PLAINFILED TOWN COUNCIL. January 13, 2003

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1 PLAINFILED TOWN COUNCIL January 13, 2003 The Plainfield Town Council met on Monday, January 13, attendance were Mr. Brandgard, Mr. Kirchoff, Mr. Ward and Mr. Young. In PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE CONSENT AGENDA 1. Approval of the minutes of the Town Council meeting of December 27, Approval of Change Order #5 in the amount of $80, for the Plainfield Greenways Phase 1 for overhead signage and gates at Vestal Road and Vandalia Railroad Trail, redesign of connector to Claymont Subdivision to meet ADA standards and final quantities per the Town Engineer s Report dated December 26, Second Reading of Ordinance No : An Ordinance Rezoning Real Estate from I-1 Office Research Industrial and I-2 Office/Warehouse/Distribution industrial to PUD Market Place Planned Unit Development. 4. Approval of department reports for December 2002 for the Town Court, Plainfield Fire Department, Plainfield Police Department, Communications Department, Department of Public Works, Parks and Recreation Department and the Human Resources Director s Report. Motion was carried to approve the consent agenda as presented. BUSINESS FROM THE FLOOR Mr. William Hutchins at 202 Vestal Road, Plainfield said I have been before the board before on ordinances regarding carrying firearms on public property. I happened to see in December s paper a notification or Ordinance, , restricting carrying firearms in any park department. Is that any firearms by anybody? Mr. Brandgard said yes. Mr. Hutchins said in accordance with Article 1, rights of citizens in the State Constitution, Section 32 bearing arms the people shall have the right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State. I have been before the board before about this. I have been at everyplace and spoke on it and it seems to be spitting in the wind, it doesn t happen. I m just here to tell you in public in a meeting that I absolutely have no intent of complying with this ordinance. Any public official who creates and tries to propose or enforce this jeopardizes his job, his career and his personal reputation. You people took an oath to support the constitution. Now if you don t like it, that is fine but don t violate it so I just wanted you to know. Mr. Brandgard said I appreciate your comments. Thank you. TOWN MANAGER S REPORT Mr. Carlucci said I have the Plan Commission Report from the January 6 meeting of the Plan Commission. I will read my certification. 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, January 6, 2003 on the application of Airwest Associates, LLC for a zone map change from OD Office District to GC General Commercial, 12.3 acres. The rezoning number is RZ The Plainfield Plan Commission voted seven to zero to make a favorable recommendation to the Plainfield Town Council on the proposed rezoning per attached zoning commitments. It is dated the 8 th day of January I have signed it as the Secretary and sealed it with the Plan Commission seal. Let me explain where this property is located. The original part started at Stanley Road and the first 150 acres was from Stanley Road! 1

2 east of SR267. This part is just for 12 acres that front on Stanley Road and SR267. I think everybody has a map and I tried to color them all so that everybody knew exactly where the 12.3 acres were. So, this is SR267. This is Stanley Road and this is the property that is subject to the rezoning. Mr. McNaught did a very good job presenting it to the Plan Commission. Originally, I believe, he indicated that the property was zoned General Commercial and then he did go back to try to go back to OD Office District. This may have come up at some future point anyway if there was any kind of restaurant or something like that that wanted to be on that frontage. They would have had to come back in. Under the GC zoning you can still have office spaces as a permitted use in the GC General Commercial District. I think the Plan Commission felt comfortable with making that recommendation unanimously to the Town Council. In addition, as is typical of the Plan Commission, there was a set of commitments that were attached. And in those commitments it eliminated a substantial amount of the permitted uses that are normally found in a General Commercial District. That was the conditions under which the Plan Commission forwarded this to the Town Council. Those commitments, if you go forward and approve the recommendation and begin the reading of the rezoning ordinance tonight, we will then record those commitments at the County and those will run with the land. So, if the land is sold to another owner or each individual lot is sold off, those commitments will come up hopefully under a title search. So, that is the recommendation from the Plan Commission on the proposed rezoning. I would be happy to answer any questions or Mr. Higbee is here if you have any. Mr. Kirchoff asked, isn t this the property that Stoop s is considering? Mr. Carlucci said it is only rumor but it is what I have heard. Mr. Kirchoff said so they don t apparently sell trucks over one time and it says they cannot do an auction there, is that correct? Mr. Carlucci said that is correct. Mr. Young made a motion to approve the recommendation to rezone 12.3 acres for Airwest Associates from OD Office District to General Commercial, RZ Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Motion carried. Mr. Carlucci said the next item that I have for you tonight, and this will come up later in the meeting under resolutions, is TKO Enterprises has requested a 10-year property tax abatement. They are proposing to construct a 30,000 square foot office production facility on 5.75 acres on Lot 20 in the Airwest Business Park. To give you briefly where that is if you go to the intersection of Whitaker Road and Stafford Road, that would be the southeast corner of that intersection. They are proposing to spend approximately 1.7 million dollars to erect a 30,000 square foot building. They could expand it an additional 20,000 square feet. The value of the machinery equipment is estimated at $1,190, A total of 60 jobs will be retained at an annual payroll of $1,960, and 10 