PLAINFIELD TOWN COUNCIL. March 22, 2004

Transcription

1 PLAINFIELD TOWN COUNCIL March 22, 2004 The Plainfield Town Council met on Monday, March 22, In attendance were Mr. Brandgard, Mr. Fivecoat, Mr. Gaddie, Mr. Kirchoff and Mr. McPhail. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE CONSENT AGENDA 1. Approval of the minutes of the Town Council meeting of March 8, Third reading and adoption of Ordinance No : Abandoned Vehicles and Ordinance No : No Parking on Airtech Parkway. 3. Approval of the second readings of Ordinance No : Prock rezoning and Ordinance No : Amendment to the Plainfield Zoning Ordinance for the addition of the park zoning classification. 4. Approval of the Human Resources Director s Report dated March 19, 2004; Utility Billing Director s Report dated March 19, 2004 and February 2004 and the monthly report for the Plainfield Department of Planning and Zoning. 5. Approval of the contract with Schneider Engineering to update the Plainfield Zoning Map for the fixed amount of $8, and authorize the Council President to sign the professional services agreement. 6. Approval of an agreement for professional services with BFS Engineering for the bridge approach and design services on an hourly rate basis not to exceed $25, for the proposed pedestrian bridge from White Lick Creek Trail to the Town Center and authorize Council President to sign the agreement. Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to approve the Consent Agenda as submitted. Second by Mr. Fivecoat. Roll call vote called. Mr. Fivecoat yes Mr. McPhail yes Mr. Kirchoff yes Mr. Gaddie yes Mr. Brandgard yes 5-ayes, 0-opposed, 0-absent. Motion carried. BID AWARD: Moon Road/Hadley Road Water Main Extension (Labor Only) Mr. Brandgard said we also have a bid award for this evening. Do we have a recommendation? Mr. Isaacs said we recommend that Poindexter Excavating do the Moon Road/Hadley Water Main Extension for labor only in the amount of $303, Mr. McPhail made a motion to approve the recommendation to hire Poindexter to install the water main in the amount of $303, Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Motion carried. BUSINESS FROM THE FLOOR Mr. Mike Dearing with the Metropolitan Planning Organization said thank you for inviting me here tonight. I asked to address you here this evening to first of all inform you of the intent of the City Council of the City of Indianapolis to entertain the introduction of the topic of a regional transit authority to the full Council. That is going to be happening sometime soon. As you know, a few years ago we tried to do this and it didn t happen as far as Marion County goes. I was asked by the mayor s office to initiate discussions again in view of this being entertained to be introduced to the City Council. I m making presentations one on one for each of the jurisdictions who happened to pass a resolution pertaining to the regional transit authority previously and that was two or three years ago. As you can see from the handout that I have given you, I will go through this a little more extensively, we are seriously entertaining this to be a fact in the near future. It is very important that we act on this in a! 1

2 regional manner. A regional transit authority is no good unless we have a cross-section of the region represented in supportive of this action. I think it is very important for the region to have the ability to have an entity identified that would, not only have the insight to plan for transit in the future, but also have the ability to manage such a system once whatever that system might be is identified. As you know the Metropolitan Planning Organization is in the middle of approaching phase 3 of a rapid transit study to identify what a system might look like with high tech technology involved. We are currently looking at three different technologies, bus rapid transit; light rail transit and an automotive guideway, which is an upgraded version of the Clarion system. Light rail meaning a system that is kind of like a streetcar in other areas, on ground or on rail. A bus rapid transit is more or less an upgraded and glorified version of a rubber tire transit system that would have a separated facility that would not be mixing in with the traffic. We have identified, as you probably well know from everything that has been passed around and identified in the media, six corridors. One would be coming from the Noblesville/Fishers area to the downtown of Indianapolis; one coming from Carmel and going clockwise; one coming from Carmel into the downtown; from Greenwood to the downtown of Indianapolis; the airport/plainfield; vicinity of Avon and around Rockville Road into the downtown area and Zionsville to the downtown. So, basically there are six corridors but there are really only three corridors because of the configuration of mixing those corridors together in the downtown area in a central location, which would hopefully be shared with Indy Go. The corridor from Noblesville/ Fishers area would be a continuous corridor to the airport/plainfield. The other two corridors would be Cumberland/Greenwood and the other continuous corridor would be Zionsville/Avon. Those are identified in those ways because of the geographic and the way that it would fit to the downtown. So, they would be side by side by side in one location, the transfer point. Buses below and whatever technology we choose per level so that would be the configuration. That is the basis and whether or not a high tech rapid transit system exists it is probably still a good idea to entertain a regional transit authority. Because if indeed the region decides not to invest in the high amount of money into a high tech facility, we still need the ability to move people around. It could be an expanded Indy Go system. Rubber tire would probably be the bus rapid system, an express bus service such as what we have had success with from the Fishers area and from Glendale, which unfortunately is going to end pretty soon. I hate to see that but the money is just not there to continue that but it has shown to be a success. So, with that background I won t spend that much more time talking about that but I wanted to go through the handout that I gave you and explain a little bit about what a regional transit authority might consist of. Bullet points there under the understanding of a RTA makeup would be not to use a taxing authority allowed under Indiana Code at least initially. And as per Mayor Peterson it is planned that the RTA would serve to plan, implement and coordinate regional transit options. It would in fact be a transit planning agency with hopefully the ability