The Plainfield Town Council met on Wednesday, December 29, 2004.
In attendance were Mr. Kirchoff, Mr. Gaddie, Mr. McPhail and Mr.
Brandgard.
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
CONSENT AGENDA
Approval of the Town Council minutes of the regularly
scheduled meeting of December 13, 2004.
Approval of the November 2004 monthly report for the
Plainfield Town Court.
Second Readings of Ordinance No. 29-2004: Ordinance
Regulating Tampering of Water System; Ordinance No. 30-
2004: Rezoning Real Estate for Browning Investments from R-
2 Single-family Residential to I-2
Office/Warehouse/Distribution/industrial and Ordinance No.
31-2004: Rezoning Real Estate for Republic Development from
Ag, Agricultural to PUD, Sugar Grove Farms Residential
Planned Unit Development.
Approval of the Human Resources Director’s Report dated
December 23, 2004; IT Director’s Report dated December 26,
2004 and the Town Engineer’s Report dated December 23,
2004.
Approval of the Memorandum of Understanding between the
Town of Plainfield and the Indiana Department of
Transportation for the redesign of Quaker Blvd., (SR267)
per the Town Engineer’s Report dated December 23, 2004.
Approval of an agreement between the Town of Plainfield and
Schneider Engineering in an amount not to exceed $35,000.00
for a preliminary engineering study to identify scope and
alignment for street projects associated with Metropolis
Lifestyle Center as identified in the Public Improvement
Agreement with Premier Properties dated November 8, 2004.
Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to approve the Consent Agenda as read.
Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Motion carried.
BUSINESS FROM THE FLOOR
Mr. Derek Clay at 317 N. East St. said I came before the Council
with three items. I wanted to first of all pass on a thank you to Mr.
Castetter with his Department of Public Works and to the Town Manager
for helping our situation after we had the snowstorm. There is an
elderly gentleman that lives on Lincoln between East Street and Vine
Street and there is an alleyway and that is the only way that he can
access his driveway. That is the same with two other people who live in that area as well. With the Town having some kind of stipulation that they don’t really plow allies I called the Town and within a half hour or 45 minutes they had it taken care of. I really appreciated that they were able to come out and plow that for him because it is a big help for him. They came through and plowed it literally within a minute or two of him coming back from the store. He got stuck on his way out. Myself and another neighbor came and helped him get out of there but it was a real big help to have them come and plow him out so I wanted to say that I appreciated that.
Two other things that I wanted to come to the Council about was a
question really. Where the Alexander building used to sit nothing
really has been done with that property from what I can tell other than we have seen it used by kids for a place to build bike ramps. We have seen it used as a parking lot and most recently last night or the night before apparently somebody thinks it is a place that they can go to do donuts. So, there is mud and stuff thrown all around. I’m curious to know when something is going to be done with that property?
The other thing that I wanted to come to the Town about is on
East Street, I don’t know if this is the case on Vine Street or not,
but where we live being a one-way street we get a lot of traffic
traveling at high speeds the wrong way. I expect traffic to be
traveling at high speeds sometimes because of the neighborhood that we live in and probably in any neighborhood for that matter. But I was wondering if we could get some additional wrong-way signs put up
because we get a lot of traffic, literally eight or 10 cars on a day, that we see that are going the wrong way up through there. I didn’t know if there was something that could be done about that.
Mr. Brandgard said I appreciate your comments for Mr. Castetter’s
response for the alley. I would like to mention one thing. I think our basic policy is we don’t do allies but I think where we have required people to stop parking on the street and use the alley as their main parking area, maybe we need to revise our policy and open those allies up. Not just convenience allies where people can drive through but at least the ones that we have told people that you have to get off the street. Even in the areas where people have not parked on the street because of the alley access. We need to look at that.
As far as the park, we have had several discussions. I know the
design that we had that we all liked got a little expensive and I’m not sure where we ended up. I think part of it was tied up with what we end up doing downtown in that whole area.
Mr. Kirchoff said my recollection is we have probably used our
resources this year to get our recreation center opened and the pool.
