The Plainfield Town Council met on Monday, July 26, 2004. In attendance were Mr. Kirchoff, Mr. Fivecoat, Mr. Gaddie, Mr. McPhail and Mr. Brandgard.
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
CONSENT AGENDA
Approval of the minutes of the July 12, 2004 Town Council meeting.
Approval to table the third and final reading of Ordinance No. 14-2004: Church Rezoning to the August 9, 2004 Town Council meeting.
Approval of the Utility Director’s Report dated July 26, 2004; Human Resources Director’s Report dated July 23, 2004; Town Engineer’s Report dated July 25, 2004 and the Plainfield Fire Department’s amended report dated July 23, 2004 as revised July 26, 2004.
Approval of a supplemental agreement with Butler Fairman and Seufert in the amount of $19,050.00 for inspection services on Phase I Vandalia Pedestrian Trail project subject to the Indiana Department of Transportation approval per the Town Engineer’s Report dated July 25, 2004.
Approval to proceed with the design, permitting and construction of a new water production well at the Anderson Water Treatment Plant per the Town Engineer’s Report dated July 25, 2004.
Approval to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding with Indy 40 LLC developers of Sierra Gateway Park for construction of water and sewer lines per the Town Engineer’s Report dated July 25, 2004.
Mr. Fivecoat said on page one of the minutes toward the bottom where Mr. McPhail is speaking it should read, “It appears that it was a little strange when I got a call, because people from “Willow Pointe” (instead of “will point”) on a lower level has never been bothered.”
Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to approve the Consent Agenda as amended. Second by Mr. McPhail. Motion carried.
BUSINESS FROM THE FLOOR
None.
TOWN MANAGER’S REPORT
Mr. Carlucci said the first item that I have is called bond refunding. For those of you who have been around for a while we have a 1995 Plainfield Municipal Improvements Corporation bond that was issued for multiple projects all over the community. The current rates look like they are pretty good to refinance those bonds. There is also a 1996 water bond that is basically in the same situation. We have been talking to Umbaugh about refunding both of these bonds. Actually they brought it up to us because they track our bonds and what is outstanding. I would like to get permission from the Town Council to move forward with H. J. Umbaugh and Dan Pecar to work on refunding both of those bonds. We think the numbers are pretty good and the savings look pretty good on those bonds. We don’t shorten the term of the bonds. Basically you are refinancing them. There seems to be a lot of interest in those 1995 bonds because of the ability to get a premium for the bondholders. I would like your consent to move forward on the refunding.
Mr. Brandgard asked, is there consent? Consent given.
Mr. Carlucci said we received a letter from James Patrick, the White Lick Community Association, which is in the Andrews Subdivision. They would like to hold a block party. They want to close off part of Andrews Boulevard, the east drive. You go the past condominiums, the front part, into the back and the east drive. They would like to hold this on September 26 between 4:00 and 8:00 p.m. James Patrick is at 205 Andrews Boulevard east drive is the one that is making the request on behalf of his neighbors.
Mr. Brandgard asked, has the police and fire had a chance to look at that? We don’t have these requests often enough.
Mr. Carlucci said they have an east and west drive over there and because Vestal Road is not completely opened there is probably less traffic on that road than there has been in the last few months. What we normally do is give this over to the police and fire department to look at and they make contact with Mr. Patrick and they will tell them what they want. We just provide the barricades but we also tell them to leave it open enough so that we can get through there if we have to.
Mr. Brandgard asked, is there consent subject to the review by the police and fire to make sure everything is safe? Consent given.
