After reviewing all the information, the City of Warsaw Common Council approved continuing the abatements for Flexaust and Whimet for another year.
City Planner Jeremy Skinner told the council Whimet came to the council in 2009 and asked for a tax abatement for real and personal property. The company at 2100 N. Detroit St. originally estimated they would add 15 jobs, “and they’ve been in that ballpark ever since,” he said. The current application has 14 jobs, but they had 15 last year.
“For the most part they accomplished what they said they would, and they’ve additionally invested a little over $750,000 in real property improvements. This is their sixth year of tax abatements, and I would recommend you to grant them the tax abatements for real and personal property,” he said.
After the council approved Whimet’s tax abatement, representatives of the company at the meeting said things are going really good for the company and it’s been a strong start to the year. They said they added more employees to the company this year.
Flexaust had three abatements before the council for 1510 Armstrong Road, 602 Leiter Drive and 1605 W. Center St.
Skinner said Flexaust has been in the community for some time and especially over the last five years has done a lot of expansion in Warsaw.
In 2006, the company asked for its first tax abatement when it did some improvements to its Armstrong property and at that time also acquired the property on Leiter Drive, Skinner said. “In general, they have done what they said they were going to do in 2006,” he said. Flexaust said it expected to add 25 new employees.
Then in 2011, Skinner said Flexaust came back and did some additional improvements and indicated they were going to add some more employees. A tax abatements was requested for the Armstrong Road and Leiter Drive properties, and the company reported it expected to add about 132 new employees.
“In 2006 they expected adding 25 new jobs. Since then, they’ve added 132, and this will go down as you will see. In 2011 they estimated adding two new employees. They’ve added 123 new employees since 2011. Obviously, they didn’t add 132 plus 123. See, that’s going down. If you go all the way back to 2006, they’ve added 132 employees since 2006 and they include all these tax abatements. So it’s just telling you the addition since the year. So you can see the block of their new employee addition has occurred between 2011 and 2013, which is really when they added a new line and bought what used to be the Midwest Raking building in 2013 on Center Street. A lot of the improvements, as you can see, they’ve added 103 new jobs since 2013,” Skinner explained.
He said they’ve met all their goals in term of employment, but haven’t yet spent all the money they have planned to on new equipment.
The council approved Skinner’s recommendation to continue the 2006, 2011 and 2013 tax abatements for Flexaust. No representative of the company was present.
In other business, the council approved on second reading an ordinance reducing the speed limit on CR 225 between Old 30 and the city limits to 35 mph.
Mayor Joe Thallemer invited the councilmen to attend a Stellar Communities Partner Meeting from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.
