WARD 1 PITTSBORO INDIANA
Your voice on the Pittsboro town council - I serve you
Be informed, stay involved or be goverened
Current news - Thursday 11.30.23
Agenda for our Tuesday meeting. If you are very observant you will notice a change
in the rules since September last year. I'll let you know Tuesday in case you don't see it.
I want to thank all those who turned out for the advisory planning commission
workshop. Steve Maple said he didn't expect anyone to show up unless they
disagreed with what the APC was proposing.
We might have an opening on the redevelopment commission for next year,
I'm waiting for a legal opinion from our attorney. If the spot is open
I'll let you know in case you are interested.
This article from the TSA has nothing to do with the town but I thought those of you who have PreCheck will find this self service screening option interesting. Too bad it's not up and running yet, it might have helped these 2 gals who were
"late for their flight and were not going to wait in line at security."
Sunday night 11.19.23 - INDOT is changing the speed limit on 136 to 45
on or after tomorrow
.
There is a planning commission workshop at 5 Monday night. This was discussed
at the last APC meeting and will be your chance to give the APC input on
how you want future growth in this area.
The areas outlined in red are owned by one group of owners and the yellow
is Benjamin family farms per Beacon and info given at the APC meeting.
The areas west of Woodridge commons and across Maple street were sold in
September.
This connector road was discussed during the APC meeting, it might be 3 lanes wide feeding both commercial and housing areas or nodes as they were described.
Based on this comment by the town's planning firm it sounds like the town may be stuck with the cost vs a developer.
Jack Swalley said some of these areas would best serve the town by having
apartments and townhomes. The term "variety of housing stock"
was used a few times to describe these higher density uses, along with
senior housing.
Someone set a "goal" of a variety of housing stock. Knowing how
'the town' works I expect this was a consultant who depends on 'the town'
for income. Steve Maple said this is probably 20 years in the future. We
don't have the ability to provide water and sewer service at our current
capacity and maybe planned capacity water wise.
We are still paying Citizen's water about $20,000 a month while waiting
for well #2 to come online.
The IDEM supervisor over our waste water treatment plant has concerns over
expanding service to the area north of 74 when we might not have the ability
to handle it. His comment was "not only are you putting the cart before
the horse, your horse is about to die."
Sunday 11.19.23
Agenda for our Tuesday meeting with 2 public hearings, one for our annual
general obligation (GO) bond and the other to finally get your permission to vacate the easement on Woodland place. Even though state law says we have to hold this public hearing within
30 days of receiving a petition per IC 36-7-3-12 (c), for whatever reason we put this off for almost half a year.
At least we half way obeyed on this petition, the other one I submitted
for a home owner on Karen drive was rejected by Jarod Baker.
I don't have any fire, police nor parks department reports yet. Duke sent this winter bulletin. Instead a link in the email it had a QR code that decoded into a URL
that was long enough to stretch from here to Lizton, so I put the neutered
version here.
I have more stuff about the special public workshop hearing with the APC
to post later today. Stay tuned.
Friday 10.27.23
Scary creature emerges as Halloween approaches!
This is Mark Morphew who works with Chris York at our waste water treatment facility. Chris got a call from Austin at
Cornwell plumbing after he cleared a commercial drain clogged with grease.
I just happened to be riding my bike by the park as Mark and Chris were
checking out this manhole to see if the grease was affecting our pipes,
which it was.
This is what grease looks like after solidifying in a drain. Chris says
there are some residential areas where grease is a much bigger problem
than others, which she attributes to cooking styles of various cultural
backgrounds.
I came across this article on leaf blower bans and thought it would be interesting to get your input on whether Pittsboro should ban them.
Thursday 10.26.23
Revised agenda for our Tuesday meeting.
I need your input on how to vote on this ordinance for new park rules. Number 7 and 12 seem excessive to me. Can you watch
the 4th of July fireworks without loitering? Maybe hopping from one foot
to the other would be a defense.
Some wives would probably say their husbands should be under adult supervision.
Since the signature page has Oct 17 it looks like someone is planning on rushing this through without the normal 1st and 2nd readings.
We have these resolutions for the economic development areas for Steel Dynamics and Fleece.
September fire board, EMS, training and building/zoning reports.Wed 10.11.23
This is the agenda for next weeks meeting. This is the final opportunity to voice any concerns
on our 2024 budget.
I have no clue what is in the budget, we were not told it was done until
our last meeting. For the last 3 years I have been trying to get longevity
pay for our staff, right now only the police officers get it. I posted
a message on the forum for cities and towns and most responses said all
employees are treated equally.
The police asked for a 3% raise on top of the $1,000 a month we gave them
earlier this year, I was hoping we could give that 3% to the hourly workers
in public works and town staff in addition to the 3% allocated for them.
If you noticed the concrete patch on Wall street by hidden hills is now
dirt and gravel that's because hidden hills failed their test for the water
pipes. They had to dig up the patch to put a line into the main feed going
under the street so they can inject chlorine to clean out the system.
They wanted to patch it again but the coring vendor could not give them
a fixed time they would be there so that meant they could not schedule
a concrete truck to be there to fill the hole.
Water plant supervisor Gary Golay watching the excavating crew.
This is the chlorine feed that was attached to the water pipe. The blue
wire is used to locate the pipe by a metal detector.
The island at the entrance to hidden hills was removed after a truck hit
the curb and broke it. Pyatt and the town agreed to let them remove it
since it was a tight entry way and would have probably been damaged again
by more vehicle during construction.
Duke sent this 3rd quarter report. This is the October parks report.
Saturday 9.16.23
Agenda for our Tuesday meeting and a bunch of reports from last month that I'm
just now getting to since most came in after I posted for the August meeting.
INDOT agreement with the town about their work on 136 at Maple street and the map of the new intersection design.
September parks report and GO (general obligation) bond wish list.
July fire department EMS, training division and fire board reports.
July and August building and planning report.
July police commission report and GO bond wish list.
Chief Scott King swore in our 2 newest officers last month, Dustin Eslick
and Rachel Coe.
I didn't put L and R after the names because I figured you guys would figure
out which one is Rachel.
Dustin is new to law enforcement and is in the academy until December.
Rachel came to us from the Brazil PD.
Duke energy sent out these bulletins - summer tips, financial assistance and share the light fund.
Saturday 8.12.23
This is the agenda for our meeting on the 15th.
We had our first budget meeting on Friday the 4th. This is where some of
the department heads give us their proposed budget for 2024. This year
only paper copies were presented and those were given to our financial
consultant so I have no clue how much or what items are being requested.
We should get our local income tax (LIT) revenue amount by the 17th. During
the county council meeting they gave part of the county's LIT to some of
the townships for their fire departments. North Salem will get $109,000
and Lizton about $160,000. North Salem plans to add paid staff during day
shift in 2024, Lizton is staffing day shifts now. This might help our insurance
ISO rating because volunteer departments don't have the point value paid
ones do.
During a commissioners meeting a few weeks ago county auditor Nikki Lawson
said 8 housing additions with 3,000 parcels will be added this year. The
median net assessed value in 2022 was $354,000 and as a result her office
is dealing with lots of appeals.
During last weeks fire territory meeting chief Zeunik said the department's
health insurance cost was dropping by 6% due to some older members retiring
and much younger members being hired. Our town rates are expected to increase
by 10% per his estimate. I expect we'll hear more next week.
Friday 7.7.23
This is the agenda for our meeting on the 18th.
The deer meadows right of way discussion is about this grass easement in
yellow.
This appears to have been left in place to extend Edgewood court eastward.
Since a decision was made not to connect to hidden hills from Woodland
place that meant this lot is basically useless to the town. When the town
vacates the property it is supposed to be split among abutting land owners,
but in our last 2 vacations this did not happen.
I presented my evidence of what looks to be non compliance to the county
for them to follow up on, it's beyond the town's responsibility.
Technically we should be mowing this and the other parcels we own in other
neighborhoods but we don't for whatever reason. I brought this up in previous
meetings. We paid our current mowing vendor over $76,000 last year so we
have the funding to cover it.
I have no info about the food and beverage tax nor the security gates.
Once I get something I'll let you know.
Tuesday 6.20.23
This is a draft of our revised salary ordinance which gives our police officers a $1,000 a month raise starting in July. House enrolled act 1454 allows for TIF (tax increment financing) money to be used for public safety.
I'm disappointed to say it does nothing for our public works folks here
in town. What I will propose is we take the standard 3% we give employees
each year and not give that to the cops so we can add that to the 3% the
public works guys get.
You may have noticed we paved Maple street just south of town and 375E
to where it meets the county's part of the road.
We have a crushed stone shoulder on the sides to help prevent tire drop
off, but in the curves on 375E you can see where people have short cut
the corners and spread rocks all over our nice new asphalt.
CR150E on the west side of Steel Dynamics was also done.
Thursday 6.15.23
This is the agenda for our meeting next Tuesday. Tuesday 5.30.23
Both the chicken and short term rental resolutions were discussed and tabled
at the advisory planning commission meeting last week. Our consultant is
going to address the issues raised, dropping the 75' distance from the
property line to 25' was one.
Trash day was moved from Tuesday to Monday for Whispering fields to shorten
the time needed for the Tuesday route. Ray noticed the truck was low on
hydraulic fluid but never found a leak. He figured out the truck must not
have been filled when we took possession and that's why the system had
about 1500 pounds less pressure.
The community garage sale is June 8-10, the sign up sheet is on our town website
We have a broken sewer line somewhere. Mark was removing debris from the
screen that traps this stuff from the system and found this rock last week
and then found a piece of PVC pipe.
If anyone sees a sinkhole forming or even worse a geyser of liquid please call our sanitation dept at 892.3326.
One of our neighbors has a sinkhole here in quail creek. Mark and Chris
came out and filled it with sand and it washed out in just a few days.
This hole is in line with a storm sewer they think is broken. Our old video
camera system is broken, as soon as we get our new one they will scope
it out to see where it leads.
The pipeline guys were busy in north park last week installing a cathodic
protection system. This system uses current flowing from a power supply
to the pipe at one end and an electrode buried 270' deep. This current
flow prevents the natural electron flow between the pipe and earth which
corrodes the pipe. The crew was hoping for 300' but hit rock instead.
The guy I talked to said they hit lots of clay, that probably accounts
for why Pittsboro was a swamp before settlers moved in. He said they hit
lots of sand in Michigan which makes it hard to keep the hole clear. I
imagine that area was under the great lakes many thousands of years ago
which would account for the sand.
The crew was also in the first fairway of quail creek golf course after
their equipment detected something wrong with the pipe's thickness. This
is usually corrosion and would have affected the course in case the ground
needed to be dug up to make repairs.
Fortunately the defect turned out to be this piece of metal from an excavator
bucket that was resting on the pipe. The hole was filled in and the course
is back to normal.
Monday 5.23.23
The APC (advisory planning commission) will be discussing and voting on modifying our zoning rules that could ban chickens and short term housing rentals. They meet Tuesday at 6.00 pm.
