All four items up for a second reading before the Warsaw Common Council were unanimously approved, including the new trash fees and the bump in the base patrol officer pay.
The first readings for all four items were approved at the Council’s May 10 meeting.
Ordinance 2021-04-05 establishes solid waste disposal fees, charges and additional rules regarding the disposal of vegetation. Under the ordinance, the collection charge for trash will be $8 a month per residence from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022, and then goes up $1 annually until it reaches $12 per month per residence from July 1, 2025, and “beyond.” A public hearing for the ordinance was held at the May 10 meeting, but there were no remonstrators. It was introduced at the Council’s second meeting in April.
The solid waste committee that came up with the proposal included Councilmen Jerry Frush, Josh Finch and Mike Klondaris.
Frush said, “I would challenge anyone to find a company to pick up your trash, yard waste, large items for $8 per month and to do as good of a job as our city street department. If you can find someone to do this, I would suggest you opt out and go hire them.” He said he didn’t think there was an outfit in the county that did it as well as the city of Warsaw Street Department.
Klondaris said, “Change is hard, and this is a shift in how we’re approaching how we pay for this service. I think we’ve done people right in doing this. … With tax caps eating into our revenues, we’re dipping into our reserves. Out of the gate, I didn’t want to do this, they didn’t want to do this, but when you analyze the problem and do some critical thinking and come up with possible solutions, I think this is probably the best solution out there.”
He said the fees don’t fund the whole trash service, it just helps offset the cost.
“I think one thing to note, too, is there seems to be a little mistaken assumption that all of the property taxes people pay come to the city of Warsaw, and in essence that’s not really true because a portion goes to the schools, a portion goes to other entities, and so while it may seem like a lot is being paid to the city, there are actually several different pots that those taxes go to,” Councilwoman Cindy Dobbins stated.
Council President Jack Wilhite noted, “Not only does that money go to different pots, but even the money that comes to the city from the state via property tax or whatever, goes into various pots within the city that have to be spent a certain way. They’ll give us the amount of money they deem we need with strings on it and say, ‘You can’t use this for streets,’ or ‘You can’t use this for general fund-type stuff.’ And they shift it around in such a way that it tends to put us in a really hard position from time to time. This is one of those times.”
Warsaw Mayor Joe Thallemer reminded the Council that apartment buildings of two, three or four residential units are eligible for trash service and have been for a few years. He said they do have the ability to opt out, but single-family homes do not have the ability to opt out.
He also told the Council that the city switching over to a user fee will take some time. “There will be issues. It’s not going to be easy to make that conversion. I would ask for everyone’s patience. We will certainly try to keep an eye on this,” Thallemer said. “There will be errors and omissions we will have to take care of.”
While not a public hearing, Thallemer opened the meeting up to anyone who had a comment and Kim Hart went to the microphone. She said she didn’t know this was going on until she saw something on Facebook and it got her attention because of North Pointe four-unit buildings.
“We have never had city trash pickup out there, so I’m happy to hear we can opt out and not have an additional charge because trash has always been included in taxes, and yet we’ve never had that benefit,” she said. “Is this a starting point? Are you to take that out of the budget and make trash in the future just a cost?”
Thallemer responded that the trash fee will supplement the cost to do trash. Last year, it cost the city $915,000 to do trash, recycling, yard waste and large items. The $8 fee put the city at about 50% of that. “And that’s where we really want to be – kind of a supplement, not to completely take it over,” he said.
Hart said, “We’re never going to get that benefit out there. Of any kind.” She said out at North Pointe, they have multi-family and commercial buildings that help foot the bill on trash but don’t see any benefit.
Councilman Jeff Grose made the motion to approve the ordinance, Frush seconded it and it was approved 7-0.
Ordinance 2021-04-04 amends the city’s 2021 police salary ordinance to increase the maximum biweekly base patrol officer pay by $200 to $2,200.64. By increasing the base patrol officer pay, it increases all officers’ pay by $200 biweekly.
Thallemer said, “I just want to make a note that the impact of raising the base patrol salary also creates a competitive increase as we look to hire new officers, and I think the wage committee can certainly verify that our wages have not been competitive in that realm.”
The wage committee includes Councilmen Grose, Dobbins and Diane Quance.
Dobbins said, “I think, probably, in addition to assisting us with hiring new officers, it perhaps will also help with retention of the current officers that we have, and I think we very much want to do that if we don’t want to have a great deal of turnover, if we don’t want to lose (officers) to other departments.”
“I just did want to mention the comparisons that the wage committee saw,” said Thallemer. “It was about 10 different agencies, five or six cities of similar size. Two larger cities and a couple of counties. All in our circle up here in northern Indiana. Significant difference. Patrol wage was $10,000 lower than the highest one of a smaller community. I think those were really the important things that the wage committee looked at. We had to get competitive to hire.”
Council President Jack Wilhite said, “I’m glad that we are trying to stay competitive. We have a good police department. It’s been noted a number of times that a lot of our new hires have been poached after going through training. That speaks a lot to our training system that we’ve got. I thank the chief for that. I’m just glad we’re trying to stay competitive. You get what you pay for. I think this is a good step up.”
He then made the motion to approve the ordinance and it passed 7-0.
The third ordinance approved by the Common Council was Ordinance 2021-05-01, which establishes the American Rescue Plan Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery Fund.
Thallemer said it just establishes a fund to accept ARP funds as they are allocated to the city. It doesn’t allocate any funds, but creates a place to put them once the city receives them. The city is expecting to receive about $3.1 million, half this year and the other half in 2022.
The final ordinance was Ordinance 2021-05-02, approving additional appropriations. The source of the appropriations is the general fund and totals $290,525. A public hearing was held on the additional appropriations, but there were no remonstrators.
Of the total, $54,525 is being utilized for COVID response from CARES Act funds from 2020; $36,000 is Council utilities; and $200,000 is for signals for Center Street intersections with Lake and Indiana streets.
The ordinance was approved by a vote of 6-0-1, with Frush abstaining.
