By Dan Spalding
News Now Warsaw
WINONA LAKE — The town of Winona Lake is taking a slightly different approach to next year’s budget plan led by the new town manager, Adam Lohn.
On Tuesday night, Lohn recapped a $4.4 million proposed budget, complete with large screen visuals.
But that’s not before town councilman Jim Lancaster tipped his hat to Lohn, who took over as town manager earlier this year.
“I think the team took a look at what we would call a zero-based budget approach this year. So instead of assuming last year’s starting point was the right starting point and indexing off of that, they actually went back to like a zero base and built a budget up from that,” Lancaster said.
“That’s not an easy thing to do. I appreciate the effort in doing that. And I think it gives a certain level of scrutiny and discernment over where you land in terms of those budgeting items,” he said.
Still to be decided is how much of a raise town employees might receive.
The budget allows for up to a 3% raise for full-time employees, but Lohn said a final decision on that will be left up to council.
Lohn told council that the upcoming budget won’t rely on money from the Riverboat Fund or the Rainy Day Fund.
“Historically, the town has budgeted to those lines. My kind of take on that, along with Adam Stone as our financial advisor, is that those are kind of our emergency funds for the town,” Lohn said.
“If we’re gonna touch those, it needs to be done by appropriation through the council for every dollar that we’re gonna pull out of that. So we’re leaving those alone. We zeroed those out for this year. They’re still gonna collect revenue, of course, but we’ll only touch those on an emergency basis as needed,” he said.
While changes to the budget proposal are still possible, the town hopes to approve the budget when it meets on Oct. 6.
Also on Tuesday, Town Council tabled a request from the Lake City Skiers who are hoping to have closing ceremonies when it hosts the World Ski Tournament next year.
While the four-day tournament will be held at Hidden Lake in Warsaw, organizers are seeking an exception to a noise curfew in Winona Lake to allow the closing ceremonies at Miller Sunset Pavilion to continue as late as midnight.
Part of the festivities would include a DJ, and town officials want to look more closely at the potential impact on neighbors.