to oversee and run a transit system. In the short term the RTA would focus on planning coordinated functions rather than implementation. Make the bridges necessary and the buy in necessary to make sure that will complement a procedure that would address everybody s needs first of all. And the work toward the implementation of some transit oriented regional system. The status of the invitation function and whether it will be utilized would be decided in future discussions once that first go around takes place. The planning area of the RTA would be in fact the nine-county Central Indiana regional because we are all working together here and that is where all of the traffic is coming to and from circulating not necessarily to the downtown Indianapolis but back and forth, east and west and north and south. I might say that it looks like if we follow the guidelines and the mold that was identified initially two or three years ago, that an executive director would probably be hired as soon as next year. The plan is, if everything goes right, that the Metropolitan Planning Organization would use its planning metropolitan planning funds to pay the salary for that person that would jump start the RTA situation. And give time to see whether or not we want to continue it and how viable that is. Then entities that belong to the RTA would figure out exactly how we would staff that RTA if we continue to go forth with multiple contributions from the members of the RTA at that time. So, that is our plan and that is what we would like to do. I m going to try my best to make that happen in our work program for 2005.! 2

3 INDOT has established a general service area for the RTA. Only one RTA is permitted within the service area. In INDOT s letter of June 8, 2001 it indicates that the RTA service area consists of, in fact, the nine-county area of Central Indiana that I mentioned before. The RTA is established by ordinance by one of the municipalities in the service area and it has always been assumed that Indianapolis would be that entity to pass the ordinance. With the other municipalities, the towns/cities that care to join the RTA they would be joining the RTA by passing resolutions as indicated by that jurisdiction. A few questions have been brought up about the RTA. Is there a need to pass new resolutions for the communities that have already passed a resolution supporting the RTA? The answer is probably yes. It would probably be a good idea to reconfirm your commitment. There has been a change over in the administrations and members of councils, etc. It is probably good to have a complete buy in by the current membership of the communities. Participating communities in the RTA passed resolutions about No new resolutions were passed during the 2001 attempt to establish a RTA so it is not known whether this is because re-passing the resolutions would be deemed unnecessary because the first domino to fall, mainly the City of Indianapolis, failed to pass its ordinance. I might say that because of the change of the party and power in the City of Indianapolis now, meaning that the Democrats have a one vote edge, it seems like it may be viable that it might pass this time around. In fact, I think there may be a couple of members that are in favor of it also so it looks fairly favorable. We will wait and see what happens. The communities previously passed resolutions include the City of Beech Grove, the City of Carmel, the Cities of Greenwood, Lawrence and Noblesville, Hamilton County and Hendricks County and the Towns of Fishers, Fortville and Plainfield. Even for those communities that passed resolutions there is a need for a new interlocal agreement for continuing the financial support of the RTA startup planning activities. So, that is what I wanted to share with you tonight. We will keep you apprised if you are interested. I think you are interested of the progress that the City Council of Indianapolis makes in its discussions. I think it was supposed to have been given to the council last week and I think they were just trying to solidify bipartisan sponsorship of the proposal. I think it is supposed to be going to the council sometime soon so I will keep you apprised of that. I would be happy to answer any questions at this time. Mr. Brandgard said I appreciate your offer to keep us apprised of what is happening. That is good news to hear but going back to the discussions that we had at the time that we passed the ordinance I think we have a different makeup of the Council but I still think it is important that we participate. But I think we still have a concern of the way that is structured. It is not a membership of equals. As I recall, you would have Indianapolis with the majority and then the surrounding communities. One of those communities would represent everybody else. I don t think that is a very workable process. Mr. Dearing said I think the makeup of RTA is up for grabs. I think we will try to revisit that and make sure that everybody gets together and figures out what is the best equality. The voice is very important. I think that is up for discussion. I don t think we necessarily have to go with the same configuration that was identified before. We want to make sure that everybody is happy with the situation. As long as I m involved, I will try to make that happen. That s why I m coming out. I have dealt with localities for a long time dating back to the time that I was with INDOT. I know what your feelings are and I understand your concern and your interest in participating so I will do what I can to make sure that your voice is heard. Mr. Brandgard said I certainly appreciate that. Mr. Kirchoff said we could or should wait until we see what happens. Mr. Dearing said that is my advice is to see for sure if this is going to be taken seriously by the city council. The scenario before was that these entities that I mentioned before passed a resolution before and went to the City of Indianapolis. Because the City of Indianapolis didn t happen it would seem to me it would probably be better to wait and see that Marion County acts first to make sure that! 3

