No, Carl Drummer.

Carl Drummer.

Yes.

He's the one that's read it.

He is.

Yeah.

Yes.

They're staggered.

He'll be this year.

Okay.

I find it.

We're just working at your guys' appointments.

We think we got it down.

But my biggest talk about this now is nothing when I go and stay up at a hotel.

It's not my money, but I just can't.

That's not gonna move.

So I think you know, I lost a lot of money at the casino, actually.

Well that you have putting a casino down to possibly, yeah.

That's all that we're just waiting for the exit time.

We're by the rule scene here.

We were all early.

Which is so unusual because usually we're like not in NFL.

It's like we got one minute.

Actually we have ten seconds.

Ten seconds.

For granted to meeting time.

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

This is the Marion County uh commissioners meeting.

My name is Joseph O'Connor.

I am the president of the county commissioners.

It is what is the date today?

November 5th, 2025, and it's three o'clock, and we are in room two sixty of the city county building.

Um this is a special meeting today.

Um so we just have one agenda one agenda item, and it looks like uh all of our guests are here.

So if you want to come on up and we've got this table or the microphone back there for anybody wanting to speak.

Come on for your I'm sorry, we'll go ahead and do some introductions first too.

Okay.

Uh I am turning on my microphone.

I am Barbara Lawrence, Marin County Commissioner in the Marion County.

Fine.

Sorry.

Good afternoon.

I am Milo Alders currently serving as uh the Marion County Autor Auditor and um secretary for this great commission.

Thank you.

All right, go ahead.

Well, first of all, uh David Bodwerf, executive director of the Association of Indiana Counties, and thank you for making special time here for this meeting today.

I very much appreciate that.

Um last time I was in the room, I think we're giving out a scholarship check to an employee uh this past summer.

So a little bit about the association.

Uh very happy that Marion County is a member of the Association of Indiana Counties.

Um great partnership with uh many of the elected officials here participation in a lot of our committees and coming to our events and uh very much appreciate that.

And we're here to talk about the National Association of Counties, which also Marion County City of Indianapolis is a member of that, have several uh county elected officials who serve on committees with the National Association of Counties, so appreciate their support as well.

But wanted to uh talk about uh a great opportunity, I think, for the City of Indianapolis and Marion County is to host the National Association of Counties Conference in July of 2028.

Um the last time Indianapolis hosted it, uh it was 1987.

We went back and looked through that and uh we're you know we're a great convention town back then and we're even a better convention town now, and so look forward to uh hopefully having the opportunity to uh have NACO come here in 2028.

And we're just looking for uh a partner.

We as the association are gonna sign the memorandum memorandum of understanding to help support the conference.

We want Marion County um to be the official uh obviously host committee, host conference, host county, and uh that's where we're here today to talk about that.

I believe we've distributed an MOU to you all.

But we'll look at this very much as a partnership between Marion County and the AIC and NACO and visit uh Indy as well to um make sure that we can put on a great show for county officials from across the country.

So this is Jack Peterson.

Um if you have any questions of me, I'll be happy to answer them.

If not, I'll let Jack talk about where they are in the process.

Okay.

I did we have of the exact I think it's yet, or is it still a fluid process?

We we do hi everybody.

I'm I'm Jack Peterson.

I'm uh managing director of membership and events with the National Association of Counties.

We do have uh I guess nearly exact dates.

We're we're talking about Friday, July 21st through Monday, July 24th of 2028.

We have some typically some pre-conference events as well.

So we'd be looking at really five or six days over that time frame.

But the 21st through the 24th is the bulk of those dates.

Okay.

Yeah, sure.

So uh hi everybody.

I'm delighted to be here.

Thank you all for for taking the time.

Um as David said, uh, I've got a couple slides here that I'll just pass uh we'll pass around.

Um as David said, we were last here in 1987, and we greatly appreciate the opportunity to consider this again.

I actually got to pick up in David's office today an edition of our newspaper from 1987 that has the registration form for that conference on the back of it that folks filled out by hand and mailed back.

We are slightly more technologically advanced uh at this point.

Um but but really excited to think about 2028.

Um at NACO as we go through this process, we we try and do a regional rotation of our annual conferences.

So uh we're we were in Philadelphia this year in sort of the northeast.

We've got a couple coming up in New Orleans and Savannah, and then uh Indianapolis, Marion County would hopefully be next on that list.

Um, so so what you have in front of you is just some really high-level pieces about uh who comes to our conferences, uh, what why we would love to host here, why you all might want to consider being part of the host committee, and then sort of what that commitment means.

