Ferdinand Town Council meeting notes – Dec. 12, 2011

At last night’s Ferdinand Town Council meeting the council and Police Chief Ted Bieker talked about the new software system (story here) that will be implemented to aid in the data keeping efforts by all law enforcement agencies in Dubois County.

Bieker talked about the online access to look up driver records and the ability to be able to fill out traffic citations and accident reports by accessing the system from patrol cars.

The best part for a town the size of Ferdinand, according to Bieker, is that only minor annual costs will be required to access the system. Also, Bieker talked about adding special network cards to be able to access the system anywhere in the town in case there are no public wireless signals available.

The council decided to wait and see what the inter-local agreement would contain before they vote to implement the system.

Fire Chief Dan Lindauer reports that two volunteer firefighters are retiring and leaving the department effective December 31st. Greg Englert who has served for 12 years and Jeremy Burger who has been with the department for 10 ½ years.

Replacements come from new members joining the department – Heath Berg, Jerrod Oser and Matt Pund. All three have been training with the department since April and the council voted to add them to the department on the condition that they pass a mandatory drug test.

In other business, Pat Miller reports that the Indiana Division of Fire and Building Safety post-construction visit to the new Tri-County YMCA building yielded a requirement to add additional egress to the east and north sides of the building in case of a fire or other disaster. Two existing doors on the northside would be connected with a walkway, which would eventually empty into the main parking lot. The two main doors on the east side of the building would require a 56 foot walkway to a “public” area. Miller presented drawings to the council that showed where the exterior doors would be located and told the council that the total cost would be picked up by the organization, but asked the council to take ownership of the final 17 or so feet of the walkway due to the fact that it lies on town property. The council was agreeable with the arrangement.

In new business, the town passed three ordinances. The first was a salary change ordinance that fixed wages for certain Police Department officers. The second was the overall salary ordinance, which gave employees, but not council members, a 3 percent increase in pay. And finally, a Health Insurance ordinance, which specified that full time employees get 100% of their health insurance paid for by the town, while spouses and children are covered at 70%.

Finally, Bev Schulthise was re-appointed by the council to serve on the Indiana Region 15 Planning Commission for another term.