By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — Mayor Joe Thallemer responded Monday night to a comment Kosciusko County Council President Mike Long made last week about the proposed city-county airport authority and its tax impact.

In an interview to the Times-Union Friday about Thursday’s special county council meeting on the proposal, Long said one major landowner — who he didn’t name — told him that the new tax for the airport authority would cost their business between $400,000 and $500,000 so they were not for it.

During the Warsaw Common Council meeting Monday, Thallemer said, “I just have one item to bring up. Thursday night, we will be across the street promoting the airport authority resolution that the county council is poised to consider. There’s been a lot of discussion and, unfortunately, some pretty significant exaggerations of information.”

He said there was a recent article published in the newspaper about a particular individual who would have a $400,000-$500,000 bump in property taxes with a 3.9 cents per $100 of assessed valuation tax increase. The absolute most the authority would be able to collect is 3.9 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, but they won’t be seeking to collect the maximum, maybe half of that, Thallemer said after the council meeting.

Thallemer told the council he went back and looked at the county’s highest-paying taxpayer.

“The highest county taxpayer, starting from scratch, and had to pay, it would be about $89,000, nowhere near $400,000-$500,000. It’s a complete mischaracterization of what we’re asking for and I just want to go on record about that,” Thallemer said.

In a text message after the meeting from Long, Long said, “I have really dug into the comments by a local CEO of the impacts of the proposed tax liability on his company. The absolute most I could come up with is around $41,000 per year. That’s a far cry from the $400,000-$500,000 he spoke of. However, that’s still a chunk of change in my book. Just goes to show the depth of some of the emotions tied to the proposal.”

Then in telephone interview, Long said that’s the reason for Thursday’s meeting — to gather facts rather than false information. The meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. in the old courtroom of the old county courthouse.

“I want it accurate,” he said, and referring to that $400,000-$500,000 without checking into it first was his mistake. “I got to thinking about it, and there’s just no way” it could be that much.

Long said he hopes to meet with Thallemer before Thursday’s meeting and get more information from him.

As for the meeting being scheduled during spring break this week, Long said he didn’t know it was spring break. It was just the Thursday the week before the county council’s regularly scheduled meeting. If the county council held it during their regularly scheduled meeting on April 13, that meeting would end up really long.

Thursday’s county council meeting is just a listening session. Airport Manager Nick King will be given 30 minutes to speak, with anyone else wanting to speak allotted 2 minutes. The county council will not vote or take any action Thursday.

If at some point the county council does approve the resolution for the city-county airport authority, there is a 30-day remonstration process. Someone opposing the airport authority creation would have to create a petition that follows the requirements set in Indiana Law 8-22-3-2, get the 456 signatures for the county clerk’s office to certify, and then no later than Aug. 1 of the year in which they would want this on the ballot it would be certified to the county election board, according to County Clerk Ann Torpy. The county council has no authority to place it on the ballot, it has to go through the petition process.

If the county council rejects the resolution, then there’s nothing to be done, she said.

On March 20, the Warsaw Common Council unanimously approved a resolution moving the airport from a board of aviation commissioners to a city-county airport authority. King gave the Warsaw council a presentation on the authority at their March 6 meeting, but asked that the council not take any action on it until their March 20 meeting to give them time to consider the request and hear from the public. There were no remonstrators.

The Kosciusko County Council must approve a resolution similar to the city’s for the airport authority to go forward as the county would have three of the six representatives on the authority board and county taxpayers would see a tax start in 2024 to help pay for the airport and its needs. The mayor would appoint three of the airport authority board members, with the county commissioners – not the county council – appointing the other three.

The ownership of the airport would be transferred from the BOAC to the authority. The authority would be its own political subdivision, but the county and city councils would have oversight over the budget.

According to the 2022 Indiana State Aviation Economic Impact Study executive summary, the Warsaw Municipal Airport directly or indirectly supports 117 jobs, including full-time, part-time and seasonal. The wages, salaries, bonuses, benefits and other remuneration earned by the associated workforce totals $6,866,000, and the Gross Domestic Product (the value of operating surpluses of businesses linked to activities and operations of the airport, plus the renumeration and net indirect taxes paid to the government) is $12,044,000.

Finally, the output — the total gross spending by businesses, organizations and individuals involved in activities linked to operations and actions at the facilities, including intermediate consumption — is $23,117,000.

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