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PORTER COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS REGULAR MEETING TUESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2007 6:00 P.M. The regular meeting of the Porter County Board of Commissioners convened at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, August 7, 2007 in the Commissioners’ Chambers of the Administration Center. Those present were: Commissioners Robert Harper, John Evans and Carole Knoblock; County Attorney Gwenn Rinkenberger; Administrative Assistant Melissa Hartig; and Recording Secretary Vi Wagner. CALL TO ORDER/PLEDGE President Harper called the meeting to order with the Pledge of Allegiance. APPROVAL OF PAYROLL Com. Evans moved to approve the payroll of August 6, 2007, Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried. APPROVAL OF CLAIMS Com. Evans moved to approve the claims of July 31, and August 7, 2007, Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried. AWARD BID FOR MODIFICATIONS OF EXISTING HVAC SYSTEM AT THE NORTH COUNTY COMPLEX DLZ, “We received bids, reviewed the bids and offered you a letter of recommendation. We have Handle Concepts for $145,194.00.” Com. Harper, “What was incomplete? You’ve got Form 96?” DLZ, “They just didn’t have it filled out.” Com. Evans, “What is Form 96?” DLZ, “One of the forms on the back of the contract. One of the documents.” Com. Evans, “The difference is $15,000, is that two bidders? Is this solely based on dollar amount?” DLZ, “Yes.” Com. Evans moved to accept the recommendation, Com. Harper, “Because we’ve already shown those bids to anyone that wanted to see them.” Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried. OFFICE HOLDERS/DEPARTMENT HEADS Award bid for electronic digital sign John Thorstad, Expo Manager Com. Harper, “Are these proposals you’ve received?” Mr. Thorstad, “No, they are the actual bids.” Com. Harper, “So now you have a recommendation on them?” Mr. Thorstad, “Yes. We had two bidders, The Sign Group from Minneapolis and Landmark Signs. The Sign Group came in at $89,600 and Landmark was $78,484. And they both followed the same bid specs. Landmark was exceptionally good about the time frame, kept in touch, wanted updates. The Sign Group guy came in and met with me for about five minutes and left.” Com. Harper, “And Landmark is from Porter County?” Mr. Thorstad, “Correct.” Com. Evans moved to accept the recommendation, Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried. Com. Evans, “How quick will it be up?” Mr. Thorstad, “I believe 90 days. They are proposing that length of time.” Com. Evans, “Advertising’s all sold?” Mr. Thorstad, “The prospects are a lot better than they were.” Approval of contract for A/S 400 upgrade Sharon Lippens, IT Director Ms. Lippens, “Tonight I need to get you to sign, the vendors’ have set a verbal purchase order for them. I will be bringing back at the next meeting the lease agreement, once we’ve gotten the financing, but this is going to be (inaudible)….” Com. Harper, “What fund is this coming from?” Ms. Lippens, “The funds for this are in the IT general fund budget. They are in there year after year to pay this and it is recurring every three years when we generally upgrade. We did not do this last year so we have an excess. It’s already in the proper line item.” Com. Harper, “Gwenn, did you look at this?” Atty. Rinkenberger, “Yes.” Com. Harper, “Okay, then what should we do tonight?” Atty. Rinkenberger, “Approve the request to set the bidder and then we will approve the first documents for the financing. We are accepting the vendors but we will approve the financing agreement in two weeks.” Ms. Lippens, “We are going to be using IBM financing so no matter what vendor is chosen, the financing will be the same.” Com. Knoblock, “We do ask that you bring in the paperwork in before the meeting.” Ms. Lippens, “I understand, I actually just got these. IBM is a nightmare to deal with.” Com. Evans moved to accept the recommendation based on the funding, Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried. Request for Additional Appropriation Dave Sheibels, E-911 Director Mr. Sheibels, “This is just a little bit of housekeeping tonight. I got a letter from the Auditor’s office as with other departments where for some reason the Auditor’s office did not withdraw the 911 surcharge budget of our portion of insurance premiums for our 911 employees. So this is simply transferring out of unappropriated account $131,988 as per request of the Auditor’s office to pay for 2006 insurance premiums.” Com. Harper, “So for some reason, for 2006, the 911 pays for it’s own insurance premiums, and for some reason, 2006 was not withdrawn, and you are just transferring money to withdraw that.” Mr. Sheibels, “Correct.” Com. Evans moved to approve, Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried. Receive and open Salt Bids Al Hoagland, Highway Superintendent Com. Harper, “North American Salt Company.” Com. Evans, “While we are waiting, Al, you can inform the Quickly reader that keeps condemning 900 that north of 950, and I already called in the Voice of the People in the Chesterton paper tonight about the same two roads, that they are not finished because they only have