It's interesting to note the fine for having chickens in violation of the
proposed rules is much stiffer than violating the rental rules. I don't
see any fines for rentals vs $600 per day if your yard is under 150' wide
and 150' deep and you have chickens. Fail to pay and you go to jail per
the penalty paragraph on page 3.
It looks like attorney Jim Buddenbaum has done a 180 on APC membership.
The law says
"(1) The municipal legislative body shall appoint 3 persons, who must
be elected or appointed municipal officials or employees in the municipal
government, as members.
(2) The municipal executive shall appoint 4 citizen members, of whom no
more than two (2) may be of the same political party."
These are our current members.
Jarod Baker - Elected Official
Jack Swalley - Town Employee
Steve Maple - Town Employee
Cathy Vandivier - Citizen
Don Joiner - Citizen
Lisa Abbott Porch - Citizen
Zach Buchanan - Town Employee but acting as a citizen
When I brought this up last year Jason Love resigned so Jack Swalley could
stay on. He was a citizen member but then we hired him so that made 4 employees.
Jim agreed with me then but now appears to say Zach can pretend he's only
a citizen.
This is one of the reasons I never vote to keep using Parr Richey as our
law firm. For $115,000 a year I expect better.
Sunday 5.21.23
Brownsburg will be working on the traffic signals at 56th and Raceway on
Tuesday from 11 am to 2 pm.
Week one of our trash pick up went pretty well, our guys really hustled
to get through after Monday. It turned out the routes Jason picked based
on approximate size from aerial photos did not take into account the smaller
spacing between homes in some areas and the number of families with kids
which meant more trash per stop.
We still have some hydraulic problems that limit our ability to compact
trash. The rep from the truck vendor will be out again this week to work
on it. Ray and Jake ended up making 3 trips to the dump per day versus
one as planned. They even skipped lunch a few days to keep on schedule.
We are very fortunate to have people willing to devote this kind of effort
to our town. I expect Jason and Ray will modify our route schedule, we
may end up with a Friday route. Once they get the pressure issue fixed
we can get more volume per load which could reduce the number of dump trips.
Tuesday 5.16.23
Here are fire chief Zeunik's fire dept and EMS reports. This is the building and planning report.
Brownsburg will be closing US 136 on the east side of town June 1. INDOT is putting in a traffic light at
CR550E.
https://entapps.indot.in.gov/dotmaps/nlri/
Estimated completion is 4th quarter this year.
Updated Monday 5.15.23
This is the revised map for the trails from our consulting firm. Their estimated cost for project management is $299,900.00.
This is police chief King's report for May, he did not include any stats on the Flock cameras.
Wall street will be closed between deer meadows and quail creek Tuesday
through Thursday so the hidden hills contractor can run a 8" water
line under the road. Normally they would horizontal bore but there is a
high pressure gas line and fiber optic cable which makes it too difficult
to work around.
Day 1 of our trash service went off pretty well. The vendor for the truck
showed up at our public works yard after he found some issues with hydraulic
pressure settings on a truck he sold to another town. Very heads up of
him to come in and make adjustments after the guys finished north park
and quail creek.
He then followed the truck through deer meadows and rode with the guys
to the dump to make sure they did not have any problems there.
Our guys had their first encounter with trash that contained human poop,
apparently some folks use different disposal methods they brought with
them from their native country.
In this case PU does not mean the college up I-65.
Thursday 5.11.23
This is the agenda for our meeting next week.
CR900E will be closing permanently Tuesday May 23 from 600N to 750N. This
is the start of the Ronald Reagan parkway extension. Highway superintendent
Curt Higgenbotham sent this detour map.Monday 5.1.23
Neither the Republican nor the Icon ran my answers to their questions to print in their election guides. What
are the odds the only primary or party caucus candidate in recent history
to have a challenger for the ward 1 seat on the town council would be left
out of both newspapers while the other candidate has his published?
These are my responses to the Republican and Icon.
This is the list of voting sites open tomorrow, the closest for us is the Pittsboro Christian church on
Maple street next to Eric Bell's funeral home.
During church service last week we heard from pastor Joe that Eric is out of the hospital and recovering at home. Eric is looking to coming back to work on light duty according to pastor Joe. I asked if light duty for an undertaker meant only burying people 3' instead of 6.
Wednesday 4.26.23
The new Lizton recycle center opened today at 11. It's just north of 74
on the west side of SR39.
Hours are Tuesday and Thursday 9-6, Wednesday 1-7 and Saturday 9-3, closed major holidays. There will be an attendant on duty, 2 are neighbors of ours in quail creek. For more info call 317.858.6070 or see their website.
Bins are labeled so you need to pay attention when sorting items. They
do not take shredded paper, it jams up the sorting machines, just put it
in the trash. This area is gated and locked to prevent illegal waste dumping.
Someone dropped off an RV at the old site, that helped prompt this new
site.
This site was a Phillips 66 station until 2008 when a tank was found to
be leaking. This site was partly funded by a $65,000 grant from IDEM. The
old site east of the Lizton fire station will be shut down soon. This will
help eliminate trash from blowing through town. Some of the recycled paper
goes to Whitestown to be processed and ends up at a paper mill in Valparaiso.
Last week I was doing some research on vacated properties and came across an amendment to the ordinance that established our town's agreement with Middle township
to make our fire territory. This grants us indemnification from any claims
by third parties against the town for actions by the fire department.
I sent this to Jim Buddenbaum to see if this would get us out of the tort
claims from the Walmart fire I mentioned in September last year. He agreed
it should and passed it on to our insurance company for them to handle.
Wednesday 4.19.23
Early voting opened in Brownsburg at the library at 450 S Jefferson St.
Hours are 2 pm-7 pm Wednesday and Thursday,
10 am-2 pm Friday and Saturday.
Hidden hills update - the contractors are preparing to move dirt to the
south side of Wall street east of the Masonic lodge to form the base for
the right turn lane. Watch for workers stopping traffic as the earth movers
and graders operate their equipment.
The crew has to avoid hitting utility pipes and lines running next to the
street. The guy in the left photo is using a high pressure water jet to
loosen the dirt which is sucked out by the large vacuum pipe and hose.
They put the pipes in the holes
and mark the depth so they know what the limits are.
The photo below shows the 6" high pressure gas line that caused some
design changes due to it being about 4' below grade versus the assumed
deeper depth.
Trash news - We got our new truck and plan on picking up trash with our
crew on Monday May 15.
We have split the town into 4 routes from Monday through Thursday. Holidays
will push us back a day.
This page has the schedule and routes.
Friday 4.14.23
This is the agenda for our Tuesday meeting.
According to Beacon the Hudson farm south of Main street on the east side of town was sold last month. Jack Swalley has heard an event center is planned for part of the ground. This is part of the area MI homes wanted to develop back in March 2021.
Hendricks power announced a rate increase and changed the peak billing time of day. The new peak rate about doubles
to
21 cents per kWhr from 5-8 pm weekdays and they have a new super off peak
rate at just under 6 cents from 11 pm to 5 am.
Jason Love said our trash truck should be in Monday. He hired a guy to
ride the back but since he's pretty sharp Jason decided to put him in public
works and had an interview scheduled for the trash picker upper spot.
Linda and I talked to a Poplar drive resident who uses trash bins to keep
cats and other critters from tearing into her bags at night. You can keep
using those if you want.
Purdue came up with this tornado response and recovery site after the storms hit Indiana earlier this month. I have not read it yet. I have watched several FEMA videos on their youtube channel. This one with Dennis Mileti is really good.
Sunday 4.2.23
Duke energy sent this out last week.
Duke Energy request to reduce fuel electric rate approved by Indiana regulators
Decrease averages 16%, or $26 a month, for average residential customer
On March 29, the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission approved Duke Energy Indiana’s request to lower bills due to declining fuel and purchased power costs. For an average residential Duke Energy customer in Indiana using 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month, it means a decrease of approximately 16% over rates today, or $26 a month. That is on top of a 5% decrease that went into effect in January. There are varying levels of rate decreases for other customers, including businesses and municipalities.
Customer electric bills were higher in 2022 primarily due to soaring fuel costs that affected the cost of power utilities produced as well as what they purchased on the energy markets. A number of unique events drove up fuel costs—from volatility in the energy markets worldwide to labor shortages at railroads that delivered fuel.
Fuel and purchased power can account for as much as 25 to 45% of an average residential customer’s bill, so when the markets are volatile, it can have a big impact on energy bills. We’re starting to see costs stabilize and are glad to be able to pass those savings along to customers.
The decrease will be in effect April-June. Four times a year, utilities adjust prices based on fluctuating fuel costs. Fuel rate adjustments are not permanent; fuel costs rise and fall, and utilities pass those costs to our customers with no profit, so customers pay what their utility provider pays. Duke Energy’s priority is to purchase fuel at the best possible price, through steps such as long-term contracts and using a diversity of suppliers. Customers can view a short video here about how fuel costs affect their bills.
Bill assistance resources
Energy costs can be a major part of household budgets, and Duke Energy offers a variety of assistance options for customers:
· Interest-free installment plans-- Customers can contact the company at 800.521.2232 to learn more.
· Energy and bill management programs, including Budget Billing and Usage
Alerts that let a customer know when their bill may be higher than normal
so they can make adjustments. The company also has a host of energy efficiency
programs, including free home energy assessments. Customers can learn more
about these programs and others at
Lower My Bill ToolKit.
· Each year, through shareholder contributions and customer donations, Duke Energy dedicates funds for customers in need through its Share the Light program. The company recently announced $300,000 in available assistance funds for distribution through statewide community action agencies. A list of agencies can be found at Energy Assistance.
This is the agenda for our Tuesday meeting. More info coming over the weekend after I get
a chance to look at AIM's latest summary of laws pending under the gold
dome in downtown Indy.
Tuesday 3.21
I've been doing research on backyard chickens and found these rules from Ellettsville, Kirklin and this info on Purdue's site. Since we need to change our UDO this ordinance needs to be tabled until
the APC votes.
Here are the reports from the parks, police and building departments.
This is Jim Buddenbaum's proposal to continue using Parr Richey for legal services. Last time the council approved this I voted no because the rest of the council refused to look at other firms and possible cost savings.
Sunday 3.19.23
Here is the agenda for our Tuesday meeting and public hearing on the Dan Keers tax abatement
application. It was interesting during our economic development presentation
last meeting that the lady from Ginovus thought a 75/50/25 abatement over
3 years was a great idea. This was only for real property and no personal.
What we have proposed is the same one you had me vote against last summer, a free ride for 3 years followed by a declining schedule for 5 more. We have this resolution to amend our abatement and TIF applications which allow for real and personal property abatements. These
amendments increase our fees from $500 to $1,500.
Please let me and and or your other members know how to vote. Any response to this email or the council is public record.
I also have this private address if you prefer it.
During the past few meetings your responses to me have been questioned
by Jarod Baker. He never reveals who emails him demanding these new laws
but wants to know why you object to them or your opinions on other issues.
Zach basically said if you don't show up and identify yourself you don't
count in his opinion.
