PLAINFIELD TOWN COUNCIL February 24, 2003 The Plainfield Town ...

PLAINFIELD TOWN COUNCIL February 24, 2003 The Plainfield Town Council met on Monday, February 24, 2003. In attendance were Mr. Brandgard, Mr. Kirchoff, Mr. Young, Mr. McPhail and Mr. Ward. Mr. Brandgard said we have a good contingent of Boy Scouts in the audience this evening. I think they are here for their citizenship’s community badge. When we have the scouts in the audience, I always like to invite one to come up and lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, which is how we start our meetings. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE CONSENT AGENDA 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6.

Approval of the minutes of the Town Council meeting of February 10, 2003. Friendship Gardens Maintenance Agreement amongst the Town, Plainfield Plus and the Hendricks County Master Gardner’s. Approval of the skate park fees and schedule for 2003. Approval to allow Anthony and Gina Marsigio, 5830 Oberlies Way to encroach four (4) feet into a twenty-five (25) foot drainage and drainage easement for an existing attached wooden deck per the Town Engineer’s Report dated February 21, 2003. Approval to accept 12 standard streetlights in the Center Ridge Subdivision per the Town Engineer’s Report dated February 21, 2003. Approval of the January 2003 monthly report for the Department of Public Works, Town Engineer’s Report dated February 21, 2003 and the Human Resources Director’s Report dated February 24, 2003.

Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to approve the presented. Second by Mr. McPhail. Motion carried.

Consent

Agenda

as

Mr. Ward abstained from voting on the approval of the minutes, item 1 since he was not present at that meeting. PUBLIC HEARINGS Mr. Brandgard said we have three public hearings for this evening that we continued from last Thursday evening to this evening. The first one is the Dunkin annexation. Do we have proof of publication? Mr. Daniel said yes we do. Mr. Carlucci said the Dunkin annexation is on the north side of Plainfield. The annexation includes a little over 21 acres of property, approximately 22 acres. It includes railroad right-of-way, which the Town of Plainfield owns. It also includes right-of-way along the Township Line Road, CR300S and approximately 12 acres owned by Ralph Dunkin. The Dunkin property is approximately 600-700 feet east of Dan Jones Road on the south side of Township Line Road. There is not too much more. You do have the resolution with the fiscal plan. I believe Mr. Daniel has one correction to make for the fiscal plan tonight. Mr. Daniel said yes I do. On the next to the last page of the fiscal plan under item “K”, the Wastewater Treatment section the last sentence of that paragraph should be revised to read as follows: "Municipal sewer extension will occur within one year from the date the annexation is final and sized to serve the 12 acres owned by Mr. Dunkin.” Mr. Carlucci said I mistakenly put these on the agenda tonight. When they are voluntary annexations, you have to have 20 days from the date of the notice and that notice would be February 27, which is this Thursday night at 6:00. That would give us the 20 days. As I recall, we didn’t want to wait until March to complete these annexations. If we do these hearings tonight and don’t hold one Thursday night, then we would have to go back and start from scratch and I don’t want to do that. Again, I apologize that was my fault. Mr. McPhail asked, so where are we now?

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Mr. Carlucci said 6:00 on Thursday. Mr. Kirchoff said that was my recollection because I was going to be out of Town. Mr. Brandgard said so that everybody understands a public hearing was scheduled for Thursday evening and not this evening. We had a mix up between the calendar and what we had in the paper so the paper is correct. Before we go any further I would like to recognize the scouts that are in the audience. We like to have the scouts come forward and give them a certificate of recognition for being here. I understand that you would like to have a copy of the advertised budget for the Town and we will give that to you at the same time. (The scouts came up at this time to be awarded their certificates.) Mr. Young said since they are going for the government award it might be interesting to the scouts to know that we have a web site. They can learn a lot about our government by visiting the web site and checking into the departments. It might be something of interest to them. It does exist and it might not be known to them that there is a wealth of information about our departments. Mr. Carlucci said it is wwwtown.Plainfield.IN.US. Mr. Brandgard said as far as the meeting goes, we would like to have you stay as long as you can but we understand sometimes that meetings last longer than any of us intend. So, feel free to leave or come and go as you please. We appreciate having you here and invite you back at any time. BUSINESS FROM THE FLOOR Mr. Jim Durell said I’m here to make some sort of confession or bear my soul. When I was here at the last meeting, I made comments about the rezoning at the Airwest Park. Part of my presentation included a comment about not having been notified but I felt that by having been here I was notified some way or the other. But at that point Mr. Carlucci was very kind to me and outlined the procedure that you go through for making proper notification. That was very gently received and I tipped my hat and slowly road away in the distance. Then the next morning I think I was in the shower that I began to realize that there is a real possibility that I’m recalling having signed a registered letter receipt. So, the minute I got out of there I went to work and got on the telephone and started calling the office trying to head off Mr. Carlucci from spending any effort going through the records in order to find out whether proper notification had been made. There was every possibility that had been made and I simply signed it and passed the letter onto the chain of command at work. Not getting through to Mr. Carlucci I came to the office at lunch break and spoke to Ms. Mitchell and she understood that I probably should come to the meeting tonight and come clean. So, now that I have come clean I do hope that the Town or anybody involved has not spent a nickels worth of wasted effort trying to find out whether I signed a registered letter. I still don’t know whether I did or not but there is such a good possibility that it is not worth anybody’s effort. So, I needed to make certain that this correction got into the minutes so that this would be properly noted and I have a clean conscious. Mr. Brandgard said we appreciate you coming forward with that but I have to say this is the first time anybody has done that and you are to be commended for that. We appreciate it. As you know, we are all capable of errors. It takes a big person to admit to it. Mr. Prince said as mentioned last week, we have a presentation from Avatar Communications tonight concerning marketing and publication for the Plainfield Parks Recreation Department. This is Chris Jefferson of Avatar and I see Mr. Reno back there as well. Mr. Belcher is going to help us coordinate the technology here. Mr. Chris Jefferson said I’m the Executive Vice President of Avatar Communications Group. Our chief office is at 1905 Crown Plaza Boulevard, Plainfield, Indiana. Mr. Reno, President of our company is here as well. Mr. President and members of the Town Council it is my privilege to be before you tonight. I would like to thank Mr. Chuck Prince for his confidence in myself and our firm and his invitation to make a presentation to you this evening.

