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PORTER COUNTY COUNCIL Special Meetings January 27, 2007 The Porter County Council held two special meetings on Saturday, January 27, 2007 starting at 9:00 a.m. in the County Administration Center, 155 Indiana-Suite 205, Valparaiso, Indiana. Members present were Michael Bucko, Jim Burge, William Carmichael, Matthew Murphy, Robert Poparad, Rita Stevenson, and President Dan Whitten. Also present was Attorney David Hollenbeck, Auditor Chief Deputy Lindy Wilson, and Jan Noll. Mr. Whitten called the meeting to order with the Pledge of Allegiance. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Mr. Whitten, The next thing on the agenda is the approval of minutes, January 3rd, 2007 and the 2007 Budget Hearings. What’s your pleasure? Mr. Carmichael moved to approve the minutes of January 3, 2007 and the 2007 Budget Hearings as received. Mr. Poparad seconded, motion carried on a unanimous voice vote. AUDITOR 01.02 Transfer $10,000 from 1120 to Hourly to 1130 Overtime Mr. Whitten, Auditor 01.02, a transfer of $10,000 from Hourly--this is Hourly, right--to Overtime. Mr. Poparad moved to grant the request for transfer of funds submitted by Auditor 01.02, the amount of $10,000 from 1120 Hourly to 1130 Overtime. Mr. Bucko seconded. Mr. Whitten, We have a motion and a second to approve the transfer. Any discussion? Mr. Poparad, Lindy, will this clean up the TIF mess? Mrs. Wilson, We’re hoping it will clean up the TIF mess, yes. Mr. Poparad, Okay. Mr. Whitten, I was contacted by Mr. Kopp, he’s hoping it will. Mr. Poparad, Okay. Mr. Whitten, Any other discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by stating aye. Motion carried on a unanimous voice vote. Mr. Whitten, The transfer is approved. ATTORNEY REPORT Inter-fund Borrowing/Resolution 07-01-27 Tax Anticipation Warrants RESOLUTION NO. 07-1-27 A RESOLUTION OF THE PORTER COUNTY COUNCIL AUTHORIZING TRANSFER OF MONIES ON A TEMPORARY BASIS FROM THE CUMULATIVE BRIDGE FUND TO THE GENERAL FUND WHEREAS, the Porter County Council is the fiscal body of Porter County, Indiana; and WHEREAS, the Porter County Auditor’s office has advised the Porter County Council that the Porter County general fund is experiencing “cash flow” problems and is in need of a temporary loan or transfer in order to pay pending and anticipated claims until replenished by real estate property tax collections and other receipts; and WHEREAS, it is the desire of the Porter County Council to make a temporary transfer or loan for cash flow purposes pursuant to I.C. 36-1-8-4 from the cumulative bridge fund in an amount not to exceed Three Million Dollars ($3,000,000.00) and to transfer or loan said monies to the general fund as may be needed from time to time during calendar year 2007 and at the discretion of the Porter County Auditor’s office. THEREFORE, IT IS HEREBY RESOLVED by the Porter County Council that a sum not to exceed Three Million Dollars ($3,000,000.00) should be and the same is hereby authorized to be transferred or loaned pursuant to I.C. 36-1-8-4 from the county’s cumulative bridge fund to the county’s general fund at the discretion of the Porter County Auditor’s office on an as-needed basis. In so authorizing such transfers or loans, the Porter County Council shall be deemed to have determined that there is a need or necessity for such transferring or borrowing of such monies in order to enhance the county’s general fund which is experiencing temporary cash flow problems. Such monies are to be transferred or borrowed from the cumulative bridge fund at the discretion of the Porter County Auditor’s office as needed in order to enable to the county to pay its bills and obligations owed from the county’s general fund. Such monies are to be returned to the cumulative bridge fund no later than December 31, 2007. The Porter County Auditor is hereby instructed and authorized to take all necessary actions associated with the implementation of the intent of this resolution. ALL OF WHICH HAVING BEEN RESOLVED, by the Porter County Council this 27th day of January, 2007. PORTER COUNTY COUNCIL s/Michael Bucko s/Jim Burge s/William Carmichael s/Matthew Murphy s/Robert Poparad s/Rita Stevenson s/Dan Whitten ATTEST: s/James Kopp, Porter County Auditor Mr. Whitten, Attorney Report, inter-fund borrowing and tax anticipation warrant discussion. Mr. Hollenbeck, Mr. President, I’m passing down what I emailed to each of you, which is a proposed resolution for your consideration this morning. In consultation with our auditor, and I believe discussions that have occurred between our president and the Board of County Commissioners, the resolution proposes inter-fund borrowing from the cumulative bridge fund to the general fund, in an amount not to exceed $3,000,000. With the problematic nature of the December ’06 real estate property tax settlement still an issue, and not knowing when that money is going to be available, the $3,000,000, if we don’t get the December settlement done here expeditiously, will take us, I’m thinking about through the end of February or the first part of March, and then we’ll have to go into the second this morning, and that’s authorizing tax anticipation warrants. Mr. Whitten, If I may interject just for a second, Dave. My recent discussions with Commissioner Harper, who is here, given the projects that the commissioners are anticipating out of this fund, I think that they were thinking two and half million was what… Com. Robert Harper, We ask the approval whether is was needed or not, two and half million. Mr. Whitten, For two and a half million, because of some projects. I think that’s going to, how will that affect your timeline if it’s two… Mr. Hollenbeck, Well it’ll shorten two things. It will shorten how long we’ll have cash, probably at that point, maybe the third week, that second payroll in February will be problematic. We won’t be able to make it. Secondly, what we did last year that can accommodate the legitimate concern of the commissioners’ overspending is that, go ahead, and again, we’re authorizing an amount not to exceed, so we don’t know whether we’ll have to go to the three. Plus, as soon as we issue tax warrants, the first thing we’ll do is repay the bridge fund. Which means, if you give me authority to proceed with tax anticipation warrants, and I do that in February, and we borrowed 2.7 million from the bridge fund, we’ll immediately access 2.7 million of the tax anticipation warrants, and replenish the bridge fund. So the bridge fund could be replenished or will be replenished as soon as the tax warrants are issued, which probably will be February or early March. Mr. Whitten, Bob. Com. Harper, Here’s what we got. We left a cushion in there. After we talked to some council members, we left a cushion in there. But, I think three-million would work. It would be a little tighter, but I think that it will work. We just left that cushion because there’s three and a half, and we know of about 400-some are going to be spent, could be spent during that period of time. So we did it for two and a half, and I talked to some council members, and they suggested a cushion. But three would probably work. And if you want to do that, Carole, we’ll do it. So it’s up to you guys. It was just going to be a little bit tighter, that’s all. Mr. Hollenbeck, And again, we can get that money back in probably in March. Com. Harper, Okay, well, I’m just telling you. I called highway, and I said, what do you have planned out of this fund, and they said for, you know, the next few months that maybe will go out of this fund is 400-some thousand, there’s three and a half million there. Mr. Burge, I have a question for Bob. If something arises between the time, you know, because you were going to allow for cushioning just in case, if something does arise, what would your plan be if you had to pull money for an emergency of any sort before we could get that money repaid. Com. Harper, Well we would have to do a transfer somewhere. I mean I think… Mr. Burge, You have some options though, you wouldn’t be left high and dry. Com. Harper, Yes, we have some options. I think we could handle it. Mr. Burge, Okay. Mr. Whitten, Okay, I’m sorry, Dave, go ahead. Mr. Hollenbeck, Well that’s fine. I appreciate the explanation from Com. Harper. Again, the adoption of this resolution would implement your statutory authority to inter-fund transfer for cash flow purposes under that statute, the transfer must be repaid in its entirety no later than December 31st of this calendar year, unless--and we’ve had to do this at least once--you declare a financial emergency, and then you have until June 30th of the following calendar year under the statute. But again, unless you tell me otherwise, the methodology would be to immediately replenish this out of the first proceeds of any tax anticipation warrants that are issued. Mr. Whitten, Thank you. Any questions? I think we pretty much understand what we are doing here. Mr. Bucko, You need a motion? Mr. Whitten, Hearing no questions, could I get a motion? Mr. Bucko moved to adopt Resolution 07-1-27 as submitted. Mr. Whitten, We have a motion to approve Resolution 07-1-27, a Resolution of the Porter County Council Authorizing Transfer of Monies on a Temporary Basis from the Cumulative Bridge Fund to the General Fund. Can I get a second? Mr. Poparad seconded. Mr. Whitten, We have a second to the motion. Any discussion? I assume your motion is by title only. Mr. Burge, The other thing I would add is I support Dave’s original proposal to repay it right away so we don’t have a shell game going on, as much as possible. Mr. Whitten, Absolutely. Any further discussion? Can I get a roll call on this, please. Motion carried on a unanimous roll call vote. Mr. Hollenbeck, I’m passing down three copies where I’ve marked the resolution number, if you could sign them we’ll get them to the auditor, Jan and the auditor will be happy that we can pay our bills for a little bit. Which segues into the tax anticipation warrants. The second financial cash flow issue we have to deal with is the longer term. What you’ve just done gives us general fund cash to get us through early March. In talking to our auditor, asking him purposefully, to be as pessimistic as he would be--because we don’t want to have to go through warrants twice--he indicated that he would recommend that you authorize issuance of tax anticipation warrants in an amount not to exceed $20,000,000. Again, it would be on a draw basis. It would only be as he needs it. We’re fortunate, the last couple of years we’ve been able to sell these tax warrants to a consortium of local bankers who are sympathetic and empathetic with our problems, and we’ve been able to do it. It’s unusual to issue tax warrants on a draw basis. Normally, the banks want to simply close and give you the money, because it’s more paperwork for them. But I, in talking to them, I think we can get a draw basis note again that would allow the auditor to access that money, just like you’ll be accessing the cumulative bridge money on an as needed