new jobs will be created at an annual estimated payroll of $233, If you decide to go forward tonight and approve the declaratory resolution, the public hearing and representatives from TKO Enterprises will be at the next Council meeting, which is on the 27 th and that is when the public hearing will be conducted. They were not here tonight because there was really no reason for them to be here. So, that will come up later in the meeting. I will be happy to answer any questions. Mr. McPhail has been involved in this project but he is at Ball State at a weeklong economic development class. A couple of other items came up. Actually, I received this today. I received a letter from the City of Indianapolis concerning the ozone compact, for the lack of a better description, that the Council had approved. They asked, according to the letter, to assign someone to the committee. They need to know by January 17. Their letter is dated January 7 but I didn t get it until today. They want to identify a person who will represent your organization during the process and provide contact information. It is short notice. I don t know if the 17 th date is a drop-dead date. I would suggest that we go! 2

3 ahead and have the Council maybe come up with some names and do this at the next meeting. I can t imagine three or four days is going to make a difference since we didn t get this until today. I don t need another meeting to go to. I think we ought to try to find somebody who is more of an engineer type. I m not suggesting Mr. Belcher. It could be a citizen or somebody who would want to be involved in this and still have a close attachment to the Town. I think we could bring this up at the next meeting. I don t think something is going to happen between the 17 th and the 27 th that will make that much of a difference. Mr. Brandgard said unless they have any volunteers here we will take your suggestion. Mr. Carlucci said there are a couple of things I want to start passing around. We have received our certificates, National Register of Historical Places for the interurban building. And from the State of Indiana for being on the State Register. I will get these framed and we can put them in the building when it is done. Mr. Ward asked, have they started doing anything there? Mr. Carlucci said no. We have to get the tile out of the building and as soon as that tile is out, we will have a preconstruction conference and then we can start the work. Mr. Brown said those are being taken out today and we will be finished tomorrow. Mr. Carlucci said we have a few things to get to the Friends of the Legion. We have to get a couple of them over there and ask them what they want done with certain things. We will store all of the tables and the chairs. The euchre club has found a new home for now. We can store a lot of the stuff but there are some papers and other stuff that we don t know if they want or don t want. All they have to do is let us know what they want and what they don t and we will get rid of the rest. The Parks and Recreation Department was featured in the December 2002 issue of Parks and Recreation Business. This is a fairly new magazine. I think this is like the third addition. It has three pages on the Plainfield Parks Department. I think they did a very nice job. I read the article. Mr. Prince and I saw a couple of drafts and we tried to get them to change a few things and I think they did a fairly good job. We will get extra copies for the Council members. We will contact that guy and get some more. Finally, this is the December 2002/January 2003 issue of the Indiana Constructor Magazine. One of the Plainfield industrial buildings, the Whirlpool building, the Pizzuti building, won an award for a best industrial project. I wanted to pass this along and show this to you on that building. One other thing, I think the Council is already aware of this and this goes along with the interurban building, Bridge 316, which is in Friendship Gardens Park, the Warren Truss Bridge, the nomination is in to put it on the National Register. And that will come up after January 22 meeting of the State Historic Review Board. It is my understanding that it will go on the National Register also. We have about a 12- month period, three properties, two in Plainfield and the interurban building and Bridge 316 and the Sugar Grove Cemetery and Meeting House that have gone on the National Register. We have more to do but that is a good start. REPORTS Chief Anderson said in my I indicated I left some record in your binders but I didn t come down so I brought those down tonight and wanted to make sure that you got them. There is nothing that needs to be discussed this evening. We were just required to provide those records. I didn t have anything to bring up tonight or talk about. If there are any questions on the other information there, I can answer those questions.! 3

4 Major Haak said I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce a new piece of equipment the police department purchased. This is Officer Doug Schnarr. He is the K-9 handler for the department. Officer Schnarr recently completed seven weeks of training in Scottsdale, Kentucky at the advanced K-9 academy. This is Zane our dog. Zane is a dual-purpose dog trained for tracking and also narcotic protection. I would like Officer Schnarr explain a little bit of the schooling that he went through and tell you what the dog can do. Officer Schnarr said this is my K-9 partner, Zane. He is a fullblooded German Shepherd. He was born and raised in West Germany. He was imported into the country approximately October 22. I went down at the end of October 27 th and picked him up. We started class in Scottsdale, Kentucky on November 3 and we have been in training ever since. He is a dual-purpose dog. He is trained as an apprehension dog. He is also trained in passive and felony tracking. Passive tracking is if somebody wonders off, a child is missing or if somebody with Alzheimer s wonders away, we can track them and he won t apprehend at the end of it. He is a passive tracker. Felony tracking is if you go into a theft robbery, vehicle bailout or something like that. He will track them and he will apprehend them at the end of