I think that is certainly where our priorities needed to be. Maybe
next year as the dust settles a little bit we can get back to that. I
think that is what we have been doing.
Mr. Carlucci said Mr. Ward has asked me about it periodically.
Mr. Brandgard said there are a couple of things on the plate that
kind of got shoved aside due to other things but we need to get back
and start looking at it. That one down there has to be a priority
because we bought it and we said we were going to develop that into a
local park. We can’t do the design we had but maybe we can come up
with something that kind of fulfills the intent instead of leaving a
dark whole down there.
We will take a look at the one-way street.
Mr. Castetter said I do know at the alleys we make sure that on
the east side of East Street has a one-way and is fine. I don’t recall about any “do not enter” signs up on U.S. 40 or maybe at Krewson or Elm Street but we will definitely look at that.
Mr. Brandgard said I have seen cars turn off U.S. 40 heading
north on East but most have figured it out real quick and turned
around. But it may be something that especially with people who are
not familiar with it we can do something.
TOWN MANAGER’S REPORT
Mr. Carlucci said I had some communications with Premier
Properties and they are looking at a ground breaking January 6 around
11:00 a.m. If you could pencil that in, I will try to verify this one
way or the other.
Mr. McPhail said I haven’t had any contact.
Mr. Carlucci said I don’t know if they are still looking at that.
I sent them a list of names that I keep on file with addresses of
Council members and different people and sent that over to them. This
is for the Metropolis Lifestyle Center.
The only other item is Lynn Hamilton is our new reporter replacing Gus Pearcy from the Hendricks County Flyer.
REPORTS
Mr. Kirchoff said I received a letter from Jerry Goldsberry who
is the principal at the Middle School. It was addressed to me. I don’t know if anyone else got a copy of it. It says, “Dear Mr. Kirchoff about two weeks ago, Sunday, November 28, I was informed by one of the Plainfield Middle School employees that the north parking lot was covered with water. After minimal investigation I discovered water was coming from an underground pipe. Mr. Jud Wolfe the Assistant Superintendent and I made a service call to Frank Irish. Once Frank Irish arrived locating the source of the leak became a tremendous challenge. After contacting the Department of Public Works Mr. Jason Castetter came to the school and volunteered his services. Using a special instrument Mr. Castetter was able to pinpoint the leak exactly. Considering the pipe was at least 10 feet under the surface this was no easy task. His assistance saved us considerable time and money. Thanks to Mr. Castetter and the Town of Plainfield we were able to have school the next day. I want to express my appreciate to everyone who came to our rescue. Have an enjoyable holiday season. Jerry Goldsberry.”
Ms. Burgner asked, what type of arrangements have been made to
pick up the records and the equipment at Belleville, if any? I’m going there tomorrow to run bills because they are due out the last day of the month. I have our bill cards to run on that system and Wilma told me that she was not really finished. She has the year-end reports off the billing program but she is doing some other year-end reports that sometimes need to refer to those records. But I told her that she needed to hurry up because we mail out bills and we are going to be posting cash. But I didn’t really know what kind of arrangements, if any, had been made to pick up all of that stuff.
Mr. Daniel said Wilma was at the closing and she did talk about
the fact that they would need those I think through the first week or
so in January. I know it was through the end of the year. We talked
about after the first of the year, the first week or so, that you and
she would coordinate getting those records here based upon what she
needed and didn’t need, etc. Feel free to contact her and if you have
any problems, give me a call.
Ms. Burgner said I don’t have any problem bringing the equipment
that the billing program runs on but what about everything else? There would be records.
Mr. Daniel said we will get everything except what they need to
collect some delinquent accounts, etc. Everything else we bring here.
Mr. Carlucci said I think what she is referring to is there is
stuff physically she wants to bring over. You can talk with Mr.
Castetter and we can send some people over there and pick it up.
Mr. Isaacs asked, how old is that system out there?
Ms. Burgner said it’s not very old.
Mr. Daniel asked, are you talking about the billing system?
