The Plainfield Town Council met on Monday, January 10, 2005. In
attendance were Mr. Kirchoff, Mr. Gaddie, Mr. McPhail, Mr. Brandgard
and Mr. Fivecoat.
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
CONSENT AGENDA
1. Approval of the Town Council minutes of the regularly
scheduled meeting of December 29, 2004.
Approval of the Human Resources Director’s Report dated
January 7, 2005 and the Town Engineer’s Report dated
January 9, 2005.
Approval of the December 2004 monthly report for the
Plainfield Police Department and Communications Department.
Approval to spend $200.00 from the Plainfield Fire
Department Beneficent Fund for the annual chili supper per
Chief Anderson’s Report dated January 6, 2005.
Approval to enter into negotiations with the Emergency
Services Consultants Incorporated to determine location,
staffing and equipping future Fire Station #3 per Chief
Anderson’s Report dated January 6, 2005.
Approval of Change Order #1 with Harco Asphalt Paving, Inc.
for the Clarks Creek Road improvement project in the amount
of an additional $6,497.19 per the Town Engineer’s Report
dated January 9, 2005. This amount includes adjustments
for the number of days, final quantities adjustments and
liquidated damages.
Approval of Change Order #1 with Harco Asphalt Paving, Inc.
on the Harlan Street storm sewer project in the amount of
an additional $12,787.92 per the Town Engineer’s Report
dated January 9, 2005. This amount includes adjustment for
final quantity adjustments, replacement of conflicting
sanitary sewer and additional street resurfacing.
Approval of Change Order #2 with Bowen Engineering for the
Southwest Waste Water Treatment Plant project in an
additional $21,446.00 per the Town Engineer’s Report dated
January 9, 2005. This amount includes extension of days,
extension of steel lifting rings to the filters, upgrade
fencing, installation of a sewer connection and circuit
breaker.
Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to approve the Consent Agenda with the
amendment to the minutes of December 29, 2004 where he made a motion to approve the Consent Agenda for December 29, 2004 and it should be noted that Mr. McPhail made the second. Second by Mr. McPhail. Motion
carried.
Mr. Fivecoat abstained from voting on item one of the above
Consent Agenda due to him not being present at that meeting.
BUSINESS FROM THE FLOOR
Mr. Robert Mahan at 411 Buchanan Street, Plainfield, IN asked,
does the Town own the retention pond that is at Buchanan Street?
Mr. Brandgard said I believe we are in the process of trying to
purchase that but we have not purchased it yet. If I’m wrong, correct
me.
Mr. Daniel said we have an offer letter out on that but we have
not received a response back from the property owner yet.
Mr. Mahan asked, can anything be done with the water situation
that happened last week?
Mr. Brandgard said I know that Mr. Belcher has been looking at
that and, in fact, he is even making plans ahead of purchasing the
ground.
Mr. Belcher said that is the whole idea of getting control of
that ground. Once we have control of it I think we can do something to correct the problem. There are several things that we pretty much have designed as far as how that will be redone to keep the water from getting high like it did over the last event that we had last week.
So, I guess the answer is if we had the ground, yes we could solve the problem I believe.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, how long has the offer been out and how long
is it good for?
Mr. Gaddie said you had quite a bit of room left before it went
over didn’t you?
Mr. Mahan said no it was over. It was probably a foot over.
Mr. Belcher said I didn’t see it but Mr. Castetter told me about
it.
Mr. Castetter said I didn’t get back to the back part but no at
the back end it went over and there are probably some seepages coming
through that levy as well.
Mr. Mahan said one other problem that I have is with the new
ordinance that you are getting ready to pass on the water meters what
happens when you call the Town because your main is leaking? You call
them on a Friday in the afternoon like six or seven o’clock and you get no response until Monday about ten.
Mr. Brandgard said I think in an emergency situation you should
get a response. I believe the ordinance was written where a licensed
plumber can turn it off if need be. I thought that is what we had
done.
Mr. Mahan said but the homeowner is not allowed to turn it off?
Mr. Brandgard said no. In fact, the homeowner shouldn’t have
anything to be able to get into it.
Mr. Mahan said they sell them at the hardware store, channel
locks. I don’t think that is fair. I think a homeowner should be able
to turn their own water service on because I called the Town at seven
o’clock one afternoon on a Friday and I got no response until ten
o’clock Monday morning.
Mr. Isaacs asked, how long ago was that?
Mr. Mahan said it was when Mr. Brown was still superintendent, a
couple to three years ago.
Mr. Brandgard said I think we have made some improvements.
Mr. Brandgard said in the winter time when you open the meter up,
it lets the cold air in and it will freeze where if you keep it shut,
it won’t freeze or it won’t freeze as quick. Again, if you have a
problem, call and it should work.
Mr. Mahan said so if the meter freezes, the Town is responsible
for that too then?
Mr. Castetter said yes. Call us and we will thaw it out.
Mr. Mahan said and the water problem will be taken care of?
Mr. Brandgard said we hope we can get it taken care of before we
have another big rain. But on the other side that line didn’t break
this time did it?
Mr. Mahan said no the line didn’t break. We didn’t have sewage
this time.
Mr. Brandgard said we are working to try to fix that.
Mr. Mahan asked, are you going to dig that back out again?