4 we know that skeletal solidity in the RTA and make sure the support is there from the base and make sure that everybody else is heard at the same time. Mr. Carlucci said there was actually a committee that was of the Regional Transportation Council that was formed and I was on that committee. A lot of time was spent going over that one issue at length on membership. We were making a lot of headway and then sometimes, as happens, politics got involved and everything came to a halt. There was no point going forward on that committee when it didn t look like the city council was going to pass it at the time. So, I hope we can have those discussions again because I thought we were on the right track. Mayor Peterson was opened to the idea at that time and I don t know if much really has changed in that way. Mr. Dearing said I don t think anything has changed in that mind set from the conversations that I have had at the mayor s office. Like I said we will do what we can to make it work. Mr. Brandgard asked, is there anyone else from the floor who would care to speak? Mr. Kerry Vestile said I m President of the Hendricks County Economic Development Partnership. In a few moments we are going to have Mr. Gutzwiller our Executive Director give you a brief presentation on our accomplishments for 2003 and our plans for But before we do that I would like to take a few moments to thank you and the Council for your financial support and for your leadership in helping us to promote economic development, not only in the County but in Plainfield. Due to your support and other communities and investors who support our organization we were able to convince seven of the top ten industrial developments in Central Indiana to come to Hendricks County. Five of which came to Plainfield and we think that is a tremendous accomplishment. With that thank you for that support. We would also like to ask you to support us as you did in 2003 for 2004 not only financially but in your leadership capacity as well. With that I will turn it over to Mr. Gutzwiller to give you an update. Mr. Harold Gutzwiller said I want to follow up on Mr. Vestile s comments and thank you for your past support both financially and from a leadership standpoint. Obviously, you already know that 2003 was very successful in Hendricks County. Hopefully, Wednesday night you will be able to attend the partnership s annual meeting to get a more full update on Two thousand four really looks good also. I just want to tell you a couple of things that we are in the process of doing or have just recently done. The partnership on behalf of the Town continues to work on an infrastructure grant for the Lilly project. Hopefully, if that is not done, if you have not received verification of that grant, I assume that will follow very shortly. Mr. Carlucci said they verified that we can spend the money. Mr. Gutzwiller said also we are in the process of assisting J.C. Penney. They revised the infrastructure grant that they were awarded on that project. Also we are assisting Griot s Garage, which you passed a tax abatement on a couple of weeks ago. We are working with them and their incentive package with the State of Indiana. We hope to have that wrapped up this week. We have seen the offer made to Griot s Garage. The State has made an offer to Griot s Garage to firm up their commitment to the Town of Plainfield. We are also working with a couple of other companies here both new and existing on projects that they have or issues that they have, not with the Town of Plainfield but with other circumstances. So, it is busy with us here in the Plainfield area working, obviously, with the Chamber of Commerce in trying to do what we can to help bring new business and industry to the Town of Plainfield. In that regard we continue to provide what I think are value added processes to Hendricks County and the businesses in Hendricks County. As you may know, we continue to facilitate a roundtable of area businesses in industries primarily centered around the distribution, 21 st logistics. Those are the folks that we are heavily involved with and obviously because of the nature of the business in the community that is the largest sector now in Hendricks County.! 4

5 One of the things that we do for the manufacturers for both the existing as well as trying to attract new folks is the wage and benefit survey. We are in the process right now of having that conducted by Pathfinders International out of Dallas, Texas. That is important from a couple of factors. For the existing businesses it gives them kind of an idea of what the other folks in the community are providing as far as wages and benefits to make sure that they are competitive. And make sure that they do not lose an advantage from an employment standpoint. From a recruitment standpoint it is good to have this information on a localized basis because most of the data that you can get from other sources, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and from the State of Indiana, don t narrow it down to a community level. If they do, the information is very dated, it is a couple of years old. We have been doing these wages and benefits survey on a yearly basis. That allows us to provide up-to-date information to businesses and industries who are looking at us and wanting to know what the wage levels are as well as what benefits are being provided to the employees in the area. So, that is currently underway. Also, later in the year we will have Pathfinders International do an unemployment study for us. We try to do that every 18 months. It has a little longer shelf life so we anticipate maybe late summer or early fall that we will contract with Pathfinders International to do that. Again, that will serve not only the existing businesses but the employees as well. That is more of a recruitment tool for us to show companies who are looking at Hendricks County that we do indeed have the employees, both the quality and the quantity of people, to fill their facilities. It s not only for now but for the foreseeable future. Because as competitive as the businesses are, we have some unscrupulous competitors who try to convince folks that we cannot fulfill their needs. By having this third party assessment of our labor force and the community patterns we are able to show a third party, an uninterested party, quantitatively that we have the employees available. We continue to sponsor and support financially the SBDC. I think the SBDC has been a tremendous asset to Hendricks County. I believe they are holding office hours in the Plainfield Chamber of Commerce office on occasion to provide those services on a local basis. We are very pleased to support them and bring them back into the community because we find that the services that they provide are unmatched and provide a valuable service to our merging companies. The other things that we are doing that we consider value added is hopefully you will remember the post card program that we did last year. This now will continue. We are kind of waiting so that we will have enough items to send out on an ongoing basis. So, we anticipate that will start up again