By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

WINONA LAKE — Winona Lake has switched to a new municipal services provider.

At its Tuesday, April 20, meeting, the Winona Lake Town Council approved buying out its current contract with Inframark and switching to Site Worx. Both companies provide street department services.

The reason for that decision was to save money, as Town Manager Craig Allebach explained.

“We have obviously taken a pretty good hit from COVID and of course a lot of internal people here as well as people in the community know … we have held the line on the budget for this current year,” he said. “And we really don’t know even now today, we hope to find out fairly soon the dwindling revenues that we have. And so another thing we took a look at was our municipal services contract.”

“A lot of the budget for the street department comes out of (the) Motor Vehicle Highway fund and Local Roads and Streets, so it’s estimated that … has already taken anywhere from a 40-60% cut, so we’ve been trying to look at ways to reduce,” he continued.

The buyout is $138,000, and Inframark’s contract ends May 5. Site Worx’s services start May 6, and the cost for them will be $385,500 annually.

Allebach said the town would save just $1,800 this year, but for the next budget year of 2022, the savings would be about $140,000.

The council’s next meeting is 6 p.m. May 18 at Winona Lake Town Hall.