PORTER COUNTY COUNCIL
Special Meeting
June 5, 2007

    The Porter County Council met on June 5, 2007 at 5:30 p.m. in the County Administration Center, 155 Indiana-Suite 205, Valparaiso, Indiana.

    Members present were Mike Bucko, William Carmichael, Matthew Murphy, Robert Poparad, and President Dan Whitten.  Also present was Attorney David Hollenbeck, Auditor James Kopp, Lindy Wilson, and Jan Noll.

    President Whitten called the meeting to order with the Pledge of Allegiance.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

    Mr. Whitten, Next thing on the agenda is the approval of minutes from May 22, 2007.  What’s your pleasure?

    Mr. Poparad moved to approve the minutes of May 22, 2007 as received.  Mr. Bucko seconded, motion carried unanimously.

PUBLIC HEARING ON MAJOR MOVES BORROWING

    Mr. Whitten, The next thing on the agenda is the public on Major Moves borrowing.  At this time I will open the public hearing.  

    Mr. Hollenbeck, Mr. President, we’re actually doing two things tonight by way of the public hearing.

    Mr. Whitten, Okay.

    Mr. Hollenbeck, The first thing we are doing, after you approved the borrowing at your last meeting, and executed the ordinance, the law requires us to conduct a public hearing on the fact that we intended to borrow 1.5 million dollars for two years to be used by the highway department, and to be paid off from the interest earned by the major moves.

    Mr. Whitten, Okay.

    Mr. Hollenbeck, That’s one purpose of the hearing.  The other purpose is, we need to appropriate the money that we’re going to borrow, so you’ll need to approve and additional appropriation.  The commissioners have asked that the money be divided equally among the three commissioner districts for highway work.

    Mr. Whitten, I just, I got a call from a commissioner about 25 minutes ago who said that’s not the case, that they, in fact, do not anticipate doing that.  They want to use the money as the highway department sees a need.

    Mr. Hollenbeck, Okay, that’s fine.  I have an email, but that email was a couple of weeks ago.

    Mr. Whitten, Why don’t we leave that issue out.

    Mr. Hollenbeck, Okay.

    Mr. Whitten, I think they want to use it as needed throughout the county.  I don’t know, but that was the call I got.  Okay, so at this time we would open the floor to the public for public comment.

    Mr. Hollenbeck, And in connection with that, as I reported to you on the investment side, Mr. Murphy, our county treasurer has filled his statutory obligation as of June 1st, and, Jim, you were going to provide them with some information about your process and what the results were.

    Treasurer Jim Murphy, We invited all of the designated depositors from Porter County to bid on the investment of the major moves principal amount of money for two years, and to get back with us on the next morning by 9:00 with a bid.  Fifth/Third was the winning, they gave us the winning bid of 5.27, and that’s the way it is.  High bid wins.

    Mr. Hollenbeck, And then I have presented you with a memorandum.  As of noon today, we solicited proposals to loan us 1.5 million for two years. Again, we solicited from all the eligible financial institutions.  We received six responses.  You have copies of those responses in front of you.  And again, Fifth/Third bank was the successful bidder at 6.17% interest.

    Mr. Whitten, Okay.

    Mr. Hollenbeck, The money has been invested since September 15th, and through the end of May, we’ll have generated $500,000.

    Mr. Murphy, $530,000.

    Mr. Hollenbeck, $530,000 of interest that’s already available to us.  The investment that Mr. Murphy made on June 1st will generate additional one-point, almost 1.6 million, so we will have approximately 1.9 million to pay off the 1.5 million dollar debt.  This interest will require about $185,000, so at the end of two years we will owe $1,625,000 and we will have $1,900,000 with which to pay that.  So at the end of two years, under this theory, you will pay off that debt, and have about $350,000 left to go into the next cycle, if you choose to do this again.

    Mr. Bucko, That’s 6.7% is fixed?

    Mr. Whitten, It’s 6.17.

    Mr. Bucko, Yes, 6.17.  That is a fixed rate, there’s no…

    Mr. Whitten, Yes.

    Mr. Bucko, Okay. Thank you.

    Mr. Whitten, Okay, I’ll open the floor to the public. Do we have any public comments?  Hearing none, I will close the public hearing.

    Mr. Hollenbeck, Then the other thing you need to do is entertain a motion to approve the additional appropriation of 1.5 million to the highway department, sounds like, to be spent the way the commissioners so designate.
    
    Mr. Poparad moved to approve the additional appropriation of $1,500,000 from the major moves money for highway projects the commissioners designated.  Mr. Carmichael seconded, motion carried on a unanimous roll call vote.

    Mr. Whitten, Dave, do you have anything else on this?

    Mr. Hollenbeck, No, we’re done with the major moves.

ATTORNEY REPORT

    Mr. Whitten, Now it’s time for the Attorney Report.

     Mr. Hollenbeck, The only matter I need to bring to your attention is a matter that I emailed you on that Mr. Kopp and I have talked about, and that’s the, inadvertently, the previous auditor, when they published, and billed the NIRPC tax rate, added an extra zero, which resulted in a shortfall in our membership fee collection for NIRPC by approximately $50,000.  So when the final distribution was made in April, NIRPC, we discovered NIRPC, there was no money there to pay NIRPC, and that they were $50,000 short.  
    This is pretty critically important to NIRPC.  They use this money as local share to match highway projects, and to get federal dollars into the county.  We have a couple of options, one of which would be to, hopefully, utilize the fact that the auditor’s office has published the ’07 rate high enough that we can collect the shortfall, if the DLGF allows us to do that.  In ’07, there still would be a request from NIRPC that we do an inter-fund borrowing, like we do for cash flow problems, get some money into the NIRPC account, and send it to them, and it can be replenished from the tax rate.
    The other option is to wait until after July 1st, under Indiana law, after July 1st, our NIRPC membership fee can come from any revenue source.  You’re not limited to the real estate property taxes.  So you’ve got a couple of options, if you are inclined to do something, and it is NIRPC’s request that you accommodate them, and try to get the ’06 membership fee paid before the end of ’07.  Obviously, we can’t do anything tonight, but if you can give me some direction, we can start doing, maybe towards you next meeting, if we’re going to do an additional, we can get things rolling on that.  I’ll answer any questions you may have about that.

    Mr. Whitten, Okay.

    Mr. Carmichael, Take is out of one of the other funds.

    Mr. Whitten, We can do that after July 1st, right?

    Mr. Hollenbeck, After July 1st, we can take it out of any fund.

    Mr. Carmichael, We have a June meeting, when’s the June meeting?  What’s the date?

    Ms. Noll, It’s the 24th.

    Mr. Carmichael, We can do it then, effective July 1.

    Mr. Hollenbeck, Yes, we could.

    Mr. Whitten, I like the way you think.

    Mr. Carmichael, I don’t care where you get it, just don’t get it out of the general fund.

    Mr. Whitten, Okay.  Anything else, Dave?

    Mr. Hollenbeck, No, other than, do you want to leave it to your president and I to determine what fund we propose it comes out of?

    Mr. Whitten, Yes.

    Mr. Hollenbeck, Alright, we’ll investigate that, and we’ll report to you before the next meeting.  That’s the end of my report.

    Mr. Whitten, Okay, any other matters that may come before the Council.  Hearing none, shall we adjourn.

    There being no further business, meeting adjourned at 7:37 p.m.

PORTER COUNTY COUNCIL
Michael Bucko
Jim Burge
William Carmichael
Matthew Murphy
Robert Poparad
Rita Stevenson
Dan Whitten

Attest: James Kopp, Auditor