basis. And again, that’s for cash flow purposes, and there’s no if, ands or buts about that. That has to be repaid by December 31st of this year. And it would obviously be repaid out of the ’07 real estate property tax revenue that you get. And again, and you’re going to segue into that discussion later this morning. Not having a good handle on when that money is going to be available, the $20,000,000 was two and a half million dollars for like eight months is what he thought he would need as a worst-case scenario. So if we get through the beginning of March with this borrowing, that would be April, May, June, July, August, September, October, that would be October. And certainly, one would hope we’d have the real estate property tax bills out by then. The process, if you approve it, is that I need to do the paperwork, and have a legal notice put in the paper. Then if you are inclined to do this, I’d ask the president--I think as we did last year--to appoint a couple of members as a committee, and then we’ll have a bid opening in the auditor’s office, probably sometime in February. Then we’ll award the tax warrants, and then I’ll go through all the process of preparing the transcript, and bringing it to you for approval. Mr. Bucko, I have a question. Mr. Whitten, Sure. Mr. Bucko, On the bid process, does that mean that one bank, one bank is awarded or a group of banks, a consortium of banks is awarded that? Mr. Hollenbeck, Yes. We, again, we’ve been fortunate the last, really starting in 2001 when candidly no one in their right mind would have lent us money, because we were literally broke, a couple of the local banks stepped up then, and they’ve continued to step up with very competitive interest rates, and gone together, three and four banks together, have gone together, and allocated it then among themselves. Traditionally, Eric Gerard at First National Bank has kind of been my point person, and we go through him, then he gets the money from what is now Harris and Centier and Horizon, and then sends it over to the auditor. Then when we repay it, we just send him one check, and he distributes it to the banks. But they all take a piece of the action. Mr. Bucko, I just wondered how the, when you say bids, it’s a bid of a consortium. Mr. Hollenbeck, Yes. Mr. Bucko, Okay. Mr. Hollenbeck, We’ll get one bid, and it will probably be from one bank, but they will tell us… Mr. Bucko, How they do it, I don’t care. Mr. Hollenbeck, Right, how they do it… Mr. Bucko, We don’t care. Mr. Hollenbeck, And candidly, that started in 2001 because we were not a very good credit risk. Mr. Bucko, Yes. Mr. Hollenbeck, We were a lousy credit risk. We just had the largest taxpayer in the county paying 17% of the property taxes go south on us. So they wanted to spread that risk among a number of them. Mr. Whitten, Any other concerns or questions? Mr. Bucko, I would just say as a point of, a point that should be made or given some thought about throughout the year, and at budget season next year, it would appear to me then that we have enough money on a regular basis, even with doing the transaction with the bridge fund until February. So under normal circumstances we are short money up until the tax draw in May on a regular continual basis unless we do something about it. And it probably wouldn’t hurt for the members of this council to try to determine what can be done with, about that. How we can create some potential plan or what have you to acquire the revenues into either some type of rainy day fund, some type of, what do you want to call it, I guess, carryover balance, so we can transcend those, that time period between February or May on a regular basis. Mr. Hollenbeck, And Mike, you know, that, that’s a good point. The last time I talked to anybody downstate, there were like 600 units of local government in the state of Indiana who issued tax warrants. So this, this is not and usual situation. Mr. Bucko, No, it’s not unique to local government. Of course, it isn’t. Mr. Hollenbeck, And through the years, you know, ten, 15 years ago, we didn’t have to because candidly we carried cash balances forward--like you said--that allowed us to pay our bills until the new taxes came in. Mr. Whitten, This is a discussion maybe we could have a little closer at budget time. Mr. Poparad, Well no, we’re going to continue this discussion for another second here. Mr. Whitten, You want to talk about… Mr. Poparad, Yes, I want to talk. Mr. Whitten, How we’re going to handle the budget session this year. Mr. Poparad, Well no, I want to talk about the fact that we’ve got unallocated EDIT money. Mr. Whitten, That’s what we need to get to. Mr. Poparad, That’s what I want to get to real fast here, because we have a lot of cash sitting here, and I don’t know. We can use unallocated EDIT money with the commissioners’ permission to borrow it, and run a little while, can’t we? We have casino money sitting here. We have bridge, no. We just have a lot of money sitting here, and I’m not going to be so inclined to run out and borrow money if we have cash sitting here. Mr. Hollenbeck, Well of course the other side of that, Bob, is that when we use it we’re losing interest. Mr. Poparad, Yes, but I’ve got… Mr. Hollenbeck, And we’re… Mr. Poparad, Okay, let’s bring up that subject of interest. Where is the interest the County made last year? Mr. Hollenbeck, On all the different accounts? Mr. Poparad, Yes, where’s it at? Mrs. Wilson, I can’t tell you that. Mr. Poparad, Right. The County made about $3,000,000 of interest last year. Is Murph here? I’m sorry, I’m looking over there. Where’s it at, Murph? Jim Murphy, It all goes back proportionately to the funds. Mr. Poparad, Okay. So in reference to Mr. Bucko’s comment, should the interest be segregated next year so we can use that operate on? Mr. J. Murphy, The interest could be siphoned off and put in one place, I suppose, and you could use that. Mr. Poparad, Because you told me, or the numbers are about $3,000,000 you made in interest last year. Why can’t we lay our hands on that money? Mr. Bucko, That’s what I think could be sat down, discussed and a plan. Mr. Poparad, Yes, I agree. I’m muddying the waters here. Mr. Bucko, Yeah, absolutely. Mr. Whitten, But as we move through the year, and we’re asking for balances on funds, this, that and the other, and we get a balance, doesn’t that include the interest. Mr. Hollenbeck, As it currently is done, the interest goes back to the fund that earned it. Mr. Poparad, To the account. Mr. Hollenbeck, Right. So, like the bridge fund, which has 3.6 million dollars, to the extent Murph invests that 3.6, it’s all invested together, but the 3.6 interest that was earned goes back into the bridge fund as it is right now. Mr. Poparad, But if we drug that interest off to the side, then the bridge fund let’s say would still be making interest. We wouldn’t have to borrow. We’d have $3,000,000 that we could use of our own. Now we’ve got this big pot of money, 300 funds or whatever, and we’ve got to go to the bank and borrow money, when I’m sitting here--do I really want to say in public how much cash the County has? Mr. Whitten, Sure. Sure, go ahead. Mr. Poparad, I don’t know, but… Mr. Whitten, It’s their money. Mr. Poparad, According to the fund report we have $55,000,000 and we’re talking about borrowing money, so. Mr. Whitten, Well, I can understand that. And I understand your guy’s suggestion, and I think that they are suggestions to be, you know, taking a look at, at some point. But I mean, for purposes of today, Bob, are you suggesting that we borrow from some other funds? Mr. Poparad, Yes. Mr. Whitten, Which ones would you like to borrow from? Mr. Poparad, If the commissioners would agree we could use unallocated EDIT or their EDIT money for 60 or 90 days, if they don’t have any projects coming up, just like the bridge fund. Mr. Whitten, What kind of interest are we making on the EDIT funds? Com. Harper, That’s why you have to have ask Murph to account for them. Mr. J. Murphy, Bob, do you have breakdown? Mr. Poparad, No, I don’t have the breakdown, Murph, I just know the totals. Com. Harper, I think that’s a percentage for the accounts. Mr. J. Murphy, Right, I’d have to… Mr. Poparad, Maybe we ought to just delay. We’ll do the bridge fund, and move on. Mr. Bucko, Yes, I think we should. Then create some kind of a three-man committee out of this Council. Mr. Hollenbeck, But guys, it takes me three weeks to issue tax warrants. We can’t… Mr. Bucko, We can’t dawdle for that. Mr. Hollenbeck, We’re going to run out. Right now we are going to run out of money the first week in March. Mr. Whitten, Well that is a problem. Mr. Bucko, No, I think… Mr. Poparad, No, in deference to Dave here, we’re not going to run out of money. We’ve got tons of money sitting here, we’ve just got to find out which pocket it’s in. Mr. Hollenbeck, I’m sorry. We’re going to have, the general fund is going to run out of money the first week in March. Mr. Bucko, I guess, could I ask a question? Do we know statutorily whether or not the funds that are gained, you know, the monies, the interest earned, does it, is it required statutorily to go back into those individual funds. Mr. J. Murphy, I’m certain on the funds of reassessment, highway, health funds. I don’t know exact, I’d have to look at the list to give you a specific answer, Mike. But a lot of that, we have just been putting them back in because they are non-reverting funds, and they’re used annually, like the reassessment and highway. Now that, that’s this, is at the discretion of the County’s board of finance, which is the commissioners and the treasurer. You know, we could restructure that any way that we decide to. It needs to be restructured; put more interest in the general fund or create another fund, and direct some of the interest into a different fund. But that’s flexible at this time, I suppose or any time to change that. Mr. Hollenbeck, Adding more issue here, which I guess we’re doing. The State Board of Accounts has traditionally interpreted the inter-fund borrowing statute to limit that inter-fund borrowing to accounts that receive their revenue from real estate property taxes, and of course, for example the CEDIT does not. Plus, we’ve traditionally borrowed inter-fund from the reassessment fund, and the reassessment fund statute was amended to prevent, it says, quote, transfers out of that fund. So, you know, is this a transfer, is it a borrowing? It’s certainly a gray area. Mr. Whitten, Well I mean I guess when we look at these funds, from a practical matter, they’re drawing some interest. We’re avoiding the transaction costs of floating the T-A-W’s, but we’re not necessarily saving all the interest, because we’re losing the interest that we would be making in those funds. It’s not a net-net gain. But my concern is, I’m hearing worst-case scenario, eight months. Three weeks to get the tax anticipation warrants processed. I don’t want to get in a situation where we get called a week or two before payroll that we don’t have the money. You know, so I want to be sure what