County Council sets 2027 budget, Temple claims he may keep highway garage
The Washington County Council adopted the 2027 county budget Monday morning, then spent the front half of the meeting on an unfinished inspection of the highway garage and a claim from Ken Temple, president of Temple & Temple Excavating and Paving, that he will keep the facility.
All seven members were present: President Brad Gilbert, Gerald Fleming, Todd Armstrong, Andrew Davisson, Karen Wischmeier, Preston Shell, and Mark “Bubba” Abbott.
As the meeting began, Abbott asked to add Ken Temple to the agenda because he was in the room and wanted to speak. Fleming seconded. Gilbert, Fleming, Armstrong, Davisson, and Abbott voted yes. Wischmeier and Shell voted no. The motion passed, and Temple was placed after Highway Superintendent Rick Voyles. Additional appropriations and budget adoptions were pushed to the end.
Rick Voyles approached the council and said people have asked him why the build-operate-transfer inspection is taking so long. He split the problem into three parts.
“A would be the original plans that were presented to the council when funding was approved. C would be the final product, what we ended up with,” he said. “What we’re missing is B, how we got from where we were supposed to be to where we are. And that would be things like change orders, changes of scopes, errors, etc.”
He said he emailed Paul Eckart at Temple & Temple on August 13 and asked for a full set of construction drawings. Eckart replied the same day that he would red-line changes and make a copy. Voyles said he has still not received them. He followed up August 20, 26, and September 10. On September 10 he wrote that several buildings had changed in size and design from what was presented to the council, and that he was afraid the inspection would show nothing built to spec.
Eckart replied that day, with council and commissioners copied, that he would put together a list of changes. Some, he wrote, were for state permitting, some were requested by the county, and some were done by Temple & Temple. Voyles said that list has not arrived either. On September 21 he emailed every council member and commissioner asking if anyone had the changes or a set of final plans. He said he got no reply.
“As of this time, it seems anything that is pointed out as incorrect or insufficient is simply going to be met with a, ‘Yeah, we changed that,’” he said.
Without that middle set of documents, he said, he cannot tell an oversight from a change. The example he handed around was a core from the truck-lane floor in one shed. Floors that were going to carry trucks and loaders were specified at eight inches of concrete with five-eighths rebar on two-foot centers. The cores showed six inches of concrete and no rebar.
“Now, is that an oversight or is that a change? I don’t know,” Voyles said. The equipment parking area behind the buildings was supposed to be stone and is still dirt. “Do I point that out to you? Do I say, ‘Hey, we need to do this,’ or was that something someone changed? No idea.”
He asked Brad Isaacs of Janssen & Spaans Engineering, who has been working from Voyles’s direction, to put dollar figures on some of the differences. Gilbert asked Isaacs to state his name for the record. Isaacs stated he had taken direction from the council’s inspection lead and from Voyles as field inspector.
Regarding the superintendent’s office, Isaacs said two energy-recovery ventilators specified in the quote were not installed, a $7,500 item.
On the shop floor, random four-inch cores found the thickness met on the west truck bays and short on the east. He figured the east-half shortage at about 18.89 cubic yards. Using $150 a cubic yard, a price he said IMI quoted him in late 2023, that is $2,833.50 in missing concrete, before any cost for rebar that was not there. A mini-split that, based on plans he was given by Commissioner Tony Cardwell, placed in the fuel shed is instead in the mechanic shop. The mechanic shop was specified for a 16 SEER heat pump and a 100,000 BTU two-stage LP furnace, bid by Miller Heating and Air at $45,539.65. Heat is in the office and bathroom only. Two or three rooms in that office area are not vented or heated. A one-foot stem wall was poured where scoping called for three feet. A 20x50 exterior wash slab was supposed to drain to the storm system. Isaacs said there is no drain in it.
On the truck storage lean-to, cores ran from two inches thick on the west half to seven inches on the east. He put the combined material shortage at about 52.78 cubic yards, or $7,917 at the same concrete price, again before rebar. The building has 24 bays and measures about 285 feet. The design called for 360 feet and six more bays. He noted three large cracks running from the back of the slab to the front.