the track. He is also a narcotics dog. He is trained for crack cocaine, regular cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana. We just graduated from class, I believe it was January 10. Tonight will be our first night on the road. I m kind of looking forward to that. Mr. Brandgard asked, how does he know the difference when he is tracking? Officer Schnarr said basically at the end of a felony track when you are getting ready to turn him loose, you give him some commands, some apprehension commands. In a passive track you don t do that. You just do the find command and he never gets off lead on a passive track so you have complete control over the dog the entire time. Not to say that at the end of a felony track you don t have control because you still give him verbal commands. It is that he just has more leeway in a felony track. Major Haak said the dog finished top in the class in Germany and during the training too so we feel like we have a real good dog. Officer Schnarr said in West Germany he got an excellent rating, 98 in the tracking, 96 in the bodywork and 94 in obedience. That is all out of 100 in each category. Major Haak said we actually purchased the dog at the sight of the scene. I sent Officer Schnarr down at Summerset, Kentucky to be interviewed with the owner of the canine property. He actually placed the officer with the dog. That is how they do it down there. Mr. Brandgard said we have a good team here. Officer Schnarr said I ve been nothing but impressed with the training and the way the dog performs. He is a narcotic finding fool. Mr. Haak said with the amount of methamphetamine arrests that we are making he is going to be busy. Mr. Ward asked, how old is the dog? Officer Schnarr said he is three years old sir. They say you can get between eight and 10 years out of a dog. Mr. Brandgard said he is a good-looking dog. Officer Schnarr said he is from old West Germany lines. That is the reason for the long hair. A lot of the newer lines are breed for the shorter hair but he is from the old West Germany lines, which gives him a longer hair coat. Believe it or not he doesn t shed any more than any German Shepherd, just longer hair. Major Haak said I recently purchased these items for the police cars. It is called a rescue disk. It looks like a frisbee and that is actually what it is. There is 100 feet of rope on these and what you! 4

5 do is if you have a child drowning in a retention pond, the officer pulls up on the scene and he takes the velcro off and he has rope there. He drags out about 20 feet of rope and then he can throw it the rest of the way into the pond to the child. It floats and they pull them back in. Each one of the police cars will have one of these in them and I understand from the fire department chief that they have one of those in their vehicles too. With the amount of retention ponds and all of the exposure of drownings in the last year I thought it would be a good idea to have these. They are about $30.00 each. Mr. Lydick said as you will notice in the report that I sent to you, Jeffrey Andy Dixon is a firefighter EMT. On January 7 he was informed that he must report for active duty with the Indiana National Guard effective January 27. Since this date I have talked to Mr. Dixon and he is to report on the 27 th. The 27 th, 28 th and 29 th will actually be training days and then his actual active duty will start on the 30 th. His orders, which we have not received the written copy of, states that he will be on duty for a year, 365 days with a possible extension of another 365 days. Whenever an employee is called to active duty, this causes a lot of stress on the employee. They, of course, are going to be away from their families but not only that type of stress but it also causes financial stress because the amount of money they earn while on active duty is considerably less than the money that they are earning for the Town of Plainfield. A year ago last September one of our police officers, Chad Parks, was called to active duty and he was on active duty for a period of one year. At that time the Town Council agreed to pay his salary for one year. But for the fire department it is a little bit different because they work in differing amounts of hours each pay period. One pay period they will work 96 hours. Another pay period they will work 120 hours but basically they average 56 hours a week or 120 hours per pay period. So, rather than recomputing the pay each pay period I would recommend that the Town Council consider paying Jeffrey Dixon the regular salary for 120 hours each pay period. Then any money that he received from the Army National Guard will be offset against this amount. During this period of time we are required by law to provide the opportunity to purchase health insurance, not necessarily at our expense but at the employee s expense. Mr. Dixon has stated to me that he plans to use the insurance provided by the military so he will not be asking for that benefit. Of course, once the active duty time is up then he is to be restated with our health insurance, dental insurance and life insurance programs with no pre-existing conditions, no waiting periods of any kind. The federal law says for pension funds that the participant must repay any amounts that is owed to the pension by three years after they come back. But the State of Indiana is much more generous. The 1997 Police Officer s and Firefighter s Disability Fund does not require them to make contributions while they are on active duty. But the Town is still required to make their 21% contribution. So, that would be part of my recommendation that the Town Council consider paying Jeffrey Dixon for 120 hours per pay period less the amount that he makes from the armed services and also pay the 21% of the pension fund. Mr. Brandgard said I think that is a good policy for the Town and will entertain a motion to do so. Mr. Young made a motion to approve the Human Resources Director's recommendation regarding Jeffrey Dixon s return to active duty in regards to pay and the PERF payment for retirement for the length of one year. Second by Mr. Ward. Mr. Young said when I introduced this a year ago involving the police officer who was called to duty in a similar situation, we were, as a Council, cautioned by our Human Resources Director that we were setting a precedent. In my view that didn t bother me. When one of our own is called, it was a good policy and that it wasn t doing it for one individual even though we were doing it for one individual at that time. So, I believed it then and I still believe that it is a good public policy. I noticed that others have adopted independently since then some of the things that we heralded a year ago. We were warned and so here we are tonight and I remembered him saying that you are setting a precedent so I think it is time to live up to that commitment that was previously made.! 5