It turns out the money your tax dollars went into making an ordinance to regulate chickens is on hold because our UDO (unified development ordinance) prohibits them on lots that don't have 200' between the property line and the pen or cage.
Let us know how you feel about this ordinance allowing chickens. I'm not sure why roosters are outlawed, I guess they don't come under the diversity, inclusion and equity banner of equal rights.
We now have this ordinance to repeal section 7.2 and this one to establish health savings accounts for our staff.
I have more stuff to post tomorrow I have not had time to study yet.
Sunday 3.5.23
This is the agenda for our workshop and meeting on Tuesday. We are going to have an hour
long presentation on best practices for economic development. These are
usually TIF districts. From my research these can be beneficial if done
properly but as we found out from the Steel Dynamics TIF it can be very
painful.
We have this ordinance change which deals with raising/lowering or keeping chickens.
We also have this ordinance to apply an economic revitalization area for more of Dan Keer's lots in Ark park.
Sorry I did not get this out sooner but I was in a 3 day active shooter response class in Plainfield and then took advantage of the nice sunny weather today for a 27 mile bike ride. The B+O trail is expanding west from 500E and has been paved to 400E. The west side has a gravel base and looks to be waiting for asphalt.
Linda and I walked to Whispering fields this morning, check out the high water mark from Friday's rain.
Yesterday the class was live simulated mass shootings with volunteers playing
the roles of shooter and victims with fake gunshot wounds. During our last
scenario the run was dispatched as a mass shooting at Ben Davis high. Some
of the firefighters in our rescue task force are Wayne township firefighters
who cover this area.
They laughed and said "there are enough students carrying guns there
it will be over before we show up."
Tuesday 2.21.23
I reviewed our April 2022 meeting where we talked about and voted on our
website contract. Civic plus is charging $3300 a year vs about $1000 for
Immense Impact after a $500 setup fee. In my previous post I said they
were $2000 due to faulty memory (mine, not my laptop's).
Bill, Jarod and I were for the less expensive vendor until we got input
from staff on uploading data to the site.
Steve Maple said Civic was much easier and "April could take care
of everything over here".
If we accept the $450 a month proposal that could more than double our
total website costs to $10,138 since the police pay Immense $1438 a year.
I volunteered to help update the site but so far that offer has been ignored.
I asked our school superintendent if they taught any classes in web coding
to see if we could get students involved. He is going to get with the Tri
West high principal.
I put short videos of this discussion for you to view.
Thanks to all who replied to my last email.
Sunday 2.19.23
This agenda for our Tuesday meeting has the proposal to farm out the town's website
updates to a vendor. Back when we discussed changing our hosting and content
provider I pointed out how high our rates were and was not in favor of
spending $3,000 a year compared to the $2,000 a year site.
I don't feel we should be forking out more money when the whole premises
of moving to a new hosting vendor was making it easier for our department
heads to update the site. Now we're being lead to believe no one has the
time to do this even though we hired someone to help Shari and Kate in
town hall.
We have 2 town staff members on medical leave, I'm sure they can learn
the process to post items to our site and social media. We have 2 folks
active in our building department but last year we only issued 3 building
permits after 92 in 2021 so that could be another means of updating.
What I want to hear from you guys is whether or not this extra $450 a month is worth it to you.
The AIM folks are bent out of shape over house bill 1085. According to their recent email
"... would require incremental revenue from TIF to be passed to school
corporations in the
allocation area to be used for career and technical education (CTE) programs
for all new TIFs going forward.
It would also add a member of the local school board to the redevelopment
commission
as a voting member. It also requires revenue in excess of 200% of the debt service obligations of the
RDC to be immediately spent, saved for a specific infrastructure project, or
passed back to the underlying units.
This week the bill was amended to reduce the amount of automatic passthrough
to underlying school corporations. Aim continues to oppose this bill because
it would still significantly restrict the flexibility of TIF and its ability
to effectively finance large economic development projects."
How many of you ever got a check from your government or a developer for
profits from these development projects? We are constantly being told
'spend a few million now and it will come back to you many times over in
X number of years.'
I lived in Speedway for years, almost every May the local for-profit content
providers masquerading as news media pushed stories about the millions
of dollars the 500 generates for the town, Indy and the state, but Tony
George never managed to send me a check.
AIM is also concerned about HB1499 which in their opinion
"currently provides additional property tax limits in most aspects
of the property tax system for the next two years starting in 2024
including: lowering the 1% homestead property tax cap to 0.95%, capping levy
growth at 3% per year, increasing the standard and supplemental homestead
deductions, and causing any project that pushed debt service levies over
0.4% into the controlled projects statute that triggers referendum to
approve the project. It also allows counties to voluntarily provide property
tax credits or rebates in 2023."
Just imagine the chaos if you the taxpayer were allowed to limit how much
you pay in property taxes by requiring your government to spend money wisely.
I updated my miscellaneous page with our holiday trash schedule. Based on how things have been going since Ray's sold out I was tempted to color every day green for no service. Robin sent me the events schedule for our parks and
I got the voting locations and dates and candidates list for the May 2 primary from the county. You guys will have a choice for ward 1 again.
Monday 2.6.23
This is our agenda for tomorrows meeting. Sorry I didn't get this out sooner, I got back from X games on Wednesday and had to prep for a class I'm teaching this week.
One of the items we discussed recently was limiting our discussion time
to 10 minutes per topic and limiting public input to 2 minutes per person.
I don't want to make any limits on your input if you are uncomfortable
with this since in theory we are there to serve you and not us.
We have this park impact fee study and proposed ordinance along with a website and social media updating proposal.
Tuesday 1.17.23
Shari sent this revised agenda out late last week but I missed it.
I see changing meeting dates was added as old business even though we changed it last meeting and I thought were done with it.
Last month I got a bulletin from the state board of accounts reminding elected officials they must sign and file a nepotism form by Dec 31. I also found this in our admin code.
-----------------------
Each elected official shall annually, by December 31 of each year, certify in writing, subject to the penalties for perjury, and on the form attached, that the officer has not violated
this section, I.C. 36-1-20.2 et seq. or 36-1-21 et seq.
----------------------
I did not read this until the 28th so I emailed Jim Buddenbaum to see if I needed to comply. On the 30th he said he'd look into it but I never got a response.
I asked him again today, he said he replied to Jarod but not me. Jarod asked us not to comply with the law until Jim looked into it.
I did a web search and could not find a form to submit, I was not going to comply with Jarod's request. I don't work for him, I work for you and I swore an oath office to obey the law.
I got a copy of North Salem's form at their January meeting. I emailed
Shari on Jan 6 to get our copy per ordinance 2012-8, she never sent it.
I got it today after a 2nd request.
This will be an interesting discussion tonight.Sunday 1.15.23
We are having a council meeting Tuesday even thought we didn't plan on
it at our first meeting this year.
Here is the agenda. I will be on zoom, I'm working with ESPN in Aspen at X games.
Wednesday 12.28.22
We have some terms expiring this year for advisory planning commission,
park board, board of zoning appeals and police commission. If you are interested
in serving send an email to let us know. We will be filling these spots during our meeting next
week. So far the people filling those spots are willing to be reappointed
but there is no requirement we do so.
We have one person on 2 commissions and another on 3, I'd like to see more
diversity. There are no requirements other than being a Pittsboro resident.
Most groups meet monthly except for the BZA which is on an as needed schedule.
Thursday 12.22.22
Good news from Chris York, our new pump is in and working. The old one
is in very good shape for 25 years old so it should be able to be rebuilt.
Our north park lift station now has a radar based system to monitor the
water level and activate the pump instead of mechanical floats which require
maintenance and can and have failed. If the float fails it usually means
the pump will burn up because it does not get the shutoff signal and keeps
running.
Eventually all lift stations will have these, we have 2 now and one is
on order. Chris gets text messages with level and pump activity alerts
which is much more efficient than driving to each site.
INDOT has recently updated the website with traffic cameras to show real
time video and still photos coming from snow plows.
Check out https://511in.org
Here is the agenda for our meeting on the 3rd.
Linda and I hope you all have a merry Christmas or happy Hanukkah.
Mon 12.12.22
Jeff Gordon is open, the bypass is closed.
I don't know why the sign crew left the arrow sign up instead of pulling
it down or at least laying it down, you can see them sitting in their truck
on the west side of the bypass. Maybe the guys that remove the signs are
not the same ones who moved the barrels out of the way. Must be a government
rule...
This is our new culvert.
The pump in one of our waste water clarifiers is failing, Chris York thinks
a seal leaked so the thermal limit switch is turning the motor off when
it gets too hot. Our vendor thinks he has located one here in the US that
we can have in under 2 weeks, otherwise we will probably need to order
from the manufacturer in Sweden.
If they have one in stock we're looking at around a 5 week delivery unless
they can convince Santa to put it in his sleigh in 2 weeks.
This is about $14,000 to replace but we are on year 25 with the current
one so we got our money's worth. The good thing about dying this time of
year is our flow through the plant is only 50% capacity, so having one
clarifier down won't affect us unless everyone gets diarrhea.
Chris has to pump about 300,000 gallons of yuck into the good unit, she's
hoping our electrician can bypass the limit switch and allow the bad pump
to run long enough to empty the unit.
If it can't do that I may be looking for volunteers for a bucket brigade. Bring nose plugs.
If the pump can be rebuilt we'll do that so it can be placed in the other
clarifier which is the same age and will probably fail soon.
Thu 12.1.22
This is the agenda for our Tuesday meeting.
The food truck ordinance is not on it, hopefully I will have an update
for you before our Jan meeting.
I talked to the county health department about this, Lisa Chandler said
she thinks this all started with a bar in Danville complaining about a
truck setting up outside the bar. I guess the bar felt the truck was stealing
customers.
This site has a list of food inspection reports for Pittsboro.
This site shows mobile vendors.
Lisa said they don't see mobile trucks having more problems than fixed
sites.
The county has issued 81 permits this year, up from 55 in 2018. I asked
about regulating food delivery drivers since it appears there is no control
over the food once it leaves the restaurant, the state has no rules on
this.
I stopped in to see John Ayres today after attending the local emergency
planning committee meeting, he said the Jeff Gordan project should be done
in the next 3 to 4 weeks. The construction crew was scheduled to pour concrete
today but they failed a compaction test so the pour has been pushed back.
John said he hopes it will be Friday or Saturday, the asphalt plants are
still open so that's in our favor.
Saturday 11.12.22
Linda and I walked to Scamahorn park this morning to help Keith Gurley and our young Marines honor our veterans.
Marine staff sergeant Walter Townsend, in the tan pants, gave a brief talk
to the attendees. The sergeant is a 2 time purple heart winner.
Jeff Gordon blvd update - during the commissioners meeting on Wednesday
our county engineer said construction is progressing but they are worried
about delays with concrete deliveries. If there are no delays and the weather
holds up the project should be done this year. If the asphalt plants shut
down for cold weather then we will still be using the bypass road until
the plants open next year.
Hopefully the good Lord will give us more weather like Thursday and not
today.
Monday 11.7.22
The agenda for next weeks meeting has the revised food truck ordinance set for a vote. I've looked at this 3 times now and still feel it's way too restrictive and is being done as a feel good project for the person who dreamed it up.