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Four months ago Mr. Prince came to our firm and he was very excited and very nervous and anticipated the new twenty-five million dollar new recreation and aquatic center that is well under way. We determined that public relations and marketing would be a necessary ingredient to insure the success of the facility. He asked me to please prepare a proposal that would involve both public relations and marketing and help explain why these are necessary and prudent ingredients to the success of the facility. I have prepared some folders for you this evening, which outlines a little bit about Avatar Communications. And in the back is a copy of tonight’s Power Point presentation as well as a copy of the agreement that I will refer to. If you would like to follow along in the back, you can turn to the first page that should be facing you in the back. It should say Avatar Communications, Town of Plainfield Parks and Recreation Department. The second page we wanted to present just a couple of comments there. I will let you go ahead and read those on your own as to why public relations is such an important element when launching a product or any new endeavor. I want to talk just a little bit about the role of public relations and branding and brand building and why it works. And the purpose of branding and why you want to create a brand marketing in general and then the importance of internal communications. Those are some terms that I will use in tonight’s presentation. We will try to move things pretty quickly. As you will notice on slide four, there is a certain way folks perceive any sort of message that is before them before they are actually inclined to purchase or to become customers. That is really where public relations and marketing work hand in hand to help launch any product. Avatar’s philosophy is outlined as well in terms of our process: perceive, pursue, persuade and perfect. First we want to perceive all of the information that we can. Pursue those different targets, pursue those different messages. Persuade those particular targets. The information that we would like them to know about us and tell our story, if you will, and then perfect our message by evaluating it. I’m purposely trying to rush through things in the interest of time. I placed also our strategic planning matrix to let you know the process that we go throughout all of these different purposes. First analyzing the situation and taking a look at any problems or opportunities that might be available. Identifying our target audiences, identifying our key messages, our goals, our objectives, strategies, tactics and evaluation. Those are different parts of our strategic matrix. They are part of the proposal that you find in the last five pages of this presentation. All of these things work together to bring about a certain result and a result that we are all interested in for this facility and it’s success in our community. When Mr. Prince was telling me about the project, it was a kind of project that I’m very excited about in terms of what it means to our community and in terms of what it means to the surrounding communities in Plainfield’s placement in our region. If you will turn to the proposal, I also have abbreviated for purposes of tonight, revised services that Avatar proposes and feels are essential for the success of marketing and public relations. Under the review of the existing parks and recreation materials is the preparation of the public relations outline and communications plan. Also, editorial development services and being able to come up with stories that will peak public interest and relate back to the success of our facility. And the preparation of communication materials. I brought some materials with me just so that you would have an idea what I’m talking about in terms of marketing and public relations. How we represent ourselves specifically to the media marketing in terms of how we best sell ourselves in a creditable way to the community. These are some examples and I will pass around if I can. There are different materials for aquatic centers that are town run and very successful. Really what we are looking at here for a facility of one of this magnitude is it is more than just a recreation facility. It is really a water park and an aquatic park, something that the community can really be proud of. I think representing it in terms of professional marketing materials will help to insure its success. Also, we would like to:

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Monitor the media and provide editorial clippings. Research the preparation of media lists and editorial calendars. Opportunities to further tell our story using different targets. Preparation and simunition of position statements, what are key messages? Implementing select marketing projects. Planning and facilitating implementation of any other communication activity that Mr. Prince sees fit as we move forward. Researching the market for appropriate relationship building opportunities. What are the relationships that we can build community wide that surround the facility and how can we best use those relationships for our purposes in the success of this facility? And developing and implementing internal communication strategies and programs.

The next slide on your page really talks about the recommended services that Avatar would provide. If you will notice, there is a large menu of services on the back of our brochure. Some of the services that Mr. Prince and I reviewed we really felt were essential to the success of the launching of this facility. Editorial concept development – what are some stories that we can put together that would be of interest? One example is coming up very shortly. I know with the white beam raising and some folks signing the names is a very interesting story that I think has some great news worthy potential. I think it is an opportunity for us to launch a community wide understanding of this project, its scope and the offering that it is to our community to be able to bring some news crews out. And to be able to have access to the media to witness that event and to publicize exactly what we are doing with the facility. There will be several events like that, of course, the grand opening. Different events throughout the first several years that we will want to highlight and bring media attention to. Developing stories like that, engaging the media, packaging stories that will be of interest that will insure that our message gets out to the public that we have identified as our targets. Developing the brand and managing the brand you will notice that there is a logo and a name for the facilities on that. We want to also be able to develop that so we have a recognizable logo on the community as to what we talk about when we are talking about the recreation and aquatic center and what we mean and what people remember and identify with it immediately. Also we want to be able to prepare the marketing materials, as I mentioned, a web presence and web development. A specific web page and a web site that would highlight the different events and different activities as well as provide information on getting their membership. Also what kind of services will be offered at the recreation facility, etc. Community relations – how we engage other business members of the community. How we can engage other groups of the community to know about this facility. To know about the things that it offers and to view it in a very positive light for the things that it has to offer them specifically and how they can be involved from a business level. We want to be able to engage other businesses and really help some of the entrepreneurs that are part of our community to get behind the project. Event and planning coordination – Avatar would assist in helping to plan events so that they are guaranteed to be successful not only in their positive media generation but also in their place among the community and helping advertising. I have listed advertising last not by mistake. I will point to the two quotes in the very beginning of the proposal. Launching any product and launching any brand that is new to the community you really want to use public relations that is most cost effective and the best vehicle for really launching your product. And then support all of your efforts with advertising. Advertising comes last. Advertising is the thing that reminds people of the messages that they have already been engrained in their mind. I have identified primary targets and secondary targets on slide nine. And then I also identified recreation and aquatic media channels, what media channels we would use. firm

I would also like to quickly highlight Avatar as a company and a that is before you. We have seasoned experienced staff in !4

communications for 60 plus years collectively of experience. We are the fourth largest public relations firm in Indianapolis as ranked by the Indianapolis Business Journal. Our offices are located in Plainfield and have been since 1997. We are very proud of that. We have a local presence and offer a strategic resource to all of our markets that we highlighted. We are focused as strategists and counselors with a host of other strategic partners in terms of copyriting and graphic design. It helps us insure cost effectiveness as well as total service to our clients. The last slide here tonight is really the action step moving forward. I think Mr. Prince first approached me four months ago. We have been eager to make this presentation. We have been eager to move forward with the project. I know steel is already in the ground and being delivered weekly and very soon we will have bricks and mortar. As this project has been in front of us, there are questions in the community. There are people who have a direct pipeline to knowing the information that is out there. We very much want to be in front of them. To be in front of the story is what we would like to get started immediately to bring about the success of this facility. I don’t have a calendar date when we had planned to raise the white beam but I think that would be one of the first things that we would really like to undertake. Then also we would really like to involve and engage over 100 employees of the Town of Plainfield in helping them understand, from a knowledgeable standpoint, this facility and what it brings to the community and having them know many facts about it. So, that they in turn can be a very positive spokesperson for the success of this launch and facility. So, those are the two things that we would like to start to work on immediately. It is very important, I feel looking at our time line, that we begin to engage some of this prior to May so that our community can know that these are the exciting plans that awaits them. They can know a little bit about what has brought us to this point and can be thinking and planning toward their involvement with the recreation facility and aquatic center accordingly. If you will turn to page two, in reviewing all of the services that are needed, we discussed those briefly on slide eight. We really looked how to best represent the time factor. What kind of time it would really take our firm to help insure the success of this launch of the recreation aquatic center. Based on 7.5 weekly hours, or roughly 30 hours, a month we feel that will be the minimum required for the successfully launch of this center. In seeking the approval of the Council, and at Mr. Prince’s request, we would very much like to get started as soon as possible. Mr. Brandgard asked, are there any questions or comments from the Council? Mr. proposal.