one coat of chip and seal.” Mr. Hoagland, “And it’s not even a total chip and seal. It’s just prime oil, it’s the base stone. You may not be aware that our distributor broke down, and we’re on the road, we’re in Union Township right now. We’ve got 3 ½ miles to finish in Union Township and then we will be north.” Com. Harper, “This is a bid from North American Salt delivered anywhere in the county for $47.68 a ton. This is from American Rock Salt, it’s a no bid.” Com. Evans, “What did you pay last year, Al?” Mr. Hoagland. “$39.42.” Com. Harper, “This is from Morton. This is 20 ton minimum dump truck delivery, $42.23 a ton. This one is from Cargil. $39.42 a ton. Is there any others? Okay. Is there anyone here that has bids in tonight? These will be available to look over before you leave. You will come back at our next meeting with a recommendation?” Mr. Hoagland, “Correct.” Com. Evans, “How much left over to carry over from last year?” Mr. Hoagland, “Carry over salt wise? Right now we are probably looking at about 1,500 ton total. We are a little bit lower than we would like to be but we didn’t use all of that. We’ve got $779.00 left in the account from last year.” Request for approval and release of RFP for North County Highway Garage Robert Thompson, Plan Commission Director Mr. Thompson, “This is a request for proposal basically asking for engineering and surveying firms to bid on this project. It would be for preparation of a full boundary survey on the 4.42 acres up in the Chesterton area for the garage. Also asking for the engineer to work with the Plan Commission’s drainage consultant that we have, DLZ and a number of other items we are requesting that they give full engineering plans according to our specifications or application procedures here at the Plan Commission for a development plan in preparation of that. So that is essentially what it is asking. It does not have anything in there as far as building. The building will be separate and we are going to be working on that RFP next for the design and build. These are engineers, surveyors, mainly laying out the plat and the location of the building, not necessarily doing architectural drawings and getting state and fire marshal approval. However, on this set, we are asking for the engineer to get a soil scientist to do soil borings and design a septic system and get all the necessary permits for that.” Com. Evans, “Thanks, Bob, for your assistance with this. And how you also got Russ Shirley to help you a little bit, too, with that kind of stuff. Just because we are a county government doesn’t mean that we should side step the procedures that everyone else has to go through. This is evidence that we are not doing that. We are appreciative of your work for us.” Com. Evans moved to approve the RFP, Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried. Mr. Thompson “We are on schedule tomorrow night for the Plan Commission.” Approval of contract with Pines Village for nursing services for JDC Ken Perkins, Juvenile Detention Director Mr. Perkins, “We are asking for approval of a contract with Pines Village Retirement Community to provide nursing services for the Juvenile Detention Center. Our previous provider at the end of the contract did not want to continue. We had to scramble a little bit but fortunately Pines Village were able to pick that up and actually all the personnel that will be providing the services are people that we’ve worked with previously and we are very happy with their services.” Com. Harper, “And all of this is coming out of your budget?” Mr. Perkins, “Yes.” Com. Evans, “Did someone breach this contract?” Mr. Perkins, “No, there’s so many days before the end of the contract they can say they don’t want to continue and they did that appropriately.” Com. Evans, “And is the fee structure the same?” Mr. Perkins, “No. The fee structure has gone up so we are going to see about transferring funds from one account to another to cover that. But being a new provider for us it’s a little bit of leeway and we will have to see how it goes. We don’t know how much money to transfer yet.” Com. Evans, “Have you reviewed the contract from the new provider?” Mr. Perkins, “Yes.” Com. Evans, “And how long is it going to be?” Mr. Perkins, “I believe it’s annual.” Atty. Rinkenberger, “Anybody can cancel at any time within 60 days.” Com. Evans moved to accept the recommendation, Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried. CORRESPONDENCE Clerk’s monthly report for June 2007 is on file. Court Security Activity report for July 2007 is on file. Request for permission by Eric Kurtz to encourage county employees to volunteer their support to a POD (Point of Dispensing) operation in the event of a public health emergency Mr. Kurtz, “The Porter County Health Department’s Preparedness and Emergency Response Office has been charged with preparing a plan for the mass distribution of medication in the event of a bio-terrorism incident. Part of that planning effort really takes, well, it’s on the last page of the document I gave you, which gives us a staffing plan to run that operation for approximately 48 hours. We need a staff of about 900 people. The county Health Department has 23 full time employees