Mr. Isaacs said the hardware.
Mr. D aniel said the hardware is twenty some years old.
Ms. Burgner said it’s not that old.
Mr. Belcher asked, do you mean the actual lines, etc.
Mr. Isaacs said yes.
Mr. Belcher said that is 20 or better.
Mr. McPhail said I don’t know the statutes. How far back do you
have to save those things?
Mr. Isaacs said it depends. You have to save different things
different lengths of times. Some you can never get rid of.
Mr. Kirchoff said another opportunity for microfilming.
Mr. Brandgard said I agree with the thoughts about microfilming
but what are we going to do when there is no longer a machine to read
the microfilm.
Mr. McPhail said you can put it on a CD-ROM today.
Mr. Brandgard said tomorrow you aren’t going to be able to read
that. It’s an interesting technology issue because as fast as it’s
moving where you have saved a lot of it you can’t read anymore.
Mr. Isaacs said document imaging is something that we have talked
about and we tried to look at this past fall but due to all of the
other new systems coming in we didn’t feel like it was wise to move
into anything else right now. Maybe the second quarter next year we
can do something with that again.
Mr. McPhail said I know Mr. Bill Castetter spent some time a year
ago looking at that and my only input is we want something that every
department in the Town can use and not just one department.
Mr. Isaacs said we need to look at the latest technology so we
don’t outdate it in a year.
Mr. McPhail said I’m sure it is different than it was a year ago.
Mr. Brandgard said I think the key is we have to recognize it
changes and when it changes, convert at that point and time instead of hanging on until it comes too late to convert to whatever the current system is.
Mr. Castetter said to give you an idea we had guys out from 5:00
a.m. Wednesday morning basically to 6:00 p.m. Thursday night. We ran
about 500 tons of material and traveled about 2,000 miles in that time. It’s a little over three and a half tons per mile on the roadway. So, we ran a little higher mix this year than what we have done in the past, a little more salt and also the molasses material that you have read about and probably have seen. You probably have seen the results of it. We really saw it Thursday night after we melted the streets they didn’t refreeze. They stayed dry and they stayed clean. Hopefully, we are reaping some good benefits going with that chemical.
Mr. Brandgard said pass on from the Council that we certainly
appreciated the efforts on everybody’s behalf. I was amazed. I went
to the Pacer’s game Wednesday evening and as the game was over and
people were leaving, it was kind of oh by the way it has started
snowing at half time. There was quite a bit of snow on the ground by
the time the game was over. Driving out was a challenge. I think your
guys did an excellent job getting the streets opened. The thing that I was glad to see is we didn’t have to call you out for that four-day
weekend to keep them opened. So, what you did worked and we appreciate it.
Mr. Bill Castetter said we developed a software package that will
integrate with electronic scanning. We have a couple of scanners in
Town, one in this building and one at the police department. We are
getting used to scanning documents electronically and storing them on
disks. My vision is that we leapfrog any kind of filming technology
and we scan documents electronically that will be readable going
forward with all kinds of software. Hopefully, we will remove filming
from the conversation and talk about electronically scanning documents.
Mr. Isaacs said another part of that is the State hasn’t approved
all of this kind of technology so some of it still has to be kept on
microfilm.
Mr. Castetter said the two devices have been real time savers,
i.e., if you would like to scan and put it in a file, you can scan it
and put it in a folder in your computer. So, this scanner, which is
not a real expensive device has been a real time saver for people in
this building and I think everybody would say that. Chief Brinker just got his but I think he will say the same thing. We will get used to doing that and then sometime, as Mr. Isaacs mentioned, maybe the second quarter we can add some scanners to the MUNIS system and we can just scan documents into this scanner and store them electronically.
Mr. Kirchoff said we had somewhat of a project team to begin to
take a look at document management. One of the things that we talked
about was there is a tremendous need here from a records standpoint. A lot of departments have that need and we were trying to go forward in some sense so I commend you all for thinking about that in 2005 and whenever we can make that happen, I think we should. Space becomes more and more of an issue in our facilities and you are freeing up space for better use.
