EVANSVILLE —As expected, local officials chose not to adjourn their Thursday night public hearing that addressed the possible Evansville-Vanderburgh County government consolidation proposal.
Instead, members of the Evansville City Council and the Vanderburgh County Commissioners will reconvene the hearing on Aug. 4.
Though many members of the two bodies have previously said they believe they are close to agreeing on a plan, Commissioners President Lloyd Winnecke said adjournment, or an official vote seems unlikely that night as of now.
"I would not see a vote on that night, but further discussion and maybe putting everything to bed and maybe continuing that public hearing," he said.
Currently, the two bodies have until January to agree on a proposal that, if approved by both, would go to a referendum, probably in 2012. Both the commissioners and the council must separately pass identical resolutions for their final proposal to go to a public vote. Once the public hearing is officially adjourned, they will have 30 days to accomplish that task.
Officials spent the first hour of Thursday's meeting going through an updated draft of the proposal full of the changes they already agreed to during a series of joint workshops held in May and June. According to Winnecke, the new proposal included 94 insertions and 98 deletions made to the initial consolidation plan drafted by an appointed reorganization committee earlier this year.
Two issues that arose from those changes were addressed Thursday — language authorizing the common council of the possible new government to ask the state to include a referendum in 2024 to address the issue of a combined law enforcement agency was added, and county surveyor Bill Jeffers presented proposed new common council district maps for the proposed unified government.
Though a timeline for exploring a possible future consolidation of law enforcement agencies was addressed, Evansville Police Chief Brad Hill and Vanderburgh County Sheriff Eric Williams have yet to agree on how the jurisdiction lines of two agencies would be drawn under a new government and a final solution may have to come from the public officials. Hill said his proposal is much more conservative and keeps many of the present boundaries than Williams' who said his changes are "far more aggressive."
Both men said they would turn over their proposals to members of the two bodies to get their input since they have yet to reach a finalized proposal.
"We are somewhat separated on a solution now," Hill said.
Proposed district maps also required an overhaul because the number of districts increased from eight to 12 when officials decided to increase the overall size of the proposed common council from 11 to 15. While the original districts largely mirrored the six current wards of the city council with two districts composed of areas outside current city limits, Jeffers said the new proposal was simply done as blocks of about 15,000 people using the Lloyd Expressway and U.S. Highway 41 as general boundaries.
Under the new proposal, only one district is composed of land entirely outside current city limits, but conversely a majority of the districts include a combination of land that is within and outside of the current city limits.
Though Commissioner Stephen Melcher did not address the issue of a voter threshold, several audience members asked the two bodies to require separate voter approvals from current city and non-city residents because of concerns from non-city residents about possible increases in taxes and other issues.
Bruce Ungethiem, one of the leaders of the anti-consolidation group We The People, said it's unfair that officials have taken so much time to address the concerns of law enforcement employees but not to have adequately addressed the concerns of those who live outside of the current city limits, including himself.
"We spent 35 or 40 minutes worried about 700 folks and how they feel about their job," he said. " But yet there are 50,000 people that live outside of the city limits of the city of Evansville that live in the rural communities whose lives and taxes will change, and this plan does not give them the right to vote that up or down on their own,"