Um starting just briefly with NACO for those who are not fully involved.

We represent all 3,069 counties across the country, about 2600 of those, a little over 2600 are dues paying members on an annual basis.

That's 85 percent of the counties across the country, uh including an array of uh consolidated city counties like uh Marion County, Indianapolis as well, um, places like Denver and Philadelphia, folks like that who who are members, and uh and we're proud to represent represent all those folks.

We're headquartered in Washington DC.

Um, advocacy, best practices, financial savings solutions, all those all those sorts of things are our purpose and mission.

In terms of our annual conference itself, we host it every July, typically the second or third weekend.

Uh we try and stay as far away from July 4th as possible, but but it tends to be a time that we can get folks to commit to come to be part of this conference.

Uh the past couple of years we have had over 3,000 total attendees, including over 2,000 county elected and appointed officials.

Um, those elected officials range from commissioners to county executives, uh treasurers, finance officers, county managers, administrators, um if there's a type of county official you name it, they're they're there, and it's really a great opportunity for all those folks to connect, share best practices, and in particular for our hosts to sort of highlight the things that are happening in your communities that other folks might want to take back home.

Um typically we contract a little over 2,000 room nights on peak.

Uh so I think we've worked with Visit Indy to have an initial block of 2100 in Philadelphia.

We ended up closer to the 3,000 mark uh overall as as we sort of looked at total attendees there.

Um so that that's a little bit about the annual conference.

Uh and I guess I will just go on to this next page about sort of why host, which again is to sort of showcase some of those county projects and best practices, um, convene regional leaders if there are folks within the state who you want to make sure we invite to speak or be at any of the events or receptions.

We we want to do that.

Um, establish you all as a leader in service delivery, and then obviously there's the economic impact thing as well.

Um the folks that visit Indy have done an initial estimate uh for the what the our economic impact here would look like in 2028.

Uh the initial estimate is about 4.1 million with tax revenue of around 800,000.

That's obviously a little over half of what the final economic impact was in 2025, and that's because their initial estimate is great, but doesn't include all of our additional affiliate organizations, some of our food and beverage and utility and internet spend, things like that.

So we would expect the final number to be closer to the six or seven million dollar range when all is said and done.

So that's really the basics of who we are and and sort of what we're looking for.

I'm happy to walk through sort of what it means to host, but maybe before I do that, let me pause and see if any of you all have questions on what I've covered so far.

Yeah.

Do we have any questions so far?

No.

All right.

Um as hosts and as as sort of partners with the uh association of Indiana Counties as well.

We, as David said, see this as a partnership.

It's our job to do all of the sort of big work around uh working with the convention center, working with the hotels, planning the sessions, um, finding the venues, doing the contracts, all that sort of stuff is NACO's responsibility, which is outlined in in the MOU.

Our ask of our hosts is it really falls into two main buckets.

One is promotion, uh, and the second is sort of thought leadership.

So on the promotion side, we hope that folks from the the government will join us at some of our events in 26, 27, and early in 28 to come speak at a general session, tell people why they want to come, why they ought to want to come to the great city of Indianapolis and Marion County.

Um we will work with Visit Indy folks to have them sort of bring uh staff a table, bring bring sort of giveaways, things like that, um, really just to get folks as excited about it.

Uh and and then on the content side, uh, we have a range of opportunities for our hosts that include we want to plan some mobile workshops to come see things you all are proud of, uh whether that's service delivery or new construction projects.

We saw a a new sort of steel cable bridge in Philadelphia.

We saw a new housing project, we've gone to new uh offices of registrars of deeds that had modern modernized all their facilities.

It can really be sort of whatever you all are are proud of and want to highlight and and show off.

Um and then sort of similar thing uh with showing off different parts of the county when it comes to social events, receptions, opportunities to get our folks out across the county and and see different portions, different neighborhoods, different portions of of the community.

Um those are sort of the big two what we put together a committee.

We we'll have uh ideally three to five folks from from the county um who can join calls over the course of our planning period and say, yes, let's take a group here, or no, no, let's not do that.

Other things.

So we want to give you all plenty of latitude to sort of have input on what we include, what the conference looks like.

Um we'd love to feature you all as experts and speakers.

Uh we've we've got a healthy uh finance and pensions committee, we've we've got a couple other uh policy committees that would be great to have your expertise featured on as well.

Um so so that's the sort of promotion and content side.

Um then there's obviously uh on this next page the financial support side.