Mr. McPhail said one of the biggest challenges that we looked at
was the size of some of the documents in the Engineering Department and the Planning Department. It takes a big scanner to do that.
Mr. Castetter said some of those documents we obviously have to
farm out to someone who has that type of equipment. The engineering
companies can scan those documents or the people who are giving us
those documents electronically and we don’t have to have the paper to
begin with. Right now we have to have that because we have people
coming in to look at it. I think it will evolve that we get it
electronically and we pass it out electronically and we don’t have to
store all of that paper.
Mr. Brandgard said where I work that is what we have done with
most of our engineering documentation. It is now in some form of
electronic media.
Mr. Isaacs said one of my biggest concerns is should we lose this
building to fire or something, if we can do this, then we can store the information at three different sites.
Mr. Brandgard said we are thinking along the right path.
Chief Brinker said our colored printer gave up and the cost of
repairing it was going to be so that it was going to be cheaper to go
with this system that provided all of this extra. Not only did we not
spend extra but we are saving a little bit and maybe as things need to be replaced this is the method to replace it. Actually, the program that we looked at was going to be somewhat expensive that we may be able to do next to nothing now. The equipment was a big expense to this program. Mr. Kirchoff said plus the manpower to get it done.
OLD BUSINESS
Mr. Carlucci said I made a contact to the school system, one of
the art teachers, and obviously when I contacted her, she said she
would like to start this the beginning of next year working on a Town
seal. She seemed real excited about it so I did get that arranged.
NEW BUSINESS
Mr. Daniel said Mr. Isaacs gave me two proposed agreements before
the meeting with Northern Lights Locating Inspection, Inc. One is for
water meter reading agreement and an underground plant locating and
marking agreement. He has gone over these and has made a couple of
revisions. I haven’t looked at them yet but if the Council is willing
to have those approved subject to his revisions and any revisions that I might have and have somebody appointed to execute those when those are approved, if that is possible.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, are these a result of our earlier
conversations about authorizing you to move forward?
Mr. Isaacs said yes.
Mr. Kirchoff said these are simply the contracts to formulize
what we authorized earlier.
Mr. Isaacs said actually it is an oversight on my part not to
have these to you sooner. They are pretty basic agreements.
Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to approve the water meter reading
agreement and the underground plant locating and marking agreement with Northern Lights Locating Inspection, Inc. subject to review by counsel. With authorization given to the Town Council President to sign the agreements. Second by Mr. McPhail. Motion carried.
Mr. Carlucci said Mr. Higbee, as you know, his last day was
yesterday. We have Roger Kilmer, who used to work for the Town, will
be filling in for him until we get a replacement for Mr. Higbee.
Because of the light agenda for the next Plan Commission meeting I will do the reports then. Mr. Kilmer used to be Mr. Higbee’s assistant and knows the ordinances in Town and the Town real well so we are going to move forward with him.
Mr. Brandgard said Mr. Carlucci has put a couple of things under
New Business that we normally take care of during the next to the last or last meeting of the year depending upon how everybody is here. One is the 2005 appointments to boards and commissions and the other is the 2005 Town Council reorganization. I do think we need to make the appointments now in order to go into the New Year with the people that would be appointed. The reorganization we can do but the only thing that would affect is whoever the president is from the Plan Commission appointment.
Mr. McPhail asked, if we do the reorganization first, can we do
the others?
Mr. Brandgard said yes.
Mr. McPhail made a motion to reorganize the Town Council as it
currently stands, which would be Mr. Brandgard as President and Mr.
Kirchoff as Vice President. Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Motion carried.
Mr. Kirchoff said I have a couple of questions on the
appointments under the Board of Zoning Appeals. I assume that both of
those should be 01/01/05 instead of 01/01/04. And I wasn’t sure on Mr. Matrana when his expiration should be.
Mr. Carlucci said you are correct. Those should be 01/01/05, both
of them.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, then when should his expiration be?