we can borrow this money from. I want to be sure that we have the money to do that, you know. We’re talking eight months, two and half million dollars a month, you know, that’s a lot of money. Mr. Poparad moved to authorize Attorney Hollenbeck, to begin the process for the tax anticipation warrants. Mr. Whitten, At 20,000,000. Mr. Bucko, Yes, I think that’s fine, because we’re going to take it on an as-needed basis in between now and then and as we need it, we can determine… Mr. Whitten, That’s right. So why don’t we do this… Mr. Bucko, How we may use it and everything. Mr. Whitten, Why don’t we put together a committee, a three-person committee chaired by Mr. Poparad, since it’s his idea. Mr. Bucko, I’ll be happy to serve on that with you, Bob. Mr. Whitten, And let’s see what we can do with this. Maybe we’re only looking at one month of T-A-W’s, and then we can start right from here, Bob. Mr. Poparad, Right. Mr. Whitten, At least let’s get it going. Who else wants to serve with Bob? Mr. Bucko, I will. Mr. Whitten, Mike. Anybody else? Mr. Bucko, Matt will. Mr. M. Murphy, Sure. Mr. Bucko, There you go. Mr. Whitten, Why don’t we make that your motion, Bob, if you’ll entertain it. Mr. Poparad moved to amend his motion to authorize Attorney Hollenbeck to start the process of acquiring tax anticipation warrants, and create a committee consisting of Mr. M. Murphy, Mr. Bucko and himself to determine if there can be more inter-fund borrowing. Mr. Bucko seconded, motion carried on a unanimous roll call vote. COUNCIL 2007 POLICY MEMORANDUM Mr. Whitten, Council 2007 Policy Memorandum. Have you had an opportunity to review it? Mr. Poparad moved to adopt the 2007 Council Policy Memorandum as submitted. Mrs. Stevenson seconded, motion carried on a unanimous voice vote. Mr. Whitten, We have our memorandum. APPOINTMENTS Alcohol Beverage Commission Early Intervention Team Porter County Historical Society Porter County Substance Abuse Council Mr. Whitten, Appointments. In your packet you see a letter that I received and forwarded on to you for the Alcohol Beverage Commission appointment from Mr. John Tavaras. He’s a local gentleman who works at Greiger’s Motors apparently, and has a Bachelors of Science of business from IU--which I’m trying to look past that being a Purdue man. Any thoughts on that? I would recommend this appointment. Mr. Bucko, That there is a question. Mr. Poparad moved to appoint John Tavaras as the Council’s appointment to the Alcohol Beverage Commission for 2007. Mrs. Stevenson and Mr. Bucko seconded, motion carried on a unanimous voice vote. Mr. Carmichael, Question, Dan. Is there a balanced board here? Mr. Whitten, He’s a Republican, and he’s replacing a Republican. I didn’t know if it’s one of those deals, but he’s replacing someone in the same party. Mr. Carmichael, Okay, one other. Did the commissioners replace theirs yet? Com. Harper, Yes. Mr. Carmichael, You put a Democrat on that? Com. Harper, Yes. Mr. Carmichael, Okay, so we’ve got a balance. Otherwise, they’ll throw it out. Mr. Whitten, Okay, we’ve got these other ones, the Historical Society. Did we have any people apply for these other ones? Ms. Noll, No. Mr. Whitten, Okay, we have none. We still have openings on the Historical Society, the Early Intervention Team and Porter County Substance Abuse Council. So spread the word if somebody wants to be on those. Get us their name in the form of a letter, and we’ll be happy to consider it. ANY OTHER MATTER Mr. Whitten, Any other matters that may come properly before the Council. Anything from the members? Hearing none, I’ll entertain a motion to adjourn. Mr. Poparad moved to adjourn the meeting at 9:25 a.m. Mr. Bucko seconded, motion carried on a unanimous voice vote. Mr. Whitten, Good meeting. So let’s take a five-minute break, and move into the next one. Mr. Hollenbeck, Nothing personal, but I intend to not come back. SPECIAL MEETING Mr. Whitten called the second meeting to order at 9:40 a.m. Members present were Michael Bucko, Jim Burge, William Carmichael, Matthew Murphy, Robert Poparad Rita Stevenson, and President Dan Whitten. Also present was Auditor Chief Deputy Lindy Wilson, and Jan Noll. Mr. Whitten, Well let’s go ahead, and move right into the next meeting. Okay, we’re sort of continuing on from our last meeting. We were talking about the tax bills and delay, and some of the timelines so we all sort of have an understanding, collectively, what we are looking at here. I’ve given these meetings a great deal of thought, myself, as have some of the other members in our discussions. We think that these meetings are going to be what we make them. So we are hoping that everybody comes with an open mind, and with a feeling of open communication so we can leave here feeling that we’ve shared enough information to go back and tell our respective constituencies what’s going on in their county. And that we all have semi-similar renditions of what’s going on. So I want to really tell you all I appreciate you coming, and sharing your Saturday morning with us. I know it’s always a struggle to schedule in a Saturday morning meeting with all the things you need to do. But we appreciate you coming. With that, I think our intention was this meeting was to begin with the assessors giving us an idea of where they are at with their work. So, I’m going to ask one of our assessors--let me see--Janine, why don’t you, I promised her she wouldn’t be first, which is why she’s first. Why don’t you give us an idea where we’re at in Porter Township. Janine Chrisman, Okay. I’ve kind of done a handout here for everybody to kind of follow along. This is not meant to teach you how to trend, it’s just to give you a better understanding of what the assessors have to do now. I know comments have been made, assessing is just going out to measure a house and then calculating it. And when I started 12 years ago, that’s kind of what it was. It’s not the same job now. Trending is the process by which we take current assessed values that are based on 1999 values from the last reassessment, and we trend them forward to 2005 values based on current market trends for the ’06, ’07 taxes. We’ve done this over the past year. This, now our process is complete, and after that are the steps. First of all, we get sales disclosures. We are supposed to receive a sales disclosure in our office for every sale that takes place in the County. Sales disclosures drive the entire trending process, and it’s impossible to trend without good sales data. All sales have to be verified through a multiple listing service or questionnaires that we send to the buyer and/or seller. All sales must be field inspected by the assessor’s office to ensure that the data that we have coincides with what the sale is based on. And as most of the assessors know we get sales disclosures in that were very strange. I, we received in our office last week, a sales disclosure for a rather exclusive neighborhood that’s in our township that had four lots with four houses on it. It had a million dollars of assessed value, and the sale price on the sales disclosure was $100,000. That’s not a good sale. But in order to mark it a bad sale, you have to have a reason why it’s a bad sale. The DLGF insists on that. Well, what do you do? You have to call the buyer or the seller, and ask them, you know, what the deal is, and they’re not always very forthcoming with information. So it’s not necessarily a cut-and-dry operation. Mr. Bucko, Excuse me. Who would not be forthcoming on that? Ms. Crisman, A lot of people. The buyer, the seller. Mr. Bucko, The buyer, the seller have that information. Ms. Crisman, We send letters out for every sale, and I think on the average, we probably get maybe 35% of our letters back. And then we’ll get letters back with, you know, notes like, it’s none of your business, and things like that, so. Mr. Bucko, Okay. Ms. Crisman, It’s not an easy process. Once we look at the sales data, then you have to create neighborhoods based on like properties and geographical areas, style of house, age and grade. In our township we have 22 neighborhoods. We have a rather small township. Susan Larson who is the assessor in Center Township, including her commercial, she has approximately 122 neighborhoods. Ms. Larson, Yes. Ms. Crisman, Okay, and the larger townships have many more neighborhoods. Every year also the land values must be re-evaluated to ensure that the land values are up to current market value. And that’s not always easy, because you have to do this based on vacant land sales, and in a lot of these neighborhoods there is not vacant land sales, especially, if it’s in one of the older subdivisions there are almost no vacant land sales. Select, go ahead. Mr. Bucko, Excuse me. In relationship to that, is there a mechanism in place put together by the State or associations or whatever involved that if you run into those criteria, situations like that, where they are not available, that they have a method in which it can be done which can hold up under state statute or however else it would be for you to assume. Ms. Crisman, Not exactly. You can figure out a land-to-building ratio, and base it on that. But then again, in order to figure out a land-to-building ratio you need vacant sales. So it’s not always easy. Mr. Bucko, Alright, then it becomes challengeable. Ms. Crisman, Yes. Mr. Bucko, You want me to show this, is that what you want. Mr. Whitten, No, no, not in those terms; I want her to finish. Mr. Bucko, Alright, well awe. Ms. Crisman, That’s alright. They also, the state wants all of us to take selected neighborhoods every year and review them, possibly go out and reassess, for accuracy. The Department of Local Government Finance, which is the DLGF, requires that all sales be databased so that they can be electronically sent to the state. And you have to have the right information in. If it’s a bad sale, they want to know why it’s a bad sale. Then the accuracy, obviously, of the sales database is key to arriving at precise ratio studies. Okay, once we’ve done all of this, then you have to start your statistical process. All the sales must be sorted into neighborhoods. Ratio studies are run on each neighborhood to calculate, and these are the things that you have to calculate: your assessment ratio, median absolute difference, mean, weighted mean, absolute average deviation, coefficient of dispersion, priced related differential and finally the trending factor. All of these have to be calculated in order to come up with a correct trending factor. The DLGF has mandated that three of these must be within a very small range, and I have these listed here. Your Median, the Cod--coefficient dispersion--and the price related differential. If these three figures do not fall within the range, then the assessor has two choices. They can either stratify, which breaks your neighborhood into smaller neighborhoods, based on style of house, age, the size of the land tract, the square footage of the house or, if you are not going to stratify, you have to go out and reassess that entire neighborhood to