once before where we swear in police officers and we have an Awards Night. Unfortunately on Awards Night I had a conflict and Councilman Ward was able to attend the swearing in. I know we have an extremely large number of conflicts for time but if anyone has a calendar date that allows you to attend that, I would encourage you. It is one of the more worthwhile events that occurs. It also is extremely well done. It gives you a chance to meet six new officers that will be protecting our community in the future and I think there is some positive in doing that as well. That concludes any reports that I have. Mr. Brandgard said thank you for bringing that up. important and it is a worthwhile event to go to. It is Mr. Kirchoff said that is at 7:00. Mr. Young said it would be in the courtroom. Mr. Prince said we conduct operational safety audits at the skate park. It is similar with what we are going to do with the life guarding staff at the aquatic center. This one came in today and I never know when they are going to come in because I employ somebody to do operational safety audits for them. If we knew when they were coming, it wouldn t be a surprise. This is probably the last one of the year. We are getting ready to close the park in just a few days. But I introduced this operational safety audit to our trained skate guards. And, of course, they will ask what happens if we don t pass? I say well you don t work here anymore, hopefully you are trainable. But I wanted to tell you that they have exceeded on every audit that they have been subjected to. I thought if you had time, you might want to look through this form. The young man on this form was working the park alone. He actually was in here and won a Boy Scouts award earlier in the year. He came to this country in 7 th grade and didn t know how to speak English. He has learned that on his own. I think this kid is 16 years old. He is probably going to be sitting in one of your chairs one of these days running the Town. We hear a lot about bad kids don t we? Take a look at the performance of this kid? He didn t know anybody was looking at him that day. Why I'm bringing this up tonight is it is said boy you have a safe skate park out there. We are very lucky. We are but luck is where preparation meets opportunity. I said you know what we are lucky but do you have any idea what those kids do out there? They train in how to take care of these emergencies and I think that has a lot to do with it. We all hope and pray a horrible accident doesn t occur but when it does, you have some young people in your community that knows exactly what to do, if it does. So, I wanted to share that with you tonight. I know the meeting has been lengthy so I will close my comments. Mr. Brandgard said we appreciate you bringing this in. This is one of the things that goes on kind of in the background that we all hope is going on and continues but we don t see it all of the time. So, we appreciate you bringing this up.! 10

11 Mr. Prince said I m a backer of these young kids. We hear the bad stories. That is what you read and that is what you hear and that is what you see. You know there is so many more good stories that are going on. I wanted you to be aware of it. I knew this Council would be interested in what we are doing out there. I wanted to share that with you and I wanted our attorney to see some of the risk management protocol and policies that we have to run the Parks Department. This will be something that we will carry through with every property and every venue that we operate. We are trying to do the right thing for our community and I wanted to celebrate with this young man. He hasn t seen this yet so we will have an award of some type for him when we see him the next time. Mr. Young said I have one request. In a former life I had some responsibility over swimming pools and practice and playing fields and equipment that is also owned by the citizens of Plainfield. I wanted to know if you could share this initiative with appropriate and responsible parties in the Plainfield School system. They are operating with the same type of risks, the same type of liability and the same kids. So, I think they could benefit from some of your initiatives and if you would just share that with them, I would appreciate that. Mr. Prince said I would be more than happy to. Ms. Holland said I will have a report at the next meeting. Mr. Higbee said I have a couple of things for you, three handouts and two things to talk about. One of the handouts is just something that I left off my report that I realized today. This isn t something that I m going to talk about. That is just a project schedule that you normally get on the back of your monthly reports. You can look that over and if you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them. The next handout that I have you probably have been expecting for awhile. You have heard me talking about the Hobbs Tollhouse from time to time. That is a memo that kind of summarizes the status of the situation. It is something that we are going to need a decision on. As you will recall, I have submitted twice for a National Scenic Byways grant to relocate and preserve that structure. The idea was to place it in the White Lick Creek Park and the first National Scenic Byways grant last year was unfortunately not effective and neither were anybody else s grants effective because of some political shenanigans, for a lack of a better description. In Washington the program wasn t handled very well. There was something called earmarking going on and the funding opportunities were basically removed for any project in Indiana last year. We were assured that won t happen again in this funding cycle so I went ahead and resubmitted the grant essentially the same that it was last year. But you will probably recall from my past reports that the landowner out there said that he would donate that structure if we were willing to move it at our own costs but we had to do it within a reasonable period of time. That was the first grant cycle. Now it has been more than a year and I talked to him a couple of months ago and he said the time is getting close when I m not going to be able to honor that forever. Because development opportunities on that site could happen at any time and the structure would have to be demolished. So, you may want to be thinking about some kind of