making sure that those folks that are in the business of locating facilities and the decision makers receive the good news about what is going on in Hendricks County and in Plainfield. Hopefully, you all received a mailing. I think I mentioned in a note attached that it was a little thicker than I like to send. But at the end of last year we hosted a number of journalists in conjunction with the State of Indiana. We toured both facilities in Brownsburg but in Plainfield also. From that we received a number of articles in national publications about Hendricks County, Plainfield and the Brownsburg area and specifically what is going on in the logistics area. Actually, one of those was an international publication. The journalist was out of Canada. We felt that was very timely and a very valuable way to spend time and resources. With that we have secured the services of Avatar Communications and Chris Jefferson to work on a process of getting us earned media in the publications that logistics and manufacturers use in their businesses instead of trying to buy advertising and trying to get our message out, which sometimes gets lost in the maze of many many ads. We are working on trying to get the story of what is going on in Hendricks County and its communities in these publications and into articles. Hopefully, articles that highlight, if not exclusively, about the communities. So, that is where we are putting our resources. We want to see how that works. We are doing it on a trial basis. Avatar is very good but sometimes it does cost to have good people do good work so we are looking at that on a very limited basis to see if we can get any traction from that effort and hopefully we will see that. We will continue to do advertising on a limited basis in those publications, which people in the decision making process use because we think it is a valuable adjoin to the other things that we are doing in trying to create an image for Hendricks County in the Plainfield area.! 5

6 For the new members of the Council we provided you with a packet of some of our printed materials that we have put together to give you an idea of what information we have available for people who are looking into the community and looking in Hendricks County. The last thing that I wanted to touch on, and I believe some of you may have received questionnaires or surveys and some of you may be requested for interviews, is that we have secured the services of a strategic development group in Bloomington to conduct a feasibility study for a business incubator in Hendricks County to see if that is something that we should pursue. And see if there is interest in the communities to pursue that as an option. If you are familiar with the incubator concept, it is a facility where hopefully we can put in homegrown businesses that have an opportunity to grow and expand where they may be working in their garage, bedroom or kitchen right now but they are growing a little bit and they need a more professional space than what they currently have. And they want conference space and secretarial help, etc. This would be an opportunity for them to move into a more professional business type atmosphere. Typically, those type of arrangements last for two or three years and then hopefully they will graduate into a larger space because they continue to grow and expand. We think there is the potential here but we don t want to walk into something that cannot sustain itself financially as well as have the number of businesses in it that it needs to have. One of the things that we have seen, as a transition over the past number of years in the way economic development and how it works, is there has been less and less manufacturing growing and expanding. As a matter of fact, we have seen a loss of manufacturing jobs but we have seen a growth in the entrepreneur sector. We think there is a lot of opportunity there and there are examples after examples of small businesses that have grown into big businesses. We want to see if there are those types of businesses here so we have secured the services of SDG to look into that for us. It is a four-phase process. As far as the feasibility study, they have indicated to us that they can have that study to us by the end of May or the first of June to give us an idea of whether or not that is something that we should pursue in the future. We think it has a lot of exciting potential but again we don t want to go into something that may sound good but in actuality may not be a good idea so we want to make sure there is a basis for any decision. So, that is a quick update and I would be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Mr. Kirchoff said you talked about articles in national publications. Mr. Vestile I understand there is an article in the most recent EEI perspectives magazine that Cinergy got published for economic development. Was it for the Plainfield area or Hendricks County? I have not seen it. I was just told about the article. Mr. Gutzwiller said it was Hendricks County primarily but it did mention Plainfield. that. Mr. Kirchoff said it would be great if you could get us a copy of Mr. Gutzwiller said we can get that for you. Mr. Kirchoff said it talks about what is happening in the County. I talked to Hutch and he hadn t seen it yet. Mr. Gutzwiller said I was fortunate enough that somebody from Cinergy ed me a copy. Mr. Kirchoff said I was told that we were mentioned in there and I thought it would be well for us to see the national article with some publicity. Mr. Gutzwiller said the article started out highlighting Hendricks County. That was the basis of the entire article. It talked about Plainfield and what has happened here and actually had a couple of photographs I believe. Then it went on from there to explain from the electric utility standpoint economic development is important so it was a very good article. Mr. Carlucci said I thought the legislature this last session, and I think the governor signed all of the bills sent to him, had a tax credit of some type for logistics equipment. Do you know much about that yet?! 6