Mr. Carlucci said Saturday I decided to read the Hendricks County a.m. addition and one article that caught my eye had to do with the West Central Conservancy District and an article about their sewer rates. What struck me funny about that article is how they came up with their comparisons. They compared all of the communities, Plainfield and Brownsburg and, of course, I’m not sure about their comparisons. They are using a 9,000-gallon figure. Nine thousand gallons is a family of eight or nine. Typically 5,000 or 6,000 gallons is a fair comparison. There was even a section in that table saying if you moved it up to 12,000, it would be even better. As Mr. Belcher said he thinks that is a car wash. There is nothing wrong with the comparison. They are trying to compare a flat rated system with meter systems. Whether you use 10 gallons in West Central or zero gallons if you leave a month and go to Florida, you are paying a flat rate of $45.00 a month for your sewage. We don’t like to have flat rates but if you wanted a fair comparison of what is going on there, each of these communities that they listed has a flat rate. You could compare flat rate to flat rate but to compare us to a meter system reminds me of what former President Ronald Reagan said, “well there they go again.” This is just not a right comparison to make. So, I distributed a sheet to everybody. Obviously, when you look at the Hendricks County District and West Central, they are both a $45.00 flat rate. Whether that is 5,000; that is 4,000; that is 20,000 gallons it doesn’t matter what it is. It doesn’t matter whether they use one gallon or 10,000 gallons it is still $45.00. But just as a fair comparison our flat rate is $25.20. That is our flat rate. I believe Danville is into an expansion and have floated some bonds and their rate is actually higher than ours for their metered rate for 5,000 gallons. But for them to come up with the fiction of comparing those rates to a metered system and then pushing the numbers to get the result that they wanted I was very upset about the way that was done because it is not a fair comparison. We have good reporters but we just wish that they would question those on how those were done and then call the Town. I don’t remember anybody here getting called. From what I understood nobody called Plainfield and asked us about our rates. I know the gentleman who did that and he does a good job but in this case they were trying to make a point. But the fact of the matter is if you are in Washington Township that is covered by WCCD, whether you use any gallons or use 20,000 gallons it is a $45.00 flat rate. Our flat rate is $25.20. That is a fair comparison. But their comparison made us look like a bad value and that is just not the case. It wasn’t done correctly. It wasn’t reported correctly and it is not fair to the towns that have a better rate than is going on basically in all of Washington Township.
Mr. Brandgard said when I read it, it struck me the same way. The rate comparison was a good comparison. The only problem was no homeowner uses 9,000 gallons of water unless they have a big leak. We usually use 5,000 gallons as an average. I think we are probably lucky if we use 3,000 gallons. Nonetheless I think like you say the problem is they put that together to justify the $45.00 that they have there and their thoughts about having to go to a rate increase.
Mr. McPhail said that is residential users and not commercial users. They didn’t even attempt to compare that. I thought in addition when I read that report, I found it very strange to look at that and the statement made that financing was already in place to finance an expansion of the plant. It would seem to me that the current ratepayers are being charged for an expansion for future users and we certainly don’t do that in the Town of Plainfield. We don’t expect current ratepayers to finance the expansion or new development. If they indeed have financing and funds on hand to finance an expansion, it appears to me that they would be charging their current ratepayers for that expansion.
Mr. Carlucci said the only last item that I have is there is a Town Center Roundtable that the citizens of Town are holding on August 24th. If you are interested in going, go ahead and sign this.
Mr. Brandgard asked, where is the location?
Mr. Carlucci said it is Brownsburg.
REPORTS
Mr. Fivecoat said last week I toured the new sewer treatment plant with Mr. Whitaker. It was a guided tour and we spent about an hour and a half. It was very informative and I was brought up-to-date on all of the construction of it. It is going to be very impressive when it is completed. They are a little behind right now.
Mr. Whitaker said they are two weeks behind their schedule where they want to be.
Mr. Fivecoat said I think they can make up for that but it is coming along real well.
Mr. Brandgard asked, what is the start of production date on that?
Mr. Whitaker said it will be next spring, probably April or May at the latest. And, of course, we will be receiving bids at the next meeting on the interceptor to get those finished together.
Mr. Fivecoat said like Mr. Whitaker and I were talking the best time to go out there and look at it is when they start laying the pipe. That is going to be the most exciting part of it.