I doubt it would hold up in court since it gives a pass on fees to non
profits, I don't see how we can be so biased towards private property owners.
The document we got from our attorney has some technical errors that I'm
not going to bother sending him to correct since we are $20,000 over our
legal budget for this year. See the first line on page 3 of our spending
vs budget report. I marked areas I noted we are over budget in red boxes. Use control shift
+ to rotate it to the right.
Jarod Baker is upset I bring this up in public. He spent $2,300 of your
money trying to see if I can be a town council rep while owning a 2nd house
in Arizona.
There is a reason I have a Kyle Martin for council sign in my yard, he cares about our town and wants to keep the small community feel most of you have told me you desire to keep.
Saturday 10.29.22
The main topic on Tuesday's agenda is passing our 2023 budget. We also have a food truck ordinance up for review and vote and the one to vacate the west end of Stamford in Ashton park.
I don't know what prompted the food truck ordinance, I have problems with
preventing private property owners from having trucks on their land. I
can see the need to keep them of public streets to avoid congestion and
people crossing outside of marked walkways.
I don't have any concerns about vacating the land, we don't anticipate
connecting Ashton park to Maple street.
Feel free to email your council so we know how to vote on these issues.
Sun 10.16.22
General obligation bond ordinance
Additional appropriation resolution
I just glanced at these and have not had time to dive into them yet.
Sat 10.15.22
Here is the agenda for our Tuesday meeting.
I got deployed by HHS for hurricane Ian relief on the 1st and have been
in Ft Meyers since the 2nd. We work 12 to 16 hour shifts for 14 days and
I extended 2 more to help out so I have not been riding in your neighborhoods
to get your feedback on how your council is treating you.
I will post the proposed budget ordinances tomorrow.
Tuesday 9.20.22
I forgot to send our 2023 budget on Sunday, we are having our public hearing on this tonight.
Here is Scott King's police report, waiting for the fire department reports.
Sunday 9.18.22
This the agenda for our Tuesday meeting. We will be discussing the hose meter ordinance
and how we are going to give credit for water use not sent to our waster
water plant. In a previous meeting I pointed out what the town has been
doing is not what our ordinance requires, which is to bring the meter in
at the end of the year for a final reading.
The town has also been giving credit outside the specific time limits in
the law. We will be discussing other ideas Tuesday. Some cities use a flat
rate based on fall and winter use because that is the most accurate measurement
of water going into the waste water system since few users are watering
lawns or washing cars in that time frame.
We will discuss and vote on vacating Lee drive and this right of way the town owns. Lee drive was planned as a dead end street but for some
reason never got developed. When we first figured out over a year ago this
is town land I suggested we sell the trees to a lumber company but either
we never got quotes or no one pushed the idea.
Please let your council know if you want us to vacate these lots, you can email all of us by using council@townofpittsboro.org.
Our town and fire department got notice of tort claims from the Walmart
warehouse fire, one letter mentions $100 million and the other says it's
in excess of $5 million. Every department that responded is listed. Our
attorney should have an update on this during the meeting, it looks like
anyone who showed up to help is being blamed for the total loss of the
building and contents.
Here are the police K9 reports for August and Riley and Zara and Robin's parks report.
We will also vote on amending our fees for items in our unified development ordinance.
Friday 9.2.22
This is the agenda for our Tuesday meeting.
The main topic will be vacating this parcel in the west end of Ashton park. This road stub was probably planned for
extension to Maple street just like rights of way in other neighborhoods.
For some odd reason about half of the back yards in the homes on the west
edge of this street are Middle township and not Pittsboro according to
the GIS system.
I got this note from Duke energy about price increases. Linda and I went to the Hendricks power coop meeting in July, I don't recall them mentioning any increases. Linda's knobby knees made the front cover photo in the August Hendricks power newsletter.
Sunday 8.21.22
I talked to the contractor doing the earth moving in hidden hills this
week, he expects to be done in October. I didn't realize how much effort
goes into moving and compacting dirt. Some sections are hard to scrape
down and others have soil so loose it has to be compacted, disced and compacted
again. Once the streets and pads are finished the pipe laying crews move
in.
Pyatt sent me this plat map showing their proposed change to the entrance, due to the high pressure
gas line being only 4' deep they will move the entrance to across from
our public works yard.
The existing eastbound lane will become a left turn lane for westbound
traffic into hidden hills. New eastbound lanes will be built, one for right
turns into hidden hills and one for through traffic.
Here are the police K9 reports for July and Riley and Zara, the fire dept operations and medical runs.
Thursday 8.11.22
Here is the agenda for our next council meeting.
Tuesday 8.9.22
Pyatt started construction on hidden hills last week so be aware of construction
traffic turning into this entrance they just made on Wall street by the
big maple tree.
There is utility work on the shoulder of Jeff Gordon just north of Wall
street, this in preparation for the bypass road that will be built to the
west so the culvert over the Thompson Schultz ditch can be replaced. This
work is scheduled to start mid September.
In case you were not aware county counsel member Kendall Hendricks died Saturday morning while out walking. I was riding my bike past as
Brownsburg and our firefighters were performing CPR. Kendall was a great
asset to the county and will be missed.
Saturday 7.30.22
Here is the agenda for our Tuesday meeting.
The presentation on TIFs should be interesting. This presentation is from the DLGF site. It has links at the end but the formatting is screwed up so I have to get those fixed later on.
This email is from Todd Rokita's office about our portion of the settlement from the opioid case, looks like about $1200 for this year.
Tuesday 7.19.22
Here are chief King's police and K9 activity reports along with chief Zeunik's medical and fire reports.
This report is from IMPA, the folks we buy electrical power from.
Didn't see many of you guys out during last night's bike ride but I did
get to pet 6 dogs so that made up for it.
Our clarifier is working again, turned out the install crew had put a piece
on backwards. Two things we males hate to do are ask for directions and
read the manual first.
Howard Paving put the final layer of asphalt down in Jefferson Park yesterday,
it was interesting to watch the level of attention and detail the crew
put into filling the material right to the edge of the curb. They have
operators on each side of the grader who make small changes to the width
of the spreader as it moves along.
This came from Duke a few weeks ago and slide to the back of my pile of stuff.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You may have seen recent national and state news coverage about the reliability of power supplies this summer. We thought you might want some background on:
· what Duke Energy Indiana does to prepare for periods of high electric demand;
· our membership in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, the regional power coordinator; and
· how an energy emergency may affect customers.
Preparations for when power is needed most
We prepare carefully year-round to meet electric demand during extreme
weather – whether the heat of summer or the cold of winter. First, we do
comprehensive, long-term planning to ensure adequate power reserves. We
also do advance maintenance on our power units in the spring and fall before
times of higher electric demand to help ensure our power generation is
ready for the summer and winter.
Our meteorologists track weather, and our system operators monitor the
electric power system 24/7 to keep an eye on power demand and supplies.
We also have robust, voluntary programs such as PowerShare® that contractually
require our participating customers to reduce their power usage in exchange
for incentives that help lower their overall electric costs.
This program is deployed as a first layer of defense and when it’s most
needed on the system. We are active in the power markets and make arrangements
to supplement our own power generation when needed with power purchases
from the MISO market. Finally, we are investing in the electric grid –
the power delivery system of power lines and substations – to strengthen
it against extreme weather and improve the reliability of our power delivery.
Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO)
The electric grid is interconnected, and Duke Energy Indiana operates as a region through MISO, an independent, not-for-profit, member-based organization responsible for operating the electric power grid across 15 U.S. states and the Canadian province of Manitoba. Duke Energy Indiana has been part of MISO for more than two decades. As a grid operator, MISO's role is to ensure the right amount of electricity is generated minute by minute and transmitted safely and reliably across high-voltage transmission lines. Local utilities, which own the power generating facilities, are responsible to deliver the electricity to their customers.
Through MISO’s transmission system planning processes, MISO works to ensure
generation resources can be used to efficiently serve electric demand across
a broad and diverse geographic area. The large size of MISO reduces the
likelihood of extreme weather conditions existing in the entire geographic
footprint. That allows member utilities to access other companies’ power
generation resources during times when they need power. It also provides
an avenue for power sales when they have a surplus.
MISO’s size also has advantages in that it can more easily absorb an event such as a power generating station going offline. In a regional transmission organization such as MISO, there are far more avenues to import power from other regions than a stand-alone utility would have. There also are benefits of increased access to renewable energy, such as wind to the west and hydro power in Manitoba. You can learn more about MISO here.
Electric Emergencies
Organizations, such as Duke Energy Indiana and MISO, operate under federally mandated standards that require us to keep the high-voltage system secure, without harming critical components such as power generators and transformers. If certain conditions are met, MISO may require member utilities in a region to take specific actions. Except under rare circumstances, this has no noticeable impact on the customer.
Recent news coverage has focused on the most extreme event – requiring
utilities to temporarily interrupt service to some of its customers to
protect the system. Utility equipment, as well as customer-owned equipment
and appliances, can be seriously damaged by voltage problems that occur
if customer demand is exceeding supply on the electric system, and uncontrolled
blackouts could happen if the system collapses.
That’s why in the event of power shortages during an extreme weather event,
MISO may direct its member utilities to reduce power demand on their systems
through temporary, controlled power interruptions in order to ensure the
electric grid remains stable. If this would ever occur, utilities would
try to limit impact on customers as much as possible. Controlled service
interruptions such as this are an absolute last resort.
Prior to this step, there would likely be voluntary calls for power conservation to try and balance demand with supplies on the electric grid. Voluntary conservation can have a critical impact and can help utilities avoid having to interrupt service. In those instances, we would reach out to the public and, in particular, large industries and power users asking for conservation.
In addition to power supply emergencies, utilities also may need to take emergency steps due to power transmission problems. The steps associated with transmission emergencies are similar to those taken for power supply emergencies. Transmission emergencies are usually, but not always, associated with a specific geographic area, or larger municipality. If enough of the power lines delivering power to a particular area are lost, for example during a storm, the remaining lines are in danger of becoming overloaded. This can be compounded by high energy usage and electric demand. Because severe overloads also can damage equipment, transmission system operators such as Duke Energy take mitigating actions. Temporary, targeted, service interruptions are used to protect both the area’s electric infrastructure as well as customer-owned equipment and appliances.
Utilities such as Duke Energy have multiple tools to help avoid power emergencies. We know that reliability of our service is essential, and we’re committed to ensuring it.
Wednesday 7.13.22
Here is the agenda for our meeting on Tuesday. I was able to confirm my estimate of $9,336
in abatements for building 2 based on the SB-1 improvement value of $476,000.
I calculated the school system's loss at $37,000.
I emailed the school superintendent about the abatement requests, he was
unaware that this was going on.
We finally got the parts we needed to repair the arm in our 2nd clarifier
and once the install crew started putting it together realized we were
short 2 long threaded rods. The guys ended up engineering a workaround
and got the arm started about 9 Wednesday morning.