7 Mr. Gutzwiller said yes and somebody said that legislation is like sausage you don t want to see it happen and apparently this is one of those pieces of legislation. The legislation in essence on a statewide basis would have granted designating bodies the opportunity to abate the personal property, the equipment, that is used in the 21 st century logistics distribution. That bill died. I think it died during the walkout. It didn t look like it was going to go anywhere but as a conference committee was established and they started putting things in, I think it was Bill 1365, a very sharp legislator said that was really important to him. So, as I understand it, he found two mile markers on Interstate 69 and said we are going to try a pilot between these two mile markers. It encompasses six counties in the State of Indiana, which will be allowed I believe, as of July 1, to provide tax abatements on logistics related equipment. It goes from basically Allen County to Madison County along I-69. I think Grant and I m not sure but maybe Delaware and a couple of other counties but there were six counties where that will be allowed. TOWN MANAGER S REPORT Mr. Carlucci said Duke Realty is requesting a real property tax abatement and they have filed the forms with the Town. It has been reviewed by the Tax Abatement Committee. They are looking at a 23 acre site. It is on the northwest corner of Perry and Reeves Road or CR550S. The property has already been rezoned. I believe it has gone through all of its planning approvals by the Town. They are proposing to put a 425,000 square foot industrial building on this property and the value of the land and the building is estimated at 6.5 million dollars. There is a resolution that is included in your Council materials and is on the agenda tonight, if the Council decides they want to move forward on that. There will be a public hearing at the next Council meeting. Mr. McPhail asked, can you give that building size again? Mr. Carlucci said the size that they had on their application was 425,000 square feet. REPORTS Mr. Fivecoat said Ms. Jane Hubbard, I believe is her name, who lives on Lawndale, contacted me about a month and a half ago or two months ago about a drainage problem that she was having in her back yard. I guess that it has been an ongoing problem for the last several years up in that area. I had Mr. Belcher look into it and he told me what the problem was in that area up behind her house where all of the water flows. There are no easements up there for us to get into to do any work. For us to be able to go into that area we need easements. He was going to work on drawing up the easements to see if we could get the neighbors to sign them. I talked to her tonight and none of the neighbors are willing to give us anything. So, she says if the Town will allow her to hook into the storm sewers out front, she will pay for the pipe from her back yard all the way out to the front to hook onto the storm sewers to try to relieve some of the problems that she is having with the flooding in her back yard. I told her I didn t know if we could do that or not but she said she would take on the expense herself of running that pipe and having it done. Mr. Brandgard said I think before we can answer that we have to have Mr. Belcher come back with a report to see if that is a viable alternative to run into the storm sewers. They are kind of deep sometimes but that seems like a workable solution. When you start to say something about trying to get easements back there, as I recall, there are a lot of fences through there and out buildings, etc. We have some other areas in the Town where we have the same problem where there are easements where people have built in and done things that we are going to have to go in there and make them move that stuff so that we can redefine the drainage. But in this case I think that is the only solution that I would know of. Mr. Kirchoff said first of all thanks to the follow Council members for the work session last Thursday night on transportation and Mr. Daniel was there. Sometimes that can get tedious but it is necessary work and I appreciate everybody taking the time to do that. The second thing is kind of an FYI. You may have seen on the news that the Dairy Queen in Clermont burned. The reason that I knew about it was yesterday as we were leaving church or walking down the! 7

8 hallway to the south parking lot Mic Linn s wife was on her cell phone physically upset because she was talking to Mic who was yelling on the cell phone that the place was burning down. We offered to take her somewhere because she wasn t sure she could drive but she went ahead and handled that. I stopped by there today and Mic happened to be there. There was an investigator there to try to find out what the cause was. The reason that I brought it up was he has had a representative in here to talk about his plans. He wanted us to know that he is still planning to do that. It might be delayed because he is going to have to put some energy and resources into getting that place back up and going. But he wanted you to know that he still plans to look at perhaps some kind of a dual restaurant business there. That s the reason that I brought it up because if you saw it and wasn t sure what was going on, that is where he is and he wanted to send the message that it is still on his horizon but it just got moved back. Mr. Daniel said tomorrow morning at nine o clock we expect to close on the purchase of the Orr property that is at the Riverside Mobile Home Park across the street. So, that is one more property for the Town Center project. Mr. Brandgard said before our last Council meeting we all had a joint meeting down at the school where the school reviewed their plans. We raised some points relative to the costs of the roads and streets. Since that time we have had a meeting with the school to go over that and discuss sites. So, this is just to let you know there is an ongoing movement to help define the site that would be the most cost efficient for the taxpayers of the community both from the Town s standpoint and the school s standpoint. It may end up that the school will pay more and we will pay less but overall it will be less for everybody so it kind of makes it a win for the taxpayers I hope. Mr. Jason Castetter said tonight I m going to ask the Council for approval for a crack sealing machine. The purpose of this crack sealing machine is to prevent moisture from getting into longitudinal and transversal cracks in our streets. We put down a rubberized material and like I said it helps water from getting into the subsurface causing deterioration into our streets. By doing this and by having a crack sealing maintenance program we can lengthen the life of our streets five to 10 years. With the way the Town is growing and the amount of the streets that we are getting I think it is very important that we do a street maintenance program to try to get the life out of our streets. I had three vendors give me quotes on this type of equipment. It is a user friendly machine. It is a low profile machine. It is a pull behind machine behind a pickup so there is always someone