Mr. Brandgard asked, the retention pond?
Mr. Mahan said yes.
Mr. Belcher said we will hire a local contractor just to put a
new outlet pipe from that pond over to the storm sewer that is already there. That is the first thing that we would do just so it won’t get as high as it got here the last couple of weeks. After that we would redo the pond when it got dry enough and lower the bottom of it significantly so that the water level will probably never get as high as the floor of your house. Right now it is actually higher than the floor of your home the minute it starts going off so it will change significantly once we get in there and have the project that we want to do. Immediately we would do something to try to keep it from going over.
Mr. Mahan said the drain that was originally in there is no
longer there. I don’t know if they covered it up or what.
Mr. Belcher said I have only been here 16 years but I’ve never
seen the rain coming out of it. Water goes in and it either soaks in
or seeps through that west end and eventually gets out.
Mr. Mahan asked, is there a strong enough sewer large enough to
tie that into?
Mr. Belcher said yes.
Mr. Mahan asked, is that over at Wabash then?
Mr. Belcher said no it is Buchanan Street. It was built as part
of the school property, the expansion that Van Buren did. The Town and the school went together about 10 years ago now and that was part of the reason the planning that we were doing was to have that pipe large enough to drain the school land and this area plus on Buchanan Street east. It is a real key piece of the puzzle for us to get that ground and redo it.
Mr. Kirchoff said I was in your neighborhood and when I drove by
earlier, it was probably that far from the berm. I went into the court and then started to get to the cemetery. I decided that was not a good idea and I had to back out. It was really deep on that road. It was severe in there.
TOWN MANAGER’S REPORT
Mr. Carlucci said the first item that I have is KDS Properties
has made a request for a real property tax abatement. I also have
included a resolution on the agenda. I apologize in not getting this
to you sooner. I don’t really like to bring these items to the meeting but I did want to kind of move this along and get this project going, if we could.
KDS Enterprises there are two things going on here. If you look
at the second paragraph, part of it has to do with the integrity molding. It is an injection molding company. They are currently located at 689 Tower Road. They have one pretty good size injection molding machine. They would like to move out of that building and develop property basically across the street on lots in Andico Park.
Their proposal came in requesting a 10-year real property tax abatement for two buildings, a 20,000 square foot metal industrial building and a 2,500 square foot office building. The buildings are to be built on lots 2 and 2A in the Andico Industrial Park. If you look at the resolution, there is a map and you can see where that is located. KDS is proposing to construct a 20,000 square foot building immediately and a 2,500 square foot building at some future date. They estimate the value of the larger building at $250,000.00 and the smaller building at $150,000.00. In terms of the larger building integrity molding would relocate from their existing building and take up 11,000 of the 20,000 square foot of the larger building. They also would be retaining and creating jobs there. They would retain six existing jobs at an annual payroll of $140,000.00 and create seven additional jobs at an $180,000.00. The average annual salary of all of the jobs strictly by dividing it into the total was $24,615.00. The buildings that they are proposing the minimum abatement for that kind of industrial building I believe is 30,000 square feet and they are substantially under those numbers. We have a section, and I point out in the memo, section 11 of our Tax Abatementzrdinance that specifically states that the Council may enlarge the abatement if the development is unique in terms of
number of jobs created, salary level of those jobs, total investment
and building and/or equipment. This is where it becomes tough for the
tax abatement committee. Those become subjective somewhat. We try to
base it on the past practices that we have recommended to the Town
Council. In this case our recommendation of the committee, the
committee is made up of the Town Manager; the chairman of the Plan
Commission, which is Mr. Haase, chairman of the Redevelopment
Commission, which is John Himmelheber, but our recommendation after
talking to both of them is that we recommend to the Town Council that
KDS Enterprises be given a three-year real property tax abatement. And
that until such time that they move forward on the other building not
to grant any abatement at this time until they firm up what they really
plan to do with that building. The three-year abatement, the first
year is 100%, the second year of the abatement is 66% is abated and the
third year it is 33%. So, on the fourth year after they have been
assessed they would be paying 100% of the property taxes. Typically,
in Indiana, if you are a homeowner you will notice this, the year they
build the house isn’t necessarily the year that you get appraised and
assessed. You may go one year anyway without paying any property taxes.
I talked to Mr. DeLong today. He seemed satisfied with the
recommendation and he appears ready to move forward. That is the
recommendation of the Tax Abatement Committee. If you decide to
approve that resolution tonight, we will hold a public hearing on
Monday, January 24.
The next item that I have you received this actually on the disk.
It is not on the agenda tonight. It is Ordinance No. 2-2005. It is an
ordinance establishing the Plainfield Parks and Recreation Beneficent
Fund. I sent it to Mr. Daniel Friday and didn’t expect him to have
that finished. I wanted to bring it up tonight. The reason that we are
doing this is to be able to take donations and put them in this fund so
that we can give scholarships to residents who are financially in need
to enable them to be able to go to the Plainfield Recreation and
Aquatic Center. You have it. Mr. Daniel by the next meeting will
hopefully have it to you for your consideration at the next meeting.
During our budget cycle we talked about a park impact fee.
