Transcript — Vigo County Oversight Board, 2026-03-05

Machine transcription of the recording of the Vigo County Oversight Board meeting on 2026-03-05, aligned to the video timeline. This is not the official record — the clerk's minutes are, and this is unreviewed automatic speech recognition that mis-hears names and numbers. Check anything that matters against the recording.

Each line is stamped with its position in the recording, both as a clock time and as [t=SECONDS]. Those are the same seconds the archive's source links use: open the recording and add &t=<seconds> to jump to any line.

Speakers were separated automatically and named from the meeting's speaker roster where the evidence supported it; an unnamed voice is shown as Speaker <n>, which is a machine label and not a person's name.

Transcript

0:00:00 [t=0] Speaker 1: I don't even shine on the same light.
0:00:01 [t=1] Yeah. I don't know. All right.
0:00:04 [t=4] Speaker 0: Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
0:00:08 [t=8] Speaker 2: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
0:00:13 [t=13] and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, and the God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right.
0:00:25 [t=25] Speaker 7: First up, we have the minutes from last week. Thank you for the motion carried. Thank you for the second. All those in favor say aye.
0:00:41 [t=41] Speaker 10 (chair): Aye. All right. Mr. Matheny. Yeah, the, you know, the first couple months has mostly
0:00:48 [t=48] Mark Matheny (oversight board member): been spent on hearing from, again, Gibraltar hearing from the school corporation, understanding the different consolidation options and plans that have been laid out.
0:00:59 [t=59] Mark Matheny (oversight board member): And so now we kind of turn our attention this next month to understanding kind of the county's
0:01:05 [t=65] Mark Matheny (oversight board member): financial situation. That was kind of the second part of what we were tasked to do. And so kind of our attention now turns. We've got auditor Barry Hutchings today who's going to share a little bit about the annual financial report that was updated and posted last week. But ultimately, our task is to look at the overall county financial situation. Our consultant pro is going to help us to model and project out more forward-looking, so model out into the future and what the projected impacts of Senate Build 1,
0:01:50 [t=110] Mark Matheny (oversight board member): um potentially how that may impact those projections so um the annual financial report is a huge kind of a first step um so i just wanted to say thank you again for the hard work uh larry and his team to get that updated uh and posted on time um so larry if you want to you're fine to stay there if you want to join us up here wherever you want but we'll have just a few questions and and I think just maybe start out by maybe just explain the AFR, annual financial report. Give us what is it and what is it generally used for for somebody that's not.
0:02:30 [t=150] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): So the Indiana State law requires the state examiner or state board of accounts to receive annual financial reports from counties, cities, towns, townships, schools, libraries, utilities, special districts and they submit those reports via the collection system at gateway these reports are submitted by the units and made available by gateway to the public soon after the deadline uh 50 days after the beginning of the year we also are in gap counting which means generally accepted accounting principles and that's typically for units that are over 100 000
0:03:07 [t=187] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): um residents uh you know people in the county um we have not done gap for two years um so we are doing gap this year it's quite a we have not done it yet it's due by june first uh that helps uh put the county in a better position to bond uh more favorably um so that's
0:03:34 [t=214] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): something that i chose to do last year we got an exemption because when we walked in it was it wasn't done so we wasn't prepared for that so we did get an exemption from state board of accounts we appreciate that this year i did not want to ask for another exemption i wanted to get
0:03:51 [t=231] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): it done so that's what we're going to do uh and i will just tell you that uh our team is
0:03:58 [t=238] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): they're they're lights out and they're always working always doing something so i want to kind to give you some numbers if i could of the past three years we have numbers for cash balances
0:04:12 [t=252] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): and we have also numbers with cash balances with investments so my chief deputy morgan
0:04:18 [t=258] Morgan Elkins (chief deputy auditor): consent is going to give you some of those numbers um the numbers we have for with invest investments For 2023, the beginning was $164,108,325.68. The ending was $108,385,559.19. cents um for 2024 um beginning was 145 385 559 dollars and 19 cents and the ending was 160 million $313,802.44. And then for 2025, the beginning was $165,326,782.08. And the ending was $169,575,389.