6 Mr. Brandgard said all those in favor signify by aye. opposed. Motion carried. None Mr. Lydick said prior to August of 1997 the Town of Plainfield did not have a bereavement policy. If a person lost a member in their family through death, he either had to take vacation time or excused absence without pay in order to attend to funeral matters or to attend the funeral itself. Then in 1997 a bereavement policy was written. We had a couple of instances that it was being misinterpreted but basically the policy read for the death in the immediate family you receive three consecutive working days for bereavement leave. This was for spouse, child, brother, sister, parent, parent of spouse, grandparent, grandparent s spouse, grandchild, brother-in-law and sister-in-law. It said three consecutive days so there was some question about what the working days were. I came back to the Council a few months ago to get a clarification and affirmation and the three days were supposed to be the day before the funeral, the day of the funeral and the day after the funeral. Of course, firefighters working 24 hours on and 48 hours off causes unique situations. They were given one 24-hour shift because that one 24-hour shift would fall either on the day before or the day of or the day after the funeral. Since this time there has been discussions about whether this is really adequate. In other words, whenever you lose certain members of your family, is the day before, the day of and the day after the funeral enough? Is it sufficient amount of time in order to be able to take care of the matters? I think one thing that we need to be concerned about is to help our employees get through this difficult time that if we could take away the worries of having to come to work or lose pay because of not having vacation time, that it would help them through this situation. So, I am recommending that we revise the policy and we put it into two different groups of family members instead of just one group. The first group would be the closest family members, which would include the spouse, a child, a parent, sister, brother and this would include stepchildren and stepparents and stepbrothers and stepsisters. An employee that lost a member of this type would have up to five days of leave with pay. Again, the question is when does the five days start? I recommended that the five days start with the date of death of the person. Then the remaining relatives, which includes the grandparent, the spouse s grandparent, grandchild, in-laws, which includes brother-in-law, sister-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law and also the stepdaughter-in-law, stepson-in-law, stepbrother-in-law and stepsister-in-law. All of those would still get the three days, the day before the funeral, the day of the funeral and the day after the funeral. If an employee was to miss any work during this period of time, they would go ahead and continue to be paid. It is very difficult to come up with equitable bereavement leave policy when we have employees with such differing work schedules. We have about 36 employees that work six days on and three days off. We have 48 employees that work 24 hours on and 48 hours off. And we have about 50 people that work five days a week Monday through Friday. And then we have another group of about 14 employees that work six days on and two days off. So, to come out and say that everybody gets the exact same number of hours in each situation is very difficult to do. So, what I was proposing was that we provide x number of calendar days and then if the employee misses a day during those five calendar days, they would get paid for anytime that they would miss on the regular schedule. Mr. Kirchoff asked, does this apply to full-time only? Mr. Lydick said that is correct, full-time only. Mr. Brandgard said I think it is a good policy. Mr. Young said I read it with interest in that I have had employees approach me because their relative died on a day that they were off, they felt they were getting gypped out of a day because their relative succumbed on their scheduled day off. These are good people but we try to make it so that you can grieve with your family and they view it as the Town is cheating them out of a benefit. So, no matter what you do we are not going to make everyone happy but it looked like it was fair to me.! 6

7 Mr. Kirchoff said plus I like the split with differentiating between the two groups. It makes since and I think it is a good job. Mr. Brandgard asked, do we have a motion to approve the policy revision? Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to approve the revised bereavement policy as presented by Mr. Lydick. Second by Mr. Ward. Motion carried. Mr. Lydick said the police department has had a position of a Records Clerk 2 for quite some time. I gave you the history of this position in my report so I will not repeat that at this time. The police department has requested that this be considered a full-time position. In other words, they needed somebody there the entire period of time. The police administrative offices are opened from 8:30 to 5:00 each day and they would like a person there all that time. In their 2003 budget proposal that they made last August they included enough funds for a full-time person. But they were saying that the current position has been working about 37½ hours. The last person that held that position resigned back in November because her husband was transferred to northern Ohio or Michigan so they moved to the Toledo area. The only