8/12/2025 Commissioners Meeting [4:11-9:14]

Thank you all. Welcome you to the once-canny-conductor's meeting, August 12th. May 25th at 9.30 a.m., next item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from July 29th, both the regular meeting and special meeting. Do I have a motion to approve? I'll make a motion to approve. Both meeting, split. I have a motion. Set. And set. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. And the motion carries. Next, do the approval of claims. I move to approve, as presented. I'll second that. I have a motion in a second for the discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. And the motion carries. Again, the approval of payroll. I will make a motion to approve the payroll. May I have a motion? Thank you. And a second for the discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. And the motion carries. Item number five on the agenda is the appointments and Brad Booth from Veterans Office. Thank you for the support. We will appreciate that. The fourth one is high school. Is it getting announced that they will be provided all sports passes to honorably discharge veterans when the $75 this year? If any veterans in the West are in contact with my office, I'll be happy to fill out a letter. Myself for my assistant service officer and my ministry, the assistant will fill out a letter to, uh, doesn't make that that revenue is honorably discharged, they can take it to being them and get $75 all sports pass. Okay. We do appreciate that. That's a good. I don't know if Mr. Community Schools is interested in right here. Give me a call. I'll be happy to have them too. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Brad. Item number six on the agenda. Dave Smith, Purdue Foreign Sandhouse. Generally, as the Board of County Commissioners is aware, we participate in the multi-district litigation involving opioid recovery. It's presently pending in the federal courts. Our attorneys, Cohen and Milan have recently concluded negotiations through the multi-district litigation process where agreements have been raised for participating in political subdivisions with Sandhouse and with Purdue Farmer. We haven't held a date in September to deliver our subdivision participation forms. I've already filled the hours out and we're ready to go. The action required today would be for the Board to vote to authorize the President, Mr. Fish, to sign the documents on behalf of the county so that they can be submitted and our claims preserved. I want to make note that the Sandhouse settlement was obtained through the private attorneys. Our attorneys being among the group approved by the multi-district litigation to represent multiple parties in the class action suit. The attorneys general of the different states that have intervened since the time that the counties initiated the lawsuits will not be participating in the Sandhouse suit. Sandhouse, as a condition of making the settlement payments, has indicated that they want the subdivisions receiving the money to use the money in a restricted fashion only. None of the Sandhouse payments will be discretionary funds. We already receive funding with the other claimants that the attorney general has been the lead on in Indiana. And typically that's an 80-20 split, 80 restricted, 20 unrestricted. Sandhouse's settlement was conditioned upon their opinions being used for remediation purposes only. At this point in time, based upon the Summit referees initial calculations, we anticipated Orange County should receive $52,581.63 of restricted funds. I don't know how long it will take for Sandhouse to pay that in and for the very administrative handling of those proceeds to be completed so that the check be issued, but I anticipate that Sandhouse's amounts can be just over $52,000. Purdue Farmer has not been calculated as yet. As you may be aware, Purdue Farmer had at one point sought relief in bankruptcy court. I think that matter has been either dismissed or resolved. And Purdue is now anticipating that they're going to participate in the summit as well.