find out, you know, what is wrong; if you’re not picking up things that are there; if your grade is wrong; if the age of the house is wrong. Okay, when the assessor has completed the ratio studies, then the trending factors have to be applied to all properties in that neighborhood. Now, you may have one trending factor for land, building, the whole thing, or if you find out that the market trend is showing that the house is trending different than the land, then you have to go back and do this whole process for your building and the land, and then when you come up with a trending factor you’ll apply those to each area that you need. And, let’s see. Agricultural improvements may have a different factor than the farmhouse on the same property. Like I said, the land may be different, so you’re going to have possibly one trending factor or you may have four on the same piece of property, and all that has to be broken down. Once we finish with all of this, then we sent all of our studies to the county assessor. Then he has to run ratio studies similar to what we do. And he has to ensure that the entire county, all the properties in the entire county are assessed equitably at market value. Once he’s done with that, then the county assessor sends it to the DLGF, then the state has to approve our figures. After they approve our figures--and this is not always an easy process either. We’ve been waiting since December, a month, December 15th, 14th, to get an okay from the state on our figures. Then we have to send notice of assessment to the taxpayers, which is an F-11. You are supposed to wait 45 days before you roll to the auditor in order for the taxpayers to come back and say, I don’t agree with this, did you do this right, and so on, and so forth--I don’t think we’re going to have 45 days after we send out the F-11’s, because now we’re in a time crunch. Then after all that’s done, then we roll our figures to the auditor, and they prepare the tax bills. The Department of Local Government Finance mandates that we do this trending process now every year. So all of these steps, and all of this time that’s invested has to be done on an annual basis. On top of trending, we now also have to do what’s called the income approach to value. When you are doing commercial properties or rentals, you are supposed to take three approaches to value: cost approach, sales approach, and the income approach, and then you take the least amount of the three and that’s the assessed value that you assign to that property. And I could explain the income approach to value, but it’s even longer than the trending. You have to take potential growth income, and subtract your vacancy and collection loss; then you add in your miscellaneous income; and you subtract out your expenses and you come up with your net operating income, and with that, you take your net operating income and divide it by the value or divide by the capitalization rate, which is another process we have to go through to find the capitalization rate, and that should give you your value. Each one of the income producing properties has to be done individually on the income approach. Now in Porter Township, we have almost no commercial, and we do have some rentals. But in a large township like Center or Westchester or Portage, they have thousands of these. These have to be done also. It took our office approximately six months to finish, to do trending this year. It should be a little easier next year because now we’re getting a little more familiar with the process, but it’s not something that is cut and dry and you can just run through. It takes a long time. And you come up with these figures, and if they’re not correct, you have to go back to square one and start over. On top of all of this, we also have to do all of our regular work, which is the transferring of property, new construction, all of our appeals, which takes a long time, and personal property. So right now we’re really having a hard time keeping up, and I’m not sure that that’s going to get much better. In our township we have 5,253 parcels. We have a very small township. Susan has 17,000? Ms. Larson, 17-5. Ms. Crisman, How many does Westchester have? Candy Crone, A little over 11. Ms. Chrisman, And Portage has 16,000? John Scott, 18. Ms. Chrisman, Okay, sorry. At this point in time, there is a bill downstate to get rid of township government. My feeling on that is, it’s hard enough for us to finish all this work. I cannot see how the county assessor can complete this in a timely manner. Now that may have nothing to do with anything, but I just want everybody to realize it’s a very complicated process, and it takes a long time to complete it. Mr. Whitten, Well where are we at right now, Janine? Ms. Crisman, All, as far as I… Mr. Whitten, All the numbers were at the state, and they were, but they weren’t approved. Ms. Crisman, They’re not approved yet. Mr. Whitten, Okay, where are we at? Ms. Crisman, Well right now we really can’t do much of anything until the DLGF approves our figures. Then we will send out our Form 11’s. Mr. Whitten, And from the assessor’s standpoint, the numbers that are at the state, are you comfortable at this point that they are right? Ms. Chrisman, I am. I think most of the assessors are. I don’t know if anybody’s got problems. Mr. Whitten, Everybody? I mean what, anybody that doesn’t think all the numbers are right. Jan Meyers, I just think they’re taking an awful long time. Ms. Crisman, Well… Mr. Whitten, Is that a yes or a no. Ms. Crisman, I our discussion… Mr. Scott, I’d say no. I say no. The general stuff that we do is yes. Steel mills, large corporations and stuff like that that do not sell and do not transfer any property, do not sell of any of their land or anything like that where we can get a fix on it, we can’t put those in. We have to stay with what we have until we get into either asking them for their federal returns to see how the business is doing or see someway what is the land connected to them, how that land is being used, appraisals. Appraisals are expensive if you want to try to do an appraisal on a steel mill it’s huge. We’re talking 30, $40,000 just for one steel mill. The problem with this is that the DLGF says you cannot, you cannot put a figure down. You cannot fakes figures. You can’t chase sales, and stuff like that, so you have to use the full disclosure. If you cannot put a price tag on it, like Midwest, I’ll give you an example what we are up against up in Portage. I talk as the Portage Township assessor, the county assessor now, but we had a meeting with the PTABOA board over Midwest/US. They said if we don’t accept their stuff, they’ll go to the State Tax Board, and they’ll get it for $6,000,000. The first offer to me was 11.9 million. Their land alone, which the state assessed at 20,000 an acre, which I had 65,000 an acre, and they changed it to 20,000 an acre. Okay? And that’s hard to, that’s hard to understand when they’re on the lake, and they use all the water and all the facilities that, you know, for shipping and everything else on the lake. They put it at 20, but I had no way of changing it because the state mandated that that’s what I had to have. Then we argue with them so more. They came up with $28,000,000. Now they’ve pulled the land out of there, because they didn’t want to, they didn’t want to argue the land, so on that particular appeal, there was no land appeal. And all of this is because of a bankruptcy. So we finally got, I think we finally settle for 40, 42 or 48 or something without the land, and like I said, the land was 10,000,000. We had a professional company come in, and we has assistance from Portage and their school corporation to help us hired these people to do it, so it wasn’t a burden on the County. They came up 54.5 million for that plant. I’m going to meet with the township assessor, whoever the people pick for the township assessor. I’ve appointed one in the interim, because there are things that have to go on, and there has to be some guidelines. You just can’t let it all die like that, and nothing happen to it. It was tragic what happened, but it happened, and we have to go on. I will meet with them, and I will propose from the figures that we have right now that the land escalates to a reasonable price, and that we use the old figures that we had from the company that assessed to get the steel mill where we need to be. Other than that, we’re going to go into litigation with them, and we’ll have to ask for their tax return, and that could be a long process, so. And that’s just one steel mill. Mr. Whitten, Well, I guess looking countywide, and that sounds like a lot to take in, but the numbers that we’ve sent from all the townships that the state has not approved. Is it that they’ve rejected it? They’ve sent our numbers back, is that correct? They said that the numbers aren’t correct, and they’ve sent them back. Mr. Bucko, Somebody said, let me just say that it was, I saw something in the newspaper about some things being rejected by the state, and I was wondering, give us an update on what that meant or if it’s accurate or whatever. Mr. Scott, Okay, they called the person that we had hired because of voluminous amount of activity that’s happening with the state and the timeframe the state actually give us to do it. The state never sent out a pilot program to a rural area and said, let’s see what happens if we do the trending. They never sent one out to an industrial area to see what happens with the trending. So I mean we had no idea of what we were coming up against, and there’s flaws in it. Halfway through the trending the state changed what we were doing. They said you can’t use these because they’re in the wrong date; you can’t use these because they’re behind; they’re too early, they don’t match the ’99 reassessment figures that you have. But then halfway through they said, okay, you can use them, but you have to, what was that stupid word they gave us? Ms. Chrisman, Stratifying? Mr. Scott, Well, stratification is what, but it’s just like, you know, I don’t even know what it is, but anyway, that’s the problem we have. We’re halfway through doing these things, then they send it and say, do it this way. Well those figures that we had, now we have to redo them, and with no sales in a certain neighborhood, not enough sales in a neighborhood, like you don’t get 3% in the neighborhood, then that’s not any good. Then you’ve got to try and match that neighborhood with another neighborhood that’s as close to it as possible. So that’s why, that was the slow down. It was sent back, we sent it back to them. Now they’ve received it, but they haven’t okayed it. Mr. Whitten, Have we had any discussions with the state what their timeline is for… Ms. Crisman, When we first turned in our ratio studies, they said they would get back to us in? Ms. Larson, Two weeks, but they have a lot. You can look at that map that I gave you. It’s quite a bit different than the one I gave you the last time. A lot of people have turned them in, therefore, they’ve got a lot more