The sign-shed floor, checked with a scanner as well as cores, showed wire mesh instead of five-eighths rebar at two-foot centers. The mixed-material building met the eight-inch floor thickness on the one core taken, but the walls are 14 inches wide and 9.5 feet tall where scoping called for 10 feet. The building was designed 100 feet wide and 80 feet deep and built 80 feet wide and 100 feet deep. The exterior mixing pad was scoped at 100 by 80 and built 126 by 60, a shortage Isaacs put at 440 square feet and about $3,000. Scans showed that pad at six inches with wire only, two inches thin, or about 47.6 cubic yards and $7,140 before rebar.
The salt building yielded a six-inch core, about 9.4 cubic yards and $1,416 short, with walls 14 inches wide and nine feet tall instead of 10. Aggregate-bin walls are 12 inches wide and about 8 feet 2 inches tall instead of 10. The bins are still 20 feet short of the lengths in the scoping documents. Isaacs said Graber Post Buildings had bid the bins, as originally scoped, at $263,900. The work was awarded to the developer at $409,900, a difference of $146,000.
The fuel shed has not been fully accessible. From what could be seen, the specified Modine hanging LP heater, bid at $3,487.50, is not in. A separate six-bay truck storage, meant to make up the missing bays, has no electric service, lighting, or truck plug-ins. Advantage Enterprises, the electrician on the project, quoted $22,000 to bring that building up to code. No eight-inch floor has been poured there.
On the site itself, Isaacs said the approved plan called for 8.5 acres, the BOT agreement refers to 7.5 acres, and recent documents show 7 acres. A 48x30x8-inch pad south of the salt building was not built. A concrete paved ditch in the detention area south of the truck lean-to is not there. Three asphalt cores in the front paving measured 3 inches, 4 inches, and 4.5 inches. A core at the rear entry measured 6 inches. He said he could not judge those against a spec because the council still does not have a pavement section from the final plans.
He said the preliminary report was produced at the direction of the BOT inspection committee appointed by the council. Rebar costs, stem-wall costs, and several other items are still being priced.
Following this report, Ken Temple approached the council and claimed this defies basic math. He doubled down and said, “if you don’t like it, I’m just going to keep it.”
“If you take all the concrete tickets and you add them together and you actually figure the job like you should mathematically, we overrun 127 cubic yards,” he said. “It’s quite an overrun. So yes, you can go out there and take a few tests and try to find some shy areas.”
He called the inspection a witch hunt and said it has split the community. He said he can no longer do business with many of the council members, and that he is eating and shopping out of town because people are afraid of being attacked on Facebook. He cited a speech claiming only about 7% of the public is doing the bashing, and that the other 93% will not stand up.
“You’re not happy, you don’t like it, I’m just going to keep it.” he said. “So Karen, Preston, Brad Isaacs, and everybody can go find their piece of ground and build one. I can’t wait to watch. So I’ll just keep this facility. You don’t have to buy it. I’ll make sure the county gets back every single penny.”
He said the project started at a $6 million estimate, came down to $5.4 million, then to $4.8 million, and that council members now pressing him were not in the room for those cuts. He said sampling was not done to laboratory standards. He said he would chain the site, post no-trespassing signs, and take the proposal to the commissioners’ meeting the next day.
“I’ll move out there and I’m gonna be proud, proud, proud of the facility,” he said. “It’s an option that I think you should take because this is just getting out of hand. And for us all to end up hating each other when it’s done, it’s not worth it.”
Fleming asked why the drawings had not been given to Voyles.
“Because legal advice says that you’re all just trying to find things,” Temple said. “And the problem is, the big problem, you wasn’t in when we went from 6 million to 5.4 to 4.8.”
Wischmeier answered that the Graber Post number never moved.
“The Graber Post quote never changed, Mr. Temple. It was always 4.8,” she said. “The only quote that ever changed was yours. The point I’m making to the public is that they quoted the exact buildings that we were told we were going to get. And their price always stayed consistent at 4.8 million. It was your price that went up to 6.2.”
Temple said she was wrong, and that the price came down, not up. Wischmeier said Commissioner Todd Ewen had stated in a public meeting that there were no change orders, while emails to council members said there were.