Jason went over later and noticed the arm needs some adjusting so the tank
is shut down until the install crew returns on Thursday to make some final
adjustments.
The shiny black frame at the bottom of this photo, the arm at the top and the connecting rods are the new bits.
I shot some video of how this arm works and will upload it later today.
It's an interesting process.
While I was at the county commissioner's meeting Tuesday I asked county
auditor and former Quail Creek resident Nancy Marsh about house enrolled act 1002 that took effect July 1 regarding tax breaks for steel mills. This law
allows mills like Steel Dynamics more tax breaks on business personal property.
I'm waiting to see how much if any this will affect our income.
Sunday 7.10.22
We got word late Friday that Jones development has pulled out of their
agreement with the land owners north of 74 to build out the warehouse industrial
park. They felt constructions costs were too high for them to make a profit.
I will check with Jason and Eric Wathan to see if we need to continue extending
a waste water sewer line to this area now that our potential customers
have disappeared. I suspect the growth at any cost folks in town will come
up with an alternate plan.
I emailed the auditor's office a few weeks ago to see how much the tax
abatement for Ark Park LLC building 1 will cost us. I have not heard back
to confirm my estimate of $9,000 over the 8 years the rest of the council
allowed.
Tuesday 7.5.22
Just got these resolutions from the attorney for us to vote on tonight. This public hearing notice and resolution are for the second building in Ark Park. This resolution will set our fees for abatement and TIF applications. I have my doubts
$500 is a reasonable fee, that seems low considering the legal hoops we
have to jump through to make this happen.
Sunday 7.3.22
Here is the agenda for our Tuesday meeting. I'm out of town on a federal deployment so I
wasn't able to be there for the parade today but Linda was able to get
this photo of parade organizer Keith Gurley.
Keith is the one wearing sunglasses.
Banning engineering was on Wall street last week checking out the high
pressure gas pipeline to verify its depth. 
The pipe is 4' deep, Pyatt needed to verify this since the turn lane from
eastbound Wall street into Hidden Hills will run over this area.
Sunday 6.19.22
Here is the agenda for our Tuesday meeting. Sorry I didn't get this out earlier but Linda
and I were on vacation last week and today is wedding anniversary #13 so
I paid more attention to her today than this site.
These links have abatements in our county for real property and personal property taxes. My math shows about $123 million in personal and $481 million in
real property for a total of $604,000,000.
Since the businesses getting these breaks are still using government services
that means we homeowners make up the difference in the various budgets
different government agencies need funding for.
We will vote to approve or deny Ark Park's (the developer) request to declare the parcels an ERA (economic revitalization area). According to this DLGF abatement process document an ERA is
"An area that is within the corporate limits
of a city, town, or county that has become
undesirable for, or impossible of, normal
development and occupancy."
I personally don't feel any area in our town meets this criteria.
I need your input on this so I can vote your choice and not just mine.
Thursday 6.9.22
Milling and paving is underway on Wall street. Eric Wathan, our consulting
engineer, said this will likely last until Monday. The first step is removing
the pot holes and cracked sections, then the final layer will be done after
the patching and milling is done.
Expect delays between Meridian and Quail creek trace while this is going
on. Traffic is down to one lane and you could be driving through asphalt
as it spills over from the equipment.
The foreman for the grinding crew said this $250,000 machine removes a
4' wide section 10" deep in one pass.
The asphalt is poured in 3 layers, the base has 25mm stone, then 19mm for
the intermediate layer and 9.5mm for the surface. Waters way will be next
on the list.
Tuesday 6.7.22
This just in, I got a copy of the revision to our MOU with Dan Keers about 4.30 pm today, then got a revision to it about 20 min later. I still don't have the original which is dated July 8, 2021.
This version is confusing to me, one line says we 'will consider' abatements
but then 2 paragraphs later says
"the town will offer".
The public hearing for the abatement, should we pass the resolution tonight,
is scheduled for June 21 but Jim Buddenbaum's email at 5.32 pm said he
does not think we can have the hearing this soon.
This presentation on abatements is from the DLGF, the yellow highlights are mine, not from
the author.
Monday 5.30.22
We are having a council meeting on June 7 to discuss and vote on our abatement
ordinance from 2007 and changes required by legislative updates since then.
Dan Keers is applying for abatements so we need to be current.
I will be posting more info later this week on abatements and how they
affect taxpayers in our community.
I took this photo of the flag display honoring our armed services while
out riding this morning.
I want to thank these folks for sponsoring the flag poles.
Jim Buddenbaum and the Parr Ritchey Frandsen Patterson and Kruse law firm
The Robert Steele family
The Fields family
The Canada family
American legion post 426
Pittsboro family dentistry
Hendricks county young Marines
Sun-fun pools
Phil Rehl USMC
Monday 5.16.22
Here is the agenda for the Tuesday meeting.
Sorry for the last minute posting, I was in DC last week working at the
peace officers memorial, Friday through yesterday were 12 hour days. I
work with disaster medical assistance teams for HHS, we had 4 first aid
tents setup on the capitol lawn.
The first year this was held was 1982, 91 names were read to honor those killed in the line of duty. This year they read almost 600.
Friday 4.29.22
Jarod, Steve and Eric Wathan, our consulting engineer, met with the DNR
folks to go over our grant and trail plans.
We have been advised to wait on public planning meetings until a grant
contract can be awarded, probably 60-90 days out.
This will be a separate meeting, not part of a parks board or council meeting.
They did not award the full amount requested, they want us to focus on
new trails and not enhance our existing ones.
Due to this change the maps we submitted in our application will change,
so what I have presented should be considered a
"concept map" per Jarod's email, and the title of the pdf I posted
on Tuesday.
I left a voice mail with Eric to find out how the proposed trail for Maple street could affect our storm and waste water sewer systems since it looks like we will be reducing the amount of ground that absorbs rain water by 14,000 square feet. This number comes from about 2400' of sidewalk (north of the tracks, south of the tracks) being widened from about 3' to 10'.
The conceptual maps show 10' for Maple street from Wall street to the tracks but then says 8' to 10' from there to the park entrance, so my 14,000 estimate could be reduced.
It will be interesting to see how we handle moving fire hydrants and mail
boxes since they would appear to be obstructing the wider trail.
I talked with our post master Lisa Hill about the mail boxes. She had me
call the Brownsburg office because they handle our driving routes. I'm
waiting on a return call from postmaster Marcel, whose last name I forgot.
Hopefully it's not Marceau, he seldom has anything to say.
David Yoder from Woodland hills emailed about the possibility of putting
in a sidewalk from Woodland hills westward to where the sidewalk ends just
east of the fire station. I'm not sure why this wasn't included in our
trails grant. Between Steve and Terry Northern they came up with an estimated
cost of $45,000 - $50,000.
If we were to approve a developer putting homes in the Hudson Sparks land
we would have most of this done at the developer's expense, but we don't
have the infrastructure to support any homes there, plus many if not all
of you I have talked to said stop the growth.Tuesday 4.26.22
I've been going through the 3 trails grant documents to pull out the interesting
stuff from the legal mumbo jumbo.
I made a separate page which has parts of the application which shows what is planned.
Based on the maps the trail will NOT go through the backyards of the homes
on Karen drive in Deer Meadows. The trail will run from the park to Brooks way in Brixton on the south side and up to Wall street on the east side of
Deer Meadows.
A concern I have is the trail on the east side of Maple street from Wall street southward. This page shows a 10' wide path but as you can see from this photo I took on my bike ride there is no way to fit this between the street and the trees. The west side has utility poles so that would be a problem too. This page shows tree removal costs, I'd hate to see these trees go.
I will bring this up at our May 17 council meeting.
Thursday 4.21.22
We just got news the state awarded us $1,304,327 for our next level trails
grant.
Per the state:
We received a total of 61 applications requesting nearly $112 million for
the third round of the Next Level Trails.
Yours was one of 38 selected in this highly competitive program.
I will post more info as we work towards finalizing our trail plans. Steve
Maple will be working with our consultant on how we move forward. We will
be looking for your input.
This photo is from the lift station by our WWTF. Danny's septic service has to pump
out the yucky stuff every so often to keep our system working. The scum
you see is all the stuff you flush that isn't degradable. This is why we
say
"No wipes down the pipes".
Tuesday 4.12.22
Here is our agenda for next weeks meeting. Note Ryan homes will be making a presentation on a proposed development on the Hudson Sparks property.
Terry and I attended the waste water treatment facility expansion meeting
with Jason and the engineers involved. During the meeting Jason said Pyatt
will be delayed in starting hidden hills until fall due to a lack of construction
crew availability.
Last night the Lizton council approved their planning commission's recommendation for MI Home's PUD on SR 39 across the street from their fire station. This plan is not the current one, the APC changed the spacing between homes from 10' to 15' and reduced the number to around 90 homes.
Since our fire department responds to over 50% of their medical runs this
could have an impact on our town.
Saturday 4.9.22
Terry Northern is our newest council member. Jarod, Randy and I attended
the caucus and were glad to see we had so much interest in our town's future
with 3 applicants and a number of residents showing up for the process.
You can see from Terry's bio he has a great background in engineering and construction which will help
your council make the proper decisions as our town grows.
Tuesday 4.5.22
We got a revised fiscal plan for the Jones development annexation north of 74 which has some interesting
changes.
The first plan had an estimated net assessed value (NAV) of $30,000,000 for 2023 pay
2024 (page 11), the revised NAV is $7,957,950 (page 12). I don't see any
explanation for the change.
I am going to the county council meeting today and will stop in the assessor's office to see if they can shed some light on these numbers. Poking around on Beacon I see similar size buildings near the airport have lower values than the
plan.
The new plan also shows our estimated non capital costs to exceed tax revenue
for the first 3 years by about $60,000. It looks like the developer will
pay about $15,000,000 for road and utility improvements so we can provide
services to the area. I don't know where they came up with the cost estimates
on page 14 but will find out.
I was going to ask Scott King about the police costs at Mondays police
commission meeting but it was canceled for lack of a quorum.
I heard we have 3 candidates for the ward 3 council seat, nice to see so
many wanting to get involved in our town's future. I added Ray's trash
holiday schedule and a parks event schedule to the miscellaneous page.Friday 4.1.22
This is not an April fool's day joke, Melodi Ingalls has resigned from
our council due to a job change.
If you want to run for her seat you need to go through the caucus process. Per Anne Englehardt, Hendricks county GOP chairperson:
------------------
The caucus has been scheduled for April 9, 9am, Town Hall. Anyone interested
must file documents at the election office 72 hours prior to the caucus.
------------------
The candidate and voter registration office is on the 2nd floor of the
county government center in Danville. I'm 99% sure you must live in ward 3 (area in purple), waiting for verification from the election office.
Thursday 3.31.22
By now I expect most of you have heard Jason Love's dad died Saturday,
his obituary is on Eric Bell's site.
According to the site:
Friends and family will gather at the funeral home on Saturday, April 9,
2022, from 11 am until the time of the Celebration of Life Service at 1
pm.
Jason and his family were on our prayer list at last nights Bible study.