in the cab driving so the low profile helps the visibility of the people working on the lawns. I wanted to add that it is an all Diesel burning machine. We currently have one that is 13 years old. It has become a maintenance problem. We have used it once in the last three years. That machine has two 200 pound propane tanks so we would be able to eliminate those by going to this pure Diesel burning machine. I wanted to give you an idea of the material. As I said, it is a rubberized material. This is separate from the machine but it is a material that you have to buy in order for you to use in the cracks. It is a thermo plastic five-percent reclaimed rubber. The material cost about three cents a pound. To give you an idea if we filled this machine up, we could fill a crack that is a half inch wide and one inch deep and 3,600 feet long at a price of $ They say it is a sixth of the cost to rehabilitate a street so I think we are money ahead by trying to salvage the streets that we have and try to lengthen the life of those streets and not necessarily go out and repave them because we have some transversal longitudinal cracks. This is a budgeted item that I have for new equipment and is in stock. It is priced at $34, Mr. McPhail said when you seal these cracks, there is some prepreparation. Does the machine do that or do you have to do anything prior to putting this stuff in? Mr. Castetter said the machine that we currently have takes five guys to operate. It takes two guys to go ahead of the truck and use an air compressor to blow the cracks out. You want to try to get to them before moisture and dirt gets back in there so you have a crew of three guys behind there. One drives the truck, one sprays the material and another one is using a squeegee. With this new machine there are three buys, one driving the truck, one with an air compressor because now this one has an air compressor on it so you can blow the cracks out and the guy behind it has a wand with a squeegee already built into it.! 8

9 There are other ways that you can look at this. They also make a router that routers out the cracks but those are best for straight line cracks. It s hard to do with what we have in some of our streets. Also, they recommend in some places heating the cracks to help the rubberized material to bond to that. Each circumstance is different. You don t know what you are going to get into but we are money ahead if we do this. I really believe in this. They came down and demonstrated it and they did some cracks in our parking lot and they look great. So, I ask for your approval. Mr. Brandgard said this is a budgeted item so I believe that we can do this with consent. Consent given. Mr. Castetter said at the last meeting I was not present but it was asked that Mr. Belcher work on putting a report together on the water plant and sewer plant. I didn t catch wind of that until late so I was able to get our field inspector to put something together to at least bring you up-to-date on it. At the next meeting hopefully Mr. Belcher will be available to answer any questions. Mr. Carlucci said Mr. Belcher had gone out and taken at your request multiple pictures but he came down ill Friday. He had intended to send those to everybody. Mr. McPhail said on the water line when do you expect Poindexter to start the work? Mr. Castetter said that I cannot answer. I know Mr. Belcher is still working on some easements that we are still hashing out. As soon as we get two or three of them solved, we will be able to move right along. We are maybe looking at starting at the other end on the Hadley Road side and not necessarily up here because the sewer that is going to start here right soon. We don t want to conflict the water and sewer at U.S. 40. So, we may start the work at the other end so the sewer can start. I don t have a time frame right now. Mr. Belcher may have a better idea on that than I. Mr. Fivecoat said on the paving of the stripes in the downtown I m still going to be hounding on that. Mr. Castetter said due to the paving it was late last year we usually let a bid out for the marking. It was done late. We didn t have time to do that. I m still looking at doing that this year and doing some striping downtown in some streets but with the roundabout coming in and maybe some other things coming down the line I m trying to schedule that with that job so we can get the company in just one time to do what we need done instead of bringing them back out. fall. Mr. Kirchoff said we promised them that we would do that last Mr. Castetter said you are correct we did. We can get some markings down there. Our standard is thermo plastic. We can get the temporary parking spots downtown for now without the thermo plastic or we can wait and do it the right way and do it one time. Ms. Burgner said since you have plans that you can read for the new utility office I would recommend that you approve the quote from LD Huff Construction for that project. The alternate bid amount on the sheet that you had at the last meeting is to remove the tile and carpet. Mr. Quintana and I had talked about that and I was against keeping the tile at all so I wasn t prepared for him to have that in the quote. bid. Mr. Kirchoff said you just thought it would be part of the base Ms. Burgner said yes. Mr. Brandgard said it looks like a pretty workable design. As we knew when we built the new building, things would change. I ve come to the realization that the way that we are growing around here things will change rapidly. With that I would entertain a motion to approve the award of the construction. Mr. Fivecoat made a motion to award the construction of the utility building director s office to LD Huff Construction in the amount of $32, Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Motion carried.! 9