Edwards and Kelsey is Jim Klausmeier’s firm. I asked Mr. Klausmeier to
prepare a proposal. You may recall one of the members on the board at
the time we did the White Lick Creek Park/Newby Lane Park project, when
we put together the plan for those two parks, we also required the
people who were sending in those proposals to quote us on a park impact
fee. At the time I recall it was $25,000.00. Park impact fees are not
something that attaches to the existing residents but our fees that are
paid at the time a building permit is taken out. The statutes are very
complicated and most of the time the local city or town staff do not do
park impact fee studies. They like to get a third independent party to
do the study so that it appears to be fair. Basically, those fees are
paid by the people taking out building permits for homes and most of
them are the contractors or homebuilders that do that. The community
has built parks over the years, developed
parks/trail/recreation/aquatic center/bicycle parks/skate parks so this
5
is a way for the new homeowners that come in to help pay their fair
share. Greenwood has had, not for too long, a park impact fee,
Fishers, Noblesville and Carmel have park impact fees and I’m sure
there are others around the State that do. But when they do the study,
they will determine by the formulas in the statutes what the park
impact fee would be. There are always a couple of things that go on
there. They will provide you with what they think should be the park
impact fee. Typically, councils do not raise the amount above that but
a lot of times for various reasons they will lower the amount and that
is appropriate to do that. But again this is a way to take some of the
burden off the park fund and it also helps in general with the general
fund by allowing us to fund some of these park improvements outside the
park fund. If we can do that, we may be able to shift some of that back
to the general fund. But in the budget meetings that we had we
discussed this and I bring this to you tonight. I have all the faith in
the world with Jim Klausmeier doing this study because he has worked
for the Town in our 1993 Comprehensive Plan. We are involved with his
firm right now in terms of the school project. So, I would recommend
that we move forward on this and that we would use the Food and
Beverage Tax Fund to fund the study. We will try not to exceed
$20,500.00 and typically the out-of-pocket expenses that are involved
with that too.
Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to enter into a contract with Edwards
and Kelsey to do a park impact fee study not to exceed $20,500.00. My
motion would include that Councilman Gaddie be the signatory on that
contract. Second by Mr. Fivecoat.
Mr. McPhail said I’m going to support this motion but I have a
philosophical problem with impact fees. I want to see what the study
says but I think impact fees tied to individual building permits are
not the way to go. But maybe we can figure out some way to do it with
development or something like that. Impact fees on individual building permits I have a real problem with. The statutes are very specific and very difficult to defend when they are challenged. I just want to go on record that I have some real concerns about impact fees.
Mr. Brandgard said I have some concerns also but on the other
hand if they are done properly, they are defendable. When we have had
impact fees before, the biggest concern from everybody was that they
were leveled equally and that they were set for a certain thing. You
just couldn’t use that money for anything that you wanted. Once
everybody was assured of that nobody had any other problems with it.
Again, we need to see what it says.
Mr. Kirchoff said I will be interested to see what criteria they
use to determine that. I think it is worth the money to have a sense
of what is this all about. Does it make sense? Is it logical?
Without doing the study we don’t know.
Mr. Carlucci said you cannot use impact fees to pay ongoing cost
to the recreation and aquatic center. That is not what they are for.
They are to support if you needed an extension to a trail but it
wouldn’t be to maintain the existing trails. That is not what they are supposed to be. If the Council decided to go forward, those fees
cannot be implemented immediately anyway. There is a long lead-time
before they can go into affect. It gives the builder associations time to come in and have their input too. We are struggling like everybody else to maintain our parks. It is a struggle every day as you know.
Mr. Brandgard said we have a motion and a second. If there is no
further discussion, signify by aye. None opposed. Motion carried.
Mr. Carlucci said we are to have a work session with Avon’s Town
Council Thursday night, the 13th at 6:00 p.m. At this point I don’t
know what will be on the agenda.
REPORTS
Mr. Fivecoat said Hendricks County broke from the five-county
district with Central Solid Waste District. With the new year I hadn’t heard of a new board appointed so I contacted Herschel Disney to find out what was going on and when we where going to have a meeting because I sit on that board. He informed me that Tuesday of last week that board was formed and he was sorry that they forgot to notify us. Mr. Disney is the chairman of it and Bob Wagner from Brownsburg is the cochairman. Sondra Cleveland is the treasurer. They are supposed to be getting a letter to us for two appointments to that board. I was a little upset to find this out because I have been going to all of the meetings to help set this up and then all of a sudden they forget to call us.
Mr. Brandgard asked, how can they form a board without everyone
in attendance?
Mr. Fivecoat said needless to say I was a little upset and I
expressed that to Mr. Disney and I also expressed it to Sondra
Cleveland when I contacted her. But we should be getting a letter, I
don’t know when, but we are supposed to have two appointments to that
board.
Mr. McPhail said I had a meeting on another issue with
Commissioner Schrier today and he indicated to me that this board had
been formed and by statute the Town of Plainfield has two appointments.
As he reads the statutes, they have to be elected officials. I don’t
know if that is true or not. He did tell me that we needed to make two appointments to that board but I didn’t know that they had already elected officers, etc. Do you understand that it has to be two elected officials?
Mr. Fivecoat said yes it has to be council members.
Mr. Brandgard said it sounds like that Mr. Fivecoat would still
like to be on it.
