Human Resources Director Jennifer Whitaker presented three salary ordinances

WARSAW — The Warsaw City Council received the preliminary tax rate at the meeting held last night, Oct. 1.

Currently, the 2019 tax rate was presented as 1.34, up from last year’s rate of 1.27.

Council Member Diane Quance explained that this is the highest figure the 2019 tax rate could be, a do-not-exceed number. The council will be seeing line 1 and line 2 cuts based on budget adjustments and a lower healthcare rate than expected.

A public hearing was held for the ordinance containing the 2019 tax rate and appropriations. No members of the public provided a comment. The council approved the ordinance on first reading. A second and final reading will be held during the meeting on Oct. 16.

Human Resources Director Jennifer Whitaker presented three salary ordinances. The first ordinance contained the general salaries, while the remaining ordinances contained the police and fire department salaries. The council received these ordinances to review at the last council meeting.

Whitaker explained that not much had changed since she previously presented the ordinances. In the general ordinance, a pre-treatment technician position was erroneously left off the ordinance and had been added back in. All three of the ordinances represented the maximum pay-grade for particular city positions. These numbers do not reflect the actual pay of employees, just what they have the potential to earn in their position.

Council members commented on the hard work the wage committee has put into making the city salaries competitive in today’s job market.

“I think you guys have done a great job,” said Council Member Mike Klondaris. “This was needed badly, badly.”

All three ordinances passed on their first reading. These ordinances will appear at the next council meeting on Oct. 16 for a final hearing and approval.

A petition to vacate an unimproved street was heard by the Bowen Center. The Bowen Center has recently bought the land at 2610 Jefferson St., Warsaw. Adams Street consists of grass because the city never put in an actual road. The Bowen Center requests that this small portion of Adams Street be vacated for possible future use. A representative of the Bowen Center stated that there were no plans for the use of the land yet.

City Planner Jeremy Skinner stated it was highly unlikely that the city would ever develop the street into a usable road. He stated the topography of the land would cause any such project to have a high cost with little impact. No action was needed on the vacation request at this meeting; a public hearing will take place in the future.

The remainder of the meeting was spent discussing annexations.

The first annexation ordinance was for J & J Thallemer LLC. This annexation was previously petitioned to the board and both a public hearing and a presentation of the fiscal plan had occurred. With no questions, the council approved the annexation. Mayor Joseph Thallemer recused himself from the discussion and the vote as this is the land associated with his private business.

Two annexation petitions were introduced for the County Farm Road area. The first annexation is a 116-acre parcel of land owned by Williams. The second annexation is for a 58-acre parcel of land owned by the Warsaw Community School Corporation. A third annexation petition was presented on behalf of Jonathon and Amanda Scroggs. This annexation consists of a residential home located in a large field near the airport industrial park.

Skinner explained that the council will hear a fiscal plan on all three of these annexations at a later meeting. No action was taken on these annexations at this time.