work. They were doing a two-week turnaround. They got, it took them over a month to get it, to send it back the first time. They did send the new figures, and it’s my understanding as of Thursday that they were going to okay it. Now whether there’s some stipulations on it, I don’t know. But I checked this morning, it had not been okayed as of yet, but they’re doing, they’re doing that daily. You can check that if you go to Indiana-dot-gov-dlgf. There’s a website, and you can access it. It’s probably on the bottom of that map if you want to look at it. Mr. Scott, The assessors that we have work their tails off to do what they tell us to do, and like I said, you change halfway in the middle of the stream, then you have to go back and try to get, catch up with that stuff. And then they say, no, no, sales chasing. Well, and I agree with that. And the class we were down at the last conference said, sales chasing is illegal. You cannot make up a full disclosure form. You can’t, You can’t do that. Also, we were thinking that if we could save some time if we get this stuff back, we wouldn’t print up all the 11’s because it’s very expensive for all those 11’s to go out, and then give them 45 days to come back. We were going to the tax, the tax bill that they sent out to the people, so that that would be their date of, of a vendor. They said no, it’s against the law, you’ve got to do 11’s. Mr. Whitten, Alright, well when we were here last month. Ms. Crisman, Dan, can I say one more thing? Mr. Whitten, Go ahead, Janine. Ms. Crisman, In talking with Barry Wood from the Department of Local Government Finance, he has said that there isn’t one county in the state that they didn’t find a problem with when they went through the ratio studies. So it’s not just Porter County. He found problems with everyone. Mr. Whitten, And I think, you know, I think that in talking at least with the different council members up here and some elected officials, I don’t think that we’re in a posture that, geez, who’s to blame or why are we behind everybody else or why aren’t we. That’s not what we’re thinking. I think what we are doing here today is trying to figure out, given the state of the, you know, the layout, what’s our timeline? Or what should we be telling people with respect to the tax bills? And I’m going to tell you, I appreciate you coming and giving us this lecture. I assume this is a good time for the pop quiz; I would fail, by the way, I’m cheating off Bill. Ms. Crisman, There are a couple of things attached at the back. There is a list of… Ms. Larson, Equations? Ms. Crisman, No, not equations. Ms. Larson, Definitions. Ms. Crisman, Definitions. Mr. Whitten, Okay. Ms. Crisman, And after that there is a simple sales ratio study. I don’t know why they call it simple, because it’s really not simple. Mr. Scott, For the people they send it to. Ms. Crisman, And then these are, the next page is all the equations that we have to use to come up with the trending factor. Then finally, there are copies of two ratio studies that our township did--that Catherine and I did--for two neighborhoods. One is rather small; one is much larger. Then it gives you at the bottom, all the figures that you need. Mr. Whitten, Well this is good, because… Mr. Poparad, That’s all great, but would somebody please tell us where we are in the process. Mr. Scott, Well, if we could tell you that, you would have already heard it. We’re waiting for the state to… Mr. Poparad, Okay, we’re waiting for the state to respond. Mr. Scott, To certify, as soon as it comes in… Mr. Poparad, Okay. Okay, what happens… Mr. Whitten, One at a time. Ms. Larson, We’re looking, we’re looking probably next week. At least that’s the word as of Thursday. Mr. Poparad, Okay, they certify, then what happens, what’s… Ms. Crisman, Then we roll our figures to the auditor’s office. Then they’ll have to get ready to… Mrs. Wilson, No. The auditor’s office is not going to take them until the township assessors are confident those are good numbers. So you want your Form 11’s to go out first so the taxpayers have a chance to review those assessments before you have not good numbers being certified again like we had in 2002, and millions of dollars going back in refunds creating another shortfall. Mr. Poparad, So that means the Form 11’s go out, they have 45 days to respond. Mrs. Wilson, Right. Mr. Scott, Yes, but the Form 11’s give the, just like says, an opportunity for those people to come in and say… Mr. Poparad, I agree with all that. I’m just saying… Mr. Scott, That’s wrong. Okay? But we get that done. Once that’s done… Mr. Poparad, Well when is that going to happen? Let’s say the state comes back next Wednesday and it’s okay, then do you guys send out the Form 11’s? Ms. Crisman, Yes, we do. Mr. Poparad, Okay, so that’s 45 days from now before you even think about rolling. And in that 45 days, the township assessors will check the work, and hopefully, everybody is on the same page, and then you roll to the auditor. Then the next step is? Ms. Crisman, Then they, the auditor’s office then takes over and starts preparing the tax bills. Mr. Poparad, And the timeline for that is? Mrs. Wilson, Well they’re going to have reports that have to be run to make sure we don’t have… Mr. Poparad, I don’t, the details I’m not concerned with. I’m trying to get a number for these people and for us, you know, what’s the timeline. That’s all I want to know. Mrs. Wilson, I’m going to guess a good month, Bob. Mr. Poparad, Okay, so then we’re at 65 days, 75 days right now. Assuming everything stays on schedule. Ms. Crisman, Right. Mr. Poparad, Who’s got a calendar. Mr. Whitten, And then once they get their tax bills. Once the tax bills… Mr. Poparad, But that’s assuming, okay, then that means, Murph, you print. You print after the auditor cuts it loose, 45, 50 days. Where we at? Mr. M. Murphy, We’re well into the second quarter. Mr. Poparad, We’re well into April or May. Mr. M. Murphy, Yes. Mr. Poparad, And that’s assuming everything is perfect. So we’re at least 60 to 90 days behind schedule, assuming everything goes right, and the odds are it’s not going to. Ms. Chrisman, I would say at least 90 days, yes. Mr. Whitten, Well, I mean do you agree with that timeline, Jim? Is that your understanding? You’re the treasurer, what do you think? Mr. J. Murphy, Basically, I do. I mean we’re all waiting for the state to approve the assessors work, and whether the assessors do or do not send out Form 11’s or. But then there are dozens of steps that have to happen, some at a specific timeline. A lot of them will have to happen concurrent in the auditor’s office before the auditor of the state will approve the abstract and taxes for the County. Then once that information goes back through them, then of course, we have to get it in the newspaper, advertising, then we can, the auditor can say to the treasurer, go ahead and calculate the taxes, and mail them out. Then we have to adjust the due date that’s past May 10th. We are required by law to get the taxpayers 15 days, I’d let them have 30 if I can, but. Once they have approved tax rates and all, the units have approved budget orders then we can advance any collections, property tax replacement, excise, homestead, we can advance that to help the cash flow a little bit until such time as, you know, we get new money in, the first installment of ’06 pay ’07. We have to get lucky for a while and stay lucky. Mr. Whitten, Well we’ve heard, we’ve heard, you know, some worst-case scenarios, eight months to, before we receive money. I mean, is that really the worst-cast scenario? Go ahead, Bob. Mr. Poparad, Ms. Larson, you talked to Barry Woods. Is he confident they are going to approve or their… Ms. Larson, That’s what he told me on Thursday. Mr. Poparad, Everything looked okay? Ms. Larson, He said, yes, he said… Mr. Poparad, But he isn’t going to tell you when? Ms. Larson, No, because he can’t. It’s, it’s many people. They have looked at it, and he said that it had come back upstairs Thursday. He had assumed it would be done yesterday. It wasn’t, I checked. Mr. Poparad, How far behind the timeline are we? Does anybody got that? I know we’ve got a schedule. Mike, how far behind? Mr. Bucko, According to this due date, I guess these are statutory due dates, perhaps. By July 1, there should have been, the trending should have been approved. Okay? Mr. Poparad, Last year. Ms. Crisman, Yes, last year. Mr. Bucko, Right, but now, if you roll that forward to whenever they get things completed, and we that trending, because nothing can start from what I’m hearing from everyone until the trending is approved. Once that rolls back… Mr. Scott, That’s wrong. That’s wrong. Equalization. Equalization has to be approved, trending goes to equalization. Once equalization is done, the state okays that. Trending is our side, equalization is our side, but it’s equalization is what they are looking for. Ms. Crisman, But that’s already been done. Mr. Bucko, But that’s a trending approved. Ms. Larson, Trending is done. Mr. Bucko, The trending approval. Ms. Larson, Equalization Mr. Bucko, Not the trending, but the trending approval is something that begins, it has to be done for anyone of these 16 points to continue. Ms. Crisman, Yes. Mr. Bucko, Okay, so if we look at that just as a starting point, you know, we’ll benchmark that, from the time that you begin your benchmark is where you’re going to move forward, categorically speaking, with the next 15 points. And then, in addition to that, you’ve got an August deadline, February deadline, and that moves on down up to the final May 10th deadline. But what it says is, but the thing that we can remember, and hopefully people can catch up on and accelerate on different areas, once the trending becomes approved, then these things are, then these steps, these other 15 steps can possibly be done interactively. Not interactively, wrong word, but simultaneously is the word that I’m talking about. So you can make up time. Ms. Crisman, Yes. Mr. Bucko, There’s a potential to make up time. Ms. Crisman, Yes. Mr. Bucko, On that, so… Ms. Crisman, And also… Mr. Bucko, That’s why you’re coming up with your guess, even though we’re at July one day. We’re looking at six months behind. Ms. Crisman, There is not one county in the state… Mr. Bucko, That’s right, and I’m not pointing fingers. I am not pointing fingers at anyone. Ms. Crisman, Right. Mr. Bucko, It’s a problem that’s astronomical. It’s a statewide problem. Okay, we’re just trying to figure our timeline in relationship to the people here that want to know how much should we plan on borrowing. Mr. Whitten, Are we still in a posture where we can’t do provisional tax bills or don’t want to do provisional tax bills. Ms. Crisman, The state, as far as I understand will not allow us to them. Mr. Poparad, Okay, what’s her name? Ms. Crisman, Melissa… Mr. Poparad, Henson. Mr. Whitten, Henson. Mr. Poparad, Okay, all you reporters out there make sure you get the spelling correct. Her name is Melissa Henson; won’t let us send out provisional tax bills, which will