Mr. McPhail said I have a couple of things to report on. The first being the recreation center. If you remember at our last meeting, we did have some citizens come in concerned about the noise. I spent a day with Jack Watson from Summit Construction and we took a look at some units around Indianapolis that had some similar problems. We have elected and have placed on order what they call an acoustical blanket, which is manufactured for this unit. We are pretty confident that it will quiet the sound. We have had a testing company out and test the noise level. It is not a matter of a loud noise. It is a constant noise. It is kind of like a bee humming in your area that never quits. So, it is not an offensively loud noise but it is just a constant noise. So, we believe that these acoustical blankets will do the job and if not, we have a couple of other things to look at. Those have been ordered. We have a four to five week delivery on those so in the meantime we have a meeting established Wednesday to meet with the manufacturer, the engineer and the contractor. We are going to attempt to shut that unit down through the month of August from about six or seven p.m. to 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. to try to get that peak hour of time when people want to be out on their decks. We are afraid to shut it down more than four or five hours because of the moisture content in the building. We lost that unit with one of the thunderstorms last week. It was off all night and they came in the next morning and there was moisture on the floor. So, with that much moisture in the air and the building we have to control the moisture but we really believe we can shut it down to give them a little relieve in the month of August.
We have a tentative date from the contractor to turn the builder over to us on September 6. We will be working with Mr. Prince and Mr. Castetter in the next week or two to try to come up with a date to recommend for opening. Just like the pool Mr. Prince needs to have the building for a period of time. We have to make sure the computer system is up and working and all of that. But I would say sometime probably around the first of October we might be thinking about a grand opening with everything except the indoor aquatic center. We really don’t have a completion date on it but I was out there today and it is really looking good. I don’t know if Mr. Prince wants to make anymore comments but hopefully we can give the neighborhood a little bit of break on that noise until the acoustical blanket comes in. Those are the peak hours so when we get the building opened, we have to cool it during those hours because that will be the peak load of people in there. Hopefully, these blankets will quiet the thing down and we will be okay.
Mr. Brandgard said apparently that noise is what it is supposed have.
Mr. McPhail said yes it is. We had the engineers out checking it and, as a matter of fact, it is advertised as the quietest unit for that size for that type of design. But most of those are mounted on rooftops and they are high-rise buildings and the noise goes up and nobody ever hears it. We looked at one situation where they attempted to quiet the noise and it affected the unit and we don’t want to do that. It is a blanket that is manufactured by the manufacturers.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, are there plans to let the neighborhood know what you are doing?
Mr. McPhail said I have contacted the neighborhood and told them about the blankets and told them that we were working to see if we could shut the thing down. If that works, I will give a couple of the people a call and they will communicate that with their neighbors. But I have told them that the blankets are on order. It is a little bit annoying to those people who can hear it. But we will be able to measure the difference too.
We are still having some general conversations with Dick’s and Galyan’s. As we move along and as they get their deal approved through all of the regulatory people, we will hopefully be able to sit down and have some meaningful discussions. There is some ongoing conversations in general and nothing specific.
Mr. Kirchoff said Mr. Carlucci and I talked beforehand that he had sent out a preliminary schedule for budget work sessions. I think some of us have a conflict on Thursday night, August 5 with the partnership. So, we suggest that we move that date from our calendar. We have enough dates on there that we can get through it without it.
Mr. Brandgard asked, is everybody comfortable with the dates? I don’t know if I will be here this Wednesday or not. I have to make a quick business trip that day and I’m not sure if I will be back.
Mr. Carlucci said at the first meeting we don’t get into the budget but talk in general what is going on and what has happened in the last couple of years. We are having the comp plan tomorrow, Wednesday night the budget and Thursday night Banning is the anniversary party.
Mr. Daniel said since Mr. Fivecoat brought up the item on the treatment plant I will report two things. Tuesday the Natural Resources Commission had their meeting and the report of the hearing officer, which recommended that the Belleville Conservancy District be resolved and was approved by the Natural Resources Commission. So, that now will be sent to the Hendricks Circuit Court and that hearing is set for August 25 on the court action on the report of the Natural Resources Commission.
Secondly, tomorrow morning at 8:45 we have the take hearing on the property on the southeast corner of Center Street and I-70, which is the Clarks Creek Phase III. It is for the lift station and other facilities. I talked to an attorney from Brazil Friday who is going to be representing some of the parties in that and he will be objecting to the take so I expect appraisers to be appointed tomorrow morning and we should be on down the road on that one.