person willing to take that job is going to try to persuade the department to get that position changed into a fulltime position. I suggested to the police department that they might want to consider going with the full-time hours. But then use a jobsharing approach where one person would actually work 20 hours of the 40 and another one work 20. Then you truly have a part-time job. There are people out there that want to work part-time. There are people out there that only want to work 20 hours but when you hire a person who is going to work 37½ hours, they are probably really wanting the 40 hours. Consequently they have not been satisfied. They have complained about the fact that they don t get any paid vacation, no paid sick leave, no paid leave-time, etc. So, Captain Brinker provided us with job descriptions for both Records Clerk 1 and Records Clerk 2 and with the additional hours they realigned some of the job duties that was giving more responsibility to Records Clerk 2 position. And then the Record Clerk s 1 position has taken on additional responsibilities with the detective division of the police department. It appears to me that Captain Brinker has designed these jobs well enough that they could be full-time jobs. The Council could approve a full-time position with full-time benefits or they could approve the position of 40 hours to be job shared between two individuals, which would not include full-time benefits. Mr. Young said I concur with the logic and the discussion held by our Human Resources Director. I think the job descriptions have been well crafted and can be easily supported. This week the interviews are being held for the chief and that the commitment from the board of police commissioners is to have a recommendation to this board at our next meeting. I think the issues of manpower, manpower realignment, manpower utilization, organization of the department should be a chief s decision as one of the roles of the chief. So, even though this is well thought out I would hate to make a decision tonight that would handcuff your future chief saying I would have rather used that money to put a person on the street and use the money some other way. I go around our buildings at odd hours to see if people are standing eight deep at the counter and I see that we really don t have that big of a problem. Our public is being served, which is our job. So, since we have such a short time frame I would feel that I would be comfortable tabling this recommendation until we have a new chief and let whoever that individual should happen to be look over the staff and make logical staff realignment, which any chief would be expected to do. I would hate for him to walk in saying I have this person and I don t know what to do with him. They did it hours before I took office and it is from that point of view. It is not because anything was presented to us that I saw any flaw at all. I know the past chief didn t feel compelled that this had to be solved on the 11 th hour before he left office. If he didn t feel it after serving this community 28 years, then I think that we can certainly have the patience to wait a few days in January. Mr. Brandgard asked, is there consent to table it? given. Consent! 7

8 Mr. Lydick said a few months ago the Town Council had expressed an interest in possibly bringing a utility building back in-house. Currently this is being done by UDC and there have been some questions about the effectiveness of this organization. So, there has been a desire to consider bringing this utility building back in-house. Currently no one in our office or in the Clerk/Treasurer s office is actually collecting water bills. This is all done by a representative from UDC. So, if we are going to move in this direction, then I think the first thing that we need to do is to find a utility billing clerk. This utility billing clerk will do a lot of the paperwork involved in the issuing of water bills, the collection of water bills and doing data entry and things of this type. Also, we would also need a utility billing supervisor. This position will be the person who makes all of the decisions about how the policies are going to be carried out, what the policies are going to be, etc. So, eventually I can see two positions here. On the utility billing clerk I can see this person being used in a dual role. As you know, the municipal building is in kind of a state of transition right now. The Clerk/Treasurer has moved out of the north end of the building. So, now that has been vacated and is ready for the engineering and building department to come up. So, we are going to be having Mr. Belcher and Mr. Rudolphi and Mr. Smith coming to this building and working out of there. Of course, on the east side of the building we also have the Town Manager, the Human Resources Director, the Planning Director, and the Building Compliance Inspector. Whenever a person comes in our north entrance, if the person goes to the right, they go into the Clerk/Treasurer s office. The cashier is very visible there as they walk in and has the initial contact. Whenever that person walks into the door to the left, there is nobody there. There is no employee for the Town of Plainfield there to greet that visitor to find out what their needs are and to direct them to the appropriate area. So, I feel that this utility billing clerk could serve that dual role. They could be the person who does the billing but then they could also do the receptionist type work. Also, with the addition of the engineering and building departments, the number of phone calls are going to significantly increase. We need someone who is efficient and trained in this area as well to ask the right questions in order to route the telephone calls to the right person. How soon will the utility billing be back in-house? That is an undetermined amount of time. We need this administrative position now so what I m requesting for the Council to consider is going ahead and creating the Utility Billing Clerk/Administrative Assistant position and go ahead and hire this person. Get them trained in the administrative part because there will be not only the training of knowing the building and knowing who the people are and