Budget cuts were on the table for the Warsaw City Council at its meeting Monday night.
Up first was an ordinance to make cuts to the 2016 budget, which were unanimously approved.
“These are the Line 2 reductions from the 2016 budget. Essentially, these are monies that will be unspent this year that have been put back, taken out of allocation and put back into the reserves. These cuts will help us when we receive our 1782 Notice, to prepare our final (tax) rate. So these are all amounts the clerk-treasurer’s office assisted the department heads with at the beginning of October, and then, I believe, we did it again at the end of November to update those,” Mayor Joe Thallemer told the council.
The total of the 2016 budget cuts is $843,500, with $533,700 of that coming from the general fund; $45,800 from aviation; $23,000 from cemetery; $80,000 from parks and recreation; and $161,000 from fire territory.
Mike Klondaris, council president, asked when the city would get its 1782 Notice from the Department of Local Government Finance. Clerk-Treasurer Lynne Christiansen replied, “The only thing I know is that we’re under review. And I know that Umbaugh (& Associates) has to send them our bond closure documents … so they can get that rate.”
Bonds for the Warsaw-Wayne Township Fire Territory were sold Thursday, with the city receiving an interest rate of 3.119 percent on the $2.95 million worth of bonds sold. Thallemer said the state never lets the city know when it’ll get the 1782 Notice, but once it gets it, it has 10 working days to respond. But the Line 2 cuts from the 2016 budget and the Line 1 cuts from the 2017 will help the city reduce its tax rate, he said.
The 2017 cuts were presented Monday for the council’s review, Thallemer said. Those cuts total $780,790, and include $238,248 from the general fund; $468,712 from fire territory; $24,600 from aviation; $16,000 from cemetery; and $33,230 from parks and recreation.
“You can see a lot of them are the overbudgeting for the medical insurance, which we typically anticipate, and then there are others that the department heads have added to the reductions,” Thallemer said.
If there are other areas the council feels should come under consideration, he said those certainly can be discussed, but the council will have to be ready to approve the 2017 cuts when the 1782 Notice from the state comes in. “And these, again, are ones the department heads have had input into,” councilwoman Cindy Dobbins said.
In other business, the council:
• Approved on second reading the elected officials salary ordinance. The ordinance was approved on first reading at the council’s Dec. 5 meeting.
Salaries include a bi-weekly salary of $2,648.26 for the mayor; bi-weekly salary of $2,297.88 for the clerk-treasurer; and an annum of $6,081.38 for each of the seven councilmen. Additional compensation will be paid for serving on the Board of Public Works and Safety ($125 per month), Plan Commission ($30 per meeting), Fire Territory ($30 per meeting) and Traffic Commission ($30 per meeting).
• Approved for reimbursements from the Indiana Department of Transportation to be placed into funds from which they were paid. The reimbursements were for $169,322.08 for the Husky Trail project, which will go into the Economic Development Income Tax, Rainy Day and Eastern TIFF funds; and $66,617.09 for the Market Street project since March 2015 that will go into the EDIT fund.
• Approved on first and second reading an ordinance to move grant dollars for the Community Crossing Grant from the Rainy Day Restricted Funds to a Grant Fund appropriation called Paving Grant as required by the State Board of Accounts.
The city still hasn’t received those grant funds yet from the state, and Christiansen said the state evidently is slow on sending out.
• Approved an amendment to the employee policy handbook for code of ethics as suggested by Human Resources Director Jennifer Whitaker based on advice she received from the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns.
• Heard from Christiansen that the State Board of Accounts is coming to Warsaw today to start an exam and/or audit of the city’s books depending on what they find in the city’s federal grants and how much the city received. Thallemer said that’s pretty normal when federal funds are received. Christiansen said the last exam was a partial one in 2012.