Mr. Prince said I just wanted to report that we have been closed for the last two days due to the weather. It has kind of been a disappointment but before those two days we have had 43,324 visits to Splash Island. Last week we received our first official audit and I think you will be happy to know that the lifeguard team exceeded standards in all areas. They did a wonderful job so that was good news for us.
Mr. Fivecoat said I was out there when they did their testing. The lady in front of me almost had a heart attack when they used a little baby in the pool. I told her to settle down that it was a drill and they are being tested and that everything was all right and that was a manikin and then she was all right.
Mr. Prince said to exceed is not easy to do. We were aware that they were in Town. Sooner or later you find out that they are here and you get the calls and you know what is going on out there. But to receive news like that your first time out was just unbelievable. We are very proud of those kids out there.
Chief Anderson said about a week and a half ago Chief Brinker had e-mailed me a copy of the notification of the BW3 fundraiser to benefit the police and fire departments. I noticed that it was not on the Consent Agenda so I wanted to make sure that we got consent or approval for the police and fire to receive that donation from that event. I just wanted to make sure that we got that in front of you and get it authorized to accept that when that comes about. That is this Saturday, July 31, 2004.
Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to accept any donation that results from the BW3 event. Second by Mr. Fivecoat. Motion carried.
Chief Anderson said one other item is the new pumper/ladder truck have been in Town the last couple of weeks. We have been doing training. The dealer is doing additional installations. We were anticipating taking delivery of those two units. That is dependent on some additional loose equipment arriving with that. We don’t know if they will show up tomorrow or not but we are hoping that they will show up by the end of the week and everything is looking good.
Mr. McPhail asked, is the fire safety festival this weekend?
Chief Anderson said that is also this Saturday so if we take delivery, they will be there.
Mr. Belcher said we have four bids coming in at the next Council meeting and I know that sometimes they can really lengthen the meeting. If you would like me to schedule those to have before the meeting and bring in the results, we can do that but I thought now would be the time to bring it up and talk it over. We could bring them at the meeting or bring them in before.
Mr. Brandgard said if they are scheduled to come in at the next meeting, you probably have already advertised them.
Mr. Belcher said yes. We can still send out addendums. We could especially communicate with the bid holders if you would like, and tell them that the bid time is adjusted. That is fully within our ability to do that if we want to do that, but right now it is set up at August 9 at 7:30, all four of them. They are the road, two sewers and the Buchanan and Harlan Street problems. We don’t have to have a decision now. Mr. Carlucci and I can talk it over. It is just one of those things that the meetings can get pretty long with that many bids coming in sometimes if we have a lot of bidders.
Mr. Brandgard said I generally like having them coming in the public meeting but on the other hand I don’t necessarily like having that many coming in on the same night.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, do we have to do them all?
Mr. Belcher said I know that I have one bid for the following meeting. Probably one could be easily be moved but three I think we would want to move forward on.
Mr. Brandgard said the two with the water problems we need to get those done, Harlan Street and Buchanan Street. What is the other one?
Mr. Belcher said the Southfield we know we are up against a pretty tough weather situation. We would like to get the Southfield Drive done. It is not a big project though. I don’t expect a lot of bidders on that one.
Mr. Brandgard said I would say those three and move the move the other one.
Mr. McPhail said to speed the process we could just open the bids and read them and have the legal counsel look at them at a later date. Everybody else in the country does that. Every public bid that I have bid when I was in the steel business, they opened them, read them and then reviewed them later.
Mr. Kirchoff said if you have been reading the article in the Star about the community to the north, they opened three bids and all three were incomplete. They announced them and told the people to re-bid it and they are having a mess up north.
Mr. Brandgard said we have never read a bid on something that we didn’t think was proper.
Mr. McPhail said until I came on this Council I never sat through a bid opening where they looked at them legally. A lot of people do it. They take in a school project and there may be 50 bids in a day and they open them and read the bids.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, Mr. Belcher aren’t you suggesting that perhaps we do that at 7:00 or some earlier time?
