Maple Leaf meetings to be added to county website
Recordings from meetings of the Maple Leaf Management Group will be added to the county’s website.
Resident Sherrie Mitchell made that request to IT Director Ric Fox at the Brown County Commissioners meeting May 2.
There was some initial confusion about the price to store audio media files online, and whether Mitchell was requesting meetings to be webcast live. Fox finally said that if the Maple Leaf Management Group records their meetings and lets him know the files are there, he will upload them.
“With Maple Leaf being the foresight of the issue around here, and transparency being the other, I don’t have a problem with it,” he said.
Fox said it costs about $4 a month to store all of the audio files from other county meetings, like the commissioners and the Brown County Council.
Auditor Beth Mulry and council member Darren Byrd encouraged the commissioners to let the meetings be posted in order to be transparent. Council President Keith Baker said that if it is legal to post the meetings, they should be posted online.
Mitchell said since the Maple Leaf meetings are scheduled on afternoons, that makes it difficult for people who work during the day to attend. Posting the audio would help people follow the happenings with the county-owned music venue.
Biddle initially said that the commissioners would consult with their attorney before asking the management group to post the meetings online. Her reasoning was that that could open the door to all county meetings to be posted online, and it could cost the county additional online storage fees. “You don’t want to set a dangerous precedent. Legal needs to look at the policy. We’ll revisit and make we’re sure being as transparent as possible,” lawyer Lauren Box said. She was sitting in for County Attorney Jake German.
Resident Tim Clark said there isn’t a demand for other meetings to be posted. He pointed out that other committees and commissions don’t have nearly as large of a budget as the $12.5 million Maple Leaf Performing Arts Center does. “It’s a big difference. You can’t compare the Maple Leaf committee to these other miscellaneous committees out there,” he said.
“I would like for us to just do it,” Byrd said.
At the end of the conversation, Biddle said the meetings could be posted since the cost to store those files is $4 a month total and not $4 per file. “We can (do it). It’s just not as much as I thought it was,” she said.
At the May 9 Maple Leaf Management Group meeting, co-president Kevin Ault announced that the meeting was being recorded and would be uploaded to the website.
INDOT bridge project causing secondary concern
Indiana Department of Transportation crews have re-poured one half of the bridge deck on State Road 46 East. That road project has resulted in one-lane closures before State Road 135 South and a stoplight that is being used to direct traffic there.
Besides the traffic backups, one other problem has been people using Google Maps to find alternative routes around the stoplight, including Brown Hill Road, which ends in a creek said Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner. “They can’t get through two foot of water. Then they turn around in people’s yards and are tearing yards up since it’s a one-lane road,” he said.
Because of that, the department has officially closed Brown Hill Road to keep people from attempting to use it as a detour, Magner said.
“I don’t like to wait in traffic either, but there’s no simple option to get around it,” he said of the bridge project.
The culvert replacement planned in Gnaw Bone will begin once the creek near the culvert dries up, Magner said.
He also said he had received paperwork in the mail about three other culvert replacement projects planned along State Road 46 East. But he said those projects aren’t showing up in INDOT’s 18-month letting list, and it will be longer than that before projects get started because INDOT has just begun doing environmental tests.
Indian Hill Road closed until further notice for repair
He also reported that Indian Hill Road will be closed until a road slide is repaired, just before the railroad tracks at the north end of the road. He estimated it would be a couple of weeks until repairs are finished.
“It’s a very low-volume road. We also have the issue. If water is up they can’t get across and go out that way anyway because they can’t get across the slab on the county road, so it’s not a 24/7 crossing. There are very few houses. Most of the property on that road is weekend property; there’s not many people who live full-time. We paved Plum Creek last year to help with that issue,” Magner said.
Barricades have been placed to keep people from driving in the area.
Yellowwood Road repaving under way this week
Paving on the south end of Yellowwood Road was scheduled to start on May 7 after a delay from the original May 1 start date.
Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner told the county commissioners that at most, the project will take two weeks. The road will be repaved from Knight’s Corner at State Road 46 West to the new pavement that was placed during phase one of the Yellowwood Road project.