0:05:22 [t=322] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): dollars that was with investments so as you can see i think there's been a trend up uh to the to a positive in my opinion uh and i will say that um we have some very intelligent people in our uh in the annex here the treasurer uh josie thompson she does a great job of investing I've went with her on several occasions to be part of those transactions.
0:05:54 [t=354] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): And she's always thinking about how to find the best interest rate to put our money to
0:06:01 [t=361] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): good use for wise investments. I think that's beneficial. We have some others in the county also that do the same thing.
0:06:09 [t=369] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): So I think that's helping us.
0:06:12 [t=372] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): things i will say is and as jim knows uh there's always the unknown uh and i you know we we have
0:06:22 [t=382] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): to think ahead we have to think and what if something happens uh you know we want we want to have that um padding of course to take care of things that you know you know may come up covid was a big you know instance of something that might have you know come up again or something else so we want to make sure the county is in a good positive state and to you know so that's
0:06:54 [t=414] Speaker 36: i think i think we're in i think we're in a good place
0:06:57 [t=417] Mark Matheny (oversight board member): thanks for your work on this was there anything that jumped out at you good or bad just as you're and i know it's you've just got it posted but was there anything that jumped out at
0:07:08 [t=428] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): you well um one thing that uh we're we're doing now that um we've been asked to do uh by the firm partner williams who we have hired is to do a better job on capital assets capital assets are roads bridges buildings vehicles uh certain dollar amounts uh you know we don't we don't put everything on there we don't like pencils and pens we don't do that but trucks uh bridges roads so we didn't really have a good grasp like even on the parks part uh there's a lot of things that weren't being put into that report that we are going back and we're asking of our entities to
0:07:58 [t=478] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): help us with that and they're doing a great job everything we've asked and done so it's just going to help us solidify us for next year to do a better job in reporting
0:08:10 [t=490] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): because ultimately we want to be good stewards of the taxpayers money and we want to make sure that you know it's done honestly um above above board uh i don't uh i can't be hired you know if it's
0:08:31 [t=511] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): right i'll do it and it's not a lot so when you say do a better job are you just talking about
0:08:40 [t=520] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): doing a better job of reporting uh i just think it wasn't asked of the previous firm that we had which i will say that mr bramble brought partner williams in uh and i thank him for that now i'm telling you they're tough uh but they're good and i like good so they're you know they're honest and they'll let me know if we're doing it right if we're not doing it right and that's what we hired them for and they're doing the job and we want to do it right uh i would probably i would sincerely
0:09:10 [t=550] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): put them in the upper echelon of firms in their category for sure.
0:09:17 [t=557] Mark Matheny (oversight board member): Larry, Jim, what is typical for a county of our size, cash and investments? I mean, there's 159 million, it sounds like a big number, but do we have any idea how that compares?
0:09:34 [t=574] Jim Bramble (oversight board member): Well, I don't think that's what we're looking at. We're looking at those unrestricted funds.
0:09:47 [t=587] Jim Bramble (oversight board member): That total is a whole, you know, grants and things that we're not going to be able to
0:09:55 [t=595] Speaker 53: use for school.
0:09:57 [t=597] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): And grants are taking a huge hit right now. So, yeah.
0:10:00 [t=600] Jim Bramble (oversight board member): But, you know, just taking a look at things from, you know, 40,000 feet up, I kind of compared general fund balances to some of our cohorts, other counties, and we're kind of, we wound up with 32.8 million this year. in the middle of the pack and in the general fund that's a big fund that pays to run the county
0:10:37 [t=637] Jim Bramble (oversight board member): and not you know for example vandenberg had 41.9 million typically was at 18.7 clark was at 12.2
0:10:48 [t=648] Jim Bramble (oversight board member): Delaware 12 million Hendrix 53 nine Monroe had 23.2 million so kind of those are the
0:11:02 [t=662] Jim Bramble (oversight board member): white side county absolutely so we're kind of in the middle of the pack as far as you know fund is in the 20s and our guys pros we've taken that deeper dive of what we had a chance to do in a couple of days sure one thing that i want to ask player about is you know like over the past five or six years that general funds had been growing and last year just about a two million dollar hit and it was is that one off or is that the beginning of a new trend uh
0:11:50 [t=710] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): i'm going to probably say it's more of a beginning of a new trend
0:11:55 [t=715] Speaker 69: just uh probably not uh i don't know if it has to do something on the investment side but uh I don't know, I'll have to look at that to be honest with you.