10 Mr. Bill Castetter said I hope you have my report and I don t attend to go through all of these in detail but I will highlight some of them and if you have questions, please ask and I will try to answer them. The first highlight is the new hardware and software. I wanted to show you that I had put all of those things in one package and that was done so that we could have enough of a leasing item to go out for lease. We need Mr. Gaddie to sign the lease because he signed the original lease, the master. So, this addendum will need his signature. So, all of the hardware that is listed in here will be part of a new lease. Software will be purchased and, of course, the implementation cost is not in the lease either. So, those are projects that we either already talked about and approval has been gained or they are in someone s budget for It is just a matter of getting them altogether. On the end of this is a spreadsheet detailing all of those costs. On the Clerk/Treasurers software and hardware I was going to negotiate with MUNIS and SSI were the two software vendors we were talking to. MUNIS was our preferred vendor and we were able to strike a deal with them. Mr. Daniel tonight has okayed the contents of the contract. We were able to get another $5, off of the software. We got a 25% discount on the first year s service fees. We got another $1, on the implementation fees. I think we beat them down to about all that we can do there. Mr. Kirchoff had mentioned on the service fee that it was a little high. It is high but they are a company that survives on their service fees. You mentioned in 10 years we could buy it again. In 10 years from now the way that they operate you have a new system so those service fees go to upgrade every year the system and you get that as a freebie. In looking at that I m not sure if you remember when they told us about the four GL process, etc. How they have gotten from there to here is that service fee. So, we got 25% off the first year but after it is justified so that is what that one is about. The Clement Electric property is just to bring you up-to-date that we have some telephone service in there. We can get out to the internet from there. We have the data servers that are ultimately going to go in the recreation center installed over there. Those are ready for Mr. Prince and his folks to begin to do some ticket selling and whatever else they are going to do with that equipment. We are real close to getting into that building. On our home page you probably don t know that a couple of things about this is we are getting some calls from people who house our home page about the amount of space that we were taking up. They wanted to charge us some more and move us to the next level for that space. Part of that problem is we have a lot of content out there that is probably not required. So, one of the things that I did is take off all of the minutes for 2001; 2002 and 2003 and put the 2004 minutes out there. So, all we have are the 2004 minutes right now. My plan is to rotate maybe three months of the minutes for zoning and the Plan Commission and the Town Council so we don t take up quite so much space. I don t think people are looking at minutes that old anyway so we will just rotate those minutes. So, that is what that is about. It just indicates that I was getting people asking me why aren t the minutes fresh? They are fresh now and we will keep them fresh. The personal computers for the treasurers staff I wanted to indicate there that you approved a new computer, which we bought and got installed. The Town Court bought some new computers and a new server. They donated their four older computers to us and we have installed those computers for the treasurers staff. So, folks who have never had a personal computer before and didn t have access to the internet and the Microsoft products now have those PCs in place. They are not the greatest in the world but these folks are coming from nothing to a PC so they are fine for them. We will get a year or 18 months out of these so they are some happy folks with used computers. So, the reallocation there saved us some money. The copiers that we have talked about are in house working. The postage machine is in. I think it is due to be installed on Thursday so those things are done. The Town of Plainfield s internet status is a little complex. When I looked at our internet, our home page or whatever you want to call it, it looked to me to be a little old to be frank. I began to do some investigation and found that it was built in 1996 and designed by! 10

11 an intern over the summer so it is built with 1996 tools. It is built with an intern who obviously didn t have a lot of technique developed at that point and time. I have heard folks refer to it as elementary and I think that is the best word to describe it. It is a little bit elementary compared to what is out there today. So, I have been trying to clean it up a little bit and investigate what is going on with it. I found that it is housed or it is on a server, if you will, in either Virginia or Texas. This company is in Virginia or Texas and where they actually have it sitting I don t know but it is in one of those two places. One of the things that I want to do is move that from Virginia or Texas to somewhere closer to Plainfield, Indiana and a vendor that is closer to Plainfield, Indiana where we can manage it a little better. So, that is one of the things that we need to do with it is move it. The contract that we have with these folks is up in July so it is timely to maybe do something with it by July. If not, perhaps we can go with a month to month contract until we can move it. Actually the content is not fresh. It needs to be fresh for people to go and look there and want to return there. So, I began to freshen up a little of the content that I can get to. I have a lot more to do, obviously, to the web master for that page because that takes a lot of time and effort to get it out there and get it right. So, what I found is that we have been giving content to Avatar for them to freshen up our internet page. So, we give them the content and often the content is given by more than one person so it can be uncensored in terms of what goes out there. I think what we need to have is a central repository for this information. Perhaps that is Mr. Carlucci, I don t know. Someone needs to look at what we are putting out there to see if this is what we want to go out there. That could be a pretty time consuming job so perhaps two or three people but the point is someone needs to look at the content before it goes out and look at it fairly quickly so that it is fresh. If it lays around two or three days or if it happens to be an ad for someone to apply for a job, it is things that we need to get out there pretty quick. So, there is the content and then controlling that content and then the cost of what we are putting out there. I m not sure what we are paying right now for what we put out on the internet. It s embraced, if you will, in a total monthly on an invoice. I don t know what part of that has to do with what is put out on the internet so I want to find out what that is and break that down and see if we can do that less expensively. In terms of redesigning it I m asking that it be redesigned and the complexity of redesigning it has to do with the elementary piece that I talked about that is sitting there. But the parks recreation center needed a presence out on