Mr. Fivecoat said yes I would like to be part of it.
Mr. Brandgard asked, are there any other Council members that
would like to be part of it?
Mr. Gaddie said I talked to Mr. Disney today about something
else. He mentioned that Mr. Fivecoat had contacted him. I would
probably fill in for that.
Mr. Brandgard said so whenever we get the letter, we have two
people that responded to it.
Mr. Carlucci said if you want to make those appointments now, we
can. The letter could be down there. We had a lot of mail but I
didn’t check everybody’s boxes.
Mr. Fivecoat said there is a meeting next Tuesday at 3:00.
Mr. McPhail made a motion to appoint Council member Fivecoat and
Council member Gaddie to the new Hendricks County Solid Waste District. Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Motion carried.
Mr. Fivecoat said I would like to commend Jason Castetter and Mr.
Carlucci to the fast response to the logjam at U.S. 40 at the bridge.
With their quick thinking and authorization of the Town Manager we got construction crews out there and got that taken care of before we had a major problem again under the bridge. I think they did an outstanding job and I was with Mr. Castetter until 8:30-9:00.
Mr. Brandgard said I commend Mr. Carlucci of notifying the State
that we had a problem and then calling somebody to get it fixed. I
doubt if the State has ever responded.
Mr. Castetter said they responded. They said they weren’t going
to do anything.
Mr. Gaddie asked, they said call DNR didn’t they? Mr. Castetter said yes they said it was DNR’s responsibility.
Mr. Brandgard said anyway we did the right thing and got it
cleared. Again, I appreciate everybody’s hard work on that. Mr.
Castetter and his crew and fast work averted a major a problem this
morning when we had a construction crew break into the 12-inch line
that goes under I-70. Water was up above the bridge.
Mr. McPhail said I would like to report that the indoor pool is
moving I think at a good pace for completion. Mr. Prince may want to
make some comments in his report. It has been water tested and
drained. They were to begin plastering the walls this week. Most of
the perimeter of the tile and deck is down. Most of the equipment is
in. They are beginning to look at what I call the final touches. That
is moving forward and I’m looking forward to being able to tell you a
completion date on that. I’m not ready to do that yet.
Mr. Brandgard asked, are you telling me that we are going to have
one thing out there that is going to be done when they said it was
going to be done at the end of January?
Mr. McPhail said I’m going to wait two more weeks.
The next item I would like to report that I had an opportunity to
visit with Ms. Holland and Chief Brinker at the dispatch center. From
all indications things are going very smoothly with dispatching for
Avon and Washington Township. I was there at the shift change and all
of the employees seemed to be relaxed in working together. It is an
impressive system to look at that. The dispatcher is sitting there
looking at three different computer screens to get their job done and
each one giving them different information in being able to pinpoint
things and respond. As far as I know we have had no complaints at this point and things are going well. I would like to commend Ms. Holland and Chief Brinker on getting that switched over in making it happen.
Most of us made the groundbreaking for the Metropolis. I think
that is good news that we are finally moving forward on that project
out there. It appears that Premier Properties has things under control. I’m looking forward to that project moving forward.
Mr. Isaacs said the first meeting in December I made mention that
we were looking for another tax distribution by the end of the month.
We received that. Also, I mentioned if it didn’t meet all of the
obligations that we had, we may have to move some money from one fund
to another. We needed to move about $700,000.00 in funds in order to
make our funds where they needed to be. Next year we have an estimate
of about ten million coming in in income. We have a current projected
budget of 12.7. So, there are some areas there that we still need to
either find some additional income in some way or look at some things
just to give you a heads up of some things coming this coming year.
Fortunately, things are coming along real well from the standpoint of
getting everything caught up and we are looking really good there to
that extent.
The new accounting system is in place. We are using that. We are
still working out some bugs. Bill, Krissy and Reed have all been
working quite hard at times to get everything functioning properly. We are able to do purchase orders at this time. We have the first payroll coming up in two weeks so hopefully everything will continue to work smooth there. That is progress in the right direction I believe.
The information from the Belleville was picked up by Ms. Burgner
and we have that billing information here now. We have tried to get
that together where that gets into the system in the proper way.
Things are moving forward.
Mr. Brandgard said I think the good news from what Mr. Isaacs
told us is we know we have a difference between income in the budget
today verses eight months from now like we found out last year. We
have plenty of time to go through everybody’s budget to make sure that we stay within the funds that we have.
Mr. McPhail said I think it is prudent that we take a real strong
look at any capital expenditure. We are committed to fund the salary
increase. We have already done that so anything else is subject to
scrutiny, in depth scrutiny as we go through.
Mr. Carlucci said we had our department head meeting. Mr. Isaacs
was the first speaker. We also talked about the fact the last couple of years we have had late property tax payments. One year we didn’t get it until the next year. We have encouraged the department heads that any capital expenditure above $5,000.00 has to be approved by the Town Manager. We are going to be resistant to buying items when property taxes don’t come in until June or July anyway. You may have money there on paper but in essence none of the property tax collections have come in on time the last two years. I don’t have any idea what their plan is for this year, if they are going to get caught up and keep it on that schedule again. Hopefully, they will but we will watch the capital expenditures very closely because the property taxes make a big portion of our general fund. We will keep a very close look on that. The message was delivered to all the department heads that were there that day.