0:12:09 [t=729] Speaker 73: Yeah, that's some of the cruel .
0:12:15 [t=735] Speaker 76: I said, let's be aware the mic is up above the TV, and it's easy to look at Larry here,
0:12:25 [t=745] Speaker 79 (chair): but I want to make sure some of our audience is getting picked up. Larry, appreciate you and your team's work on this. I can't imagine it's something easy to accomplish here. I would say encouraging to see overall cash balances increasing for the year despite burning down the ARP funds by 10.2 million. So that's great. I noticed on the detailed receipts report, it looks like all the earnings on investments and deposits goes to the general fund.
0:12:58 [t=778] Speaker 80: is that correct does that count is that council directed no not because i mean
0:13:05 [t=785] Speaker 82: 7.6 million on the 34 million
0:13:15 [t=795] Speaker 83: investments of total linings on deposit if they don't identify a fund you know
0:13:21 [t=801] Speaker 61 (staff (auditor's office)): It just defaults to the general? It's a well convention of tourism wants to take five million dollars and put it in
0:13:33 [t=813] Speaker 87: their aid. So, the citrus will go to that particular fund.
0:13:37 [t=817] Speaker 91: If you invest by funding it goes to the fund and the treasury is defined and then identified
0:13:46 [t=826] Speaker 92: CD then goes to the general.
0:13:49 [t=829] Speaker 79 (chair): probably makes the deposit accounting a little easier after navigating it all out.
0:13:55 [t=835] Speaker 94 (oversight board member): I noticed on here in the disbursements in the general fund there's just other services and charges for five million dollars. Do we know what that is or can we get detail on what that is? it's just other
0:14:18 [t=858] Speaker 95: typically goes into that
0:14:22 [t=862] Speaker 97: that's the miscellaneous account
0:14:28 [t=868] Speaker 100: black hole yeah like to avoid miscellaneous when i can
0:14:33 [t=873] Speaker 38 (oversight board member): So what happened in 2023 after the ending investment balance to drop? I know that's restricted and unrestricted, but do you know what happened?
0:14:49 [t=889] Speaker 107: I do not. I was tired. Okay. Hey Jim. Do you know what happened? Nothing was here.
0:14:58 [t=898] Speaker 38 (oversight board member): So what happened in 2023? I mean, it could easily be like a grant, whatever. like there was such a major drop in 23 when you self-growth in 25 and the overall.
0:15:09 [t=909] Speaker 110 (oversight board member): I was wondering if there was a change in accounting because you said we have a gap for two years. Okay. That was in 25.
0:15:16 [t=916] Speaker 114: When's the last time we did gap, Jim? Was it 21?
0:15:20 [t=920] No.
0:15:21 [t=921] Speaker 115: 22. 22. 23.
0:15:24 [t=924] 23.
0:15:25 [t=925] Speaker 88: Okay. 23.
0:15:27 [t=927] Speaker 111: 23, okay.
0:15:29 [t=929] Speaker 94 (oversight board member): There's some miscellaneous things on here like Staples TIF, Pfizer TIF, CSN ITF, I assume
0:15:50 [t=950] Speaker 110 (oversight board member): if i assume that's supposed to be where you find information on like all the abatements that are
0:15:56 [t=956] Speaker 119: out there are those categorized so much that's something i can kind of request would be good to
0:16:04 [t=964] Speaker 100: know um on the schedule of debt i didn't see anything else sure no i understand that um
0:16:15 [t=975] Speaker 110 (oversight board member): but i didn't see anything in here related to those
0:16:21 [t=981] Speaker 121: on the debt report there's nothing for the jail where does the jail bond set
0:16:28 [t=988] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): i actually have that information in my office because i've just seen it
0:16:35 [t=995] Speaker 125: that's fine i know there's there's only about a million numbers in here
0:16:39 [t=999] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): right we did just uh i just i just got that report but is the payment like 4.1 million i think i saw
0:16:46 [t=1006] Speaker 7: 4.1 million somewhere and that should be about
0:16:58 [t=1018] Speaker 127: so is it a lease so the bottom's probably held by a different entity
0:17:01 [t=1021] Speaker 119: you have kind of leases it.