Carlucci

said

I

think

the

Council

got

a

copy

of

this

Mr. Prince said I think Councilman Ward and you had a copy of that originally. Mr. Jefferson said it has changed just a little bit. It was four months ago that Mr. Prince and I sat down to look at it. A few things have changed since then. We have highlighted the possibility for creating a crisis communication’s plan as well as a media relations plan. Heaven forbid something unfortunate would happen at any facility in the Town of Plainfield. But being able to engage a crisis communication’s plan for the parks and creation department could be used Town wide. There are several different elements like that as we try to strategically use the resources to the best benefit of the Town. We expanded the hours required for that just a little bit and also improved some of the wording in terms of making things a little more focused. This revised proposal mirrors that with a slight revision and adjustment in amount of the time. As we would be using several of the different tools that are created not only for the recreation and aquatic center but it could be used for the skate park, for instance, or for any of the other departments within the Town. And being able to know what to do when something happens. And also how do we go about it so that the Town has its best foot forward in being able to engage the media, being able to involve itself with getting the facts out to the community. Mr. Carlucci said I agree 100% that with this kind of facility and this kind of investment you need a marketing plan for the facility. I haven’t had a lot of time to look at their new proposal yet. I’m !5

more familiar with the old proposal but the problem that I had with the old proposal, and maybe some of that is still in here, is I could not tell the difference on some of the items that were specific dollar amounts to accomplish specific things. And the ongoing relationship on retainage basis. I don’t want to delay this because I know a delay would not be beneficial especially if we have something coming up. Mr. Jefferson said let me explain, if I could just briefly. Mr. Prince had asked me to outline some of the costs associated with developing some things like marketing materials or crisis communication or an advertising campaign. So, what I did I gave a brief cost breakdown of similar projects that we had been involved in. They were basic cost estimates, and depending on the quantities and the amount of time used in some of those projects, some of those costs would vary. So, It tried to give some ballpark numbers, which are I think far from creditable in every instance. I wanted to at least give him an idea of what some materials might cost. Some of the things that we are planning and talking about, the costs associated with those. Mr. Reno said those are standalone estimates that we gave you per project. That did not contemplate or retain an agreement at that time. So, that is the difference. Those are standalone costs. Mr. Carlucci said what I want to make sure, and depending on how the Council wants to go forward with this, is we understand exactly what is being delivered. The nice thing about the retainer is that the firm and the Town get to know each other, which we do pretty well already. But if we weren’t to have a retainer and something happened and we called you up saying write a press release for us and take four hours to do it, it is absolutely the wrong approach to take because you probably couldn’t write one in four hours. You wouldn’t have any ongoing relationship with the Town other than maybe do this or that. I don’t even know how you do a logo on a fixed rate because you take the chance of bringing four samples to the Town and we say we don’t like any of them. Then that is frustrating for everybody. So, it is always good to have an ongoing relationship. With the little time that we have here I can’t look through here and say I understand exactly what is being delivered. Or what is retained on an hourly basis and what is a fixed rate. That is all that I’m trying to make sure that we understand before we enter into that agreement because it will be important to know. Mr. Jefferson said with any relationship there is always some adjustment. One of the things that we really enjoy in the relationships that we have that are very successful is either a single point of contact or a minimal amount of people who can really manage exactly what we are doing. We can make recommendations and we can counsel our clients as to the way that they should go but ultimately the time and use of our expertise is up to our client. If there was something unfortunate that happened and we would need to spend a little bit of time to prepare some information for the news media, there would be a certain amount of time that would be allocated for that. Whereas, the 30 hours are very flexible in how they are used and we tend to work at the direction of our client. Mr. Carlucci said what I said wasn’t meant to be negative but we have to completely understand. If the Council decides they want to move forward on this, I would suggest that we sit down and make sure that you along with Mr. Prince, myself, the attorney and whoever else wants to be involved in this, and understand exactly what we are getting and how it is going to be structured. I was doing pretty good on the old one until you brought the new one. Mr. Jefferson said they mirror each other pretty well. Mr. Carlucci said that is all that I’m trying to get at. We have a relationship with you now because you maintain our web site. So, this additional relationship I think will go along smooth. I think everybody is pretty familiar with the work Avatar does but again I need to understand exactly what those are so that there is no confusion later on. The strength of the relationship is that you enter into an agreement with everybody knowing what it means so that we don’t get down the road, and find out that there was something that wasn’t covered or is additional. Mr. Jefferson said in our action steps moving forward, the final slide, provided for the final thing moving forward, which is to bring an implementation team together. I don’t know exactly who the members !6

of that implementation team would be but it would certainly be a team that could decide exactly how those hours and how that time would be best spent. Mr. Kirchoff said to build on your comments Mr. Carlucci in the proposed contract, as I see it, I see a monthly retainage fee but I see no other over and above that rate. It is a minimum but it also carries over if we don’t use the hours. If we use your company 100 hours a month, it doesn’t say what those charges would be. Mr. Jefferson said the charges would be the same. $125.00 per hour rate.

It is the

Mr. Young said I recall during the budget period that our Parks and Recreation Director advised us of some extraordinary costs with the opening of the other recreation center so we were advised. So, this is not a surprise but is this covered in our budget? Did we have this as a budgeted item on the current 2003 budget? Mr. Prince said that was presented as an expense in my budget, yes. We did not know what month the recreation center was going to open but this was presented to the Council as an operational budget. It was an annual expense to operate the Parks and Recreation Department, not just the recreation center, but the promotions of our entire department starting with the recreation center opening. So, my answer to that is yes it was presented to you in the budget but we were still wondering when the recreation center was going to open. Mr. Young said I certainly understand and recall those conversations. I just wanted to make certain that my recollection from many months ago was carried forward and I was on that page. Like our Town Manager and as at least one of my colleagues mentioned I was not privileged to get this before tonight. So, what I’m reading is we have expert consultants and advisers and engineering firms and writers and others who provide services. But as has been stated earlier, there is a specific project. They give us a budget as to what it would cost to accomplish that specific project. They work within that budget and we pay the bill. What I see here is basically a retainage where you are available on call and it is kind of open-ended and I’m kind of uncomfortable with that. I have to tell you that when we deal with the other individuals successfully over many years, some have expanded their role because they work very well within their budget. If the State Department of Public Accounts stops in the Clerk/Treasurer’s office and wants to audit a payment, we have a clear project and we have a clear payment. And we have clear authorization by the Council and everything is fairly straightforward on a per hour basis. This doesn’t answer any of that. Mr. Jefferson said we certainly want it to be very clear. Reno would like to see if he couldn’t clarify your question here.

Mr.