cost everybody in this audience a lot of interest money. Mrs. Wilson, Bob, I was in a class with Melissa Henson last Saturday in Indianapolis. Mr. Poparad, Okay. Mrs. Wilson, I specifically asked her, Melissa, what is the Department’s position on provisional tax bills? She said the law as it was written previously was to account for the 2003 tax year after reassessment, blah, blah, blah, they had allowed for a provisional bill at that point. At this point, that statute has changed. They will allow for provisional bills, but it’s a big rigmarole to get down there in order for them to even consider it. But they’re not saying, absolutely no provisional bills. That is not what they are saying. Mr. Poparad, Okay, I’m going to say something. Okay, we’re 90 days probably closer to six months, five months behind. Mr. Bucko, Five, yes. Mr. Poparad, I mean, let’s be realistic. I don’t know if we should just, Murphy, who starts the provisional tax bills rolling? Do we have to do it? You got to do it? Should we just have him start the process now? Mr. Whitten, Well I think that’s, do you want to start the process? Mr. Murphy, I’ll hold my nose while I do it, and I hope that you’ll respect me in the morning. Mr. Poparad, We will, yeah. Mr. Bucko, Just keep the… Mr. Poparad, We’ll give you flowers. Mr. Whitten, Well, I guess hearing from some of the other elected officials here or, you know, representatives, is that what you want? Is that what you want? Do you want us to go through the process of provisional tax billing? Mr. Poparad, I see everybody is nodding their head yes. Mr. Whitten, Are you comfortable with floating tax anticipated warrants to, I mean there’s transaction costs and interest and all that stuff. I mean what do you want? Mr. Poparad, Well if we don’t do provisionals, they’re going to borrow more money. Mr. Whitten, Yes, I mean… Mr. Bucko, That’s true. Mr. Whitten, You’re the ones that are answer to your constituency too. You know your cash crunch, what do you want? Any ideas? John Scott, Are you asking? Mr. Whitten, I’m asking anybody that has any thoughts. Mr. Scott, I would say that yes it’s a real hard and tough way to go, but I think it’s the only way to go, like we did in ’02. Ms. Crisman, And that’s going the cause… Mr. Scott, It’s an awful lot of work, but I mean it’s… Mr. Whitten, But the thing is… Mr. Scott, We’ve got to get funds here for you to run the county without borrowing. Mr. Bucko, We’ve got two people shaking their no they’re not. Mr. Whitten, I mean we’ve got half the room shaking their head, yes; and half of them shaking their head, no. Mr. Poparad, Well find out which half is shaking head no, and they probably work for the County. The other people out there shaking their head yes, are probably Duneland Schools, Valpo Schools, Portage Schools, the Town of Chesterton, who need money. Ms. Crisman, Can I make a comment, please? Mr. Whitten, Please, go ahead. Ms. Crisman, If we do provisional tax bills, there is the very distinct possibility that that’s going to throw the assessors even further behind next year. Mr. Poparad, Well we’ve got to get through this year. Ms. Crisman, I understand that, Mr. Poparad. Mr. Whitten, Well wait a minute, I guess I want to hear from some of the other assessors. Let’s, what are your thoughts? What’s going on in your townships? Are you comfortable with the numbers from the state? Do you feel like we’re going to get them approved? Are you feeling like the ball is rolling, and we’re on? Nancy Kolasa, If Susan talked to Barry, and he said that it sounds like they’re going to approve them, then, if he’s saying that, we call, we get different answers, but whatever. Mr. Whitten, Well what answers do you get? Ms. Kolasa, As far as provisional, as the assessor part of me, yes, they’re a real pain in the neck because they are going to get a large bill in November, and that is when they go crazy on us. But as a trustee who has to keep running the township with limited funds, yeah, it’s tough, but, you know, I can borrow from the cum-fund. That’s not a problem, but I can see the cities and towns and schools really having trouble. And this is going to be a problem in ’08. We are already behind, in ’08 we’re looking at the same exact problems. Mr. Whitten, What’s the City of Portage think? What do you guys think, Olga? Are you thinking provisional tax bills, please get them out? Or are you thinking we’re going to just do our tax anticipated warrants as a matter of course, because that’s a cost of doing business. Has there been any discussions up there? Donna, anything? Ms. Pappas, The past two, the last time we had provisional tax warrants, we had so many appeals it was a large portion of our property tax, you know, for those appeals that put us in a big bind. We have been doing, borrowing from separate funds from the first of the year already. I mean we anticipate it being late from what I’ve heard from the DLGF and the State Board of Accounts. Mr. Whitten, So you’re not feeling from the Portage, I mean Olga, is that accurate? Mr. Bucko, At least city. Ms. Pappas, We’re short money, yes, but the thing is we’re adjusting and we’re running very, very lean, but the problem is we have a lot of property that they are appealing tax rates, you know. Mr. Poparad, I guess maybe… Ms. Crisman, It’s not going to be an easy process, no matter which way you go. Mr. Poparad, Dan. Mr. Whitten, Yes, Bob. Mr. Poparad, I think one of the things that needs to be established to help all these people, when is settlement going to be, because we’re still waiting on it. You know, what’s settlement look like? Mrs. Wilson, It’s just downstate, we haven’t heard anything this week. They’re having problems trying to figure it out. They’re taking the smallest tax unit they can, which happens to be the Town of Pines. Mr. Poparad, Pines? Mrs. Wilson, To see if they can figure out what the problem is there, and apply that same correction to the other tax units to see if it’ll work. We have no idea when it’ll be done. Mr. Whitten, Okay, well Portage is kind of posturing itself already for the cash crunch for six months, you’re telling us? You’ve already sort of lined yourself up for a lean time. Ms. Pappas, We’ve been borrowing in Portage since ’01. Mr. Whitten, Alright. How about Valpo? Sharon Swihart, We deal with the Indiana Bond Bank, and so we had to prepare that well before the end of the year. I did my cash flow projections based upon not getting any tax money until late August, early September. So, you know, we’re prepared in that way, and of course, that’s going to cost interest. But even more important to me right now is the fact that I don’t have my 2006 money. Mr. Poparad, That’s settlement. Ms. Swihart, And that is causing a problem for us because we don’t know where we’re at. As far as the provisional billing, not being a county official, and not being an assessor, I hear that it’s a huge problem, and can be a huge problem. I don’t want, I guess I would say, I don’t want anything done that will cause the kind of problems that we had last year with having to pay over a million dollars back to the County, and having a huge shortfall, because of refunds. I would like that not to happen again. I would like to at least know how much collection we had for 2006; that would help, because we’re on the clock now as far as an appeal--it has to be filed by March 1st--if we have a shortfall, and I don’t know if we have a shortfall, because I don’t have our 2006 money. Mr. Whitten, That’s a good question. Mr. Poparad, If it comes back from the state Monday, what’s your timeline for the distribution? You’re waiting on the state’s approval to make final distribution? Mrs. Wilson, I assume so. Mr. Poparad, Okay, then what’s, a week? Is the ball in our court? Mr. Murphy, Then the ball is in the auditor’s court, and probably within a week or ten days distribution could be… Mr. Poparad, The final distribution. And we don’t the status, do we. Mr. Bucko, What’s Portage got to say, the schools. Mr. Whitten, Yes, go ahead. Mike Berta, Mike Berta, Portage Township Schools. This is such a complex issue, and I’m going to keep this simple. Number one, the folks represented, I think we owe them a lot of gratitude for the work they’ve done in a short period of time. Mr. Whitten, Certainly, Mr. Berta, Number two, we experience this bureaucracy in the schools more and more each year, and it gets so complex, it’s hard to reduce it to simplistic terms. But in all due respect, I think we do need to point a finger somewhere, because year after year we continue to react or try and react to what I call systemic problems. I can’t run my house this way. And I mean that in all seriousness, I don’t think anybody in here could; year after year borrowing money to continue to make mortgage payments, paying on a credit card, pay my utility bills. I don’t think any of us can do that. Yet, in government it’s almost become a common practice for our schools and cities to have to continue to borrow money. I stood here in December and said, the cost of this to our school district in Portage is astronomical in my opinion. We’re up to almost $9,000,000 in borrowing, which in interest is going to translate to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we’ll be back here next year again with the same issue. So in all due respect, there is a finger to be pointed somewhere. And I’m not the financial guru here. This is very complex, and I would suspect most of us have a difficult time trying to audit that, what this is all about. But it just doesn’t make any sense that ultimately taxpayers have the burden these interest rates year after year after year. And schools, the interest alone, that’s six teachers to us. I could put six more teachers in the classroom if we didn’t have to borrow this money over time. So, as complex as it is, and again, these folks that do this work to try and unravel all of this, you have all my respect. But I think we ought to be saying something to those that create these situations, because it just never ends. Mr. Whitten, Well our legislators are coming at 10:30. Mr. Poparad, Yeah, in ten minutes you’re going to have the audience here. At this time, there was applause from the audience. Mr. Berta, We’re here today, I have other folks on my staff and other school board members over in Chesterton addressing other issues that really emanate dollar shortages, the full-day kindergarten and all those things. So we have two meetings going on this morning; half of us are over there, and half of us are over here. But, in simplistic terms, and I hope I’m making sense, because I think it does make sense. We can’t operate our homes this way, yet we operate the state this way. We operate locally in our schools this way--it’s got to end. It has just got to end. We’ve become, in our business, we’re educators; we’re educators second anymore, because we need to deal with all these issues all the time, and in our case, there’s over 8,000 students out there that require our attention that we get diverted with this, these kind of issues. It’s just, something’s