“I don’t see how this is some legal chase when all we’re asking for is how did you get from the 4.8 that never changed to the 6.2 that you’re talking about today, with no change orders,” she said.
She also said an Indiana BOT, once agreed to, cannot be changed except as the county’s agreement allows, in a public meeting in front of the commissioners. Temple called that a change of scope, not a change order, and said Commissioner Phillip Marshall, who was not at the meeting, had made those scope changes for the county. He said Marshall could not defend himself because he has been ill.
Wischmeier asked when the county could expect the money back if he kept the building. Temple said he was in the process and that it would take a while.
Voyles provided some additional clarification before Temple left.
“I don’t want it to be on record that anybody accused them of falsifying tickets. We never said that,” Voyles said. “If there’s enough tickets to justify the concrete, then somebody miscalculated and they’ve got too many tickets. My concern was with the six inches of concrete. I mean, the core sample doesn’t lie. It is six inches of concrete. A loaded snowplow truck loads out about 70,000 pounds with the plow. Six inches of concrete without rebar in it is by far the minimum. Five to 10 years down the road, I have concerns about that.”
Temple agreed six inches is a minimum.
“I’m not doing a witch hunt,” said Voyles. “I’m pointing out to you as a council, here’s what you have, and here’s the concerns you should have.”
Temple compared the dispute to a car the buyer does not want. “Just let me buy the car back and go get the car you want.” He also said he had found about $50,000 that Paul Eckart did not charge the county and should have. He left the refund offer as an option, not a mandate.
Gilbert put the council’s role on the record.
“The inspection report is information only. This council does not take action on any of that. All of that gets referred to the commissioners,” he said. “And then your suggestion and what you want to do, I would ask that you would take that to the commissioners, because, Mr. Temple, we can’t take you up on that. But we will make sure that you, and it’s on record that you proposed that here at our meeting.”
Temple said he planned to do that.
With that, the highway garage discussions came to a close. The meeting then moved on to other business.
The Brown-Vernon Fire District additional appropriation of $90,000, for equipment, passed unanimously. Fleming moved it. Armstrong seconded.
Fleenor then presented the remaining piece of an information-technology additional that had been split because the first claim was short. The council approved $20,000, plus $1,000 from the 1191 account and $3,870 from the general fund. She said some bills have already been paid from the fund and that it has been depleted, so the money is needed to finish the year. She also flagged a $500 HSA payment that will come back next month as the only place she knows to draw it from. Shell moved the additional. Davisson seconded. It passed unanimously.
A salary-ordinance amendment for the sheriff’s office was cleaned up on the floor. Gilbert first described it as the $8,000 jail-lieutenant item. Fleenor corrected him: it was the probationary deputy the council had already agreed to move up to regular deputy pay. Armstrong moved it, Davisson seconded, and it passed.
Moving on to budgetary items, Gibson Township’s 2027 budget passed 6-0. Wischmeier abstained because her sister is the trustee. Davisson moved it. Shell seconded.
Brown-Vernon Fire District’s budget passed on a motion from Abbott and a second from Davisson. Blue River Fire District passed 7-0, Shell moving and Davisson seconding. Delaney Creek Conservancy District passed, Davisson moving and Shell seconding.
Washington County Solid Waste passed 6-0. Shell abstained as president of that board. Abbott moved. Davisson seconded.
Before the county budget vote, Davisson reopened the health-department pay gap left from the September hearings. The working number had been an additional $3,700, including $2,000, which still did not create the separation staff had asked for between clerical pay and the two jobs above it. Other figures on the table were a $500 gap and a $1,000 gap.
Wischmeier argued for $1,000, citing Orange, Harrison, Lawrence, and Jackson counties, and setting Clark aside because its budget is about four times Washington County’s. She said clerical separations in those counties generally ran from about $750 to $1,200 or $1,500, with Orange the low end at around $600.
“I think to get it closer within range, we need to be in the 1,000,” she said. She later added that her larger worry is retention. “I’m more worried about the retention and them just going to another county close to us.”
Fleming said he struggles with using other counties at all.