And this uh looks really different for for all of our different hosts.

Some hosts uh elect to just sort of have a direct contribution to the conference, others uh decide to do fundraising or in-kind support.

We leave that up to the host to to work out.

It's not our role or responsibility to direct anything on your front.

Um, but we hope that as uh part of being the hosts and engaging in the planning committee, you'll you'll commit to helping us raise a certain amount of money.

Um the folks at visit Indy have already been generous in in working towards uh a discounted use of the convention center.

Um so we're excited to partner with them and then uh obviously hope to work with the association and you all to sort of bridge the gap the rest of the way.

Um below that you've just got the planning timeline.

Here we we will make two or three or four additional trips back here to see the different places we might want to have receptions or events, take the tours.

Um we hope that you'll uh again sort of identify the right folks to be part of planning committee meetings.

Um we'll hope to see you on those site visits.

Uh and that all will sort of kick off beginning of next year as we're really two years out at that point and want to make sure we have all of our ducks in a row.

So David, anything you want to add to any of that?

Uh yeah, thanks, Jack.

Uh great explanation.

And um really excited about the opportunity to host counties from across the country.

I mean, Indiana has a lot to be proud of, City of Indianapolis, Marion County, and um our association is committed to staff support, some financial support as well.

We generally we always attend the NACO events.

Um we'll probably expand the number of people we pay to attend those events to help promote um the hosting here if we have the opportunity to do that in 2028.

And so uh we're already committed, I feel like, as the association that we're gonna uh help organize the event and help fundraise as well.

Um contact some of our corporate uh partners uh through uh here in t Indiana uh to help us um meet the fundraising goals.

I think we'll be able to do that.

Uh again, contributed services are a great assistance as well and count towards um uh the commitment to raise to to raise the revenue.

So uh having been to a lot of NACO events, I know they have um worked with a lot of cities and uh ca cities on the contributed services and we'd have some ideas on how we could do that and not necessarily looking for a direct cash contribution, but contributed services.

But but we will help raise money from the corporate side uh to meet the objective.

Okay.

That that's I think all I had to share.

Happy to answer any and all questions you have.

Are you on the site visit right now?

Is that why you're here?

We have sort of combined this with a site visit.

Yeah, Leah Rivera's our uh director of conferences and um she's running around with Kenneth and some other folks to they're looking at the hotels and making sure all those ducks are in a row.

So if and when you all and the association say our s our signatures on the MOU, we're ready to execute the rest of those contracts and and book book the book the business.

Okay.

You talked about just a little bit about the switching around of the the conference.

So um it was it's it's in New Orleans next year, is that correct?

It's in 2026 is New Orleans and 27 is Chatham County, Georgia, Savannah.

Savannah, okay.

So it stays in the s stays in a region for a couple times and then moves to a different region.

It typically moves region to region year over year.

We've had some reshuffling uh after COVID happened.

We we sort of rebooked 2020 and 2021 and the pattern sort of happened that we ended up that way.

Um but in sort of an ordinary four-year cycle you'd see a northeast, south, midwest, and west over the course of four years.

Just kind of curious what other cities in the Midwest have been hosting or we did 20 seventeen was in Columbus.

Um we did uh 2023 was in Austin.

Um and in sort of the out years, we'll look at um Milwaukee, Kansas City, um Chicago's probably on that list as well.

Yeah.

So since I've been with the association, which is several years, it's been in Nashville twice, um it's been to Chicago once, and uh Jack mentioned um uh Dayton.

Uh it's been in St.

Louis um since I've been with the association and Kansas City.

So that's sort of our competitive market if we want to host we can beat St.

Louis.

I don't know about Nashville.

That's right.

We don't have music city.

Right.

But we've got a race track here.

I think I'd just like to say I'm I've been on various committees for these conferences, and I'm really excited about this opportunity.

And I hope it works out because we love showing off our city and our county.

So I I really hope this works out.

That's great.

I do want to let you know.

I have reached out to some of the adjoining counties who are active in NACO and they would be interested in uh maybe hosting an event, but also contributing um step personnel, yeah, yeah, volunteers.

And um and maybe a little bit more than that, but yeah, but they want to help out.

So they they want to show off the Central Indiana.

So yeah, it's been a while, but we hosted the International Association of Assessing Officers.

I know seems like it may be a similar uh size conference, but um I know it took a lot of just people power to volunteer, and so I guess so.

We you know, Hamilton County, we all came together and yeah and made that happen.

Yep.

It is a they're pretty they're similar to us in a lot of ways.