Mr. Isaacs said we will be able to levy more into the general
fund this year and take some out of the park fund because the park fund will end up with a little bit of a surplus. So, we will be able to make some adjustments there in the levy, which will assist the general fund and should not put a burden on the park fund.
Mr. Brandgard said one of the things that we are dealing with is
the changes that were made in the tax structure when the legislature
adjusted the property taxes and other things that dealt with
municipalities, which were never the problem with the tax structure.
They certainly hit the municipalities the hardest. We are still
struggling. We are trying to deal and understand exactly what has
happened to it and Mr. Isaacs has done a great job of getting that
under control and also getting the records under control. I think we
have a clearer, from a Council’s standpoint, understanding of where we are financially than I ever have so thank you.
Mr. Isaacs said let me give credit to everyone in the group
because they have worked very hard. It’s a good group of people.
Mr. Gaddie said a lot of people in the Town really appreciated
getting the snow removed. Everybody was pretty happy with it, not 100% but most of it worked out pretty good from what I have seen and Mr. Castetter has done a great job.
I was talking to one of the customers in Belleville and he was
talking about surface water going into the sanitary sewer. We had a
lot of leakage out there I think.
Mr. Belcher said we would like to know about that.
Mr. Brandgard said one of the things that we are dealing with is
the changes that were made in the tax structure when the legislature
adjusted the property taxes and other things that dealt with
municipalities, which were never the problem with the tax structure.
They certainly hit the municipalities the hardest. We are still
struggling. We are trying to deal and understand exactly what has
happened to it and Mr. Isaacs has done a great job of getting that
under control and also getting the records under control. I think we
have a clearer, from a Council’s standpoint, understanding of where we are financially than I ever have so thank you.
Mr. Isaacs said let me give credit to everyone in the group
because they have worked very hard. It’s a good group of people.
Mr. Gaddie said a lot of people in the Town really appreciated
getting the snow removed. Everybody was pretty happy with it, not 100% but most of it worked out pretty good from what I have seen and Mr. Castetter has done a great job.
I was talking to one of the customers in Belleville and he was
talking about surface water going into the sanitary sewer. We had a
lot of leakage out there I think.
Mr. Belcher said we would like to know about that.
Mr. Gaddie said he called somebody. I don’t know if it was last
month. When did we take over that?
Mr. Belcher said the 17th of December is when we closed.
Mr. Gaddie said I told him to call the Town garage. He was
asking me a lot of questions. He got money back when they had access
money and he said I took it but he said he didn’t know if that was
legal or not. He didn’t know how it was set up. He was concerned. He
said that their lawyer said it was legal. He seemed like he was
concerned about the operations there. I don’t know where he lives now. I know where his mom lives.
Mr. McPhail said we know from the records that it is getting
there we just don’t know where it is coming from.
Mr. Brandgard said I think I have seen water in places that I
haven’t seen before this last week. I thought September a year ago
was bad and I hate to think about a couple more inches of rain.
Mr. Prince said I understand at the last Council meeting you
discussed the Bob Ward Park. I wanted to update you on what I know
about that and my suggestions to move forward. We did have a plan that everybody on the Council liked but it was something that wasn’t
feasible in its entirety. I think where we left the project, and I
think is a reasonable place to pick it back up, was to speak with
Context Design and ask them to move forward with what we would consider a Phase 1 of that project that was really nothing more than to get some curbs in that area and maybe one of the walkways through that park to get people across it and get the curb and gutter and whatnot in. I could move forward with that if that is what you would like me to do. We had actually started moving forward but if we put gutters in there, we don’t have anywhere to drain them until the trail goes through. That would be something that we would have to phase. If the trail doesn’t go through there, we really don’t have anywhere to take the water. That is where we left the project. I would be happy to call the landscape architect and start getting a Phase 1 bid package ready to go.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, do we have funds available?
Mr. Carlucci said there are a couple of things. We were talking
about that at the department head meeting. I think maybe we should go
back and look at that design of that park and get a design that we can live with and then go from there. The real key problem is that project should be tied into fairly closely or it wouldn’t necessarily need to go this year but we hope to have that new trail extension under construction this year. The construction of the new trail system in different parts of the community will spread over two construction seasons. We could get the Bob Ward Park project where we want it and then as that trail project is being built we can come back and build that park in 2006 when we could really use it and it is tied to the trail system.
Mr. Brandgard said it has been awhile since I have seen that plan
and it was a good looking plan but I think it was pretty elaborate. Is there any of that that Mr. Castetter’s crew can do from a construction standpoint? The other part of it is we don’t want it so elaborate that it is difficult to maintain either.