Mr. Reno said I want to make sure that I do clarify that. What I believe that you are interpreting as a retainer agreement is actually an hourly service agreement. With all projects of this type we, to the best of our ability, attempt to estimate hours going into a project. But in this case what we have done is we estimated that. We have done it under a long-term agreement and we have given the Town a significant reduction in our hourly rate and my hourly rate, at least, of $175.00. What we try to do with this is give you control over the agreement. Typically the way that it is managed is whenever we have accounts, we are really talking about one day a week. So, what we do is on a monthly basis, really a weekly, we will meet and have a project meeting but we will review that account every month and see where we are. There is no intention in this agreement of just saying that we are going to be on call. We have outlined specific action steps in this plan that we are going to carry out. I would assure you that after the first 90 days of this you will probably see your hours above and far beyond what they call for. But what we do in almost all of these types of situations is if you have an hourly allocation, in this case 30 hours a month, you will find that in the first four to six months of that, with all of the things that we will need to create for this project, we are probably going to be at 50-60 hours. But we go into this understanding that and understanding that over the course of a year it is going to go down. I would say one more thing and that is if you look closely at the agreement, there should be either a 30 or 60 day automatic out in there. So, that if you don’t believe that you are getting the value from us that you need to get, you may cancel that at any time. I want to make sure that it is clear to all of you that this is not a !7

situation that we sit and wait on the phone to ring. We have not just given you a proposal but we have outlined a plan for you here. We have done that specifically in good faith to get moving forward. We are not ever going to ask you to be in a situation where you are 30-40 hours under and we are sitting on our hands and the bills just keep coming in. I understand your prospective. Mr. Young said let me give you an example that is very similar. A different department presented to the Council a proposition for some electronic mapping for the Town’s infrastructure and services. It was also going to be long-term. But with the proposal it gave a budget so that we knew in advance how much money we were spending the first six months. How much money we were spending the first year. How much we were going to be spending on year five. So, the hourly rates for the various categories of help within the firm were identified. So, then we had a clear picture of the value of having the global positioning project accomplished and would we have enough money to do that over that period of time? So, it was a decision we could make very capably. Right now what I have here is that you are on call at a certain rate to do some things. I don’t see them in the same light. Mr. Brandgard said it is different than how we normally see it. Mr. Reno said what we have done to the best of our ability is to estimate hours. If you look in the plan itself, we have outlined several things we are going to do and we have, to the best of our ability, estimated the number of hours to accomplish those tasks. Mr. Kirchoff asked, where is that located? Mr. Reno said it should be toward the front. one on the cover letter.

It is under item

Mr. Kirchoff asked, what are the hours? Mr. McPhail said I guess I’m looking at this somewhat differently. It appears to me that they presented a game plan of several items that they are going to be working on. I believe what they are saying is they think that it is going to take about 30 hours a week over a period of time to get the job done. The only concern I have is we might put a maximum on the thing. Mr. Reno said that is one of the difficulties that we run into. We estimate that and we work with the client and then often the client will want other things included. At some point if we were 40-60 hours, we would have to say hold on. But what we have done is estimated the number of hours at 30 hours a month or whatever we have in there times 12 months. Again, giving you the flexibility that at any point and time you can turn the faucet off and say stop. What we will do is advise you at that point and time about what things are going to cost. If you took the original way that we structured the proposal and you just said we want to price this at 10 separate projects other than a retainer, you would find that to be prohibitively expensive. If I write a crisis communication’s plan, the standalone fee for that plan is $7,500.00. We know that is how many hours it takes so it made no sense from my prospective, having worked with the Town for three and a half years, of coming in and trying to sell you the moon when you didn’t need it. We tried to assemble a modest proposal here of 30 hours a month at a lower hourly rate and give you the list of services that we are going to provide. If we get into meetings and there are other things that we need to do, then we can add those and review it at that time. This is what we have recommended that you folks do with the recreation center. But you ultimately, as the client, have the control over that. The best one to speak to that is Mr. Carlucci because he has worked with us for three years and he knows that is how we operate. You really have the control in this situation. Mr. Brandgard said I think what I’m hearing is you have an estimate for each one of the services being provided and how much time you think you will need. Mr. Reno said yes. Mr. Brandgard said I think that is what we are lacking here is understanding how much time it will take. Mr. Reno said as we work through this, we may find, for instance, we need to spend more time fixing stories than we do with internal !8

communications. A lot of it is driven by the process that we go through with the client to determine what is needed at the time. As someone said earlier, when you get into issues like developing adds or developing story concepts, news releases, etc., I have seen, for example, I have gone through 14-20 drafts of news releases before to get them approved. I don’t anticipate that here. But we have to make an assumption that we are going to be heavy here or light here and work as we go through it. Mr. Ward said I can see, like he says, a great number of hours the first 4-6 months, 30 hours a week, to get this thing underway and then ration down to some kind of schedule. Am I wrong in that? Mr. Reno said no. That is exactly right. We thought honestly if you looked at numbers for specific projects without having done research, without having looked at the tasks at hand, just to throw out numbers project by project, believe me, you wouldn’t do business with us. It wouldn’t make any sense. That is why we said let’s take a look at the entire need of the project, price out some of what we believe to be the major components of the project, do it on an annual basis and then revisit this at the end of 30-60 days. Revisit it again at the end of the year so we have really tried to build into here Mr. Young a level of accountability for ourselves and a level of responsiveness for you. So, that if at any time you are not comfortable with what is happening or services that you are getting, we can revisit the agreement or you are welcome to call us and put us on the carpet and have us explain what we are doing for your investment. Honestly, there was no way for us to throw out a number. If it is the Council’s desire, certainly we can work on an hourly basis but I don’t think that is the best use of your resources. I think at some point, four months in, you would stop in a hurry. I really do. Mr. Young said now I’m hearing something that I don’t read in here. You have a retainage minimum where even if you work only one hour, I owe you $4,000.00. If you put in one hour, it is a minimum monthly fee of $3,750.00. So, I know what my minimum is but you are saying that if you spent 50 hours, it would be $3,750.00. Mr. Reno said the same amount of money. That is exactly right. Mr. Young said that isn’t clearly specified. Mr. Kirchoff said paragraph 4 B says when you spend more than a monthly minimum, we pay for additional services. Mr. Young said that is the way that I read it. I know what my minimum cost is but I don’t know what my maximum cost is. Mr. Reno said what it says is “during those months when approved staff services exceed.” What that means is we will rewrite it to say that “no additional hours will be billed without the express approval of the Town.” That is exactly what that means. I will try to clarify it any way that I can. Essentially what will happen is, as we go through this, and I’m basing this on 20 years of work, we are going to get three or four months into this and you will be 60-70 hours over. Then as we get into the summer and into the fall, you will see those hours start to taper off. But we won’t be in a situation where we are coming to you and in a 30-day period we are coming in with 90 hours at $125.00 an hour and then the Town says stop. There is no governing to it and there is no way to project out. Honestly, that is one of the advantages of meeting every week and managing hours and saying we have to work within a budget. We can’t get too far out and too far over. We usually don’t like to get any more than 40-60 hours over before we start to revisit those things. If we are only working 10-15 hours a month, we are not doing our job especially on something this large. As I said, if you are not comfortable with this, then we can go back to a straight hourly rate and pay as you go. We can do that too. I want to do whatever you are comfortable with. Mr. Kirchoff asked, how soon do we need to decide? Mr. Brandgard said I think, obviously, we need to get started as soon as possible. At least give us a chance to look at this and make a decision at the next meeting if we can. I think we have an area here that we need to fully understand. it.