County road paving plans being made for 2019
The Brown County Highway Department has not applied yet for Community Crossings road repair grants for 2019, Superintendent Mike Magner reported May 2.
He said the state hadn’t released the application yet; it was supposed to be released in February.
“We’ll go ahead and do some local projects, get those bid out probably fairly shortly here anyways. I wanted to make sure if we had the grant application that I had money set aside to do match money, so we do not get in trouble here and not have enough match money to utilize the full million dollars,” Magner said.
“We’ll do some local paving projects anyway just to make sure get them in the system and get them done this year.”
He also said that local road crews were using a rented a sealing machine to treat cracks in recently paved roads as part of the county’s asset management plan. “We’re trying to get the cracks sealed to keep the water and dirt out of them so it doesn’t lead to bigger problems later on,” he said.
He estimated on May 2 that crews would be working on that for about three weeks until all new roads are sealed.
Hoosier Hills Scenic Byway application sent to INDOT
The application to establish 25 miles of road through Brown County as a Hoosier Hills Scenic Byway has been submitted to the Indiana Department of Transportation, county commissioner Diana Biddle reported on May 2.
The total route is about 200 miles, connecting interstates 70, 69 and 65 using parts of state roads 50, 58, 135, 46, 45, 252, 37, 446, 67 and 39, as well as several county roads.
“It gives people some options to get off the interstate,” Biddle said.
The INDOT Scenic Byway Committee received the application at its last meeting, but a committee meeting has not yet been scheduled to hear applications, she said.
If it is established, this scenic byway would be the eighth in the state. The byway program’s purpose is to showcase scenery, history, culture and recreation along the route.
Work needed at highway department salt barn
An estimate to repair the salt barn roof at the Brown County Highway Department was higher than anticipated and now Superintendent Mike Magner is looking to bid the project out.
Magner reported to the Brown County Commissioners on May 2 that the estimate was above the legal limit set by Indiana Code that requires the county to bid out a project. “It’s way more than what it should have been. We’ll have to put together a quote package and get three quotes for some other options,” he said.
Magner said his department also is looking at doing something different than re-roofing the circular dome, but that if the repair doesn’t happen this year it would be OK to repair it next summer. “It’s not a major leak at this time, but it is something that the more it leaks, it’s starting to rot some of the panels. It needs to be stripped off and some structural repairs made and then re-roof it,” he said.
Budget hearing dates set, financial study nearly ready
The Brown County Council will hear budget requests in August. Budget hearings will begin at 5 p.m. Aug. 20, 21 and 22.
Prior to those hearings, the Brown County Commissioners and council will have a joint meeting with Umbaugh & Associates to discuss the county’s five-year financial forecast.
Auditor Beth Mulry and commissioner Diana Biddle had a meeting with Umbaugh earlier this month to look over the preliminary numbers in the five-year forecast. Both agreed that a presentation by Umbaugh on the financial forecast should be done closer to budget hearings.
“(It was) mostly pretty good. We’ve got a couple of funds where they had us having static income, where the revenue didn’t change at all. We know that there are changes, so they are going to go back and tweak a few sections,” Biddle said.
Umbaugh wants to take the numbers gathered so far and create graphics to show the council and commissioners.
“If we do it a week before budget hearings, it will be fresh in everybody’s minds,” Biddle said. “If we keep doing this in a good cycle, then we’ll always be able to forecast two to three years out as we’re looking at our budget so we don’t come up to a budget year and go, ‘Oops what are we going to do?’ We can plan for it kind of two years before.”
Credit card limits increased for county departments
The Brown County Commissioners have allowed Auditor Beth Mulry to increase the credit card limits by $1,000 for Brown County Emergency Management and the county’s IT department.
EMA Director Susan Armstrong had approached the Brown County Council on April 16 about not being able to purchase plane tickets and hotel rooms and register participants for a conference on her county credit card with the $1,500 limit it has.
All costs associated with the trip will be reimbursed by the District 8 Emergency Preparedness and Planning Council, which had agreed to send three members from Brown County to a conference in May.
“What I am looking for is some help figuring out how to get that covered so I can purchase the flights, and then when it gets reimbursed, get it covered so it’s not coming out of anyone’s budget line,” she said at the council meeting April 16.