wrong. Something is systemically wrong, and I think we have a responsibility to do something about that. Thank you. Mr. Whitten, Thank you. Mr. Bucko, True. Mr. Whitten, Yes, Olga. Olga Velasquez, And the only thing that I wanted to add to that is, I understand, Bob, you’re saying we need an answer now. Are we sending provision bills or not, we need to make a decision. But at what point, do we make the decision about, when do we catch up? Next year we’re going to be sitting here and saying, are we sending bills. Where do we stop, and I think the constituents want to know when do we stop having to borrow and pay this extra money. Mr. Poparad, I don’t write the laws, Olga. Ms. Velasquez, I know. Mr. Whitten, But here’s the thing, I guess along those lines, are we faced with a decision today or hereabouts that we are going to try to stretch this year out, not doing provisional bills to ease up some of the work that would be caused by provisional bills next year. Are we going to take the hit now, and just try to stretch ourselves out by these tax anticipated warrants or borrowing? Or are we going to do the provisional bills, understanding that doing that, we may very well get some money sooner this year, but we’re going to probably be causing some delay next year. Mr. Poparad, Whoa. I was going to throw out for discussion. Oh, I’m sorry. Mr. Whitten, Tom, go ahead. I’m sorry. Tom Pappas, I was just going to say, what I’m hearing here is we have a number of elected offices, assessor offices, they’re all burdened with all this paperwork. Mrs. Velasquez asked the question, are we ever going to catch up. What I’m hearing is if we keep doing provisional tax bills, we’re going to put more and more of a paperwork burden on these people, and if we had any hope of catching up soon, we’re just going to keep pushing that back. You know, I know we’re all in trouble. We’ve got it in the city, my wife, she comes home with her feathers standing up. I hear from the school financial people, the school boards, we have terrible accounts of financing, but if we’re ever going to catch up, we’re going to have to figure out how to get these offices, get as much burden off their backs so they can do the jobs that the state says they have to do. Mr. Whitten, Alright. Well, I mean I guess we could, I’m sorry, go ahead, Bob. Mr. Poparad, No, what I wanted to throw out for discussion. Should we instruct Mr. Murphy to start the process of provisional tax bills. We come back here in 60 days, which will put us at the end of March. Then let’s see where we are at in the process. Get permission or whatever we’ve got to do to send out provisionals, the end of March we make the decision. We have a drop-dead date, and if the assessors and the auditor and everybody’s not all on the same page in 90 days, Murph sends out provisionals. Or something along that line. Don’t stop the process, but don’t complete it all the way. Do the legwork first. We have a drop-dead date, that we’re either going to do provisionals or we’re just going to a wait this out. Mr. Whitten, What do you think, Jim? Mr. J. Murphy, I can probably get it ready a week to ten days. Mr. Poparad, Do we need permission or do we… Mr. J. Murphy, I don’t know about that. I’m not sure, Bob. That’s what I have to get… Mr. Poparad, I notice we had more legislators walk in. Is that a question you guys could answer? Representative Duane Cheney, I didn’t even hear the question. Mr. Poparad, Do we need permission from Melissa Henson to send out provisional tax bills. Representative Cheney, Beg your pardon? Mr. Poparad, Do we need permission from the state to send out provisional tax bills, because we are getting conflicting stories. Representative Cheney, That’s something you need to check with your counsel on. That would fall under the Indiana statutes, it would be cited in that. Mr. Murphy, Bob, I think that the reason we, when we first did provisional bills a couple of years ago, the reason that we had to get approval from Beth Henkel at the time at the DLGF was that it wasn’t for the concept of doing provisional bills, but rather a percentage of last year’s amount that we were allowed to bill as a provisional billing. That’s set in a statute now at 90%. Mr. Burge, Dan. Mr. Bucko, You know, Bob, it almost seems to me that you can’t, it’s almost difficult, Mr. Berta’s is, you know, talking about the complexity, and it surely is to try to get our hands around what the actual cost might be in relationship to additional work performed by all of the assessing processes to go through a provisional bill, and then go through the correction process and everything else. Then compare that to perhaps what the other subdivisions of government are going to have to borrow to operate. And look at the interest paid, and everything else compared to the work that’s going to have to be paid for, and that could be in extra time, that can be in extra people, all of that, and figure out what’s the less burden on the taxpayer at the end of the day. Mr. Whitten, It sounds like Portage has already set itself up. I mean they’ve already gone down the borrowing path, so. Mr. Burge, Yes, I mean Bob’s idea of having that option in March is a good idea. Mr. Whitten, Sure it is. Mr. Burge, But I think what we’re hearing, a majority of the folks in the room, is it would be bite the bullet, do the tax anticipation warrants, we pay out the interest, but we don’t create a domino effect that’s just going to make it that much worse next year. Mr. Whitten, I guess I’m concerned because we’ve heard that the state is saying that they are going to approve our numbers, but they haven’t yet. So I’d hate for us to say, okay, they said they are going to approve it, so we’re looking at, you know, six months, and then 60 days from now we find out that we’re about 30 or 45 days off because there was another problem with the submission. So I guess… Mr. Poparad, Yes, that’s… Mr. Whitten, Yes, I guess I understand where Bob is coming from. How much of an effort would it be, Jim, to at least get; well I don’t even know what the approval process is, because I’m like Duane, I don’t know every statute in the state. But how much of an ordeal would it be for you to at least get us in a position where we could do provisional tax bills if we needed to? Mr. Murphy, Give me a couple of weeks, and I can have you an answer on that. Mr. Whitten, Okay, so maybe that’s our best… Mr. Murphy, We’d have to found out about, get permission, yes, no. As I believe the code reads now, Dan, and I’ve slept since then, but the treasurer can propose that, and the auditor or 15 taxpayers can object to it, and once that happens, then hearing is held by the DLGF in our jurisdiction to decide whether or not it’s necessary, and that’s when approval is either granted or denied. I can research that, and I can find out what IT requirements that are out there as far as adding the tax bills, the numbers. You know, I can get as much as that information without too much trouble. Mr. Whitten, Okay. Well I think that might be good, because we, there’s a lot of ifs here. Mr. Bucko, Yes. True. Mr. Whitten, If the state approves our numbers like they say, then we’re looking at this timeline. If they do it right away. And if they don’t it could be this long. And it could be worst-case scenario, eight months. And I just would like to have some of those ifs answered before we burden the assessors with an incredible amount of work, and we burden the taxpayers with yet another delay next year, particularly hearing that one of our larger cities has already put itself in the position through borrowing to get through six months anyway. So I have a lot of questions myself. Yes, Donna. Ms. Pappas, Dan, if you guys are going to do these provisional bills, are you going to allow these departments to hire more people to get the process done? I mean you’re giving them more work to do, but they’re not getting any more staff. They still have to do their day-to-day business. Mr. Whitten, We are giving the employees an opportunity to shine--that’s my lawyer answer. We have the best employees in the state, they can do it. Ms. Pappas, But you have limited time they can work, and if you want these departments to do it, you’re going to have to give them the employees to get the hours in to do it. They’re overworked as it is. They’ve got this situation they have to work with. Mr. Whitten, That’s right. I think we’ve heard that. There’s no question that this process is going to cause a delay next year. It is, we know that. Mr. Bucko, It’s several years that we’ll have to go through this. Mr. Whitten, Yes, so we understand that. Mr. Poparad, Dan, I think… Ms. Pappas, Again, you’re asking these departments to commit themselves. The assessors, the treasurer, the auditor, the clerk treasurers, the council people, the school boards and everything, but you’re not giving the departments that need the help to do these jobs the employees to complete it. Mr. Whitten, Right. Ms. Pappas, So you’re going to have to do something. If you want it done, give them what they need to get it done. Mr. Poparad, Do we want to give them what they want or what they need, Donna? Ms. Pappas, What they need. Mr. Poparad, Do you want to take the money out of Portage to spend it? Mr. Whitten, Well, no. Ms. Pappas, You’ve got a mess. Mr. Poparad, I mean, do you want to go down this employee, how many they want compared to need argument out here. Mr. Whitten, Well, and I understand, there’s, I mean we’ve told the assessors at times, you know, we understand there’s an additional burden, and we’ll, you know, we’ll do what we can to help you and all that stuff. So we understand that, Donna. We do understand. I don’t know the answer to your question. I don’t know. Mr. Bucko, Unless we get estimates from these departments to say, okay, if we do a provisional bill, what’s your estimated amount of personnel costs, additional in overtime that you may need; additional in personnel that you may need. How can we say we would or we wouldn’t. Good point made, but we’ve got to have data from those individuals, and that’s like I was asking from the other subdivisions of government… Mr. Whitten, Yes, and that’s… Mr. Bucko, If you’ve got to do the tax anticipation warrants, let us know what those figures are so some comparison can be made, and then at the end, our statistical buddy over there will chomp it all up and figure out, you know, give us some kind of an analysis of what it’s going to be, what the impact is. Mr. Whitten, Well if we leave, I mean if we leave this meeting and two weeks from now we know that our numbers have been approved, and we can now start kind of getting an idea of the timeline, our decision becomes much easier. I mean… Mr. Bucko, It does. Mr. Whitten, I mean there’s just some questions here that I don’t know. John. Mr. Scott, I think that a part of this equation is, how much money would you be paying back in interest? Could that be used to help some of the offices. Okay? The, the provisional bills, the assessments that we sent to the state, and if they are