Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and call the meeting to order.

My name is Joseph O'Connor.

I am the president of the county commissioners, and this is the Marion County Commissioners meeting.

It is September 17, 2024, approximately 2.01 p.m.

And we are in room 260 of the City County Building.

The first order of business will be introductions from my colleagues starting on my left.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

I am Isla Eldridge.

I have the privilege of serving as the Marion County Auditor and as the secretary for this great commission.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Barbara Lawrence, and I am privileged to serve as the Mary Pink County Treasurer.

Thank you very much.

The first order of business will be to approve the meeting minutes from the August 20th, 2024 meeting.

Do we have any additions or corrections to those minutes?

Hearing not, I'll entertain a motion.

Move approval.

Second.

We have a motion to approve in a second.

All favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed, same sign.

Minutes are approved.

Next up we have a board update from our uh esteemed uh Dr.

Virginia Kane here to present um the Health First of Indiana program for the Marion County Public Health Department.

Good afternoon, Dr.

Cain.

It's a pleasure to have you here.

Well, it's my honor to come before all of you.

Ms.

Lawrence, Mr.

O'Connor, and Miss Alrich.

Uh I'm so excited to come to you and talk to you about our Health First Indiana, our state investment and local public health initiative that was passed by a Senate enroll Act 4 legislation passed by our 2023 Indiana General Assembly that really transforms public health.

I was honored to be on Governor Hockram's commission for looking at the public health infrastructure for Indiana.

And as a result of a lot of hard work through a number of people, Indiana University Fairbanks School of Public Health, our association of state uh health officers, uh, and our administrators, uh, and just an incredible number of people that has resulted in receiving these dollars.

And I also want to really acknowledge kudos to our Indiana State Department of Health at that time under Dr.

Christina uh Box and our current uh health commissioner Lindsay Weaver and her staff, just an incredible staff to help spearhead us in this efforts.

Now, this legislation allowed for 225 million dollars over two years for all of the local health departments to improve their infrastructure.

And just to give you a lay of the land, when you looked at Marion County Public Health Department, prior to 2023, we had not done a market adjustment of our salaries in over 12 years.

And when you look at certain areas like just look at the restaurant business, it's just sort of exploded in the last couple of years.

We have over 7,000 restaurants, but my goodness, we have all of these mobile units that are out there for us to meet the demand of doing those inspections and all of those temporary events.

The FDA says that technically, based on the number of restaurants we have, that we needed 15 more food inspectors.

This funding has allowed us to at least have five.

We nobody can we afford the 15, but to help prevent a lot of the burnout related to this.

So in our first year, which started in uh 2024, uh, we received a total of 10.8 million dollars.

Six counties of the 92 counties did not opt in in this first year.

They were Johnson County, Fountain County, Whitley, Wales, Crawford, and Harrison County.

As a result of their not opting in, we were able to get additional dollars in this first year.

And so last year we were able to uh improve and get our salaries closer to close to more of a market for the folks in public health uh arena.

And what you will see on this chart is uh 2025, we will receive a total of 22.5 million dollars.

If from what we can tell, if we're able to utilize these dollars effectively, at least over 80 to 90 percent of these dollars, this will continue to be a line item budget where we can continue to have 22.5 million dollars every year if we're able to show that this money was well invested.

We've seen an improvement of our outcomes, and this sheet here on the second page that you have tells you where we have to provide funding some of our core services, like our maternal and child infant mortality.

You know, what kind of services can you offer there?

What can we do to reduce our tobacco, especially in our teenagers and young adults with this vaping that's going on that's medicated?

Um how do we address chronic uh conditions, uh trauma and injury?

We need childhood led screening for our children in the schools in order for them to do well, and uh we cannot forget that infectious disease is important as we see influenza, flu cases pop up, RSV infections in our young children, but also being prepared for COVID-19 infections that are still occurring, and we're seeing a slight increase occurring around this time.

And we do have funding for our core services as well.

Now, the important point I need to tell you is of that 22.5 million dollars, 10 million dollars is going to go to the community for civic community-based organizations, neighborhood associations, uh, faith-based uh institutions, even our hospital partners, in order to be the they're the they're the ground swell foot on the ground.