Mr. Prince said I think we could do a lot of that in house. We
asked Context to come up with a plan and they did and we liked it. I
think we asked them for a concept and we have paid for it and we have a concept. I think we could probably build the park that we want off
that concept. I think the curb and the walks that go through there are going to have to go through there anyway. I don’t want to heap more work on Mr. Belcher, but I mentioned to him that maybe with some of our local engineering firms and Mr. Belcher and I can’t speak for Mr. Castetter either, but I think we can do a lot of that work here in Town with our local contractors. I think we could refine that plan
ourselves. We can use it as a design but we can use the materials that went into it and we can put it together in a logical sequence. I think the first bite is going to be the tough though. We had pictured a few streetlights and we pictured the curb and the gutter and that is going to take some pretty substantial work. But after that I manage the playgrounds that we put in and the skate park so I think we could probably manage that in house and achieve a lot that was in that design but do it on our own. The elaborate parts were mostly a lot of plantings and I think we can decide how to put those plantings in ourselves. But one way or the other we probably need to make a
decision how to move forward. One might be like Mr. Carlucci said, let me get you a fresh copy of the design hopefully at the next meeting and maybe we can bring this back up after everybody has had time to think about it and maybe consider going into an in house management of that project.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, how long ago has it been that the proposal
was made?
Mr. Carlucci said I still have the original file of that park. I
would rather put it on the CD-ROM so that you can see it.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, did it pre-date Mr. Gaddie?
Mr. Prince said it was before the new Council.
Mr. Kirchoff said I think refreshing everybody including the two
new Council members and some type of phased in modified plan rather
than let’s not bite it all at the same time and get a plan put
together.
Mr. McPhail said it seems to me if we could put some topsoil in
there and get it seeded while we are trying to decide what to do, it
would certainly improve the looks of it and have an area where kids
could romp around a little maybe. I don’t think that would be a waste
of time of much time and effort to just do that.
Mr. Gaddie asked, would there be a gazebo?
Mr. Prince said some walkways through the property with a gazebo,
a small water feature but it had some extensive plantings.
Mr. Carlucci said it also had some iron fence. <
Mr. Brandgard said it was supposed to be more of a neighborhood
park.
Mr. Prince said it was supposed to look more like a park that
they built in the 30s or 40s when they were still using some nice
construction material. We are trying to make it a passive park. You
might walk around the park but we wanted some turf area out there. I
can provide the design. Mr. Carlucci has a digital and I believe that
I have a packet that I was going to give to you anyway that had a copy for everybody and maybe we can take up a discussion at the next meeting and decide a course of action. I knew that you were concerned about that and I’m prepared to move forward. We just need to decide which way you want to go.
Just a comment on the pool, they did start plastering the pool
today. They are really doing a beautiful job on this one. Jack Watson
continues to work in our favor out there. I have criticized a few
things out there so it is probably fair to say something when things
are going really nice. So, far if they keep it up, it is going to be
beautiful. They are on schedule, if not a little bit ahead of
schedule. Attendance is still great. I’ve got a lot of New Year’s
resolutions that ended up helping us offset our costs out there so
things are still going well. We are making progress everyday and
getting a little bit better everyday.
Mr. Brandgard said from my standpoint I’ve heard nothing but good
comments.
Mr. Kirchoff said I hope you go back and tell your staff that I
continue to get compliments on their courtesy and the professionalism
and the knowledge. The customer service mentality is so important.
When people give you those comments unsolicited, it says that you are
doing a good job.
Mr. Prince said I will pass the word along because we have some
good people.
Mr. Fivecoat said my daughter was in from New York City and I
took her down there and we took a tour of the facility. She was at a
lost for words of that building and the facilities that we have for the citizens of Plainfield and she lives in Long Island, New York. She said this is something that the Plainfield residents should be very proud of because she asked how long it had been opened and I told her. She said if this was in New York City, it wouldn’t look like this. She said it is terrible to say but they wouldn’t take as good of care as we do of that building out there. She is very proud of it. She took a lot of pictures and she is going to show it to everybody in her neighborhood.
Mr. Jason Castetter said event one of last week, the rain event
that we had, as mentioned, we did have some flooding on the White Lick bridge, a log jam. I contacted the State as well as I believe Mr. Carlucci did too to try to get something accomplished. Again, they said it was DNR’s responsibility. We took it upon ourselves, those of the Town, to contact a contractor, which was JDH Contracting to come down and remove those logs. I would like to thank JDH for their quick response. Within probably an hour of the phone call they were down there with equipment. I would also like to thank Kristy’s Café for allowing us to stage in their parking lot. That was the key because there is no other real good place to get to it. I would also like to thank the fire department for showing up down there. The way that JDH was removing those logs they were repelling a guy off the edge of the bridge and tying off on those and pulling those logs to the side and cleaning them up. I just wanted to give credit where credit was due and it was for those folks there.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, should we put some of this in writing for
those people?
Mr. Castetter said I can do that.
Event number two was the one-two-inch snowfall, which turned out
to be four and a half for us on Friday evening. Just to let you know
we had trucks out for 17 hours. I believe with the newcomers that I
have, I have five newcomers, they are learning the route so we are
getting a little better. I believe that we got every street hit this
time.
At the last Council meeting there was a gentleman talking about
the one-way on North East Street. I want to do a follow-up on that. I
will look at that. We have quite a few signs on that road. The State
has two “do not enter” at U.S. 40 North East Street. Every intersecting alley and street on that roadway, North East Street, has a one-way sign pointing south. Without personally counting them I would say we have a dozen one-way signs on that street and two “do not enter”. I believe that the people going the wrong way going fast are people who know that they are doing that and they are doing it so that they don’t get caught. I think Chief Brinker can speak for that as well.