and 7 part time employees so that gives us 30. What we wanted to do is see if the Commissioners would approve and support us in soliciting county employees through their department head and elected officials to volunteer to help us meet the staffing requirements on this plan. Our plan, after we worked through the county agencies, to see how much staff we can gain, is to then approach townships and city and town governmental agencies as well as the school districts to help round out the staffing. Our plan calls for 4 points of dispensing in Porter County to service approximately 160,000 people and dispense the appropriate medications within a 48 hour period. This is planning that we hope to never use, but our goal is to make sure we have a plan that is real and right now we don’t have full staffing that we can feel assured is there in case we need it.” Com. Harper, “I’ve met with Eric on this and our Health Department has done a lot of work and they are trying to keep up with the requirements of the federal government. He has done a lot of work on this and I think we should support them on this and encourage our employees to be volunteers. As he said, they are going to cities and towns, schools, different organizations and so forth. I think we should try and help him in any way we can because they are trying to put together a plan for something we hope never happens, but at least they are doing their work on it and meeting their requirements of the federal government. Any questions, Carole?” Com. Knoblock, “Is this everyday that you need people?” Mr. Kurtz, “No, the hope is we will never need it. Essentially this plan is centered around the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, around a worse case scenario of a release of aerosolized anthrax and the plan is really to distribute the medication within 48 hours. If we can meet that planning goal, less severe biological incidents can be handled in a longer time frame so if we can meet the anthrax goal we should be prepared for most any biological type incident that we could face. We’re part of the Chicago metro area and Chicago has been identified as a high target area so we could potentially be on the fringe of that. This is not everyday. We would probably have an exercise once a year, we would try and turn up our points of dispensing, see what kind of group that we can achieve to run our population through each POD, have to process a population of about 1,000 an hour and to go through our population in a 48 hour period. Essentially, these are pre-packaged bottles that come from a strategic national stock pile and just pharmaceutical and medical stock pile. Our planning efforts obviously involve EMA, the hospital and many of the other emergency responders. The staffing members do not include security and traffic components that the Sheriff’s Department is managing for us as well, so that’s an extra head count that comes from within the law enforcement and reserve officer staff.” Com. Harper, “And this is just one of many projects being worked on for the county.” Com. Evans, “Well, it’s a monumental task to pass out that type of a number of medication and even a bigger task to get 900 people called and in the right position. How is that going to be accomplished?” Mr. Kurtz “Essentially we will use calling trees and that’s the benefit of using existing departments and agencies because then we can call the department heads or the elected officials and then they can use their calling trees to push down in their organizations. Ultimately, we will be recruiting medical professional volunteers to fill in some of those roles and that will be a task to notify those people. We are looking to access a tool that the Indiana State Department of Health is supposed to make available which is the Indiana Health Network, which is very similar to some of the reverse 911 systems that we looked at, too, to alert our team members and the people would be expected to staff POD’s. The 900 number is really based on three shifts every 24 hour periods and that each person would work 2, eight hour shifts during that 48 hours.” Com. Evans, “I noticed you mentioned schools. Have you also included the university?” Mr. Kurtz, “Well, we are looking at trying to establish the university and some of the large employers such as the steel mills, to do their own points of dispensing for their own employees and the family members of the employees. So that will relieve some of the pressure on people that would have to wait for the dispensing sites throughout Porter County. We do have memorandums of agreement in place for those four sites so I believe we have the structure of the plan, the biggest thing we are lacking is potentially the staffing; the bodies behind managing that kind of influx of people.” Com. Evans moved to accept the recommendation, Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried. Com. Harper, “Will you please talk to Melissa about how we are going to do this?” Mr. Kurtz, “Since it looks like some people from the Michigan City Schools are here, we might need to use your Pine Township school facility as an alternative housing site.” Request for approval of quotes from Tudor Floors to replace carpet for Judges Thode and