Council President Keith Baker said increasing the credit card limit would be up to the Brown County Commissioners.
Biddle said during the council meeting that credit card limits are a “reoccurring problem” with some county departments. In February, the commissioners approved increasing a credit limit to $2,500 in order to issue a card to the county health department so they can use it for conferences.
“When some of these conferences become available, it’s not like back in the day we used to just get a check, take a check to the Sheraton (Hotel) and hand them our county check as our payment. They won’t do that anymore. Everything has to be prepaid with a credit card,” she said.
When the county initially set their credit limit and created their policy for county credit cards, limits were set at $1,500.
Mulry said only department heads have credit cards.
At the commissioners meeting April 18, Mulry said the county was currently maxed out on their credit limit. She said the commissioners would have to ask for a credit line increase for Armstrong’s card, and then the bank would review the request before approving it.
Mulry said it may be quicker to decrease the limit on another county credit card, like the commissioners’, and move that extra credit limit to Armstrong’s card. Then, once the bank approves the overall credit line increase, the commissioners’ card would be pumped back up to its $1,500 limit.
She said there is a need for diversity when it comes to the county credit card limits. “You want to be conservative on your credit limit, because credit cards are a risk,” she said.
“Some agencies, like the highway and health department and EMA, they do more point-of-contact purchases, whereas I, generally, use mine for conferences.”
Biddle said IT faces similar problems with its credit card limit because employees have to pay for monthly server storage fees, encrypted thumb drives for sheriff’s deputies and computers.
The commissioners voted unanimously to increase Armstrong’s and Fox’s credit card limits to $2,500, either by reducing the commissioners’ credit card limit or by the bank approving an overall credit line increase, depending on which can happen fastest. The commissioners’ credit card limit would be brought back up to $1,500 after an overall credit increase is approved.
Highway department selling three vehicles
The Brown County Highway Department received approval from the Brown County Commissioners to sell three vehicles that are no long drivable.
Superintendent Mike Magner reported at the commissioners meeting April 18 that he wanted to sell the vehicles on GovDeals.com.
One is a truck that caught fire earlier this year. Another is a truck with a blown engine and the other one is a 2001 pickup truck that is no longer drivable either.
Any money earned would be put back into an equipment fund, he said.
The department also is looking at replacing the roof on the salt barn. At the April 4 commissioners meeting, Magner reported that the roof was “badly deteriorated.”
The barn still has the original shingles installed in the late 1990s. “Plus it’s had some accidents with equipment being banged into the entry door,” he said April 4.
Magner said he had building maintenance budgeted for this year and he was waiting on repair estimates to see if they can cover it this year or if it have to wait until next year.
“It’s still sealed up good enough to keep the salt from getting wet, so we’re not losing $82-a-ton salt to rainwater,” he said.
“We could get rid of the dome and just build a square roof over top of it. It would probably be a whole lot cheaper, but we’ll wait for the numbers to come back and see where we’re at,” he said.
Council approves over $300K in additional fund requests
The Brown County Council approved moving money to fund a part-time clerical position in the Purdue Extension Office for the rest of the year at the April 16 meeting. Purdue University gave the county $4,000 that will be used to fund the part-time job in that office for the rest of the year.
The council also unanimously approved two additional appropriations from the Brown County Highway Department.
The first was $362,151.19, which was the cash balance left over from last year out of the county’s road loan money, Superintendent Mike Magner reported.
“Last year in June, when we’re making budgets up, I didn’t know how much would be left over at the end of the year, if any, to spend under this year’s budget for paving. We actually ended up with a cash balance at the end of the year of $362,151.19,” he said.
Magner said he wanted the money transferred to disbursement lines so that it can be used for paving. He estimated the money would cover four or five miles of paving this summer.
“We just want to get it set up now so it will be ready to go,” Magner said.
The council also approved Magner’s request to appropriate $20,393.29 in insurance money from a highway truck that caught fire earlier this year to an equipment expense line item so that it can be used to buy miscellaneous equipment, like snow plows for new trucks the county recently purchased.