Chief Brinker said not anymore. We wrote eight citations for
going the wrong way down East Street within the last two weeks. The
majority of which come out of the apartment complex there and they are going up to Lincoln trying to make that turn around there. We will continue to monitor that. It is a lot easier when it is a lot warmer. The last couple of weeks it was the motorcycles but we will find a place to put cars and we will continue monitoring that.
Mr. Fivecoat said they come up to Vine Street. They come across
Krewson and they come south and down Vine. There are at least 15-20
cars a day. I’m not exaggerating. It is 15-20 cars a day coming down
Vine Street the wrong way.
Chief Brinker said we will get on it.
Mr. Castetter said the event that happened this morning, as Mr.
Brandgard mentioned, there was a contractor south of I-70 who was doing test wells. I’m not sure, maybe Mr. Belcher can help me out on this, if they were for dewatering wells for a sewer extension that they are putting in or if they were putting in soil samples.
Mr. Belcher said they were dewatering wells.
Mr. Castetter said but they had a 24-inch auger bit that they
were drilling down and they hit the 12-inch water main and punctured a hole in it, two to three inches in diameter. I got the call about 20 after 10. I called one of my guys and within minutes he called me back and said he was on his way. He was in front of the North American Islamic center and was on his way and said, “Oh my I see it.” We have about 90 pounds of pressure down in that area so coming out of a two-inch hole it was shooting quite high, above the I-70 bridge and landed on a substation, which is probably one hundred foot away. Within an hour and a half within that call we were able to temporarily shut down, not totally, but enough to get in there to fix it. By noon we had water back on to all of the residents out there. Again, JDH Contracting was on the spot. I gave them a call and within minutes they were there and was able to dig that up and take care of that for us. My crews stayed on site to make sure all of the valves of the system were done properly.
One last thing that I would like to talk about is the new
Southwest Waste Water Treatment Plant. It is going well. At the end
of this week we will be pumping water out of the new well site.
Hopefully, at the end of next week we will doing some start-up and some testing at various stages of the treatment facility. We will be doing bacteriological samples, pressure testing of the mains, etc. We will probably do a two or three day pump to waste, if you will, to make sure everything is clean. Next Wednesday, the 19th at 1:00, if the Council is available to do a tour of the facility, Bowing Engineering should be there and there should be a lot of contractors there checking out the facility so it would be a good time to get you folks in there.
Mr. Fivecoat said we talked the other night about a chipper. Did
you get any prices?
Mr. Castetter said I have one quote but I haven’t been able to
get any others at this time. I’m in contact with a gentleman who had
done some chipping for us down there at the bridge. I’m going to sit
down and talk with him about doing some possibly emergency services for us. He has a contract with a couple of other communities. Beech Grove I know is one and possibly Greenwood to have an emergency response for that. If we had the incident like they did up north with the ice, us having the chipper, I don’t know if we would have put a dent in it. We probably would have contracted a lot of that. I have one quote and if it is the Council’s desire, I can move forward and get other quotes. The chipper that they had down there was a big one. It would chip up to a 21-inch diameter log. That machine is about $62,000.00. I don’t know that we need one quite that big. A chipper for a 14-inch diameter log is going to run about $32,000.00. It is one of those things that you are not going to use everyday but when you have an event, you are glad that you have it. I don’t have that budgeted in my budget for a chipper. I didn’t necessarily plan on getting one but if the Council desires, I can move some funds around in my budget to make that purchase.
Mr. Fivecoat said that incident and also like for the Christmas
trees this year there was no place to dispose of the Christmas trees.
Everybody is used to going down Vine Street so they just threw them
over the fence so we have a bunch of Christmas trees now.
Mr. McPhail said after they got the bridge cleaned they stopped
and took the tree down, about a 30-foot tree, they had a guy start at
the bottom with a little chainsaw and he started cutting limbs from the bottom and shinnied up that tree cutting limbs as he went along and cut the top off and threw it off with a 12-inch chainsaw. The tree was gone and the mess cleaned up in less than 30 minutes and that was a huge tree. Did you say the chipper was a 21-inch?
Mr. Castetter said the logs that they were pulling out from underneath the bridge they would just cut the root ball off and they would have the track hoe sitting there and they would lift it up and push it in with that track hoe and it would just eat it up.
Mr. Brandgard said I had a tree taken down at the house and they had a 21-inch and it ate it up right now. Mr. Fivecoat said I asked Mr. Castetter to get prices and that way we could talk about it and see if we need one. For cases of emergencies and like Christmas trees and we can use the mulch around the trees in the parks, etc.
Mr. Brandgard said yes continue.
Mr. Castetter said I will continue to get some quotes. I haven’t
received any responses back from any vendors yet.
Mr. Brandgard said we will see where we will go from there. If
you have a big one, is it capable of doing the small branches too?
Mr. Castetter said yes it is and I am being told from three or
four people that I have talked to they tell you to go big just for the mere fact that the smaller ones can’t do the big stuff and the wear and tear on the machine. You are replacing more parts on a smaller unit than you are on a bigger unit. I have been talking to a Mooresville tree service and they are not bidding on a piece of a machine but I did talk to them about it because they have been in the business for many years and they said to do the same thing, don’t go too small but go big. They recommended nothing smaller than a 14-inch.
Mr. Brandgard asked, how is the salt supply?