Jent 1. Judge Thode offices only $2,437 2. Judge Thode courtroom & break room $5,602 3. Judge Jent patch carpet in office $ 149 Com. Evans moved to approve, Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried. Request for additional appropriation—Highway Fund 02 $2,000 to 3920 disposal To continue rubbish removal through the end of 2007. Com. Evans moved to approve, Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried. Com. Harper, “Do you have that on the Council agenda?” Ms. Hartig, “That has been turned in already. The carpet, the repair of the carpet, is that going to come from CCD or do you want it to come from CEDIT building maintenance?” Com. Harper, “Why don’t we take it from CEDIT building maintenance.” COMMISSIONERS REPORT South District: 1. Hunter Trail, Phase A, Performance Letter of Credit #2000203-1366 from Marquette Bank in the amount of $15,000. New expiration date is July 25, 2008. Recommend approval. Com. Knoblock moved to approve, Com. Evans seconded, motion carried. PLAN COMMISSION Robert Thompson, Director Amendment to the Unified Development Ordinance #07-05, 2nd reading Mr. Thompson, “This is Plan Commission Resolution 07-9. Plan Commission had a favorable recommendation to amend the UDO for the sexually oriented businesses removing those businesses from I1, Industrial District.” Com. Harper, “Okay, and we passed it on first reading last time.” Com. Evans, “Is there an ordinance number?” Ms. Hartig, “07-12.” Com. Evans moved to approve the amendment to the UDO on 2nd reading, Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried Rezone-I2 to IN-Michigan City Schools Area Schools, 1st reading Mr. Thompson, “This is Plan Commission Resolution 07-10. Petitioner is Michigan City Area Schools, requesting a zoning amendment from I2, General Industry to IN, Institutional. This was before the Plan Commission at their July 11th meeting, they recommended approval of this to the County Commissioners with written commitments. The written commitments on this were to show the open space that they have, there is a significant amount of wetlands in this area and also forest areas. And from the drawing that they have there, there is a number of pods that they have there. There is one we are showing for future expansion of the school and they wanted to keep the school at that size as shown on the plat and if they needed a change then they needed to come back to the Plan Commission for review of it and with the commitments. The other commitment was they had to go through and complete DLZ storm water review. I did receive that today, they are clear as far as their site goes, so DLZ gave them essentially a thumbs up saying they need to have the storm water ordinance.” Com. Harper, “There was a question of green space that was going to be maintained, is that correct?” Mr. Thompson, “The open space.” Com. Harper, “And they had agreed to commit to that and they have by, how has that been done?” Mr. Thompson, “Hoeppner Wagner & Evans has prepared a written commitment that is in draft form and Attorney Leeth forwarded it to me last week that I sent down, it was draft form because he had not had approval yet from the Michigan City Area Schools yet as far as their client on this. I did send down a draft written commitment. This would be recorded with the ordinance along with a copy of the plat along with the ordinance.” Com. Harper, “And you have reviewed that?” Mr. Thompson, “Yes, I have.” Com. Harper, “And you are satisfied that it meets certain requirements?” Mr. Thompson, “Yes, there is one very first conditions under conditions precedent that they have open space commitment. The real estate show contains only the building improvements and other amenities on the site plan approved by the Plan Commission on July 11, 2007 which shall contain no more than 4 PODS in one building, owner can agree upon or retains the right to ____ a POD at a later date.” Com. Harper, “There’s a lot of wetlands in that property.” Mr. Thompson, “Right.” Com. Harper, “And those wetlands will have to be at some point identified by…” Mr. Thompson, “Army Corp of Engineers, I believe. They have had that, I will let them answer that.” Atty. Leeth, “It’s already done and the identification or delineation is already on the site plan showed in green. The only impact we are having is the building doesn’t impact the wetlands at all. The only impact is, I call it this tear drop wetland, very small one here in the soccer field, we’re not going to initiate any construction on the soccer field until permitting is done for that one little isolated small wetland there. But, with regard to the building, all the driveways, park services, wetlands are completely avoided.” Com. Knoblock, “So you’ve got the report on that already?” Atty. Leeth, “Yes.” Com. Harper, “And the majority of 99% of those wetlands are part of the open space, correct, Bob?” Mr. Thompson, “Correct.” Com. Harper, “So you are satisfied that commitments asked for are there?” Mr. Thompson. “Correct.” Com. Harper, “This is the first reading tonight, it is going to be an open public hearing. I will let the petitioners start first and when they finish, anyone in the audience who has any questions or comments, we will go back to the