Mr. Belcher said what I would like to do, and this is a suggestion, if Mr. Daniel would be willing to come at 6:00 or something, we could have those opened. He could review the ones that should be opened or shouldn’t and we would have that done before the Council meets. If there is some action that the Council needs to make, they can make it at the meeting but we would still present all of them and have them come in an hour earlier.
Mr. Kirchoff said I’m not uncomfortable expediting it but I have been contacted by that community from the north saying how do you guys open bids. So, it is very fresh on my mind. We talked again today and I explained to them our process. We just talked about it earlier. They are in a mess. They are probably headed for some kind of lawsuit.
Mr. Belcher said it is pretty critical what you do and don’t read.
Mr. Kirchoff said I wouldn’t have trouble doing it early but I certainly would not want to circumvent our process because I think it does protect us.
Mr. Daniel asked, would you have the bidders here when we opened them, is that the idea?
Mr. Belcher said it would be a public meeting but it just would be starting at 6:00. We have done one like that before for the wastewater plant. We only checked for two items, the bid bond and the bid amount and that’s it and then we handed them off to Mr. Daniel to review at a later time but that was done outside a regular meeting. Then we brought the results to the Council after that.
Mr. Brandgard said the process that we have has not caused us very many problems.
Mr. Belcher said it works but it is just lengthy in terms of the meeting so I have absolutely no problem opening them here if you don’t but I wanted to forewarn you.
Mr. Carlucci said you were talking about moving one of the bids. Which one were you suggesting?
Mr. Belcher said actually I was thinking about moving one of the storm sewer projects. The Harlan Street project, the weather is not quite as dependent upon a storm sewer project getting into the ground this year.
Mr. Brandgard said I really don’t want to move those up.
Mr. Belcher said I know there is some sensitivity in the neighborhood.
Mr. McPhail said I would rather come early if that is what it takes.
Mr. Carlucci said there aren’t too many firms that do slip lining so that shouldn’t be too many bids and on that Southfield Drive I don’t think we will get a lot of bids. It is not big enough so those may go pretty quick and you are also talking about the interceptor sewers.
Mr. Belcher said that one is big. That is a good size job so I would expect that we would have several on that one, maybe six or seven possibly on that.
Mr. Whitaker said we will be meeting tomorrow for a pre-bid meeting with the contractors. We will have an addendum coming out after that pre-bid meeting anyway. So, we have already anticipated sending out an addendum. If you would chose to move that one to an earlier time that would not cause an extra effort on our part.
Mr. Kirchoff said so we would do the other three during our regular meeting.
Mr. Belcher said we could just do one of them early and do the other three in the meeting.
Mr. Daniel asked, are you talking about August 9?
Mr. Belcher said yes.
Mr. Daniel asked, what time do you want to do that?
Mr. Kirchoff said 6:30 should be fine shouldn’t it or even 7:00.
Mr. McPhail said let’s move the meeting to 6:30.
Mr. Belcher said that will be simple and get the biggest one out of the way.
OLD BUSINESS
Mr. Fivecoat asked, when are we going to tour the facilities?
Mr. Carlucci said I will send some dates out and see if we can get some consensus.
Mr. McPhail said we talked about it at the last meeting but the contract with operating our utilities. Time is continuing to get shorter. I’m fully convinced that we really need to evaluate what we are doing. I would suggest that we have some kind of resolution at the next meeting in some manner or at least some recommendation to move forward. I had an opportunity to visit with a couple of the plants this past week and ask some questions. I’m more convinced that we need to do something based on that. I really would like to see us get a group together of some kind and move forward with some kind of recommendation of what we need to do in the future.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, when does that expire?
Mr. McPhail said the first of September.
Mr. Brandgard said I think we got started off and got sidetracked a few months ago looking at it.
Mr. McPhail said I know Mr. Castetter has done some work and Mr. Lydick has done some background work on some things so I think we have some data to work with to begin to look at it.
