Minutes of CONA Meeting

7:00 p.m., March 17, 2010

City Hall Building

Bloomington, Indiana

Board Members Present:
6th & Ritter - David Walter
Eric Knox - SoMax
Southampton - Richard Carr
Bill Milroy - Old Northeast

Guest: Craig Harvey - Monroe County Treasurer's Office

Business Meeting

1. The minutes from the February 17, 2010 meeting were approved.
2. David Walter reported treasury balances as follows: Checking: $1612.54 and Savings: $6,443.42. David said that because the Irwin Union Bank has been taken over by First Federal, their banking hours are from 9 AM - 5 PM on weekdays with no Saturday or evening hours. David would like to move the CONA accounts to 5/3 Bank were there are more branches and they have Saturday morning hours.
3. Craig Harvey spoke about the property tax homestead exemption form that will be sent out along with the property taxes in April. He said that because of statewide concerns about homeowners abusing this exemption, all homeowners will need to fill out and send the form back to the treasurer's office. Monroe County is fortunate in that the property taxes will be sent out at least a month before the payment is due.
4. Craig then spoke about the property tax cap and the sift of funding of schools from fairly stable property taxes to the state sales tax. The property tax cap only benefits homes with a value in excess of around $250,000 or more. Owners of homes below this level do not receive the benefit. Likewise, moving the funding of schools to the sales tax has made them dependant upon state revenues and consumption. When the recession hit, people limited their purchases and revenues declined.
5. Eric Knox agreed with this and said that when the legislature looked at balancing the state budget they decided to reduce funding from the state to the local schools and said "Mission Accomplished", leaving it up to the local school boards to make the hard decisions of what cuts to make in salary, staff and programs. Eric said that now it is necessary to have a referendum to support the schools by raising local taxes. Instead of local control of school funding through property taxes, it has now up to Indianapolis to decide how schools will be funded.

There being no more business, the meeting adjourned at 8:00 PM