petitioner, back again to the audience to see if those questions were answered.” Com. Evans, “I just want to point out a clarification. Your staff report indicates that this township is Liberty, isn’t that Pine?” Mr. Thompson, “I’m sorry, that should be Pine.” Atty. Leeth, “My name is Todd Leeth. On behalf of the Michigan City Area Schools, our office serves as counsel for the school district. Carl Backsmier from Fanning Howie is the project coordinator. I am going to let him kind of go through the handbook, if you will, that is recent history from the Plan Commission meeting from July 11th and I just want to update you as to what has happened since then very briefly.” Carl Backsmier, “I will be very brief. I think Mr. Thompson really hit the key points. We have several tabs in there, the first tab is a set of plans of what you see up there in the green showing the wetland areas and as you see there is a dash line by that tear drop shape, that’s the area that we would like to exclude from any construction until such time as purpose is received. Next tab is marked Natural Resource Assessment. That was done by Phoenix Group. That has been submitted to the Corp of Engineers to start the determining process. The other issue I would like to touch on briefly that the Plan Commission raised and nobody has addressed, is the next tab which is the Porter County Highway Department. The Plan Commission asked if the Michigan City Area Schools would be willing to post a bond for any damage potentially done to a either the county roads, and I’ve been out there with the county engineer and he provided the letter that is in there setting the bond amount at $50,000.00. He suggested the road be videotaped with the help of Dan Williamson, the facilities director for the school, and we did videotape it, so we are successfully getting approval and we will provide that to you any time the Highway Department will allow. The final tab I would like to address before I turn it back over to Todd, is the DLZ question which also Mr. Thompson addressed and we have the first part of that tab is the letter we received this morning from Tony at DLZ acknowledging that you don’t have two full bays but agree with our contention that because of the soils and we don’t want to deforest more than we have to, then it would be all right in this case to go ahead with the drainage plan as presented. Now with that view, the two issues were the open space and the rezoning and I will let Mr. Leeth address those.” Atty. Leeth, “I think we have already touched on those. Commission Harper and Mr. Thompson have discussed the agreement for commitments that state law allows us to enter into that contractual obligation with the county as a condition of the zoning change. That’s what we are really here for is to change the zoning of the 62 acres in question to allow for the school to be located there and the conditions the Plan Commission was most concerned with are incorporated into that agreement. It’s somewhat of a boiler plate outside of the core issues of those conditions, the open space reservation, and the reverting of the land back to its original. So, those are the two chief concerns. The other developmental types of concerns that the Plan Commission had were more site review issues that Carl talked about. I would be happy to answer any questions. I know Carl and I would and others with us that we would try and cover all the bases. Thank you. “ Com. Harper, “Is there anyone in the audience that wants to speak for or against this petition? Anyone to speak for or against this petition? Questions?” Com. Evans, “Obviously the size of the school is going to be much greater than it is at the current time and that the capacity is going to be filled with students coming from where, existing schools in the Michigan City District?” Mr. Backsmier, “The plan is currently to redistrict. We have several schools that are overcrowded and this would equalize the elementary schools.” Com. Evans, “Approximately how many more teachers or how many more students?” Mr. Backsmier, “Capacity is about 600 students and there are currently about 300 students in the existing school. They won’t have 600 students in the near future, but that’s the capacity of the building. I might also mention part of that capacity is based on early childhood expansion of all day kindergarten and early childhood Pre-k construction will be taking place on this site.” Com. Evans, “Not that it affects this project, but what is going to happen with the old school?” Mr. Backsmier, “That hasn’t been determined yet.” Dick Williamson, “I am Dick Williamson, Facility Director from Michigan City Schools. It hasn’t been decided yet. We are willing to work on that issue.” Com. Harper, “I will close the public hearing. Do I hear a motion?” Com. Evans moved to approve the rezone on first reading, Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried. Com. Harper, “Anything else?” Com. Evans moved to recess, Com. Knoblock seconded, motion carried. BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS PORTER COUNTY, INDIANA Robert P. Harper John A. Evans Carole M. Knoblock Attest: James K. Kopp, Auditor |
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August 7, 2007