0:17:03 [t=1023] Speaker 127: Mm-hmm. Gotcha.
0:17:05 [t=1025] Speaker 133: Well, you're kind of building corporations.
0:17:08 [t=1028] Speaker 134: So you're a building corporation, huh?
0:17:11 [t=1031] Speaker 135: It would be interesting to know what the cash balance is as a percentage of the total expenditure, like what your one month or six months would be.
0:17:22 [t=1042] Speaker 137: Is that something you could get us? Absolutely.
0:17:25 [t=1045] Okay.
0:17:26 [t=1046] Speaker 139: You can send that to me and I can disperse it to them.
0:17:33 [t=1053] Speaker 141: I don't want to create too much work for you here.
0:17:36 [t=1056] Speaker 139: No, you're all right.
0:17:37 [t=1057] Speaker 143: I'll keep down with somebody else.
0:17:40 [t=1060] Speaker 144: Any other questions for Mr. Hutchings?
0:17:47 [t=1067] Speaker 145: Just to make sure I mark them right, the funds we should look at are general funds, because
0:17:54 [t=1074] Speaker 147 (school board member): because they're not restricted right and then the edit county portion and then the 1138 cumulative capital and then rainy day and then river goat that's the ones that i mark them all
0:18:08 [t=1088] Speaker 148: okay i just want to make sure i just want to make sure i have those marked because the rest
0:18:16 [t=1096] Speaker 110 (oversight board member): is all for sure what's the uh tax sale surplus that's when you sell a property at the tax sale
0:18:30 [t=1110] Speaker 88: they bid over over the taxes and expenses that are due on it that's the amount that they someone has been over that and it goes in that fund and
0:18:46 [t=1126] Speaker 61 (staff (auditor's office)): If it's redeemed, go back to the purchaser.
0:18:55 [t=1135] Speaker 87: And if it's not redeemed, then the tax sale purchaser acquires the property eventually
0:19:05 [t=1145] Speaker 154: and surplus potentially goes to the old owner. We have a tax sale coming up.
0:19:11 [t=1151] Speaker 119: Do you have a feel for does that normally get released or what's the timeline there?
0:19:24 [t=1164] Speaker 61 (staff (auditor's office)): There's statute of limitations on it. It might be that the check for sure, but after three years if nobody claims that the county gets it.
0:19:37 [t=1177] Speaker 162: Is that a general fund or?
0:19:46 [t=1186] Speaker 163: Yeah.
0:19:48 [t=1188] Speaker 164: Do we typically see much money revert out of that? It normally gets claimed? It just depends. We really run them down.
0:19:57 [t=1197] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): I think when we came in last year, I think it was like 800. We're down to 300 and some
0:20:04 [t=1204] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): We've been working with the city, the commissioners to try to put everything we can down to that phase. We'll try to apply the properties and so on and so forth. They have the ability to put those back on the tax sale. And then we have a lot of property owners right now that don't even realize they have properties next door to them that are on the tax sale.