Mr. Kirchoff said I’m still confused and would like to chat about

!9

Mr. Carlucci said maybe Mr. Ward, Mr. Prince and myself can meet with Mr. Reno and Mr. Jefferson because I still have some questions. There is a whole list of things and we will have to decide what we are going to do first and I don’t see that in there either. Mr. Reno said we can’t tell yet. Mr. Carlucci said I need some more explanation on some of the things that you are planning on doing. There are some things that I just didn’t understand real well. My thought of doing this is just when we start on this, we have an understanding on both sides of where we are going. I didn’t mean to try to derail it. The problem with bringing something in on the night of the meeting is this is what happens. You get these questions and the Council, from my experience, hasn’t done a lot of approvals of things that they have seen the first time. Mr. Brandgard said the other part is we always try to make it a practice of not signing anything until Mr. Daniel has had a chance to say that it is okay. Mr. Reno said we didn’t come this evening expecting approval. We just thought we were suppose to come tonight and present a plan to you so that is what we have tried to do. Mr. Brandgard said I think we have had some good constructive dialog here but it is a case of making sure that we both understand what each of us are saying. Mr. Young said the questions that I asked weren’t meant to be mean spirited. Mr. Reno said I didn’t interpret them to be that way. Mr. Young said you are dealing in an area where art meets business. I believe I brought to Mr. Prince other successful projects where they branded their project and it was very highly effective. Where you have art meeting business and creative juices are flowing I don’t know how long it takes to sit around a think tank to see what the brand is for an aquatic center. I have no experience in that. Do we trust our department heads to be fiscally responsible for their department budgets? We do and we give them quite a bit of authority and trust and respect their good judgments. So, it is not that we are suddenly distrustful. It is just what you were saying and what is in this document I personally have not had time to read in that document what you said. What you said and what this says is clear and from my prospective they are not the same thing. Is that fair? Mr. Reno said it is fair. Mr. Brandgard said thank you for coming in and we appreciate your time and effort. We all think what you presented is a good plan. It just comes down to making sure that we both understand it. Again, we will have at least Mr. Prince, Mr. Ward and Mr. Carlucci take a look at it and work with Mr. Daniel also to make sure that we all end up with something that we are agreeable with collectively. TOWN MANAGER’S REPORT None. REPORTS Mr. Ward said I stopped in the interurban building and saw that they have taken the floor out. They were pouring concrete and getting ready to do their thing. It will take shape here pretty quick right now. Mr. McPhail said the only report that I have is it is very obvious that the weather has not been very conducive to construction. Therefore, things are moving pretty slow. Mr. Kirchoff said if you have your calendars, Mr. Belcher, Mr. McGillem and I would like to pick a day hopefully in March that we could have a work session on transportation issues. We will be in a position then what kind of projects that we have and some of that. (The meeting was scheduled for March 27 at 6:00 p.m.). !10

Mr. McPhail asked, Mr. Higbee do we have a meeting on the 19th? Mr. Higbee said yes at 7:00 p.m. I was going to announce that when I got up. That would be a combined meeting of the Plan Commission, DRC and BZA and anybody else from the Council who wants to come. Mr. Kirchoff said last week I attended two meetings that I thought were well prepared and well presented. On the 18th we had a meeting here with BDI on the downtown revitalization. I thought that was well done. They have done very good work. We had 20-25 citizens here and it was very well done. I think we are headed to some good things there. I appreciate the chance to participate in that. And then Thursday night this was a little bit smaller but we had a meeting on the Comprehensive Plan down at the high school. We had about a half dozen citizens there. But again there was some very good work. We talked amongst ourselves and others about some ways to get that out to the general public in a better manner. Then we talked about maybe coming to the Lyons and Rotary and other places to get citizen’s input. They have done some really good work here and it is just unfortunate that we didn’t have more people show up. We do need people’s input on that. Mr. McPhail said they had an excellent method of trying to gather data. It was a very easy opportunity for citizens to have their input in all areas of that Comprehensive Plan. It was very well done. Mr. Kirchoff and I both said we have to do this again and get more community input. Mr. Kirchoff said it is the kind of thing at a service club that they could tailor it down to 20-30 minutes and then give everybody a chance to react. I don’t know if you will have any more conversations with them or not. Mr. Higbee said I think they understood at the end of that meeting that we needed to do something else. I sent them something asking them to propose a date for another meeting. Perhaps we could propose a date for another meeting that perhaps we could advertise better than we did on the one before. One concept that was kicked around was the possibility of having an all day open house at the Town Hall. I even said if we do that, we would bleed over to the evening so that way you capture any citizen who had a time conflict with a particular time of day can come morning, noon or evening and get his chance to do that. The additional types of things that you are talking about would probably be doable but we would have to work out an agreement with them because those extra meetings and visits wouldn’t be within their scope of services. As long as we are willing to pay for that or possibly I could go and do that for them and feed the data back. Mr. Kirchoff said we just need more feedback. citizens is not sufficient.

A half of dozen

Mr. Brandgard said we ought to send direct mail out to everybody letting them know this is going on and when and where. Most people don’t read that part of the paper. Mr. McPhail said I had a conversation with Bruce Smith, at the Star West after that meeting and told him how important it was. He told me he would write a feature article if we would pick another day to do it. And that he would interview HNTB and anybody from the Staff and that is what we need. We need some headlines and people to come and see this thing because it is well prepared. Mr. Higbee said I would like to give just a little feedback on that too. I think we should do absolutely what you are saying and go for it and try to get as many people as we can in there. But just as a baseline for you to think about I was reading about Marion County’s Comprehensive Plan this weekend and they had some comp plan meetings. HNTB was telling us, the people that put on that last meeting, that it is typical in the early part of a comp plan that you don’t get much attendance. Ours was unusually low with five or six people but it is typical that the numbers are really low no matter how hard you advertise. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it but in Marion County there were several meetings held where they were only getting 15-25 people at comp plan meetings for the size of Marion County. If we get 20-30 people at a meeting, we will probably be doing great. !11

