The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/836610
A-2 Front Wednesday, June 14, 2017 The Press-Dispatch WINSLOW Continued from page 1 LEASE Continued from page 1 "When you care enough to send the very best" Free gift wrapping with purchase! Marge's Shop 716 Main St. 812-354-9372 Petersburg Regular Hours: Monday – Saturday 9-5 New Arrivals Willow Tree Collectibles Hallmark Father's Day Cards Hallmark Cards, Lib's Candy, Assorted Gifts, Graduation Gifts and Cards, Gift Wrap and Accessories Say Happy Father's Day to the special man in your life! That's my Dad Plus 6 more Willow Tree Father's Day collectibles with a Gi for Dad from us! Gi Baskets • Fresh Flower Arrangements Celebrate 201 S. 7th St., Petersburg • 812-354-8793 Mon.-Fri. 9am to 5pm • Sat. 9am-12pm 1853 N. SR 57, Willisville | 812.582.0905 marylousfloral.com | Mon.-Sat. 10a.m.–4p.m. or by appointment. Father's Day He said the fee would be $4,400. Councilman Dick Brewster asked how long it would take for Winslow to get the money if it was approved. Craig told him they plan to announce the grant recipients in August. Craig also confirmed for Brewster that Winslow could contract with Pike County to do the paving work for them. In recent years, the County Highway Department has put down pavement for Winslow and Petersburg if they pur- chased the material. "If we have $ 35,000, that would work out to $140,000 for paving material," said Brewster. Brewster moved to hired Midwest and apply for the grant. "I think we need to jump on it, while the getting is good," said Council pres- ident Terry Strobel. Craig told the council he needed to know how much money they wanted to put for a match. Brewster said $ 35,000. Craig said he also needed a priority list of streets and how much the coun- ty was going to charge them. Street Supervisor David Gayhart said he had put together a list of prior- ities. "They are the worst of the worst," said Gayhart. That list included: Beardsley, from Oak to Mariah, as well portions of DeTar and Mariah streets; 325 feet of Jasper St.; Wash- ington St., between Highway 61 and Walnut St.; Third St., between Facto- ry and Brenton Sts.; and Mill St., off of Lafayette St. He also included several streets for patching portions of the worst pave- ment. Those streets were Porter, Bluff, Union, Lafayette, Center, West and Collins. Gayhart said that list will grow as they figure out how far $140,000 will go. In other street business, Gayhart said he put a blade on the town's old tractor and he is going to use it to blade grass that has grown out to and onto town streets. He said blading the sod off the roads will help with the drain- age and he wanted to get it done before they started paving. "I'm sure it will make some people mad, who are used to mowing all the way out to the street," said Gayhart. PLANS FOR NEW PLAYGROUND UNDERWAY Debbie Lamb, with the Beautifi- cation Committee, told the council a new $ 91,000 playground had been de- signed for the baseball field park. She said it will be located near where the shelterhouses are now located. The Economic Development Com- mittee and the Babe Ruth League are working in conjunction on the park. She said the Babe Ruth League is applying for a grant. The rest of the funding will be from "grass root" fundraising. "You are going to raise $ 91,000 from grass roots? " asked Brewster. "Those figures aren't written in stone. We can trade out some pieces of equipment. I think that is a pretty good number for a turnkey project. We can do it," said Lamb. They are also in the process of hav- ing a fitness trail installed that will en- compass the baseball fields and area around the fields. Lamb said it will be about a half-mile loop. In other business, the town accept- ed a $ 3,000 bid from Dave Tisdale for their 1988 C60 dump truck. Tisdale submitted the only bid for the truck. "I don't think we gave too much more than that for it when we bought it," said Strobel. I think we gave $ 3,500 for it when we bought it two years ago. I think we ought to take that bid," said Brewster. Both voted to accept Tisdale's bid. Clerk-Treasurer Beth Bennett said Deputy Clerk-Treasurer Mara Bolin had printed and folded flyers to notify their water customers the town was go- ing to be conducting smoking tests in the sanitary sewers throughout town on Monday, June 19. The town also accepted the German American Bank building on Main St. as a donation from GAB after months of considering the action. Dick Brewster has argued the build- ing would be expensive to maintain, heat and cool. He also said GAB re- moved some restrictions that limited to whom Winslow could sell the building. They voted to pay the claims of $41,732.84 for the month. The next Winslow Town Council meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Mon- day, July 10 in the community center. ported sub-lessor, is not a le- gal entity. "4. You have no lease in which to sublet to the Friends of Otwell Elemen- tary, Ltd. "5. In any event, this lease will not be renewed under current terms." Ridao said Tuesday that she learned that the commu- nity center's lease had lapsed during a meeting with Pike County Attorney Val Fleig on Monday, June 12. "I was just making sure that our lease – the lease between the township and the community center – was what I