the internet and they had to do something fairly quick so they could not wait for us to decide how we are going to redesign the current page. So, they have moved forward with a very nice looking product that when you set it up beside the elementary, it looks like the graduate, if you will, because it is very nice. It is done with today s tools and from a vision prospective you can see that it comes from two separate places. This is obviously done by an intern and the other one was done by someone who this person has been in the business eight years and knows what they are doing and is using the right tools. So, when you go out to look at it, it is seamless in terms of its location when you move through it. You don t know you are going to another place except when you step from this old elementary piece and the new piece. You have to be taken aback and say that s nice I wonder why the other piece of this isn t done that way. I wonder why the fire department isn t done that way? I wonder why the police department isn t done that way? So, to me we need to redesign at least that front piece. What I m asking here is that we allow Avatar to finish up the recreation center piece, which I believe is ongoing right now and get that finished. And then we take a look and bid out the first part of it to whoever can do the best job with the best tools and go forward with redesigning the front part of it. We will use the recreation piece that is already done. We own that so whoever would win the bidding process would take that piece and go forward with it whether that would be the people who have already done the work, which I would assume would have a leg up here or it be someone else. But that we take a look at the whole thing and not just that piece. So, redesign it, look at how we are getting the content out there and moving it closer to home. The people who would win the project and redo the internet would most likely have an avenue of where to house and bring it close to home. So, that is what that is about and it is asking you to give me approval to continue negotiations. I don t have a dollar number. All I m asking for right now is let s go ahead and do some bidding and get the process going and then I will come back with the going rate for what this looks like. Perhaps I can come back! 11

12 and show you the two things side by side but all I m asking is think about it and I think it is the place that we need to go. Mr. McPhail said as you progress I have a couple of ideas that I would like to discuss with you. Mr. Brandgard said in the terms of the discussion that you just completed I think we have consent to move forward. Consent given. Mr. Castetter said I put some projects that are in process that maybe they are not going as fast as we want them to but they are things that kind of fill in the blanks. We have talked about upgrading this recording device that we have here. As I began to look at that, most of the devices that replace that these days is a computer with a piece of software so what you are paying for is a piece of software. You have to buy a computer that will do what that does. I was looking more for a device that is more like a recording device only digital instead of tape and something that would digitally record. I began to find out that all of the mics in here are channeled through one microphone to that device, which makes it pretty difficult for the lady who is doing the transcribing who is talking most of the time. So, one of the things that we need to do with whatever appliance we get for that is to get all of the microphones on a separate channel through the device we are going to buy. Then she can tell who is talking. That project is about $3, no matter what device we buy. So, what I m asking is do you want me to go ahead with that and actually get the microphones on separate channels while we continue to look for a device? Mr. Kirchoff asked, could you could find a piece of equipment that would solve everything? Mr. Castetter said it is possible. I have a feeling that any device we put out there to channel all of the mics is still going to be difficult to know where the sound is coming from. I m not an expert at that but I certainly could ask the folks that are but I just have a feeling that is going to be a problem. I believe the $3, is high. We can negotiate that down. My question is do you want to go ahead with that project? If you do, I m not asking you to bless the $3, right now. If you want to go ahead, then I will continue to look to get a price to channel all of the microphones individually into one unit. If that happens to be a unit that takes care of that, fine. I have a feeling that it will not be. The thing that I have tried to explain about this is it is simple to use and anyone can come in here and have a meeting and have anyone sit down and use that device. Getting a PC with software that may be more complex is probably not where we want to go because anybody who wants to use this room doesn t want to be given a hour of instruction and then go away while they try to use this machine. I m thinking that we need to try to stay with a simple device but perhaps we can do things to improve the simple device by channeling to the device. Mr. Brandgard said I have sat up here and even those who know how to use it have trouble at times to get it to work right. Mr. Castetter said it is an analog device. You won t have any tapes anymore. But that is what that is about. I appreciate your feedback on that but let me know if you want to fix the channeling and fix the device also. I m continuing to look at different things. Mr. Brandgard said from my viewpoint I think we need to move on with that. Like you say it is a tape device. There s not much tape being used anymore. Mr. Castetter said I think the folks who installed the plasma device and what is in here indicated that was a suggestion that they made at the end of this installation, which I think was almost a year and a day ago. But the answer was that we could probably get by with what we had. I think it has turned out that we probably can t so it was suggested a year ago that we do the channeling. I will go forward with it. We won t spend any money until I come back and tell you what we have. I m looking at installing some wireless connectivity in this meeting room with laptops. I have taken a laptop like the ones that you have and put a wireless communication and a wireless router in here. I was able to get out to the internet pretty quickly. Chief Brinker configured all of these at the police station as if they were always going to connect at the police station. I will have to un-! 12