how to route people but they can also provide administrative assistance to the building and engineering department. Of course, the building and engineering department used to have a secretary to do some of their work. Of course, when they come up here, the secretary stays down in the Public Works Department. They are going to be missing that administrative support. I recommended that the salary level for this position be from $11.00 to $15.00 per hour realizing that during the period of time when they are training for the administrative work and training for the utility billing, then they would be at the lower end of that scale. But once the utility water billing comes back in-house there would be a raise at that time. I also provided you with a job description that we originally had for the utility billing clerk and then I showed you some revisions that we would make in order for the dual purpose. I would be happy to answer any questions that you would have for the plans for this person. Mr. Ward asked, do all phone calls come into that desk for the whole building? Mr. Lydick said currently they are coming in on the Treasurer s side. The cashier who is currently responsible for answering the phone but the plans would be that once this person was on board that all of the phone calls for the entire building would come to this person. Mr. Kirchoff said I think you mentioned in your report but did we budget for such a person? Mr. Carlucci said this would be funded out of the water and sewer department. It is not a General Fund budget item. UDC was purchased by! 8

9 U.S. Filter. They now own it and I can tell you that it has gotten no better now that they own it than when UDC was owned by Indianapolis Water Company. As a matter of fact, in some ways it is worse. If we misled the Council about the desire to bring that back in-house, I apologize for that but we thought that needed to come back in-house. We have Sherry down there being provided by United Water but at some point if we replace her and bring a utility billing person, that person would be responsible having the software and having it contracted for the utility bills. And then answering the questions and being sure that it is being run the way that we want it run and have it close in hand. We still have people call that UDC number even with the local number, which is We still have a lot of people frustrated because they are trying to call the UDC number. As we bring in Mr. Belcher and the two building inspectors and go through the process of getting a new phone system in, if people want to talk to a receptionist, they can. There is a menu so if they want to talk to the manager, they can talk to the Town Manger, building inspector, they can go through that. I think by improving the phone system, we can do substantially more. Most of us already do most of our own typing. We have our own computers. We are experts on computers and software and we do pretty well but the reason that we picked the need for two people was if you just have one person, that person just can t work five days a week, 52 weeks a year. We need the extra support staff to help along with the chores that drive us nuts. Mr. Prince is here but he will be leaving soon and he will be moving into his new offices at the recreational center but right now we have Mr. Prince here. So, we will have a substantial amount of help that we will need. We are proposing to bring a lot of this back in more detail at the next Council meeting to let you look at the job descriptions and the detail that we can put into it in how we think this is going to work. We would also like to hear if you have any comments about the concept. Mr. Brandgard said I have read in the paper where other communities have had similar or worse problems with UDC than what we have had. One of the major problems that we have had is our citizens water customers being able to talk to somebody and resolve a problem, which we have not been able to get done dealing with Indianapolis Water and UDC. So, it seems like it is one thing that maybe we need to bring back where we have more control over what is going on. Again, we have had some discussion on that but I think we are probably getting close to the time where we need to make a final decision on what we are going to do. Mr. Carlucci said I might add that this would lower our contract with United Water, if they are not providing the service anymore. They actually contract with UDC separately to do this service. We do not contract with UDC directly. This was all done through the original agreement. I will find out the amount. I have an amount in my mind that I think is correct on what the value of that contract is with UDC but with that amount of money we won t be funding anymore if we take it in-house. I need to verify that amount so you know what the amount is. Mr. Kirchoff said my only comment is I think we need to get on with it. We have been talking about it so let s go do it. Mr. Young said at budget time and at other times when there is discussion where everyone wants an additional staff member, I know which Council member is vocal about holding the line of the size of Town government so it is for that reason that I will comment here. I view this in a different light. This is a transfer of duties. Either we contract it out or we bring it in-house. If we bring it in-house, we need the staff to do it. When we out-sourced it, I do recall about being very uncomfortable with WREP and indicating that I was always going to consider them on the opposite side of the table. They were never my allies and I think they have lived up to all of my expectations in every way. They lived up to it better than I had anticipated. I thought they would have disappointed me in certain areas but they have not disappointed me in any of the business relationships that we have enjoyed. So, my position on this is just transferring the function. If they do it, they have to hire the person and if we do it, we have to so my view is different than having an assistant to an assistant, getting another assistant type thing. This is a person to handle the function. I would personally support this.! 9