thought it was," Ridao said. "In doing that, we dis- covered that, that lease had expired in 2012, so it needs to be redone. And that's what prompted the letter." "I mean, it's black and white that it has expired," Ridao added. "I assumed it just kept renewing automat- ically for five years, which was wrong. So, regardless of anything else, the Friends of Otwell Elementary are just sort of caught in the middle of that, more or less." Fleig agreed. "That lease has expired by its own terms," Fleig said. "Under the terms of that lease, it was for five years and then it was for another five years – but that's it. And nobody has bothered to re- new or anything else." "You can't sublet a lease that no longer exists," Fleig added. "If they've got any rights, it's just as a Tenant Holding Over, and they can't sublet for any longer period than the Holder, which is day to day. On a legal basis, ( Jef- ferson Township Communi- ty Center, Inc.) doesn't have the ability to sublease it." Fleig also noted that the commercial lease agree- ment that was prepared by Friends of Otwell Elemen- tary legal counsel Elisabeth Luff and signed by Traylor in May 2016 identifies the les- sor as "Otwell Community Center" and describes it as an "Indiana not-for-profit or- ganization." "Who is Otwell Commu- nity Center? " Fleig said. "It says it's a not-for-profit cor- poration. No, it's not. You can go online to the Secre- tary of State's office, which is where you check on all that, and Otwell Communi- ty Center doesn't exist." "It also mistakenly says that they don't need consent from anybody," Fleig added. "That's not true." According to the terms of the 2002 lease extension agreement, the lessee – Jef- ferson Township Communi- ty Center, Inc. – was barred from assigning the lease and from subletting all or any portion of the leased prem- ises "without the prior writ- ten consent of the Lessor." However, the sublease agreement between Friends of Otwell Elementary, Ltd., and "Otwell Community Center" has never been pre- sented to Ridao for approval. But, Ridao noted, that, at the moment, is a moot point. "The township and the community center right now do not have a lease," Ridao said. "So the commu- nity center can't take on sub- leasing something that they don't have a lease for to sub- lease – regardless if anyone at the township approved or didn't approve." Regardless, Ridao said that it was imperative that the township and Jefferson Township Community Cen- ter, Inc., enter into a new lease arrangement, espe- cially since a sublease with the Pike County Library Board expires in August. "We will need to have a new lease with the com- munity center before they can sublease to the library again," Ridao said. Ridao said that the town- ship would soon draft a new lease agreement, which would be presented to Jef- ferson Township Communi- ty Center, Inc., officials for their approval. "It will be more clear on what can be done," Ridao said. "In the original lease, which was 1976, it specified what the building could be used for. It didn't expire, but another lease was granted in 1999, and it's less exact. So the new lease should have clearer terms – and not a lot of room for interpretation." Ridao said that she didn't really know what impact her letter and the resulting fall- out will have on the Friends of Otwell Elementary's plans for Otwell Miller Academy, which is currently in the early construction phase on property located approxi- mately one mile from the Otwell Community Center. "At the community cen- ter meeting in May, (Friends of Otwell Elementary vice- president) Bob Rhodes re- ported to the group ... that they may not have enough students to even bus them over," Ridao said. "So I guess it depends on their enrollment, if it has any im- pact or not." According to Luff, the first day of school at Otwell Miller Academy is sched- uled for Wednesday, Aug. 9. the Highway Department's budget for paving. Conse- quently, the commissioners will not have to request an additional appropriation. Commissioner president Brian Davis, in a phone in- terview following the meet- ing, confirmed the commis- sioners had enough money in their budget to fund their maximum match. "Last year, we were able to double our $460,000. In the past, we have had to request be- tween $500,000 to $700,000 from EDIT funds. With this program going to be around this year and maybe the next two or three years, we are really going to be able to make a lot of people happy," said Davis about the roads it will allow them to pave. Davis said the commis- sioners will be working in the near future to put to- gether a list of roads to sub- mit. He said they are going to try to make the list as near to $1.33 million as they can. Councilmen went through a series of additional appro- priation requests Tuesday. They approved a request of $ 34,300 from Sheriff Jer- emy Britton to replace an au- tomatic transfer switch for the jail's generator. Sher- iff Britton said the auto- matic switch quit working and it was having to be do- ne manually. "It is a 1,600 amp switch. You can't buy it at the hardware store," said Britton. He said they are required to turn their generator once a week. In April, the jail took a lightning strike and lost power, and the generator had problems, leaving them in the