Mr. Carlucci said Mr. Matrana is our appointment from the Plan
Commission to the BZA and that is only a one-year appointment. It
should be 2005.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, is 2007 okay for Mr. Blevins?
Mr. Carlucci said yes.
Mr. Kirchoff said on Stan Bassett under the Economic Development
Commission should we make that 01/01/05 as well instead of 02/01/04?
Mr. Carlucci said that shouldn’t be on there at all. That was
done last year. I apologize for that. Mark the Economic Development
Commission off because we did that last year.
Mr. Kirchoff said so we don’t need to do it again.
Mr. Carlucci said no.
Mr. Brandgard said on the second page under “others” where we
have the police chief, the fire chief and the Town attorney you have
that for a one-year period. I think we have been doing that for two
years.
Mr. Carlucci said I couldn’t remember if we did that for two
years last year or not. Does anybody remember?
Chief Brinker said I believe last year we did but the year before
we did it for one year because of the election.
Mr. Carlucci said I wasn’t sure if we had done one year or two
years.
Mr. Kirchoff said this is the second year isn’t it?
Mr. Brandgard said yes.
Mr. Carlucci said so we can eliminate those too.
Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to approve the appointments as amended
for 2005 as presented. Second by Mr. McPhail. Motion carried.
RESOLUTIONS
Mr. McPhail made a motion to approve Resolution No. 2004-36.
Authorization to appraise the Brock property. Second by Mr. Kirchoff.
Roll call vote called.
Mr. McPhail – yes
Mr. Kirchoff – yes
Mr. Gaddie – yes
Mr. Brandgard – yes
Mr. Fivecoat – absent
4-ayes, 0-opposed, 1-absent. Motion carried.
ORDINANCES
Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to approve Ordinance No. 32-2004 on
its first reading. An ordinance for the amendment to the 2005 Salary
Ordinance. Second by Mr. McPhail. Roll call vote called.
Mr. McPhail – yes
Mr. Kirchoff – yes
Mr. Gaddie – yes
Mr. Brandgard – yes
Mr. Fivecoat – absent
4-ayes, 0-opposed, 1-absent. Motion carried.
Mr. Kirchoff said I went back to my old stomping grounds and
tried to find the files and I couldn’t find any files on that so if I
have any luck on finding it, we can always come back and amend it. I
have called and actually went in and I couldn’t find it. With that
said I would move to suspend the rules so that we can have the third
reading and adoption for Ordinance No. 29-2004; Ordinance No. 30-2004
and Ordinance No. 31-2004. Second by Mr. McPhail. Roll call vote
called.
Mr. McPhail – yes
Mr. Kirchoff – yes
Mr. Gaddie – yes
Mr. Brandgard – yes
Mr. Fivecoat – absent
4-ayes, 0-opposed, 1-absent. Motion carried.
Mr. McPhail made a motion to approve Ordinance No. 29-2004 on its
third reading and adoption. An ordinance regulating tampering of water system. Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Roll call vote called.
Mr. McPhail – yes
Mr. Kirchoff – yes
Mr. Gaddie – yes
Mr. Brandgard – yes
Mr. Fivecoat – absent
4-ayes, 0-opposed, 1-absent. Motion carried.
Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to approve Ordinance No. 30-2004 on
its third reading and adoption. Rezoning real estate for Browning
Investments from R-2, Single-family residential to I-2,
Office/Warehouse/Distribution/Industrial. Second by Mr. McPhail. Roll
call vote called.
Mr. McPhail – yes
Mr. Kirchoff – yes
Mr. Gaddie – yes
Mr. Brandgard – yes
Mr. Fivecoat – absent
4-ayes, 0-opposed, 1-absent. Motion carried.
v
Mr. McPhail made a motion to approve Ordinance No. 31-2004 on its
third reading and adoption. Rezoning real estate for Republic
Development from AG, Agricultural to PUD, Sugar Grove Farms Residential Planned Unit Development. Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Roll call vote called.