This is our agenda for the council meeting next Tuesday to discuss and vote on the 3 annexations
introduced on the Ides of March. Some of you have complained about the
quality / poor performance of our current video streaming service. I asked
Jason to see if we could duplicate our stream to zoom, it looks like he
has done more testing but I have not pushed it since his dad died.
This is Jarod's response to my email to Jason and the council about adding
zoom.
----------------------------
Town Hall Streams is a service that allows us to record meetings while giving an
opportunity for the interested public to attend remotely or view at a later
time. Connectivity issues with those watching should be checked from our side to
ensure it is nothing on our end, but it stops there. None of us can ensure the
connectivity issues are not with the watcher.
As for Zoom options being offered, we will continue to offer zoom meetings to
council members, legal counsel, and essential Pittsboro Town employees when they
are unable to attend. It will be offered to special guests should they need to
present something that is on a deadline and not able to attend in person. Zoom
will not be an alternative source option for anyone else.
If there are Pittsboro residents (or others) not satisfied in what we offer,
they can attend in person moving forward.
------------------------------
Some of you have asked if we could move our meetings up by 30 minutes or
an hour so they end earlier. I will bring this up during the Tuesday meeting
and see how the council feels.
Sunday 3.13.22
First some old business - I was going to post this a few weeks ago but
neglected to. This info is from Jarod based on his knowledge from working
with the Marion county assessor and has to do with the discrepancies I
found on Beacon last month.
----------------------------
I would suggest you tell people if they see that their floor plan and square
footage has significant errors, they contact the Hendricks County Assessor
and file a Form 133. This will allow the homeowner to not only get it corrected
but they can also get a refund up to 3 tax years.
It is also important to note that when someone files a Form 133, they are
subjecting themselves to having missing items added to their property record
card, even up to 3 years back. For example, someone who is noted to have
an
unfinished basement and has now finished it (without or missing permits)
will now have that added. Same with things such as decks, patios, etc.
Also, I would add that floor plan sketches the Assessor create should be
similar to the building plans, but will not be as detailed (identifying
locations of rooms within the structure). If they note things such as locations
of basement
(if not a full basement), attics and second floors (when not over the entire
first floor) that is sufficient.
I worked for the Marion County Assessor for 6 years and 95% of the time
I never walked into a house once doors & walls were up. Due to this,
we were instructed (and DLGF approved of this) was to do our very best
to capture and identify the various floor levels (especially when they
were not the same from one floor to the next), garages, and exterior features.
A lot of it comes down to who is using CAD to enter the sketches and if
there is someone within the Assessor's office who is reviewing these entries
to ensure they are accurate.
------------------------------
Here is the agenda for our Tuesday meeting. The main topic will be the annexations. The first is the wee bit of land in Brixton which will be for park use.
The second is the area north of 74 and east of Jeff Gordon, the developer wants to
put in industrial warehouses, probably similar to what we're seeing going
up on Reagan just south of 74. The fiscal plan says the first building
will be about 650,000 square feet.
We would be required to provide sewer and water to these parcels. Water
should be no problem since we provide about 40% from our well and the rest
from Citizen's. Our only cost should be running pipes to the area and since
our water treatment plant is basically across the street that should be
easy.
Waste water could be the sticking point. Our plan is to expand our existing
plant so we might need to run pipe under 74, plus our capacity could limit
how much service we can provide. During the past few months we've been
running about 50% capacity but the 2 heavy rain events we've had in the
last 4 weeks both caused us to hit 2 million gallons on those days, well
over our 1.25 mgd limit per IDEM. Jefferson Park is nearing capacity so
we will have a higher daily average than in past months, plus hidden hills
is scheduled to break ground next month.
Our fire chief said he would like to have land for a new station in this
expansion area. I don't know what a station costs but his office and training
building was about $400,000 10 years ago. Look at this line under the
Fire Protection and Emergency Medical Services paragraph.
"No incremental costs are anticipated to provide these services to
the Annexation Area."
I'd agree with this statement up to the point where a building or buildings
are built, then who knows what kind of calls for service the fire department
will be hit with. A million dollar plus station in not incremental in my
mind.
The third annexation has me wondering if it's worth it financially to our town.
We would be required to spend $40,000 to improve 800N even though I think
it's in good shape, very much more so than CR150E on the east side of the
property. I'm going to be asking questions at our meeting about the payback
period on a parcel like this. The fiscal plan estimates the NAV to be $500,000
in 3 years. By my calculation that means about $1920 into the town based
on our current rate of .384 per $100 NAV.
Friday 2.18.22
Earlier this week I was looking at our home's floor plan in Beacon, our county's GIS site, and noticed it was nothing like our home. I emailed
the assessor's office and they corrected it. I don't know how many of you
have looked at yours but in talking with some fire chiefs our firefighters
will look at these while en route to a fire to be better prepared. If you
find any discrepancies (sounds better than saying govt screw up) you can
email the assessor's office to get it fixed.
We had 3 annexation proposals presented during our council meeting this
week. This half acre parcel is in Brixton and will be left empty. I was expecting the developers
of the Fisher Hill ground to use this as a road into Hidden Hills since
it would provide quick emergency access for the fire department. I suspect
they felt getting permission from CSX to cross the tracks was too hard
so they did not try.
This parcel west of Steel Dynamics is going to be the offices of C+J well company. They are not requesting any utilities so there won't be much of a cost to the town.
These 2 parcels and the parts of 2 others were the subject of our executive session. I
don't like executive sessions since we are here to serve you and not keep
secrets. Time will tell.
The rain this week caused our sewer systems to go into overdrive, we processed
2 million gallons through the wastewater treatment plant but thanks to
our great team we did not flow any solids (a pleasant way of saying turds)
into the creek. Pretty amazing considering one of our clarifiers is not working properly after it broke last week.
We have the replacement equipment on order but it's a few months out. Hopefully
we will get it installed before the spring rain runoff happens. I took
this photo of White Lick creek on Thursday and this one today. I marked Thursdays photo with yellow boxes to show where the water had receded by Friday, pretty amazing difference.
We voted to accept the insurance proposal from Hometown Insurance and drop Hylant. Hometown's bid was about $13,000 less for what looks to be equal or better
coverage in all the major categories. I put this comparison together for the council. Any mistakes in interpreting the coverage amounts
are mine, I'm not an agent.
This news item has nothing to do with our community but is an interesting look back at
post WWII history. The pilot who started dropping candy to kids behind
the Berlin blockade died this week, it's a great story on human kindness.
Wednesday 2.9.22
Here is the agenda for our Tuesday meeting. Note for the first time in many years we are
going to look at quotes from more than a single vendor for our insurance
coverage. This has been a sticking point for me so I'm glad to see we can
offer you a choice in how your tax dollars are spent.
We will be looking at more annexations and deciding if we add June 19 as
a town holiday. So far your input has been to keep our holiday schedule
intact and not duplicate what the feds provide. This site has an interesting list of state, federal and world holidays, but it does not have Jan 1, 1863, the day president Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation.
Another item I've been pursuing is our police commission members. During
our our June meeting I pointed out state law requires them to be sworn
in by the clerk of the circuit court, an elected official, not our clerk
treasurer. Jim Buddenbaum agreed but the police commission's attorney said
it was OK for our clerk to issue the oath.
I did more research, went to the government center in Danville and talked
with Marjorie Pike, the county clerk, and her chief deputy at the time,
Laura Herzog. Neither was aware of the law and as I called and emailed
other towns in our county they were not either but felt they had authority
to perform the oath of office. I know the Speedway police commissioners
were sworn in by a Marion county clerk so that added to the confusion.
Because I'm persnickety I asked for and got this opinion from the attorney general earlier today.
Monday 1.31 - We have a short council meeting tomorrow night to deal with
amending our salary manual. Among the things we discovered while examining
our old manual was the police dept pays longevity pay but we don't have
that for public works or utility workers. I think we should match what
the police get paid for time served and would like your input on this.
Here is the current police salary chart and the meeting agenda. We are also considering adding June 19 as a paid holiday so I need your input on that too. This is our current holiday list.Monday 1.17.22
Agenda for our meeting tomorrow
We have a police commissioner term that expired last year. Jarod has offered
the spot to the current member but we are not legally bound to keep the
same people in office. If any of you are interested let me know and I'll
nominate you for the spot.
If you are interested in running for town council we have 2 spots coming
up in the May primary. These are both called
'at large' positions and have nothing to do with waist size. Anyone in
town can run.
The process has changed since I applied to run 2 years ago. This site has info and links if you are interested.
Monday 1.4.22
The only item on tomorrow's agenda is forming a new covid policy.
I went to the technical advisory committee meeting on hidden hills last
month, Pyatt made a change to phase 1 by
dropping 2 homes on the southwest corner and adding a detention pond.
Thursday 12.30.21
Jarod Baker has declared a local disaster emergency under IC 10-14-3-29 "Due to the rampant increase in Covid cases throughout our nation, the State of Indiana, and Hendricks County."
He called a special council meeting for next Tuesday at 7 pm to discuss
the covid increase in town staff.
He said this would be a zoom meeting for the public, I will let you know
the info when I get it. It should be on
town hall streams as well.
The agenda has not been sent out but it will be to create a new ordinance
on a covid policy for our town.
Monday 12.6.21
Agenda for our meeting tomorrow night at 7 pm. Because our population has increased
since our last election state law requires us to have a primary starting
next year. We have to pass an ordinance to make that happen.
We are on town hall streams now, no more zoom.
Monday 11.15.21
Meeting agenda for Tuesday night. We will be in our new admin building at 33 E Main. It's the metal building with a porch
behind Dollar General and to the east. My lovely wife took this picture on the way to church last night so you can see
what it looks like at night. We have lots of room for public seating so
please come check it out.
We don't use zoom anymore, we have moved to town hall streams. If this link does not work use the drop down box on the home page. I
can't get it to play the police commission meeting, not sure if it's because
I run very tight security on my IT systems or something on their end. I
contacted tech support for help. I can see their video on how the system
works so I'm confused on what they are doing. I block google ad manager
and most other google sites because it's none of their business what I
do with my freedom, that may have something to do with it.
I did not realize this streaming site does not appear have a dial in option,
I feel that's something we need to work on. It also says nothing is scheduled
so that's another bug they need to work out. I don't know if there is a
chat / Q+A option either, hope to have all this working by Tuesday night.
We have a public hearing on the GO bond. Looking forward to seeing you
in the new building.
Tuesday 10.19.21 - Lots of stuff just hit my inbox this afternoon.
1 - UDO fee change ordinance
2 - Fire dept report
3 - Police dept report
4 - Hidden hills PUD ordinance
5 - budget form 4
6 - levy increase
Friday 10.15.21 - The agenda for our Tuesday meeting has an ordinance to establish a 3 way stop at Woodland place and Karen drive. So far my input from you has been against this so you need to attend / zoom the meeting or make sure you email us so the council can meet your needs.
Monday 10.4.21 - This is the agenda for Tuesday's council meeting.
Tuesday 9.21.21
We just got these revised documents from Baker Tilley for tonight's meeting.
