At the recent council meeting on March 3rd, after multiple contract negotiations have lengthy amounts of time to handle, a plan was announced to pay for a 5% increase for members of the police force through Opioid settlement funds. In addition, the contentious annexation plan to annex parts of Farmington was withdrawn over the weekend, and taken off of the agenda last night by council-member Jeff Greene.

Mayor Dan Ridenour in a press release on Thursday stated there were too many concerns from members of the Farmington community to go forward. In previous meetings members of the Farmington Neighborhood Association said they didn’t feel as if the discussions on the matter were adequately made public to them, and that they had a majority of community members against the annexation in a survey conducted. Ridenour by contrast described the situation as “when you’re trying to date someone and you can see that you don’t align, you get the hint.” Ordinance 7-25 was introduced last night, although not adopted until the upcoming April meeting, that would use over $500,000 for public safety pay increases, going both to 

According to the Indiana Commission to Combat Substance Use Disorder, the funds are intended to address substance use disorder. The funds amounting to $980 million over an 18 year period are being distributed to Indiana cities over an 18-year period. The funds according to the Combat Substance Use Disorder commission are restricted “for programs of treatment, prevention, and care that are best practices as designed or required by the settlement documents or court order.”

Community members Audie Barber and Wayne Scaife both spoke out against the use of funds. The vote was 9-0 to introduce the plan and it will be voted on for adoption at next month’s meeting. While both Police and Fire negotiations were talked about last night, members of the Ridenour administration said they believe there is going to be an agreement with the city employees’ union AFSCME in coming days.