Mr. Brandgard said when we did the last one, we had some pretty full meeting rooms. Mr. Kirchoff said I’m not tied to the service club issue. I’m just tied to getting more input. A general chamber meeting might be an alternative as well. They just did good work and I think it is really important for us to get the word out and get input back from the community is my whole issue. Mr. Higbee said we will work on that. Mr. Young said Monday night, February 17 the Plainfield Metropolitan Police Department held its board of police commissioners meeting. During that meeting the general business was conducted but I did want to report that in the fourth quarter of 2002 Chief Miller had suggested that there were voluntary citizens who wanted to start an initiative of collecting money for a second canine officer. Then in January of this year, if my memory serves me right, Kim Kooner of Buffalo Wild Wings made a presentation to this Council in person supporting that initiative. So, the commissioners asked Chief Brinker how that initiative was progressing? He had indicated to them that he had established a very high budget of $20,000.00. That would cover vet bills, feed bills, equipping the car, everything to start up the program for the second dog. That is the maximum, $20,000.00 and they asked him how far along are you? Since this is just a new initiative how is the money progressing? And he said they had passed the $10,000.00 mark. For those of you who swing golf clubs I hope you swing hard because this is helping us get our second canine officer. I thought that type of successful initiative from the private sector should be reported and is deserving of this report. Mr. Higbee said I wanted to make you aware of a couple of things. Number one I wanted to give you some good news from the Indiana National Road Association. Outside you might have noticed the little poster that I put there for you to look at at your leisure on your way out. What that poster shows is a bunch of interpretative panels that the Indiana National Road Association hopes to have manufactured and placed along the entire National Road in Indiana. They have identified many sites but for this particular project there are 23 sites. They would put three panels at each site and invest a substantial amount of money. They have submitted for an ISTEA grant for this year’s funding. The good news for Plainfield is two of the 23 sites are actually in Plainfield. One of them would be the diner on the east end of Town, which has been identified as an historic site worthy of what they refer to as an interpretation, which is a marketing term means explaining what something means or creating an experience for somebody. So, they want to put one out there and they got a little confused because they said two sites and they combined the interurban and the Hobbs' tollhouse as one site. I told them that is not one site but two sites. You are going to have to make a choice but the good news is they want to do it for at least two, maybe three sites in Plainfield. That ISTEA grant that they are going after would fund those panels and also would fund an audio tour. They have gone for $300,000.00. About half of it would be for the panels and half of it would be for this audio tour to try to direct people to the road. They would be able to drive down the road with this audio tour in their car and it would be telling them what is what along the road and where to go next, etc. I wanted you to know that those investments, should we get funded, will directly benefit Plainfield. Those panels would cost over $15,000.00 just for the ones that they would put in Plainfield alone. It is likely that they will come before you or they will ask me to at some point in the future and ask for you to help them fund the matching portion of that. There is the usual 80/20 arrangement that we do when we fund these kinds of grants. So, they are going to have to come up with the 20% if they get funded. I wanted you to know that. If you were to decide to invest in that, you have gained more, just in the hard dollars of the interpretative panels. And then with the audio tours, along with their other marketing programs and creating a web site and many other things that actually attracts people to the roads, it will get you some economic benefit out of it as well. Also, an article was published on the historic Hobbs' tollhouse. That is what I have always called it. This is a magazine called Roadwork, which goes out to several hundred people that are members of that Indiana National Road Association. It has my name on it, as author, although actually I had somebody help me write it. I wrote a rough draft and said you need to finish this and get it published. So, !12

that is out there. We are hoping to hear whether or not we got funded for our grant to preserve and move that structure sometime in the near future. Also, I was asked if it was okay to publish an article on the tollhouse in this magazine called the Preservationist. It is a publication of historical landmarks foundation. They kind of have an alliance with the National Road Association. They did an article, you might recall, a few months ago on the interurban that was really good. So, I gave them my permission to go ahead and work with information that I had already given them through this article and other things to publish something on that. That should be coming out shortly. Another item that I’m working on is the telephone system for the Town Hall. I volunteered one day because I was wondering what was happening with it and I was finding out there were a lot of questions but no real progress was being made on getting the system in here. So, I asked the departments to sit down with me and we basically formed a little committee for you. We took the initiative to do that and started finding some alternatives for how a phone system could be put in. What I have done is I have invited four phone system vendors to come in this Thursday and respond to a list of criteria that the department heads came up with and told them that within 10 days we want them to submit a quote and schedule installing a phone system in the Town Hall. We have defined the criteria so that basically we can have whatever we want in the system. If you tell us, for instance, you want direct dial to the department heads’ desktops, we will be able to do that. We know that we will be able to have an automated attendant type feature in the system. We know that we will be able to have voicemail and some other features that are really going to benefit everybody. But we can kind of design it any way we want after they come back with those quotes. So, I wanted you to know that we are doing it. Sometime in the next two or three Council meetings we will probably bring something to you and say this is kind of what we think would work. Does that work for the Council or do you want us to do something else? Mr. Brandgard said we certainly appreciate you taking that on. Mr. Belcher said I have only one item to talk about. It was in the report regarding the traffic agreement that Rex is still working on with C. P. Morgan and Precedent Development. Some time ago the Plan Commission approved the project and one of the conditions of approval was that Section 1 would not be recorded until a written agreement with the Town Council was obtained. That agreement is not in place yet. The developer is at the point where he wants his plat. There are things that are out of his control and are a little out of our control in terms of putting that agreement in place. Just for your information this particular developer has committed up to $75,000.00 towards the improvement of the intersection of Morris Street and Raceway Road. Prior developers, some of which were under County control and we had no input on, had also committed funds. We have a record of that. We have no assurance of that. We have a record of $30,000.00 by Bay Development, which is on the Marion County side. We have a record of $10,000.00 from Crossman, which is north of Morris Street. And then we had Precedent commit to $5,000.00 from the Meadowlark Subdivision that we have committed to us. With those previous funds committed to the County and then the Town, the developer said I will commit up to $75,000.00 in addition to those funds, which would be $120,000.00 for a traffic signal. That was basically the estimate for a traffic signal. It doesn’t include the lanes and it doesn’t include the other things that we really think needs to be done there. It is very difficult to get those other things done and try to coordinate three different agencies. Long story short we are at the point where we have a written commitment from the development. It is in the public minutes of the Plan Commission meeting. It is in a letter that he just recently wrote to me with those same commitments. I’m willing to say I think the Council should go forward and allow us to sign that plat and allow him to get his first section. He still has many sections left. If something were to go awry and he began to resist in some fashion, I think you have a lot of other leverage still available if you would like to use those. I don’t anticipate that with this particular developer. We have never had them go back on a commitment yet. That is what I wanted to bring forward to you and would like to move forward if we could. Mr. Higbee said one quick comment. I talked to Doug Waggner of Precedent after 5:00 today about this briefly. Section 1 has 164 lots in it. That is what we are talking about signing. There are 550 lots !13

in the overall subdivision. He told me that Section 2 would only have 78 lots in it and it would be coming very quickly. This probably isn’t going to get resolved before Section 2 is ready to be finalized either. He thought probably Section 3, or some future section, was more likely. I just wanted you to be aware to not structure it to be tied to the next section because that might cause a problem. Mr. Brandgard said I think this is an area where we get into trouble every now and then when we ask a private developer to do something based upon having to pull multiple groups together. This one is more complicated because part of the groups are in different counties where we even have problems pulling things together. With the assurances that have been shown I think we should allow the platting to go forward. I will turn to Mr. Daniel if there is anything else we need to make sure this happens as we think it should. Mr. Daniel willing to do.