Spending plan worksheet aka form 1 that looks to have been updated today but has a time stamp
of 11.51 pm tonight.
Budget book aka form 3.
Nancy Marsh is at a training conference and could not get back to me on
possible tax changes in reference to the GO bond.
Hopefully Baker Tilley can clear up any confusion.
I got this revised plat map for hidden hills from Steve Maple, it removes the dead end Jarod asked
for during one of our meetings.
Monday 9.20.21
Tomorrow is your opportunity to voice your opinions on our 2022 budget. This is our spending worksheet. The council is still meeting in town hall at 80 N Meridian, I'm not sure
when the new meeting room will be used. The agenda for tomorrow night has November as the target date.
Since I was not invited to the meetings where department heads presented
their budget wish lists I don't have any details on what this budget contains.
This is the 2nd year in a row this has happened and I'm going to push to
see these are open to the public in coming years as we did before people
let the covid panic rule their lives.
Zoom ID 865 4583 7707 passcode 147584
This DLGF site has a good explanation of how the budget and property tax process works
so you can be better informed on how your council gets money to keep the
town working.
We continued our discussion of awarding a $2,000 bonus to town employees
and $1,000 for council members. Your feedback from my last email was not
to pay the bonus which I mentioned during the August meeting. If you were
watching you noticed I got some push back from the council, I explained
I was passing on your wishes and not dictating our personal feelings to
you.
Please let the council know how you feel about this. We will also discuss a GO (general obligation) bond. My understanding is if we vote to get the bond our property tax rates will remain about the same, otherwise we could see a big drop due to the Steel Dynamics TIF ending. This site shows about $13.6 million being added to our NAV.
Monday 9.6.21
1. Agenda for Tuesday council meeting
Zoom ID 865 4583 7707 passcode 147584
2. Wall street bridge update - the contractor has installed temporary walkways
on the sides to put in new
guardrails. They do not anticipate needing the full 75 days allocated.
3. New meeting room update - the furniture is scheduled to be setup this week and the asphalt paving is done.
4. Pipeline repair - unless you play golf at quail creek you might not be aware of a section of pipeline being replaced.
During a routine inspection a 91mm deep crack was detected. The pipe is
250mm thick. This pipe usually carries
aviation fuel from Terra Haute to Zionsville but can be switched to other
types of fuel.
When the type of fuel is changed a foam plug called a pig is compressed
and inserted into the pipe to purge the
fuel. Normal pressure for fuel is 1100 psi, when the plug is inserted it's
pressured with nitrogen at 400 psi. It takes 41 hours for the pig to make
the trip.
Wednesday 8.18.21
Last night the council voted to let Pyatt build homes in the farm land
owned by the Fisher Hill family.
Jarod, Randy and Bill voted yes, Melodi and I voted no.
Now the planning commission will work with Pyatt on the plat map and infrastructure.
There is no more public input.
I had 2 emails asking why the council thought our employees should get
a $2,000 bonus for working during covid, so I got the council to put the
ordinance on hold until our Sept 7 meeting. We need your input on this
and if the council members should get $1,000. This money is from the recovery
act funds and I believe is string free so to speak, but many federal programs
providing money have requirements so I will be doing research on that.
Some of you were quick to send email about the vote, I understand your
frustration. I did not see any urgency in last nights meeting that required
the decision be made then.
Tuesday 8.17.21
Zoom info for our 7 pm meeting
Webinar ID: 865 4583 7707, Password: 147584
Just got these proposed ordinances from Jim Buddenbaum. During our last meeting we agreed to give our
employees a $2,000 bonus for working through covid. This version also includes
council members at $1,000.
I'm not comfortable accepting this unless you guys feel we deserve it.
I may be talking about our sewer plant and what is called I and I in the poop processing world, this link has info.
Friday 8.13.21
Starting Monday the 23rd the Wall street bridge between Quail Creek and
Woodland place will be closed for
75 days for repairs. The detour is Meridian or Maple to 136 from the west
and 475E / Baldauf from the east.
The bridge between 475E and Quail Creek will be next.
Wednesday 8.11.21
Here is the agenda for our council meeting next Tuesday.
This is the revised ordinance and staff report on the Pyatt hidden hills proposal.
Many of you have asked about how adding 200+ homes will affect our schools. I created this report
on student counts in Northwest Hendricks for the last 10 years based on data from this site under
the attendance & enrollment heading. From my interpretation it looks
like the school system had 8 less
students last year versus 2011 despite Jefferson park and whispering fields
build outs.
So far this year there have been 7 homes occupied in whispering fields and 48 in Jefferson park. The school superintendent said they have 1901 this year so the count remains very stable.
Tuesday 7.27.21
Zoom info and agenda for tonights planning commission meeting at 6 pm - ID: 831 7273 5943; Passcode: 706250
call in 312.626.6799. This is the staff report on the PUD application.
This meeting should be open for public attendance despite the 'zoom only'
notice in the agenda.
The bridge on Jeff Gordon / 275E just north of I-74 will be closed for
rehab starting Wednesday Aug 4 for 30 days.
The detour is Commerce way or 900N to 150E.
Larry Woods sent this email on the Pyatt Hidden Hills plans to the planning commission to be entered
into their public record since he can't make the meeting in person.
Friday 7.23.21
Pyatt will be submitting this revised plot plan and PUD ordinance at the planning commission meeting next Tuesday.
They have removed 4 lots with back yards along Wall street and added 4
90' lots. They still show Karen drive going into Hidden Hills even though
I have advised Steve Maple and the council you don't approve.
APC meeting info for zoom, Webinar ID: 831 7273 5943 Passcode: 706250
The town hall meeting room should be open for public attendance but could
be tight for seating. We have furniture ordered for our new meeting room,
hopefully our next council meeting will be in the new building.
Here are the police commission, stats and fire activity and EMS reports from Tuesdays meeting.
Sunday 7.18.21
Here is the agenda for our council meeting Tuesday at 7 pm.
Zoom ID: 865 4583 7707 passcode 147584
Monday 6.28.21
Our estimated covid recovery plan allocation is $408,000 for 2021. We are
considered a non entitlement unit (NEU) because of our size. Our total
estimate is $816,000. We should get our 1st payment soon and the balance
one year after this one.
This pdf has the complete list for Indiana NEUs.
According to this US treasury site these funds are for
Support public health expenditures - funding COVID-19 mitigation efforts, medical expenses, behavioral healthcare,
and certain public health and safety staff
Address negative economic impacts caused by the public health emergency - including economic harms to workers, households, small businesses, impacted
industries, and the public sector
Replace lost public sector revenue - to provide government services to the extent of the reduction in revenue
experienced due to the pandemic
Provide premium pay for essential workers - offering additional support to those who have and will bear the greatest
health risks because of their service in critical infrastructure sectors
Invest in water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure - making necessary investments to improve access to clean drinking water,
support vital wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, and to expand access
to broadband internet
Wednesday 6.23.21 - Last night the APC voted to allow Pyatt builders to
proceed with a PUD application for the Fisher Hill ground. This is the
same area you had the APC and council vote down earlier this year.
This is the plan they presented.
At first glance it looks much cleaner and less dense than Arbor's plan.
They did say "masonry" is not required.
This plan shows 222 homes vs 292 from Arbor. I expect this will come before
the APC at their next meeting on July 27. We should be open to the public
by then in our new meeting room behind the Dollar General and Porter's
car lot.
As you might expect there are some strings attached and hoops to jump through
to get our funding, but since 3 of the 4 men on your council are married
jumping through hoops to keep our wives happy is in our blood so hopefully
this won't be a problem.
State senator John Crane sent this pdf of new laws taking effect July 1. I'm half way through reading it, once
I'm done I'll send out a summary of how these changes may affect us.
Wednesday 6.9.21 - we have an opening on our police commission, it's 3'
wide. If you are interested (and can fit) send us a resume so we can add
you to our list. You do not need any police or public safety experience.
This is the IC section on police commissions if you want to know what they do.
This is North Salem's off road vehicle ordinance they voted in last week. We need to adopt one so we're looking to base ours on this. Let us know if you agree to let these vehicles on our streets.
Here are Tuesdays town council agenda, police chief King's commission report and May run stats.
Zoom ID: 865 4583 7707 passcode 147584
Monday 5.17.21
County road 975N will be closed between SR39 and CR75E starting May 31 for 90 days for
a bridge replacement.
Your options are taking 75E north to 1075 N, 75E south to 925N or stay
home.
Sunday 5.16.21
Here is the agenda for our 7.00pm Tuesday meeting and chief Scott King's police report.
Zoom ID: 865 4583 7707 passcode 147584
Our combined council and APC meeting is Wednesday at 6.00pm
Zoom ID 867 7713 1184 passcode 335169. Call in numbers 312.626.6799 or 646.876.9923
Tuesday 5.4.21
We will have our first combined council and advisory planning commission
tomorrow night at 6pm.
These are scheduled for the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays until December.
This is your chance to make sure your council doesn't do anything stupid...
Some road construction projects coming up that could affect your travels.
CR350N will be closed between 625W and SR75 for 6 months starting May 17 to replace
the bridge.
Jeff Gordon / 275E between 900N and 1000N will be closed for a culvert replacement from June 7 to 9.
Monday 4.12.21
Back in December I interviewed Pittsboro fire department training chief
Jim Miller about insurance ISO ratings and how our department plans to
help improve them. The mp3 and slide show presentations are on my misc stuff site.
Tuesday 3.23.21
This pdf has the proposed changes to our UDO. It decreases floor area for R1 to 1500 sq ft
decreases R2 density to less than 2 units per acre
decreases R3 to less than 3 units per acre and lot widths to 80'
decreases R4 to 6 units per acre, lots size to 8,400 sq ft, widths to 65'
and side setback to 12.5'
Monday 3.22.21
This is the agenda for tomorrows APC meeting.
Zoom ID 831 7273 5943 Passcode: 706250
The first public discussion item would change our UDO procedures on zoning
change requests from the APC which they voted against or had no recommendation.
Under our current rules the council can make changes and accept it without
returning it to the APC for your and their input. I'm opposed to this as
you probably noted in my comments during the Feb 16 meeting.
This proposed change will let the council send changes back to the APC for discussion per IC 36-7-4-607. Please be on the call and make your comments during the hearing. I do
not have any info on the lot size changes in the 2nd item, I've asked Steve
Maple for that info and will send it out when I get it.
County road 200W will be closed between 500N and 625N Wed 4.7 to Fri 4.9 for paving work on the culvert that was replaced earlier
this year. 500N is still closed at 200W for culvert work.Tuesday 3.16.21
John Hill of Fisher Hill farms sent an email to your council last night,
it's on the Fisher Hill page.
Monday 3.15.21
I just got this M/I revision from Steve Maple, it details changes to their previous plan.
I highlighted the areas that jumped out at me. It does not eliminate vinyl
from the duplexes.
I don't see how the council can accept this with less than 24 hours until
we vote, especially since most of you may not have time to study this before
tomorrow night.Friday 3.12.21
This is the agenda for our Tuesday council meeting.