dark for four or five hours. "We were completely in the dark. We were operat- ing on keys and flashlights. That is a dangerous situa- tion," said Britton. He said he has contacted several companies to give him a bid on replacing the transfer switch, but some aren't interested. Britton said the $ 34,300 request was the amount of the low- est bid so far. But he has two more companies that were supposed to give him a price on Friday, but he ex- pects them to submit a price to him in the next few days. Britton said the switch is so big that when it is as- sembled, it won't fit through the basement doors or into the elevator. It measures 84 inches tall, 48 inches deep and 36 inches wide. He said one of the contractors is pro- posing to take portions of the switch into the basement then assemble it. Britton said if they took apart an as- sembled switch, they would void the warranty on it. His request was approved by a 7-0 vote. MATRIX HIRED TO MANAGE SERVER SYSTEM The county approved ad- ditional appropriation re- quests of $ 6,250 from the Auditor, $7,180 from the Treasurer's office and $ 6,750 from the Assessor's office to pay Matrix Inte- gration of Jasper to manage their computer systems. Ron Wilson went through a long list of problems that were created when two hard drives on the common serv- er between the Auditor, As- sessor, Treasurer and Com- missioners' offices failed on April 5. He said it was two weeks before their systems were operational again. They also learned their backup had started failing on March 12. He said if that had hap- pened a week later, they wouldn't have been able to collect property taxes. Assessor Mike Goodpas- ter said his office was com- pletely shutdown for two weeks. "I was to the point of sending people home. We couldn't even go out to look at properties, because we couldn't put them up on our computers." Treasurer Marta Query said, "We lost so much in- formation when the server crashed, I have money sit- ting in places and I don't know where it goes." Commissioner Assistant Kristi Dischinger said she lost a large spreadsheet. She has a hard copy printout of it, but she hasn't been able to get it re-entered into her computer. Councilman Dennis Bish- op asked Wilson if it was someone's responsibility to monitor the backup system to know it wasn't working? "I asked the individual who takes care of our server that question. His response was, 'The commissioners don't pay me to monitor it, just trepair it.'" Wilson said the first ques- tion he asked potential tech companies was if they would take responsibility for the system. He said with Matrix the time to get back up and run- ning would be hours instead of two weeks. Councilman Max Elliott asked if the county shouldn't look into hiring a tech per- son to manage all their com- puter systems. Wilson said they looked at that possibility but it would take a couple of months to make that determination. "I can't wait that long. This is a one-year contract." Councilmen agreed to fund the one-year contract with Matrix Integration and in the meantime, form a committee to see if hiring a tech person for the county is feasible. Councilmen also ap- proved an additional appro- priation of $25,000 for the Probation Department. Brenda Ham told the council her balance to pay Southwest Indiana Region- al Youth Village was $ 3,200 and she started out with $25,000. She said she has a bill of about $7,000 to be paid. Willis asked if the bill was running about $7,000 a month. Ham said it varies from month to month. "It just de- pends on how bad our kids behave," said Ham. Arrested juveniles are housed in the Southwest In- diana Regional Youth Vil- lage instead of an adult jail. "We don't have much choice," said Willis in voting for the measure that passed COUNCIL Continued from page 1 An artist's rendition of a proposed playground to be built near the baseball fields in Winslow. Deb- bie Lamb said the playground's estimated cost is $91,000 and it will be located near the shelterhous- es. The playground not only features playground equipment for children, it has four stations of exercise equipment. Donations are being sought to fund the playground. People wanting to donate to the project can send their donations to the Winslow Economic Development Committee, PO Box 355, Winslow, IN 47598 or call 812-354-4493. This giant transfer switch that switches the Pike County Jail from electrical lines to their genera- tor needs to be replaced. So far the lowest price is $34,300. It is so big it won't fit in the elevator or through the doors to basement of the jail. by a 7-0 vote. An additional appropria- tion of $10,000 for commis- sioners to pay Computers Plus for repair work on the county's server that failed was approved. They also approved an ad- ditional amount of $12,185 to replace a recording sys- tem in the Circuit and Small Claims courtrooms. Melanie Mosby told the council the current record- ing system has started to cut out, making it hard to tran- scribe court hearings. She said the state is mandating county courts start doing electronic filing and the sys- tem they are looking at will meet the new requirements. It was approved by a 7-0 vote. The next council meet- ing is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, July 11 in the courthouse auditorium.