0:20:31 [t=1231] Speaker 171: so we've been contacting them and they've been you know adding those up so everybody's going to come to the tech sale so i think we're going to have a pretty good showing this time
0:20:42 [t=1242] Speaker 119: all four getting stuff on the tax roll
0:20:49 [t=1249] Speaker 175: what's the date of the sale heather might be buying some property
0:20:52 [t=1252] Speaker 36: hey this is actually a really cool it's fun to watch pretty competitive
0:21:02 [t=1262] Speaker 164: any questions on the f-r i'm sure we'll have more and it's only been out for a little less than a
0:21:09 [t=1269] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): week but we'll uh we'll try to get those working and there will be some adjustment um by law we can do that up to a certain point um and like i said with gaff that's going to change a lot of
0:21:20 [t=1280] Larry Hutchings (county auditor): things also um so um yeah it's uh we'll continue to update that and that'll be on gateway uh and if i see any major changes i will let mark know and you guys can be aware of that and actually
0:21:35 [t=1295] Speaker 144: look at that awesome thank you yeah great partners great quick to communicate with us and when we need information and yeah appreciate it thank you very much
0:21:50 [t=1310] Speaker 94 (oversight board member): uh mark you threw this on the agenda i think yeah potential school visits
0:21:54 [t=1314] Mark Matheny (oversight board member): some of the conversations um yeah and carrie feel free to speak to this if you'd like but you know there's a few um you know dr himself has encouraged us for the last several months to consider our board going up and visiting um various you know other corporations other schools playing field would be one since we compete directly with them for students um valpo he indicated would be a good model for um middle school kind of a kind of modeling the
0:22:24 [t=1344] Speaker 185 (oversight board member): west vigo renovation actually their high school at valpo they did a complete gutting and re renovation which is what we're hoping to do at west vigo and then i think you had indicated
0:22:35 [t=1355] Mark Matheny (oversight board member): fort wayne carroll might be one mentioned like one that was like outside facilities or outside
0:22:41 [t=1361] Speaker 186 (unknown — district staff or oversight member): The Fort Wayne Carroll or the Lowell. Lowell is closer to that Valpo Crown Point area, which from a convenience perspective would make sense. But they basically redid their outdoor spaces and would give us a model of how it's just different and how other people are approaching that. Especially the modernization given girls sports and some of the stuff that didn't exist at the time that North and South were constructed. and then holbert was the other one i mentioned because holbert has a new school model in a
0:23:12 [t=1392] Speaker 186 (unknown — district staff or oversight member): community very similar to taro and they actually went through replacing a 100 year old building
0:23:18 [t=1398] Speaker 194: that took many many many many many years of debate in their community before they decided to do so
0:23:25 [t=1405] Speaker 137: and this is the stuff that school board members had the opportunity to go on some of these trips
0:23:29 [t=1409] Speaker 147 (school board member): i didn't get to go so i am interested in any potential school visits but um i i do think it helps um the board members um and admin that went to kind of see the vision of what you could do
0:23:43 [t=1423] Speaker 137: whether it's a new build or a renovation so it could potentially be i think the middle school
0:23:51 [t=1431] Speaker 186 (unknown — district staff or oversight member): we mentioned was there was a taft middle school in crown point which is also up in that area to to kind of get a feel for what does a modern layout look like for a middle school in terms of how they kind of organize around sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade kind of format, which helped us kind of get a visual for what it might look like when we were to renovate north and south and how do you lay things out to meet the needs of sixth grade students versus seventh grade students versus eighth grade. And I think it was helpful for us to visualize and see how the layout of a middle school
0:24:25 [t=1465] Speaker 186 (unknown — district staff or oversight member): is slightly different than the old time junior highs kind of thing.
0:24:32 [t=1472] Speaker 201: Were these Gibraltar designs? The ones in northwest Indiana were.
0:24:38 [t=1478] Speaker 186 (unknown — district staff or oversight member): Plainfield is not, but we know that from anecdotal data that we get from people that they visit Plainfield, they visit here and make some decisions on relocating to Plainfield in
0:24:51 [t=1491] Speaker 147 (school board member): part because of their facilities versus ours sure and i was able to recently visit plainfield as a school board member they and their school board invited um some of us and they're doing a renovation on like a 10 year old building so like they are continuing to reinvest in improving and adjusting what their students need and it was a good example of that um they did have two elementary side by side i didn't understand that but um i did they've done some some creative things in terms of getting their students future ready so why don't we um i think we can maybe
0:25:32 [t=1532] Mark Matheny (oversight board member): maybe through email we can kind of maybe throw around some different dates or you can send us some some options there and we can see whoever's available um it'd be a full day it'd be a you know
0:25:43 [t=1543] Speaker 185 (oversight board member): if you give us the dates and times we would work through gibraltar to work with their superintendents
0:25:48 [t=1548] Speaker 186 (unknown — district staff or oversight member): and principals to make sure that we're not disrupting and that we're not like for example we don't want to go there on a day when they're doing either learning or something like that but we would work around those things and make sure that we're not getting in their way
0:26:04 [t=1564] Speaker 208: but i am positive that they will be accommodating based on my experience with them
0:26:08 [t=1568] Speaker 210: I know I'd have a preference in going to Hobart. Yes, Hobart.