approved, we’re closer to be right than we are wrong. Okay? But the last one, well, we had no guidelines on land and that created a huge problem. I only had 6,000 appeals in my township. Originally, and probably another 400 came with the land because we had no guidelines to do what we needed to do. Those guidelines are all now second place, and they have been cleared up, and they were part of the appeal process. Mr. Whitten, Alright, so all these things, I think all these things have to go into the discussion when we make a decision about that. But I think what we should take from this meeting is, A, the numbers have been approved by the state. What should we tell the people that we answer to in our respective communities? Worst-case scenario, what did we decide? What’s the worst-case scenario for tax bills? What are we going to tell people. Mr. Poparad, I think 90 days is probably a good number. Mr. Whitten, Is that? I mean is that a comfortable number? When can we tell, when should we tell, I mean what’s the timeline for the tax bills, if the state approves our numbers in the next couple of weeks. When can we tell people to expect their tax bills? Any ideas? We’ve kind of gone, we’ve kind of worked a way around the possible timeline, but that’s what people want. When they ask me they want to know, when am I getting my tax bills. Ms. Crisman, July? Mr. Whitten, July, is that the number we’re looking at? If everything works right, and you talk, Jim, a little bit about, we’ve got to hit, we’ve got to get some luck here. Let’s say we get the luck. Are we telling people July, subject to change? Mr. Burge, But this is bureaucracy, so you have to, you have to factor in some things going wrong. Mr. Whitten, Well then you just go back and tell them I didn’t say July of what year. Mr. Bucko, If you just take that timeline right there, and looking at the fact that you’re six months behind now, and roll that forward as you go, you could come up with your worst-case. And depending how well these people can make, do magic, with the ability to work simultaneous functions, will bring that down. I mean, you know, that’s, but it all hinges on the approved trends. And at that point you can move forward, you can guess. Mr. Whitten, Alright. Jim. Mr. J. Murphy, If we got, if we are bestowed with this luck that we’ve been hoping for the past 30 years, we could probably, not comfortably, but we could conservatively say it would be no worse than this year, excuse me, last year, and the bill was due on July 7th. Mr. Whitten, Okay. So that’s where we’re at. Mr. Poparad, Do you want to go 60 days? Mr. Whitten, Yes. Mr. Poparad, I’m going to make a motion in a second to instruct him to start the provisional bill process; we meet in 60 days and make a decision. Mr. Whitten, Okay. Mr. Poparad, If all these little pieces of your 16-point letter have not fallen into place… Mr. Whitten, Then we can revisit the discussion. Mr. Poparad, Yes. Mr. Whitten, And we can see where the cities and towns and schools, where everybody’s at. Mr. Poparad, Well that’s what I’m saying, yes. Mr. Whitten, What do you think about that, we reconvene in 60 days. By that time we’ll have an idea of when the state approved our numbers. We’ll know then, you know, a more realistic timeline to tell people. At this point, we’re looking at maybe July. During that time, Jim, maybe you could do some, a little bit of, you know, studying and seeing, get a better idea of what the provisional tax bill process would be, then we can come back and put our heads together and see if that’s what we want to do. I mean I’m suspecting that if the state has approved our numbers, and things are moving along, and we’ve got, everybody in the same room saying we’re able to cut some time in that last 60 days this way, and maybe we won’t be looking at provisional tax bills. You know, I think that would be, it would be a bad decision. Mr. Poparad, Jim, in referencing the provisionals, the last time they did it, the problem stemmed from the personal property, not the real estate. Is that, was that the problem? Ms. Crisman, Not entirely. Mr. Murphy, If our concept would work without a problem, it’s the unknowns, what’s going to happen with real estate. Mr. Poparad, But I mean could we do provisionals just based on real estate, and leave the personal property, because that’s where all the problems came in. Mr. Murphy, There’s a lot of personal property up north, as you’ll recall. Mr. Poparad, Yes. Mr. Murphy, I guess we could do that. Mr. Whitten, Well, why don’t we do that. Mr. Poparad, At least it would give these people some cash. That’s all I’m saying. Mr. Whitten, Okay. Mr. Bucko, Is it fair to say too that the subdivisions of government out there that do yearly tax anticipation warrants are going to move forward and do those anyway, because you have a cash flow problem just like the County does. So that process is going to be done. It simply, you can’t get around it, can you, anyway. Mr. Murphy, No. Mr. Bucko, Do you do that on an as-needed basis as you may have been here earlier, our council said we’re going to look, consider $20,000,000 of tax anticipation warrants, and we will use it on an as-needed basis. Is that how you do that so you’re only paying interest on what you actually use? Mr. Whitten, Like a draw… Mr. Bucko, Okay, that gives us what potential impact we can decrease if we can get things done better. Jan Meyers, Without an extension on February 12th on our Plexis program, and if we don’t have approved numbers, we can’t roll those numbers anyway, because we’re going to be locked out of our software. Mr. Poparad, Did they resolve that, John? Ms. Meyers, If we’re locked out of our software; we have no numbers to roll to the auditor’s office, then we have nothing to base these bills on. So they have us hostage. Mr. Scott, No. We’re, we have, we’ve been working with the Manatron people, and I gave a copy to Bill about what they had sent us. My chief deputy stayed until almost 5:00 to get a whole feedback from Manatron. They gave us four options, but I have to give those options to the people here if they want to. But one of the options was, we can buy this system for $250,000, that’s not going to happen. Not going to happen. They will allow us to use this system without support, probably at the same price that we were before, or they would, there’s a whole bunch of options here. I’m going to let the Council, I only had the one copy, but get a copy for everybody from that thing from, the proposal from Manatron. But we, we’re not going to shut down. Mr. Whitten, Okay. Mr. Bucko, I’m assuming that rides on our AS 400. Ms. Meyers, Was that yesterday afternoon? Mr. Scott, Yes. Mr. Whitten, Okay, any other comments? We’ve got a couple legislators here now. I mean, do you have any questions? Bill Sexton, One of the things I have, I appreciate everything that’s being done for this coming year for the taxes, and trying to establish a date, however, we’re not getting the same thing. We’re not hearing a date that we might get the things that are due in 2006. And the other, I haven’t heard any discussion on the TIF districts, and what might be going on there. Mr. Poparad, Lindy, if the state approves the numbers, the distribution will be within a week or two. It’s sitting at the state. The TIF, I guess, is figured out. Have you guys? Mrs. Wilson, Well we’ve got that surplus… Mr. Poparad, No, I meant the TIF zones straighten out. Mrs. Wilson, The gals in our office--in the auditor’s office--are working on that. They have the research completed with just a couple of parcels in question. They are finding a lot of the problem doesn’t necessarily stem within the auditor’s office. Mr. Poparad, Yeah, well, don’t start pointing fingers. Mrs. Wilson, Well, okay. Mr. Poparad, It doesn’t matter. Mrs. Wilson, Okay. Mr. Poparad, Where we at on the process of, because we can’t set the ’07 tax rate until the TIF is done. Mrs. Wilson, Right. Mr. Berta, We need money now. Mr. Poparad, That’s the distribution you’re talking about. Mr. Berta, The distribution from last year. Mrs. Wilson, Part of the problem with doing the research is getting the correct legal, so you can see exactly what parcels really do need to be included in there. So they have it narrowed down to just those few little places that they are questioning, maybe the legal on it or whatever. Christine was telling me day before yesterday that 99% of that research is done. She’s confident that they have almost exactly the parcels in the TIF’s that should be in the TIF’s, so they’re working on calculating the monies. Mr. Poparad, In referencing your cash flow, as soon as the state approves the distribution, we’re going to distribute it as fast as we can. It’s sitting down there. Evidently, there’s an issue with the Pines; not picking on the Pines, but that’s the issue. Mrs. Wilson, Well, the issue is all of the County, that just happens to be the smallest tax unit. Ms. Kolasa, You mean the Michigan City School District? Mr. Poparad, Huh? Ms. Kolasa, The Michigan City School District. Mr. Poparad, Is that what it is. I figured it was the Michigan City schools. Ms. Kolasa, Well that’s not Pine. Mr. Whitten, Alright, but at any rate, all that having been said, people are starting to leave, we’re losing our room. I promised you it would be an hour; it’s an hour. You can hang around and discuss things, but I have an 11:00 meeting, I think, so does a couple of the other members, so. Mr. Burge, One point I was going to make. I want to thank Representatives Ed Soliday and Dick Cheney for coming. Mr. Murphy, Duane Mr. Whitten, Duane. Mr. Burge, Duane Cheney. But to realize that the decisions that are made in the legislature, the impact they have at the county level, and the trending I think is a perfect example, if somebody at the legislative level would take the time to do, the time and people studies, what type of work is created when a mandate like that is made, and without the funding for the County to add additional people to speed the process along, you can see the chaos that it causes. And hopefully, you can take that back to the legislature, so in the future they can correct those type of things from happening. Mr. Whitten, Thanks again for coming, everybody. We’re going to have another one of these meetings. Mr. Poparad, Do you want to set a date for another meeting or not? Mr. Whitten, Yes, well, 60 days. Do you guys favor the Saturday meeting? A gentleman from the audience, Yes. Mr. Whitten, I mean I just can’t meet, I mean… Mr. Bucko, It can’t, it ain’t going to work any other way. Mr. Whitten, Yes, our weekdays are just horrendous. Mr. Poparad, We’ll just send a notice out. Mr. Whitten, Yes, we’ll send a notice out in the next couple of weeks, and you’ll get a date. There being no further business, meeting adjourned at 10:40 a.m. PORTER COUNTY COUNCIL PORTER COUNTY, INDIANA Michael Bucko Jim Burge William Carmichael Matthew Murphy Robert Poparad Rita Stevenson Dan Whitten Attest: James Kopp, Auditor |
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January 27, 2007