Mr. McPhail – yes
Mr. Kirchoff – yes
Mr. Gaddie – yes
Mr. Brandgard – yes
Mr. Fivecoat – absent
4-ayes, 0-opposed, 1-absent. Motion carried.
COUNCIL COMMENTS
Mr. Brandgard said I think this has been another extremely busy
year from the Council’s standpoint, therefore, I know it has been from the Staff and employee’s standpoint. Next year will probably be
busier. With that thought in mind I want to ask the Staff heads that
attend the meeting that when the Council asks for something during the meeting or somebody brings something in and we assign it to somebody, that you bring something back to us within no more than three days. That we get a check sheet sent to us of things that we have asked to have followed up so that we can remember to follow-up with you on them. I say it from the standpoint that too many times so much goes on we tend to let things slide. We don’t do it intentionally but it is because there are so many things going on and we need to have some way of following up. If we could do that at the end of every meeting, eventually we will end up with maybe this much from this meeting and the second meeting we will have more but then we will close some out. But we will have a running list of open items that we need to have closed at some point and time.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, is there some way to have that included in
the CD?
Mr. Brandgard said I would like to get it a couple of days after
the meeting but we need to have a running list every meeting on the CDs so that we can challenge ourselves to challenge you to make sure we get the answer out. A lot of times it has to do with a citizen request. I don’t think we are too timely in getting their answers back and again it is not because we don’t want to but it is because in the midst of everything going on it tends to get overlooked a little bit. Again, if we can do that or figure out a way of doing it, I think with the computer systems that we have today we ought to be able to come up with some kind of running list. I’m going to look to somebody to be the point person to make sure we can get it collected. We usually assign something to an individual.
Mr. Carlucci said we have a department head meeting January 4 so we will put that on the agenda to discuss that.
Mr. Brandgard said I would like to wish everybody a Happy New
Year. The Christmas weekend was a cold and snowy one and it appears
like the New Year’s weekend is going to be a warm wet one. My hope is
it’s not very wet but nonetheless I hope it is quiet enough that
everybody has the long weekend that we have planned and that everyone
deserves occasionally to get over the stress of the day-to-day business and be with the families. I express both to the employees and to the citizens of the community to have a safe New Year’s holiday.
Mr. McPhail said I would just like to forward a comment, in fact,
two. I have had two people in the last two days that live in another
community and the county tell me how good of a job that the Town of
Plainfield does from the Council’s standpoint. I always tell them that we are able to do our jobs because we have a Staff like we have sitting in this room. We are not always able to remember to pass those comments on but yesterday and today both I had somebody that lives in another community and county say that I really wish that we were up-tospeed with Plainfield. We are able to do that as a Council because we have a Staff like we have. We appreciate all of your efforts.
Mr. Carlucci said I heard today that they had a ribbon cutting at
the Six Points interchange.
Mr. McPhail said they had a ribbon cutting today and I drove from
Stafford Road to SR67 and made the loop. I didn’t get on I-70, I just
went across and it is opened.
Mr. Brandgard said I think we are all glad that it is opened,
those of us who have had an opportunity to drive it both going toward
Indianapolis and coming back out of Indianapolis to the south to SR67. It is really going to work well. When the citizens figure that out, you will find more people using that than we have SR267 and I-70. I told Mr. McGillem and Mr. Belcher that the only thing that bothers me with it is when you come off of I-70 going north, there is only one lane. If you are coming off of I-70 going south, there are two lanes on the ramp system, which says they did a real good job of taking care of Indianapolis, Marion County, Ameriplex of getting the traffic down there and not so good of a job of meeting the needs that we have here, which is much more than what they have down there. Again, under the circumstances maybe it is not too surprising nonetheless it does work well and it may not be a problem. I am glad to see it opened especially knowing that there are other things coming along where we are really going to be glad that is there. I think as we were discussing with the SR267/Quaker Boulevard rebuilding schedule for 2006 or late 2005 that will make things interesting for everybody.
ADJOURNMENT
Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to sign the necessary documents and
adjourn. Second by Mr. McPhail. Motion carried.