Mr. Castetter said it is good. We have probably used around
1,000 tons this year. I mentioned the “ice-x” at the last Council
meeting. I had the “ice-x” representative stop in my office the day
after we received a Flyer and he reminded me that it’s not called “icex”, it’s called “de-ice” and “ice-x” went out of business a year or two ago.
OLD BUSINESS
Mr. Carlucci said last week I talked to Mr. Bowles who has the
property over on Hadley Road. We are trying to buy a piece of his
property for the trail through there. I was worried because I hadn’t
heard from him. I called him and he said he was trying to get this
done by the end of January. He has some things to work through with his mortgage company. It doesn’t sound like it is going to be a problem. He said John Howard, an attorney in Danville is the attorney that may or may not be calling at this point. He is ready to move forward on that.
I let the Council know, and Mr. Fivecoat wasn’t here at the last
meeting, that I got an art teacher from the school to agree to help to put together the idea for the Town seal. She didn’t want to do
anything until after the first of the year so I will get back with her and will get you that name so you will know who it is. We can get that off the old business item.
At the last meeting in December you talked about tracking these
items so it is on the “F” drive and we will complete it and give it to you at every meeting on the CD-ROM so you can track those items.
Mr. Brandgard asked, who is keeping track?
Mr. Carlucci said we have a form but we have to work out that
part of the detail.
Mr. Brandgard said I had a call the other day and I’m going to
turn to Ms. Burgner on the water billings. You have taken it back and
there are some areas that are served by Indianapolis Water but they
have Plainfield sewer. How are we doing those billings?
Ms. Burgner said twenty-five/twenty a month so we don’t have to
pay anything out plus for the readings. A lot of them have called and
they are tickled to death.
Mr. Brandgard said I had the call because the gentleman dropped
his water bill off and then we mailed it back to him and said they are on Indianapolis Water and you are no longer excepting the billing for Indianapolis Water.
Ms. Burgner said a lot of people do that. They put the
Indianapolis bills in our drop box. We would just put it in a bag and
the guys pick them up and take them to Union Federal. They can’t do
that anymore. We have been mailing them back with a note.
Mr. Brandgard said I said I think you are probably getting a
separate bill but I wanted to be sure.
In the same area, I think it was the Meadowlark area, part of
that area will be in the Town and part of it is not but I think it
should all be covered by the County at the moment for snow removal.
Mr. Castetter said I believe we take care of Bentwood, Sections 1
through 6 at this time because they are north of the property line.
Meadowlark and the Huntwick area is County that are maintaining those.
Mr. Carlucci said I received a call from a lady on Gordon Drive
who wanted that drive plowed. I had to try to remember where Gordon
Drive was and Mr. Castetter reminded me that it was out on U.S. 40 just past Eagle’s where the welding used to be. She asked why aren’t you down here plowing it? I called her and left her a message that we
don’t plow that area. I don’t think we have ever been out that far.
NEW BUSINESS
None.
RESOLUTIONS
Mr. McPhail made a motion to approve Resolution No. 2005-01: KDS
Properties, LLC Real Property Tax Abatement. Second by Mr. Kirchoff.
Roll call vote called.
Mr. McPhail – yes
Mr. Kirchoff – yes
Mr. Fivecoat – yes
Mr. Gaddie – yes
Mr. Brandgard – yes
5-ayes, 0-opposed, 0-absent. Motion carried.
ORDINANCES
Mr. Brandgard said next we have Ordinance No. 01-2005. Mr.
Lydick do you want to let us know what we are doing here?
Mr. Lydick said we had a position within the Town that in order
to get the salary at a level that could attract the person we had
originally said that because this person had worked for the Town of
Plainfield about 10 years that we wanted to give him credit for that
time by letting him come in at the 5-year level for longevity. But then after reviewing that we felt that maybe a precedent that was set that we would not want to set. So, the salary for a 5-year longevity is $1,000.00 and the longevity for a new employee hired in 2004 is
$150.00. So, we took the $850.00 difference and added it into the base salary and then calculated the bi-weekly salary with the $850.00
included.
This letter was given to me by Mr. Castetter before the meeting
and I will read it. It is one of these things that occasionally we get a good news letter. “January 7, To Whom It May Concern: We wish to say thank you for the left turn lane and the roadwork that you have done on Main Street and Clarks Creek Road. Last year in April our car was totaled as we tried to make a left turn off of Main Street. A young man hit us from behind. We had no serious injuries. We did have three months of physical therapy on a very painful shoulder. We were not the first to have an accident there. There were many before us. We understand a stoplight will be installed there later this year, which will make it a super safe intersection. For all of this we thank you. Richard and Joan Sanders.” I appreciate Mr. Castetter bringing that in. We strive to do things right and I think that was effort well spent as it has made it a safer intersection.
Mr. Mahan said I would like to thank the Town for the snow
removal they have done and getting the water line and sewer line fixed in our area and especially to Mr. Castetter. He did an excellent job on it.
Mr. Brandgard said we will do our best to get that area fixed as
soon as we can. We are working toward it.
Mr. Mahan said there is one guy that I work with in Franklin and
he was there four days before he saw a snowplow.
ADJOURNMENT
Mr. McPhail made a motion to sign the necessary documents and
adjourn. Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Motion carried.