0:26:17 [t=1577] Speaker 211: Hobart if you're from up there. Hobart, I cannot.
0:26:21 [t=1581] Speaker 212: My wife is from up there, so she's trained me that this is the way you're supposed to sit. Is this we go versus if I go?
0:26:29 [t=1589] Speaker 38 (oversight board member): I think so. But if you're saying they were in a similar situation, they renovated a very old building, I think I'd personally have a preference.
0:26:36 [t=1596] Speaker 188: They did a new build.
0:26:37 [t=1597] Speaker 189: They vacated a whole building that was 100 years old and they went through years of internal community debate before they decided on what to do. I think that would be good.
0:26:48 [t=1608] Speaker 218 (unknown — district staff or oversight member): In the design, they brought the historical perspective of the community forward in the new high school. So it was represented in a very clever way. They have been very accommodating for Saturday visits as well. So if we were to choose that a Saturday would be best, they will accommodate that as well. Sometimes you get through the buildings a little bit quicker, too, because you don't have the staff and students there. But it's nice. You can check out multiple boxes within just 20 square miles from each other.
0:27:27 [t=1647] Speaker 79 (chair): Mercy, do you or Carrie, do you want to coordinate? trying to find some dates that were some difficult options thank you
0:27:38 [t=1658] Speaker 225: something else on number four there um comments from the public
0:27:46 [t=1666] Speaker 10 (chair): i think we mostly have affiliated parties here so move on from that uh mark's scheduled march meetings yeah so um i know an email was sent out um we're for march we're in kind of this
0:28:03 [t=1683] Mark Matheny (oversight board member): vote right now so we're going to go down to a once a week meeting it's going to be a thursday and we're going to rotate day and evening meetings just to accommodate folks that can't make it
0:28:13 [t=1693] Mark Matheny (oversight board member): during the day um sent that out to a lot of you if you want that just catch me afterwards and i can
0:28:20 [t=1700] Speaker 10 (chair): make sure you know which ones are the next week and the 26th or our evening meetings yeah yeah
0:28:29 [t=1709] Speaker 43: at 5 5 15. yeah where are those at should should be in council
0:28:41 [t=1721] Mark Matheny (oversight board member): 12 12 and 26 will be our evening ones today and the 19th will be uh our 10 30 in the morning ones and then we'll um we'll just see as as needed for april
0:28:56 [t=1736] Speaker 240: anything else for the calls thank you for the motion to adjourn carrie second
0:29:03 [t=1743] Speaker 242: jim all right all those in favor say hi all right see you next week
0:29:18 [t=1758] Speaker 250: Thank you.
0:29:48 [t=1788] Speaker 254: Okay.
0:30:18 [t=1818] Speaker 252: i um I mean, I know where it is. It's amazing.
0:31:06 [t=1866] Speaker 8: I think it's really good. I think it's really good. I think it's really good.
0:31:12 [t=1872] Speaker 276: I think it's really good. I think it's really good. I think it's really good.
0:31:18 [t=1878] See you around.
0:31:20 [t=1880] Speaker 252: Alright, step right up. Hello, how are you? It's good to see you. Thank you for coming.
0:31:26 [t=1886] Speaker 15: I'm trying to think of the best way I think that was the way I put on the end.
0:31:37 [t=1897] Speaker 252: No, I'm just going to say, everyone, thank you for being here.
0:31:43 [t=1903] Speaker 8: How are you? I just want to just get into the room. Hi, how are you? Good. How are you? Good. Nice to see you. Nice to live.
0:31:56 [t=1916] Speaker 252: That thing is so awesome.
0:31:59 [t=1919] Speaker 8: It doesn't want to move.