10 Mr. Brandgard said with the job description that has been presented to us, has everyone had a chance to look it over? If you have, I would entertain a motion to approve the job description. I don t think we are quite ready to approve the position per se to go out and hire somebody. Mr. Kirchoff asked, are we ready to do that until we know we are going to do it? Mr. Brandgard said I would like to make this part of the total package of what we are planning to do. I think coming back to comments where if we were to formerly create the position and fill it and then divert and do something else, then we have another employee that s not really doing what we are intending to do. I think this is one part of the puzzle we have to put together. I would like to defer the hiring of somebody to fill that position until we have everything and we know exactly what we are doing and when it is going to happen. Mr. Carlucci said we will bring that to you at the next meeting. We will tie it all together and show you which way we are going. Mr. Brandgard asked, is there anything that we need to do with the FLMA? Mr. Lydick said it was on the Consent Agenda so that will be covered then. Mr. Carlucci said I told Mr. Lydick before we left this evening you don t really mean that if I put that on the Consent Agenda all of that is done do you? He said well I don t think so. So, we will work on how we will split these two up a little bit better. Maybe if we put an asterisk or something next to it that it is on the Consent Agenda, the rest will be discussed. Maybe that is the easiest way to do it. Mr. Brandgard said I just wanted to make sure that we all understood that. Mr. Higbee said I just handed out a document that I would like to put in front of you. Perhaps by or you could call me if you would like, in the next few days, if at all possible. It has to do with our Town Center Area Plan. We contracted several months ago with a company out of Illinois that have been working on that plan. We have had some oversight advisory committee meetings in public places, etc. They are coming in on February 18 to give us some actual suggestions and concepts that could ultimately become part of the plan. What you have there are 12 sites that they have identified in the Town Center area that they have looked at as sites where we could benefit from receiving some development ideas from them should we choose to do so. In their scope of work they agreed to provide four development sketches for four identified sites. When they did that, we immediately specified that one of them would be for the bank site, First National Bank, the old Bank One lot. That one is already taken but we have the opportunity at this point to pick three more sites, perhaps out of that 12, that they have there. If you go to the far right hand column, you will see that they have actually suggested what they think some of the top sites could be. So, that may help you but if you see another site within those 12 or even not within that 12, it doesn t matter, you can let us know. I wanted to poll you and a couple of other key people with the Town on that. I want to hand it out to the Town Engineer and a couple of other people as well before I give feedback back to them. Then on about February 18, I believe, when our next meeting is here with the consultant they should bring the sketches with them or some kind of ideas relative to what those look like. If you could give me some input, I would very much appreciate that. One other item I just wanted to give you an FYI on is you are all aware, in fact it was on tonight s agenda for a second reading for the new PUD development that is proposed by Premier Properties out on the east side for the 190-acre PUD development. It is called Plainfield Market Place. We want to gear up to help that project be able to get reviewed and go forward quickly. I was talking to Premier today on the phone and they have actually got a tenant right now that is hot and heavy. They want to come in and get their Phase I review started as soon as it gets all of the way through the third reading at the Town! 10

11 Council. We agreed to put a special committee of Staff people together to do a front-end review on that project to help get it through the process because the normal process we still want to use. But we felt, because of the complexity and the uniqueness of this project, it warranted another front-end step. I m suggesting that the committee include myself, Terry Jenkins, who is with Business Districts, Inc. It happens to be the same guy who we hired for the Town Center Plan but he has a lot of retail expertise that can help us. I also am recommending Gene Valanzano, our planning consultant, Mr. Belcher, Mr. McGillem and then I m hoping if I can get him to confirm his availability, Kevin Cavanaugh who is on the Plan Commission and the Design Review Committee. If Mr. Cavanaugh, with his new job, turns out not to have that additional time for this committee, I would suggest maybe another Plan Commission member instead of Mr. Cavanaugh. But I wanted to let you know that is how I m looking at the formation of the committee at this point and time and if there is no objection to that, we will go forward in the very near future, probably within a few weeks and have our first meeting. Mr. Brandgard asked, is there consent? Consent given. This is just a case where developers have asked for us to work with them as he goes through this so when he hits a formal review, he doesn t get it thrown back at him and he has to start over again. He is trying to make sure he is covering everything he needs to cover as he goes through the process because it is a large one. Mr. Kirchoff asked, is there any reason to accelerate the approval process? Mr. Higbee said I don t think it needs to be accelerated. With every developer, and this project is no different, they always look at our time lines and say is there any way that we can crunch us in through faster? Apparently they have somebody on line right now that is giving them some deadlines that are going to be challenging for us. But that s not unique. That happens all of time with people who do not want to go in accordance with our filing deadlines and our meeting dates, etc. and they would rather go sooner than later. This