Shown from left at the Winona Lake Redevelopment Commission meeting Wednesday are Denny Daniels, commission member; Bruce Shaffner, commission member; Craig Allebach, Winona Lake town manager; Denny Duncan, Warsaw Community School Corporation representative to the commission; and Alan Alderfer, commission president. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

WINONA LAKE — New this year, redevelopment commissions must develop a spending plan by Dec. 1 for 2025, the Winona Lake Redevelopment Commission heard at its annual entity meeting Wednesday, June 5.

Jim Higgins, partner with London Witte & Co. LLP, said the meeting was the second of the required activities that the commission has to do annually.

“There are now four of those activities. The first was the completion of an annual report that was given to the town council back in April, that I worked with the clerk-treasurer to get that submitted. The second is holding this annual entity meeting where we invite all the impacted taxing entities that are affected by the town’s TIF (tax increment financing) districts,” he said.

Those entities include the county, the town itself, the school corporation, township, library and the solid waste management district. They were given an opportunity to attend Wednesday’s meeting and ask any questions that they may have of the commission as far as the commission’s use of TIF dollars. Higgins said that while the meeting and the invitation to the entities were required, they’re usually not very well attended meetings.

The only representative of any of those entities at Wednesday’s meeting was Denny Duncan, who serves as Warsaw Community School Corp.’s representative to the commission.

“I’d just say the school board talks about the TIF situations on a regular basis and appreciates the good work and the judgement the group has used up to this point,” Duncan stated.

The third item that’s statutorily required annually is a determination by the commission that there is no excess assessed value being captured that could be passed back to those impacted entities. Higgins said that has to be done each year by June 15 so that the county auditor can move forward with determining assessed values in July to give to the entities for their budgeting purposes.

The commission approved a resolution similar to ones adopted in past years that concludes there is no excess incremental value that is being captured by the commission.

“Then the very last item that is new this year is the redevelopment commission, prior to Dec. 1, has to adopt a spending plan for 2025,” Higgins said. “The parameters and the format of the spending plan will be dictated by the DLGF (Department of Local Government Finance). We’ve been awaiting their guidance for a while now for both the guidance and the form. We haven’t seen either. We imagine that’s within the next 30 to 60 days.”

He said there was “interesting” language in the legislation regarding the spending plan in that it’s not like a municipal budget.

“A municipal budget is adopted and then, if necessary, you can amend your budget during the year. This spending plan legislation … it says that the redevelopment commission may not use any of its funds for any other purpose than described in the spending plan. So it seems to be this idea that once adopted, we can’t deviate from that, as far as additional or new spending during the year,” Higgins said.

He wasn’t sure how that would work for a redevelopment commission, but that would be the challenge they will face. He said he imagined that by November there would be another meeting of the redevelopment commission to address the spending plan.

“But again, I can’t speak much more to it than what the legislation talks about, which is by Dec. 1, you will adopt a spending plan for next year and from that plan you can’t deviate from it as far as additional items. And we’ll just wait to see what the guidance is that we get. I just wanted to give you a heads-up that it is coming,” Higgins said.

Town Manager Craig Allebach said mainly what Winona Lake has been doing with its TIF is “Miller Sunset Pavilion, the residential TIF and some bonds for water and Stonehenge.” If the spending plan includes those, he asked Higgins if that would be following the legislation requirements.

Higgins said they’ll just have to be very thoughtful in how they develop the spending plan within the parameters the DLGF gives them.

Commission member Denny Daniels was curious as to how specific were they going to have to get.

The commission also had to elect officers, but currently only has three members. Two of the five-member commission — Al Disbro and Alex Hall — decided not to serve another one-year term. Allebach said they’ve been trying to look for a couple others to serve on the commission, and maybe even put town council members on instead of just residents.

Commission member Alan Alderfer said he might be able to come up with a couple names, and Allebach told him to email him their names.

Members Bruce Shaffner and Daniels elected Alderfer as president. A vice president and secretary were not selected.