Dan Keers is requesting we annex this 6 acre parcel next to his land east of Love's. This is the fiscal plan.
The county has revised its road closure for 500N and now recommends this detour.
Steve Maple got this revised design and construction standards manual from our engineering vendor.
Here are the water, storm sewer, pavement and so called sanitary sewer supplements.
I found a typo in the first document, if you get really bored and read
it the missing item is IDEM.
Monday 3.8.21
M/I homes sent out this revised plan tonight. We need your input for our vote on the 16th.
Monday 3.1.21
We are having an executive session at 7 pm and then a regular council meeting
at 8 tomorrow at the fire department meeting room. This is the session notice which should set a record for the most number of words in a sentence without
punctuation.
The public session will discuss our plans to pay our humongeous gas bill from USDI.
We will zoom our regular meeting, meeting ID 865 4583 7707, Password 147584
Welcome to the newest members of our police department who did a ceremonial swearing in at tonight's police commission meeting, Kevin on the left and Nick who is obviously on the right.
Tuesday 2.23.21
I posted the staff report and agenda for tonight's APC meeting on the Fisher Hill page.
If you tried calling town hall today you probably got a message saying
the number is no longer in service. The town is not going out of business,
we are changing from TDS to Endeavor for phone service and the switch was
scheduled for Friday.
Somehow we forgot to let the Endeavor folks know town hall closed at noon
Friday so they made the switch today.
Friday 2.19.21
Here is the latest update on our gas situation from Jason Love. We should be back to normal by Saturday
morning.
Tuesday 2.16.21
We got this statement from UGM, our gas supplier, explaining why we might see increases in gas
prices during this cold snap.
Monday 2.15.21
I got clarification on the fire territory equipment replacement fund from
township trustee Tim Griffith. The proposed renewal rate of .0333 per $100
NAV was voted in when the territory was created. This fund has a dollar
cap and as the township's NAV rises causes an effective drop in the rate.
We went from .0282 last year to .0262 this year.
The increase we will see if we vote yes would be .0071 or about $10.65
per year on a home with a $150,000 NAV.
Data I got from chief deputy auditor Jayson Puckett shows this should add
about $28,747 to the fund for next year.
We will be voting on the town's insurance proposal tomorrow night. Last meeting I asked if we could put this out for bid
to see if we could save you guys money but was told it's a 3 year agreement.
I just finished studying this 30+ page document and it looks like it will
expire next month if we don't vote on the rate increase. To me this is
not a fixed contract but just a handshake deal to keep using the same vendor.
I have some questions about whether or not Hylant has looked at what our
town really needs based on items in this document.
They mention volunteer firefighters on page 14 even though we don't have
any. Two other pages have line items listed twice.
Looking forward to seeing you on zoom tomorrow night.
Saturday 2.13.21
Our town manager provided this press release about the current situation on high demand and possible cost factors.
Our supplier said prices for some of their towns in Illinois have jumped
7500%
Wednesday 2.10.21
This is the agenda for our meeting next Tuesday.
Zoom ID 865 4583 7707, passcode 147584
Township trustee Tim Griffith sent us this notice on the fire territory equipment fund tax rate. We will vote on this next week.
Unless I hear otherwise I'm assuming you want me to vote yes.
One of the arguments we often hear from developers is how much tax revenue
their homes will generate for us.
I decided to do some research on NAV (net assessed values) we get from
parcels near the proposed M/I homes project.
This data comes from the county's parcel search page. I took data from the 18 homes in Woodland Hills along the east side
of the proposed neighborhood and compared it to the 18 homes closest to
136 in Brixton Woods. The average NAV for Woodland Hills is about $192,300
versus $65,000 for Brixton.
The county will be shutting down CR500N between 200W and 325W for culvert work on March 1 for 90 days. This is the county's notice and here is my map showing the detour. The blue circle on 200W just north of 500N is where
the culvert was replaced earlier this year. They did not finish the shoulder
work due to weather so the shoulders are gravel and not asphalt until it
can be finished once/if warm weather returns.
Monday 2.1.21
This is the agenda for our meeting tomorrow night.
Zoom ID 865 4583 7707, passcode 147584
I put a link on my govt site page with our unified development ordinance but noticed it's a few years behind. Steve Maple is working on getting the latest version posted to the town site.
Steve sent me this building permit report showing our growth from 2017.
Wednesday 1.27.21
Adam Peaper sent these files relating to Arbor's changes. After last nights
meeting I suspect they will be making more.
Revised PUD plan
Revised site map
Tuesday 1.26.21 11.45 pm
The planning committee voted 5-1 against a favorable recommendation for the revised M/I homes plans for the
Hudson Sparks property. Your council will have the final vote on Feb 16.
Monday 1.25.21
10.37 pm update
Here is the APC meeting agenda
M/I homes has asked for a continuance until Feb 23.
12.30 pm
Here is the Arbor homes staff report for tomorrows meeting.Thursday 1.21.21
The Sparks family sent this letter to the council and APC members regarding the sale of their property.
I discovered our town's site had an old future land use map which showed
the Arbor and M/I sites as low density residential or 1-3 homes per acre.
This was changed in 2014 to medium density or 3-6 homes per acre.
This is the current map from our 2020 comprehensive plan update, this has been sent to our web guy to update.
We will have 2 council meetings next month, the main topic for the Feb
2 meeting is the continuation of the public hearing on annexing the Fisher
Hill property into the town and our vote on this.
I changed the link in the left column from the town site to a new page
with our site and county sites to make it easier to navigate. Let me know
if you have any suggestions or sites you'd like added.
Thursday 1.14.20
Here is the agenda for our next meeting.
I got this revised site plan for the M/I homes development on 136. They have removed homes from the
east side of the street so backyard views from Woodview won't be looking
at backyards of other homes.
Friday 1.8.21
Steve Maple got this fiscal plan on the Arbor homes Fisher Hill annexation request this week. This is a
cost benefit analysis for the town to help us decide if it makes fiscal
sense to annex the property. I told Steve to let the Arbor folks know about
the error in the legal description.
Here is the time line for the possible annexation.
January 19 town council meeting
1. Annexation petition is officially received by the council.
2. Introduction of annexation ordinance # 2021-01 and fiscal plan.
3. Public hearing for the annexation.
February 16 town council meeting
1. Vote to accept/deny the fiscal plan.
2. Vote to accept/ deny the annexation request.
If the annexation is approved vote to approve Annexation Ordinance # 2021-01.
If the ordinance is approved at the February 16th meeting, the annexation
is not final until 30 days after the vote,
March 18, and the paperwork is recorded
Notes:
When the petition is received by the town council, it starts a 60 day clock
in which the ordinance must be adopted
or the whole process starts over with a new petition.
Notice must be published at least 20 days before the public hearing (it
was
published in the December 24, 2020 newspaper).
The public hearing must be within 30 days of the town council receiving
the petition.
The town council can not vote on the annexation ordinance until at least
14 days after the public hearing.
Tuesday 12.29.20
We got this letter from IDEM yesterday saying their sewer ban early warning has been terminated. Our
waste water treatment plant capacity has been changed to 1.2 million gallons
per day. Last time I talked to Chris York we were about 50-60% of this
new limit.
Christmas eve 2020
Just got this IDEM letter about SDI requesting to renew their air quality permit.
This is the application and preliminary finding report.
The section under 'How can you participate in this process?' has details
on submitting comments and requesting hearings.
I found this statement way down on page 266.
'The staff recommends to the Commissioner that the Part 70 Operating Permit
Renewal be approved.'
We have 5 candidates appearing before the republican caucus to take Jim
Hill's seat on the council:
Jason Ellis, Zach Buchanan, Randall Price, Robin Drew Swalley and Larry
Woods.
It's nice to see so many people wanting to get involved. The county election
supervisor said it's very unusual to have this many people file. I left
voice mails with Randall, Robin and Larry thanking them for wanting to
help our community, I already talked with Jason and Zach.
I posted our 2021 meeting schedule and put a link to the town's events page in the left column.
Last week Chris York, Jason and I met with SDI engineering staff at our waste water flow meter on their site after they questioned their recent bill which showed a massive increase over what they believed to be a normal flow amount. Our vendor who installed the meter put a temp meter in and verified the flow on the meter we installed in October was accurate.
The SDI folks admitted they found a valve that appeared to be dumping water into the sewer and were working on finding other outflow sources. They are averaging 300,000 gallons per day, about half our daily input.
Merry Christmas and happy Hanukkah.
Sunday 12.13.20
Jim Hill introduce a code of ethics for council members at the last meeting. I need your input on whether to accept it as presented or make any modifications your desire. I put my comments in red, this looks to be a boilerplate deal but needs additions and changes in my opinion.
I got a chance to make more new friends in deer meadows and north park
this week, now that the weather is getting colder I doubt you guys will
be out as much, but don't hesitate to stop me if you see me out on my bike
rides.
I hope I was able to answer your questions during the deer meadows Arbor
homes zoom meeting last week. It's nice to see so many people getting involved
with our future. I've been hearing people say
'the town said they want this or that'.
YOUR ARE THE TOWN
You may be hearing comments town employees have expressed based on past
policies or procedures but you have the power to change those within the
limits of our laws.
Monday 11.30.20
I posted the agenda for tomorrows meeting, note there is a public hearing for the increase
in our trash fee.
This is a zoom only meeting, no one will be allowed in town hall.
One item is to continue our contract with the Parr Richey law firm at $275
per hour. I would like to get quotes from other
firms and want to know if any of you work with a law firm and would like
to bid on this contract.
We also will vote on this resolution to keep town hall closed until at least 1.19.21.Wednesday 11.25.20
This is the power point Kyle Martin presented during the Woodland Hills zoom meeting on Sunday.
The county will be closing 600N between 50W and 100E on Thursday from 8.15 am and 2.45 pm for drain work.
CR50W will be closed from 600N to 625N on Monday 12.7 during the same times for the same reason.
Tuesday 11.24.20
Not news but I wanted to share this opinion on Americans from the Jerusalem Post.
'The US is insane, and I wouldn't have it any other way'
Sunday 11.22.20
I did a zoom interview with building commissioner Steve Maple describing what will happen at the Tuesday
advisory planning commission meeting.
Monday 11.16.20
Here is our proposed ordinance modifying our covid plan for town buildings and facilities. Ignore the
typos on the last page, our attorney is working on the newer version.
Saturday 11.14.20
Here is the agenda for Tuesday's town council meeting.
Zoom ID is 865 4583 7707
Passcode: 147584
Dial in numbers: 301.715.8592, 312.626.6799, 646.558.8656, 253.215.8782,
346.248.7799 or 669.900.9128
I created a new page for info on Arbor homes plans to build the Fisher Hill housing area.
Sunday 10.18.20
I created a new page for info on M/I homes plans to build the Hudson Sparks housing area.
Tuesday 10.6.20
Steve Maples and I are working on the audio to eliminate the echo you hear
on zoom.
We spent a few hours testing different PCs and audio settings Monday, it's
better but not where it should be.
I have a cable on order that won't be here until Thursday so the audio
should be very clear by the next meeting.