said

they

are

on

record

as

far

as

what

they

are

Mr. Belcher said it is just a difficult coordination issue. Everything from trying to get the MPO of the federal aid portion because it is such an expensive intersection. There is a bridge in Marion County on that side so there is a lot of complex things to deal with here. We could probably rush up there and put a signal in right away but Mr. McGillem and I felt like we want to resist that because that really could make the problem worse. It is slow now but it is safe. I think it is even to our advantage to try to pull these other folks together. Mr. Kirchoff said I’m sure this will be a topic of conversation at our work session on the 27th. Mr. Belcher said there is a new PR meeting this week and some different things we can try to get input in ourselves. Mr. Carlucci said it is also going to be a topic of conversation with the commissioners. I found some e-mails that were coming in and I talked to John Harris today and, of course, Mr. Harris was telling me that what was interesting is that a County council member for that area has been complaining. But every time he asks him for help he doesn’t hear from him. The most expensive part is going to be the part inside Marion County because of the bridge. Right now that may be the worst intersection in the County bar none. Mr. Kirchoff said last Thursday I came through there going south and it was late afternoon and it was backed up way way north. It took forever to get through there. Mr. McPhail said it is going to be worse when you put a light there without turn lanes. It seems to me that if we get near to his last section, say he is ready to release and post the last section, if we haven’t got it worked out at that point, we could ask him to post a bond or something. His profit is not going to come until he gets those last lots anyway. So, he is going to be more eager to be cooperative at the end than he is today and it sounds like he is pretty cooperative. Mr. Daniel asked, so he is talking about recording just part of that then? Mr. Belcher said Section 1 right now. It sounds like maybe he would like to have Sections 1 and 2 because 2 is close to being ready. Rather than coming back to you in a month or so and ask you for the same permission it sounds like he is ready to propose, if you are willing, Sections 1 and 2. And then review it again at 3. Mr. Daniel asked, are there three sections? Mr. Higbee said there is a minimum of three sections. know how many.

We don’t

Mr. McPhail made a motion to allow Precedent to record a plat up to 50% of the 550 lots before we have to address this issue again. This is in relationship to the agreement that they would have an agreement as far as the signalization goes at Raceway and Morris Street before they plot it. So, we will allow them to plot it up to 275 lots before they have to come back in to deal with us. Second by Mr. Young. Motion carried. !14

Mr. Young said this may be a perfect example where department heads and experts might want to assist the developer because of contacts. This is a huge job when you take all of the government entities and their staff and their boards to get this done. We may be asking a guy to do a job that he really doesn’t have the resources to do. It would be to everyone on the west sides interest for us to cooperate and give them some assistance. This is just a suggestion. I know when I reviewed the e-mail, I was thinking I don’t see how a developer is going to get this done. Mr. Brandgard said this is one of those areas where government is better fit to handle this than the private sector is. Mr. Prince said along with the several attachments on the e-mail that I sent you I did have a monthly report. I looked down and I didn’t date it. I apologize for that but it wasn’t acknowledged on the Consent Agenda so I don’t know if you read it or I could touch on all of the other items on it. Mr. Carlucci said I apologize. Mr. Prince said I don’t object as long as everybody got the report. Mr. Carlucci said a lot of that was already approved. want to go over the other items.

You might

Mr. Prince said first of all the four items that were on there were the rule changes and the fees for the skate park. Another item was the agreement between Plainfield Plus and the Hendricks County Master Gardner’s and our department for the care of Friendship Gardens. Those were on the Consent Agenda. The other item was our intent to purchase budgeted trucks this year for the parks department. And then the last item was one that I did not specifically list and I think that we will have to discuss and that is we received a request from the Plainfield Girl’s Softball Association to begin hosting sponsorship banners at the park. I specifically don’t have a problem with this myself, however, it is not something that we have typically done. In the mean time, an interesting situation came up. I think in the enforcement of an ordinance a citizen was asked to take down a banner and they mentioned that the Town skate park happened to have a big one up at the same time. Needless to say we went out that day and removed it and I immediately began to discussions with Mr. Higbee. This all occurred at the same time. We have a local provider of recreation that uses our facilities that wants to post banners across the street. We have typically posted public announcement banners and we have had a sponsorship banner hanging at our facility last year and we had intended to carry it through this year. I also think that once the other providers in Town see the one group is trying to add to their coffers to provide their program by selling sponsorships they are going to be inclined to ask the same question. I thought we needed to address how we wanted to handle that. I spoke with Mr. Higbee and there are allowances in Town to have banners up for community events, etc. I actually think that what I’m doing is actually covered to an extent when I read it as long as it doesn’t exceed a certain square foot. But typically at parks and recreation settings you do see sponsorship billboards placed to allow some of these non-profit groups to receive funds. Certainly I like the idea to receive a free banner and put my own letters on it from Pepsi or Coke or whoever we go with as opposed to running an add in the paper that I have to pay for that sends a message to the community. In our case we recently used the “skate park closed” banner. Certainly it was in our plans in the next couple of weeks to get another banner back up to let the kids know that we are going to be opening back up. I thought I needed to bring that up. The Plainfield Girl’s Softball formerly asked permission to hang these banners up but I think there is a deeper issue there that we need to address. Mr. Carlucci said if you go to Lovell Field there are advertising banners on those diamonds. If you go to the baseball field in Hummel Park, there are advertisements on the scoreboard, which have always been there. The scoreboards out in Swinford Park have Coca-Cola, is that correct? Mr. Prince said that is correct.

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Mr. Carlucci said a lot of ordinances make differences between the private/public sector in terms of these community groups. We allow churches and schools to put out advertisement that nobody else is allowed to put out for the general public’s general good. We allow weekend signage from Friday evening until Monday morning for the real estate signs. So, you do treat different groups in different ways. I don’t know how specific without going into that ordinance and saying we have a lot of advertisement going on but they are mostly in the public domain. They benefit the children or some non-for-profit group, the community or church or some type of event. Is that permitted under the ordinance is the question? What you don’t want is to be able to respond in the private sector without any way to respond because it is not covered. It comes back to Mr. Higbee on those specific advertisements. Mr. Higbee said I can tell you what is permitted. It is just a matter whether you want to get into that discussion here or you want us to do it somewhere else. Mr. Carlucci asked, are those things permitted? Mr. Higbee asked, which things? Mr. Carlucci Swinford Park?

said

the

banners

that

they

want

to

put

up

at

Mr. Higbee said no. The way that the ordinance is written now, which remember it was updated in 2001, what we call temporary signs kind of changed at that point. Because parks are universally in Plainfield zoned Residential. It just so happens that there aren’t any zoned for Commercial, for instance. They are all special exceptions in Residential Districts. They really weren’t thinking about parks when this was written. So, maybe we need to do something special for parks. But it says if you are Residential, you can have one temporary sign and it can be up to six square feet in size, which isn’t going to meet the kinds of needs he is talking about. Then there are some controls on duration. We are a little bit more liberal in a Commercial zoning district. You can have a four by eight banner if it is a Town recognized special event. Some of you on the Plan Commission probably remember defining what those special events are. Again, they are limited to duration but you can do it up to five times a year for one site. That still might not meet his need because he is talking about multiple users needing sponsorship. I picture the inside of the Hoosier Doom when he was talking, because you look around the inside of that and you see banner after banner on the inside. That is obviously typical for sporting events. Mr. Kirchoff said I think we ought to find a way to do it because like Mr. Carlucci said we have been doing it for Hummel Field for years. We have been doing it at the Hummel Baseball Park for years. We need to find a way to do this. Mr. McPhail said that is a specific banner in a specific location and advertising a specific group of people that is going there. It is not like a general public banner that is out flying in front of a business. We obviously need to have the ordinance allow for seasonal sports facilities to have banners. You may need to be specific. I don’t think we put that in the same category as we are interpreting the ordinance. It is just a flaw in the ordinance as far as I’m concerned. Mr. Higbee said the thing is we want to be sensitive as he gave the example already. Whatever we do needs to be reasonable and defensible to the citizens of the community that are being enforced upon in their areas. We have to put some kind of limitation on what we do in the park but we probably should do something to allow his needs to be met. Mr. Brandgard said we probably need to create another section in the ordinance to handle that but I think it has to be something specific so that the signage is in good taste. In a park setting I have some philosophical problems with advertising. Mr. Ward said at Hummel Park all of their signage is the same size they have in the outfield. Mr. Higbee said we can put our heads together.