is a multi-family project and he can phase it any way he wants. We wrote a flexible set of commitments and we said you can create as many phases as you want basically. We are not going to say it is one phase, two phases or three phases. That allows him to break it into the pieces that he needs to break it into to get through our process in a reasonable way but yet we have also put an outer time limit on it so that it will get done within a reasonable time. Mr. Brandgard said part of the answer to your question is we have always, if a developer or somebody comes in and they can show us why they need to speed the process up, we usually try to accommodate that. Mr. Kirchoff said I didn t know if our ordinance process would help at all. Mr. Higbee said it basically requires them to come in for a prereview before he files anything with the Town. It requires him to give himself another 30 days or so probably for each of the phases. But he agreed to all of those commitments and didn t bulk at them at all when we worked through the process so I have to assume that those time periods are reasonable. Mr. Belcher said I didn t get a report out so I was going to ask, if you didn t mind, if I would go ahead and update you quickly on a few projects going on at the beginning of the year here. But on the road projects going on in Town, Vestal Road, I wanted to let you know that about 30 or so parcels that we are acquiring right-of-way we have gotten into that. All of the offers are out except for a few on the very northern piece of that road project. Things are coming pretty well. We are pretty happy with the responses of residents out there as far as right of entries. Some have accepted offers and some of those are being processed for payment now so that is going quite well. The bids are out and it is being advertised now so they will be coming back relatively soon within a month or so.! 11

12 Dan Jones Road, we are in the right-of-way phase there. It is a Federal aid project. You can t bid that until you have all of the right-of-way acquired. You certify it to the State so we are in the midst of that. There are around the same number of parcels, 30 or 35, somewhere in that range. All of the appraisals are done and the offers are going out soon. One item on that is there is a piece of land that Cinergy owns on the east side of Dan Jones Road. It lays south of the old railroad right-of-way that we own. It is a 50-foot wide strip of land and it goes from Dan Jones all of the way to the creek that is east of Dan Jones. It actually is important to us we think for several reasons. Not only for this project but for some other things going on. So, Mr. Brown and I have approached Cinergy about possibly donating, not only what we need for Dan Jones, but the entire piece. It is disconnected from their land and they looked upon that favorably. It will save us some money. They want to donate it to us so we are working on the documents and hope to bring that to you with more details pretty soon. We are pleased about that. At 600S and Center Street, the round about signal issue. We are working on more information for you on that in terms of some of the intersecting roads near that intersection. So, we are not finalized on that design aspect yet. We haven t started designing either one of those yet. Perry Road, Phase 2 I wanted to let you know that we had a little problem with the property owner to the north of that road, the majority of that road. It is west of Smith Road, the Grundy s. There were some issues with the surveying done during the project where the property lines were of the right-of-way that we purchased. Some errors may have been made in the survey. We received letters from them and they met with me about that. Also, there was a drainage issue. But I wanted to tell you that ahead of time in case you got asked about it or someone called you about it. We are trying to work on resolving that and they were nice enough to give me a written account of what happened and what they think has gone on so we are going to resolve that here pretty easily but we will get back to you on that. You know about the interchange project at I-70. The biggest issue I think there is the schedule. Here we stand at the beginning of 2003 and they were telling us they were going to be done by the end of 2004 from Stafford to SR267 with that project. If that happens, it is a significant change in the Town s traffic patterns that will occur at that time. It is coming up relative quick. It has been a lot of years talking about it and now something seems to be happening. The County has also now gone on record saying that they will have the piece from U.S. 40 to Stafford done at the same time. So, if that happens, that will even be better for us I think. GIS we are working on that still trying to get address data, data that exists out there instead of recreating data from scratch. We are having pretty good luck with that. I did talk to somebody from the County and had a good conversation with them about possibly sharing information in what they are doing and what they are not doing verse what we are doing trying to make things compatible. We are real pleased with how that is going. The water main project. We have a big water main project. We haven t talked about it for awhile but Hadley Road and Moon Road from U.S. 40 around that corner basically. There is a lot of land to acquire easements and we are still in the middle of that, 30-40parcels that we have acquired. There are always a few that we will have difficulty with. I think we are getting down to those few now. We will be talking to Mr. Daniel soon when we get to where we can t get any further with the basic offers and things but it is going relatively well. The South Wastewater Plant we had a pre-bid meeting this last week. We had some good contractors come in. We had a nice meeting with them. There was not a lot of really big questions. We know that it has come down to concrete and moving earth. That is where all of the money is in this project. Just some big tanks and a really big hole to dig, about an acre or so. But anyway we got some good input from them. We are putting some addendums out to help explain some of the things that! 12