interim plan to put it someplace. The grant that I resubmitted we won t know for at least nine months and maybe even a year. It seems like whenever they tell you when they are going to give you the grant award or give you information about it, it never ends up being when they say. That is why I say nine months to a year before we would know whether we got grant funding. We certainly can t predict that. It is a competitive funding that projects across the whole country are going after. But we think we are going to get a look because we are on an All-American road and there are only 20 All-American roads in the country. That is one of the reasons that this whole grant program exists. This program and the grant proposal meets a lot of the objectives that they would be looking for. But as I had told you back when we did the original feasibility study, we estimated the moving costs to basically demolish parts of the structure that were not original and move sort of the core piece that we thought was probably an original tollhouse and get it all the way down about 4.1 miles down the road down Main Street would be about $50, Which surprised me that it was that low. Then I asked an engineering firm, Banning here locally, to give me some estimates on doing engineering, site layout, surveys, foundation work to actually place the structure. That would be the same regardless whether you dropped it at that site or another location. That! 11

12 altogether came to around $10, So, the situation that we are in now is as a Town we have to decide are we going to do anything to protect this structure now not knowing whether we might get a grant to do more with it later. Are we willing to spend $60, knowing that we are in a competitive grant situation so we may not get anything. We would have to look at what we are willing to do in the future. So, that is what this memo summarizes. The decision would be do you want me to go ahead with some kind of plan to think about protecting the structure? Mr. Carlucci said it was brought up to me by a representative of the Wayne Township historical group. The gentleman that I was talking about said that they didn t believe that was the original tollhouse but that it was somewhere in the Ben Davis area. Mr. Higbee had our intern last summer did about as much as he could do with the internet, checking with State agencies, etc. to determine if that is the original tollhouse or not? Mr. Higbee has said that even if it isn t, if you think it is, it doesn t hurt your application. The only thing that hurts our application more than anything else is politics, what goes on in Washington. It doesn t matter if it is or if it isn t. That is just what happens but maybe you could tell us the result of that search. Mr. Higbee said I once reported to you that when you do historic research, and I guess particularly when you are not an expert, is what you find out is old stuff is hard to find basically. That is what I learned. But we have been kind of beating our heads against the wall. Even if that is a tollhouse, I don t know if we will ever be able to prove it. But what the guy in Wayne Township told my summer intern is he thought this structure may be the tollkeeper s residence and that the actual tollhouse itself, which was probably located on the same property was moved from there to a site in Bridgeport. If you think about this, back when this would have operated in the mid to late 1800's as a tollhouse, and I don t know the exact time frame, but we know the road came through here as a wilderness road probably beginning in 1830 s and then built in various stages after that. Bridgeport would have been much closer to the site than Plainfield. Plainfield is annexed out to Raceway Road today but back then people would probably have known it as being in Bridgeport. But the theory that we get from the Wayne Township side of the County line is that the tollhouse is sitting on the north side of Main Street in Bridgeport or Washington Street over there, not far down the road. And got relocated from that site and that this would have been the tollkeeper s residence. Either one is probably a good thing from the standpoint of people who would evaluate a grant like this. I have talked to some historians who go well you ve got a lot of good anecdotal stuff and that may be good enough. I have a pretty harsh test. I want to see a deed, photographs, things that are totally convincing that this is a tollhouse and I haven t found them yet. But we did find one ad in a Plainfield paper from 1890 that referenced a land sale transaction on that property that said that there was a tollhouse on it. It didn t say this structure was the tollhouse. So, we have just a ton of anecdotal stuff. We have two possible tollhouses now. What I said in the grant straight out is this is still an interpretative facility and the basis for these grants is really whether you create an interpretative facility. If it also happens to be an historical structure and if it also happens to be the only tollhouse left in Indiana and we prove that at some point as we continue to try to find avenues to pursue that, then that will really make it a jump. But if you were building a brand new interpretative facility from scratch there, you could still apply for that grant. You would not have to move an historic building to do it. I went ahead and submitted the grant on that basis and was encouraged to by the Indiana National Road Association who has a lot of input into the grant process. Mr. Carlucci said I know that property out there on the northwest corner of Raceway and U.S. 40 has lagged behind in development. Part of the reason is that U.S. 40 has been continuously under construction for 15 years. I don t know what is going on here anymore but first our side was under construction. And then as soon as we got done, we had about a year wait and then they went over and constructed the other side. It has some good potential to go north. There is a good connection between that piece of property as a General Commercial property because that really goes from U.S. 40 to CR200 going straight north to the Meijer and that busy U.S. 36 corridor. I would suggest that as they come in for their plat or approvals on the development plan approvals, we have some leverage there with the property there. We could even suggest to them to break off a piece of property and! 12