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Mr. Carlucci said maybe the Council can make that in the form of a motion to recommend to the Plan Commission that they develop a set of standards for that and amend the Sign Ordinance so that we can go forward. Mr. Young said when you think of public good, it is good for the sports activities that are receiving the funds in exchange for the advertisement. But it also is good for the commerce of the community because it points out which local businesses are deserving of patronage because they support our community. So, when you look at the whole good, I think working out a four by eight banner or a piece of plywood that is painted and maintained around the outfield is something that we can support as a modification of the Sign Ordinance. Especially when we have precedence when we have modified it for other things much less deserving than this. Mr. Brandgard asked, is there consent?

Consent given.

Mr. Prince asked, would it be alright to tell the Plainfield Girl’s Softball that they can move ahead or would they have to wait? Mr. Brandgard said we would have to have the ordinance to allow it first. Mr. Carlucci said I think we might be able to get this done in time for them. I don’t think they start until mid May anyway. Mr. Kirchoff said I think you can send the signal listened to them and we will move as quickly as we can. Mr. McPhail said uniformed in size, etc.

give

them

some

guidelines.

They

that

need

to

we be

Mr. Prince said we have already discussed it. When I have discussed it with people, I have told people that they have to be in excellent repair in appearance at all times. If they become shabby, there is an expense with that. They need to be replaced and they need to work that out with their sponsors. So, they are already aware of that. I told them some ground rules before we move forward with that. I think they understand where we are coming from. We are not going to have a tacky looking facility or a park. One last item is the Plainfield Women’s Club has donated to the parks since I have been here. And the first check that I got, and I had only been here a few weeks, I literally didn’t know what to do with it and I gave it to Ms. Mitchell. It was $50.00. I tried to call and thank somebody and never got a hold of them. Next year here came another $50.00 check and today I got one for $100.00 and obviously I think they are worried that I’m not using them and I think they raised them. These are for park beautification so the message is coming through loud and clear. We are going to find a way to spend their money on park beautification. I think we will work with Plainfield Plus and Master Gardner’s and find a way to beautify the parks with their money. I’m sure that you know some of these women in the community and I wanted the Council to be aware of it. I don’t know how they raise their money but a portion of it is coming back to the Town to use in the parks. When we see these people, we need to let them know that we certainly appreciate that. Lastly, although construction at the recreation center seems to be going slow, our Chicago contractor that is putting in the playground came to work today and he is putting the playground up in the snow. So, that project is under way. Mr. Kirchoff asked, where do we stand on these trucks? Mr. Brandgard said on the trucks where are we as far as funds go? Do we want to defer that expenditure for later in the year? Mr. Carlucci said I would like to go forward because these trucks are eating us alive. They just need to go. We keep spending more money than they are worth. Mr. Brandgard said with that I think we need to move forward. Mr. Prince said we have put off some maintenance in hopes that we could get approval for the new ones. We are going to have to put some money in the old trucks if we don’t move forward. !17

Mr. Kirchoff said that haven’t approved tonight then.

is

the

only

outstanding

item

that

we

Mr. Ward asked, are you taking them in as trade? Mr. Prince said no but what I was going to do, if Mr. Brown would help us, was to put those away at the next sale. Mr. Brandgard asked, is it a budgeted item? Mr. Prince said it is a budgeted item. Mr. Brandgard asked, is there consent? Consent given. inches of snow have you moved this season Mr. Brown?

How many

Mr. Brown said it will be 10 this weekend. Mr. Brandgard said express our thanks to the guys. doing one whale of a job and they have to be tired.

They are

Mr. Kirchoff said I received complements, as I go around the community, of the job that they have done and it is good to hear those complements. Mr. Brown said I will pass that along to them. OLD BUSINESS Mr. Kirchoff said a meeting or two ago we discussed the possibility of the Town Manager pursuing high-speed hook-ups for our connections at home. Have you had any luck? Mr. Carlucci said I have talked to Mark Apple from Comcast. are still trying to work out the details in how to do this. Mr. Daniel Elliott lawsuit.

said

you

may

or

may

not

remember

the

Rankin

We and

Mr. Carlucci said I thought we were done with that. Mr. Daniel said we have been for awhile. It has been the two of them that disputed who owned the old railroad right-of-way out there. That was set for trail last Friday and I talked to Doug Meyer two or three times Thursday and they were trying to work out a settlement. To make a long story short, as of five or so Thursday evening, they settled that between Rankin and Elliott. I’m confident there will be some papers probably for someone on behalf of the Town to sign to resolve that settlement agreement. We are the condemning party in that lawsuit although we have nothing to do with who ended up owning what part of that railroad easement. So, the report is that they have settled their issues and to the extent that the Town needs to sign something to file settlement papers I would ask permission to do that on behalf of the Town so long as the Town doesn’t have to pay any more money. We obviously have paid our money in accordance with the appraiser. My understanding in talking with Mr. Meyer is that was the understanding of the settlement is what we paid into court they are willing to take. It is a question of how they divide that up between the two of them. I made it clear to him that we didn’t care much about who got which part. In fact, he asked me if I was going to be there Friday for the trial and I said I have no evidence to offer to either party. So, I would ask for permission from the Council to sign any documents necessary if the Town is required to sign any to resolve that dispute. Mr. McPhail made a motion to allow the Town counsel, Mr. Mel Daniel, to sign the documents that may need signatures to resolve the Rankin/Elliott case. Second by Mr. Young. Motion carried. NEW BUSINESS None. ORDINANCES Mr. Brandgard said when anything comes up relative to approvals on Ordinance No. 01-2003, let Mr. Durell know so that he can be aware of it. He made some good comments and we gave him some assurances at !18

the last meeting. it.

We want to make sure that we live up to our side of

Mr. Kirchoff made a motion to approve Ordinance No. 01-2003 on its third and final reading. An ordinance rezoning real estate from OD Office District to GC General Commercial for Denison Properties, Inc. Second by Mr. Ward. Roll call vote called. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr. Mr.

Ward – yes McPhail – yes Kirchoff – yes Young – yes Brandgard – yes

5-ayes, 0-opposed, 0-absent.

Motion carried.

COUNCIL COMMENTS

ADJOURNMENT Mr. McPhail made a motion to sign the necessary documents and adjourn. Second by Mr. Young. Motion carried.

_________________________________ Robin G. Brandgard, President

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