They're we're actually they're an affiliate organization of ours and have a seat on our on our board and we'll have a side meeting during our conference, and so we um we like working with and learning from them as well.

So I thought it went well.

I mean when when we hosted their events, so yeah, yeah.

Mr.

Chair, if I could I've had the privilege of hosting a conference, not uh nationwide, but for all 92 counties here in that the state that we live in.

And I think this is exciting, and I'm like um Madam Treasurer that I hope that um that we can do this um in Marion County and be a partner.

I do have concerns with um, and this is probably like a pre-mature, it's not really a question, actually, it's a maybe a pre premature statement, but in regard to the commitment of raising whether it's 475,000 dollars or whatever that number may be.

That is um, because that's a lot of money.

Um, but I think outside of the commitment to raising this uh type of money um would be my only, like I said, my only kind of like red flag with it, and not that it's not that we can't do it because we live in a great state and Marion County is the best county.

Um, but um that would be my only concern, but I think this is awesome for our state and for Marion County.

I think this would be amazing if we would if if we can um host um a conference of this size.

I think that would be great.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

I I would I would just say uh um uh completely agree that this would be an amazing place to host a conference.

I had the privilege of coming to an event that David hosted here and um and and I actually stopped by the Hall of Champions this morning in a a free hour, and it just would be a really fantastic place to the whole the whole city and county would be a fantastic place to show off.

Um completely uh completely understand the concern and I would I would just sort of say we we are a partner in that as well.

Our our fundraising team develops a uh sponsorship menu and tries to make it as easy as possible on facilitating some of that, and uh w we used this model with one of our hosts a couple of years ago, and all they had to do was was make a make the asks and we facilitate the rest of the conversation and documentation and I I would say frequently the the number sort of starts with what's on the page, and as we get through some of the in-kind services and and some of the venues we want to go to, we're frequently able to revise that down and say we've got it we've got a more manageable different number here as well.

Yeah, I think that's really as we reach out to some of the venues.

We want to see host the event.

If they give us a discount because it's government employees or government officials, those kind of discounts can help contribute to the commitment.

Yeah, all right.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Any other questions or comments?

I I would like to make a proposal if I may, since we just saw the revised version of the MOU today, and we have another meeting scheduled for November 17th.

I'd like to do is sort of take it, look at it and then actually do a vote on the meeting on is it the is it the 18th?

Okay, on November 18th.

Does that sound reasonable?

Yeah, is that work with you guys timeline?

Yep, that sounds great.

Yep, Tess.

Okay.

Absolutely.

So we have a motion, Mr.

Chair, a second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second to go ahead and review and vote at our next upcoming meeting on November 18th at two o'clock in the same room.

Uh all in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Oppose, same sign.

Motion carries.

Wonderful.

Yeah, thanks so much.

Thank you for being here.

My pleasure.

Very important to us to have you here, and we appreciate it.

It's it's my pleasure to be here.

We're we're excited.

So just know too that we have two elected officials that sings your praises when it comes to the NACO conferences, and that would be Debbie Jenkins, our surveyor, and our recorder, Faith Kimbrough.

So we hear a lot about the NACO conferences.

Well, thank you for being here.

I'm glad to hear that, and I uh will be excited for you all to experience one in 2028 or hopefully before.

Um we have had uh I think it was the in 2021 to sort of get ready for 2022.

Adams County, Colorado was hosting, and they brought 30 people to the conference, and they all can't got on stage at our general session in front of 2,000 people and had a whole chant and stuff planned, and you don't have to do all that, but it's it's uh I don't know you've you've encouraged us now.

We have to top that.

Yeah, but but we really appreciate you all and the work you're doing, and it would be a delight to bring everybody else from across the country here.

And within uh NACO, there is the large urban county caucus, which Marion County qualifies for, and I think we have the participation on that in that caucus as well.

So uh NACO is very good about recognizing that um you know when you've been to one county you you've been to one county, and that the larger urban county caucuses had slightly different needs, perhaps perhaps in some of the rural uh counties, but uh they're great at recognizing that.

So great.

So NACO is very good about recognizing that um you know when you've been to one county you've you've been to one county and that the larger urban county caucuses have slightly different needs perhaps perhaps in some of the rural uh counties but uh they're great at recognizing that so great great okay all right any more thank you thank you thank you all sounds great look forward to being partners yeah thanks perfect any uh any other business to uh come before the Marion County commissioners today there was not I move adjournment all right hearing or seeing none uh we are adjourned