“We have to work with our assessed value. That’s not going to change,” he said. “In my opinion, that’s where the decision should be made, referencing this county as opposed to any other counties.”
Armstrong said the gap should probably be in the $1,000 range and concurred with Wischmeier. Davisson said a $1,000 difference is justified. Shell called it justified. Abbott said he agrees with Fleming that counties are hard to compare, “but with that being said, I do agree that we need to try to make that separation, because it does keep our employees here.” He said he would go along if that was the majority.
Gilbert said the consensus was $1,000, applied as separation between the clerical line and Josh, and between Josh and Maggie.
Shell then asked again that commissioners be included in the raises. He said he was fine with the council not getting one.
“The commissioners are 24/7. You know, they can get called out anytime,” he said. “If the jail’s broken down or something happens in the courthouse, they’re there.”
Fleming said no. “When you sign up for this job, you know how much money you’re gonna get. This is an elected position. I’m not for a raise.”
Armstrong agreed. “Elected in this position or a commissioner’s position is a matter of service. It’s something you have to want to do. You’re not doing it for the money, because you’re crazy if you’re doing it for the money. As tight as the budgets are, I don’t think we can justify it at this time.”
Davisson said the council had already beaten that horse. Wischmeier said she does not do the job for the money, but she worries that never raising the pay will make it harder to get people to run, for council or for commissioner. “Every office in the county has an elected position, and what would they do if they never got a raise?” Abbott said it should stay as it is. Gilbert said the consensus was to leave it for now, and thanked Shell and Wischmeier for raising the long-term recruitment question.
Wischmeier asked whether the EMA vehicle would be new or used. Gilbert said the council set a $30,000 cap and is still looking. Abbott said he talked to the dealer the day before. Three former Floyd County vehicles are coming in through John Jones police-pursuit vehicles, low mileage, typically in good shape, and are already set up. He expects an update within a week or so and something more concrete by the November meeting, but payment cannot be made until the new budget year starts on January 1. He said he told the dealer that, and that Emergency Management Director Deni Stempowski will look at the vehicle before any move is made. The price would then go to the commissioners.
Fleenor said the dispatch pay scale had been lined out. Abbott thanked her for building a budget that was not a straight across-the-board raise. “We put her kind of under the gun. She’s done a ton of work.”
Davisson moved to adopt the 2027 Washington County budget. Armstrong seconded. It passed unanimously.
Following this, the clerk’s office reported that voter registration ends at midnight Monday. Voting locations will be open 8:00 am to 5:00 pm Tuesday. Early voting is from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm Friday, then opens again at noon November 2. Saturday early voting is 8:00 am to 3:00 pm October 24 and 31, at the courthouse.
Council attorney Alyssa Cochran reminded the council that she is staying out of the garage dispute.
“I continue to not participate in those discussions. I haven’t been asked any questions about the ongoing inspections. I haven’t offered any feedback or comment to the council on those inspections,” she said. “As with any proposal that might come up, I will also recuse and not be involved in any of those discussions as well.”
Armstrong asked what would happen to grant money if the commissioners took Temple up on the offer to take the project back. Auditor Kyra Stephenson said she is not sure how it would work with the federal ARPA money, “because that’s huge,” and that those dollars are supposed to be spent on projects completed by the end of 2026. Gilbert said the commissioners’ attorney and the auditor’s office would have to sort it out, and that the county would more than likely lose the money. Stephenson said a decision has to be made one way or the other by the end of the year.
Gilbert asked Voyles how he would feel about waiting another two or three years for a new facility if the commissioners accepted the offer.
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t think that’s realistic. There’s no way that’s going to happen,” Voyles said. He added that he believes the situation is “more of a bluff than anything.”
If it did happen, he said, the highway department could make the old site work. “If it was 10 years, I mean, we’ll figure it out.” Tank inspections come about every three years and usually cost about $10,000 in upgrades.
Wischmeier thanked department heads for fighting for their employees. Shell thanked department heads, the council, and the commissioners. Gilbert credited Fleenor and Stephenson for getting answers quickly during budget season.
Shell moved to adjourn, Wischmeier seconded, and the meeting came to a close.
Comments