Mr. Brandgard said I agree and Mr. McPhail said he sent me a note saying he would like to be on the committee. Since at the moment I have the water utility and Mr. Fivecoat has the waste treatment utility and Mr. McPhail is somewhat familiar with the waste treatment facility why don’t we appoint Mr. McPhail as the leader with Mr. Fivecoat and myself working with him. And Mr. Castetter and Mr. Lydick have a piece of it and Mr. Belcher has a piece of it. And work with Mr. Carlucci and if we need to bring somebody else in to work on it also, we can. I think it is something that we need to pull together and understand what it is that we have and how to get there. We started looking at it and got diverted with some other events. I don’t think we are going to be able to do much about the September 1st piece of it but we need to get ready for the next piece for the next opportunity.
Mr. Kirchoff said I assume there is some kind of renewal clause in there.
Mr. Daniel said there is but it doesn’t mean you can’t operate on a month-by-month basis.
Mr. Brandgard said part of what we had discussed is trying to get a quarterly meeting between ourselves and WREP. We know what we need to do so we need to do it.
Mr. McPhail said I think WREP is supposed to have a proposal to us. Mr. Castetter do you know when?
Mr. Jason Castetter said this week.
Mr. McPhail said I will move forward then.
Mr. Kirchoff asked, what is our schedule for moving forward with the Hadley Center Street sewer project?
Mr. Belcher said a land acquisition piece is going on right now. I think that is probably the most time consuming and unknown. We don’t have all of the appraisals or offers out.
Mr. Whitaker said the plans are done. Really it is the land acquisition is what we are missing.
Mr. Kirchoff said I don’t know if we have communicated to the neighborhood that it has kind of got pushed back or not. We talked about that a little bit too. We might want to let them know because we said we were going to start July 6 and here we are two/three weeks beyond that.
Mr. Carlucci said I also noticed that one of the big pieces of property down there is for sale, the house and the land.
Mr. Kirchoff said it has been for a while. Mr. Carlucci I know you have been on vacation but what about Glen Haven.
Mr. Carlucci said I didn’t even get a chance to call him since I have been back. I will visit with him.
NEW BUSINESS
Mr. Daniel said as you know, the Town has been negotiating with Centex concerning the provision of water services for the Centex development. I e-mailed a preliminary agreement that I talked to Mr. Price about. He represents Centex and is here this evening. As you may recall, we had a letter in July, a term sheet that the Town reviewed at that time. What we have basically done is taken that term sheet and incorporated it into the preliminary agreement and added some terms that we thought were important to the parties. If the Town is prepared to act upon that, I have copies tonight and you will have to designate someone to sign that on behalf of the Town.
Mr. Brandgard said I think it covers everything that we discussed with Centex.
Mr. McPhail made a motion to approve the preliminary agreement between the Town of Plainfield and Centex Homes and designate Mr. Brandgard as the signatory on behalf of the Town. Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Motion carried.
Mr. Daniel said the second item is last Thursday evening the Avon Town Council took up an interlocal cooperation agreement with the Town of Plainfield and approved that interlocal agreement. I talked to Dan Taylor today because I didn’t have a signed document from the Town of Avon to present to the Town Council this evening for the Council to act on that. He advised me that they did approve that but the copy that he had had a “draft” stamped on it. I have clean copies and mine didn’t have “draft” stamped on them so I have a copy of that interlocal agreement. That has been out since the first week of March and if the Town is prepared to act on that tonight, I have copies of that interlocal cooperation agreement that the Town of Avon approved. Once again if you approve that, you will need a signatory to sign that on behalf of the Town, which includes the Plainfield service territory that was approved by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission. That was an order dated December 31, 2001 and it would provide the manner in which the Town of Plainfield would provide public water services in that territory and in any area that is later annexed by the Town of Avon. If you have questions, I will answer those for you.
Mr. McPhail made a motion to approve the Town of Plainfield and Town of Avon interlocal cooperation agreement regarding water. And that Mr. Brandgard be the signatory on behalf of the Town and instruct legal counsel to hand carry and get it signed before the week out by the signatory in Avon. Second by Mr. Kirchoff. Motion carried.
ADJOURNMENT
Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to sign the necessary documents and adjourn. Second by Mr. McPhail. Motion carried.
Meeting adjourned.
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Mr. Robin G. Brandgard, President
