Kosciusko County Sheriff Jim Smith (left, center) and members of his department present their proposed 2025 budgets to the Kosciusko County Council Wednesday morning. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

KOSCIUSKO COUNTY — In its first day of hearings for 2025 budgets Wednesday, Aug. 14, the Kosciusko County Council got through more than half of the departments’ presentations in four hours.

A second day is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday, with discussion on wages to wrap it up. Wages are not being discussed during the department heads’ presentations of their proposed budgets.

A third day is scheduled for 8 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 21 for budget cuts.

Nonprofits

During County Administrator Marsha McSherry’s presentation of the county commissioners’ budgets, she mentioned the required budget by the state for the Bowen Center for 2025 is $809,000. Bowen Center is a nonprofit organization.

Councilwoman Joni Truex asked what launched the conversation by the county commissioners regarding the continuation of not-for-profit budgets. “I’m just curious because that was very interesting,” she said.

Council President Mike Long asked if she was referring to the discussion of the county not continuing to provide funds to nonprofits, and Truex said yes.

“The city of Warsaw and some personal views,” Long said.

McSherry said some had stronger views on the matter than others.

At their July 16 meeting, the commissioners approved recommending to the council that seven nonprofits receive the same amount of funds in 2025 as they did in 2024. An eighth nonprofit that requested funding for the first time was recommended not to be granted any dollars. Bowen Center isn’t among those nonprofits because the state requires the county provide funding to them. The commissioners also discussed the possibility of eliminating the nonprofit funding after 2025.

Long said Wednesday it was just conversation at this point, but the ideas that are floating around involving freezing the nonprofits’ funding because it is taxpayer dollars and not every not-for-profit is getting funding.

A year ago, he said the county decided not to take on any new nonprofits.

“There has been some talk about possibly starting to decrease the funding. So this is all talk. There’s nothing been decided. So full disclosure, that’s kind of some that I have been involved in,” he said.

Truex said it was upsetting to not-for-profits to learn about it and commissioners’ comments through the newspaper. She said the commissioners should have had a meeting with them before the meeting.

“Those discussions are out there that are being had, so at some point in time, I think it’s going to be looked at. And where it goes from here, I have no clue,” Long said.

Truex wandered what other counties do to support their communities’ not-for-profits. She wasn’t interested in what cities do, but what do counties do.

She also wandered what it would take for the county to take on some of the roles of the not-for-profits if the nonprofits were no longer there, like The Beaman Home or Kosciusko County Senior Services.

“I think that those are things that we need to totally examine,” Truex said.

Long said those are part of the discussions that are starting to be had, but there’s some who are starting to think, “Is this something we want to do with taxpayer money?”

Legal Services

There’s funds budgeted throughout the many department budgets for legal services, including under the Cumulative Capital Development fund in a commissioners budget. For 2025, McSherry said CCD legal services had a $9,000 increase. She said there was no increase in the 2024 budget.

“This is largely in part to the requirements of House Enrolled Act 1158, which became law on July 1. This governs all contracts that are approved by the commissioners,” she said. “So, I think we talked a little bit about this before. Any contract with Kosciusko County has to be under the name of the county.”

The county attorney, Ed Ormsby, has to review all those contracts within 21 days.

Councilwoman Sue Ann Mitchell told McSherry she requested information on legal services and found only one round of money has been spent. “6/24 was the first billing that appears to have come out of the money that’s been appropriated,” she said.

McSherry said they are up to date. Wednesday was Aug. 14 and billing has to be in by the 15th of each month.

Councilwoman Kimberly Cates said $29,480 has been spent this year. Mitchell said the county wasn’t receiving bills on a regular basis. McSherry said the commissioners are aware.

Sheriff

Back in June, Kosciusko County Sheriff Jim Smith spoke to the council about increasing medical coverage in the jail.

On Wednesday, he presented the significant increase in the jail budget.

“We knew this was coming, and it would be increasing our medical coverage in the jail to 24 hours a day. Currently, the nurses are leaving at 9 p.m. and we don’t see them again until 6 a.m.,” Smith said.

Generally speaking, he said the people with higher medical needs — drunkenness, overdosing — come in the middle of the night when there’s no nurse coverage. He noted that most litigation against jails comes when there’s not enough medical coverage in them.

Instead of requesting four new jailers for next year, he reduced that request down to two to help soften the increase with the medical coverage.

NET 43

The Kosciusko County Narcotics Enforcement Team (NET 43) began Feb. 14, 2019. It was officially created by a memorandum of understanding Oct. 22, 2019. NET 43 is a collaborative, specialized unit consisting of officers from various local law enforcement agencies, according to part of a letter in support of NET 43 signed by the head of every law enforcement agency operating in Kosciusko County. Smith’s signature was one of them on the letter.

At Wednesday’s budget hearing, Smith said he was fully in support of the prosecutor’s office taking over the budgeting for NET 43 because what makes NET 43 work is having a third party oversee it.

“It’s just a cleaner way of doing it, so we’re very supportive of it,” he said.

The sheriff’s budget has $13,222 in its law enforcement forfeiture budget, which will be transferred to the prosecutor’s budgets for NET 43. Those dollars were a fairly recent addition to the fund.

Dan Hampton, prosecuting attorney’s office chief deputy, said a lot of the increases in fund 23015 for the prosecutor’s office deal with an increase from NET 43’s budget. The prosecuting attorney’s office has taken over a lot of the expenses of NET 43.

Pauper Counsel

Superior Court III Judge Chad Miner said the big item in the proposed budget for Superior II and III courts for 2025 was pauper counsel at $750,000, which he mentioned to the council at their meeting last week was coming.

He said they really don’t have enough attorneys so they’re pulling attorneys from Plymouth and Fort Wayne to serve as pauper counsel.

Cates said as of June, almost $410,000 has been for pauper counsel, and for 2025 he was asking for $750,000, but she asked if that was enough. Miner said he thought so based on the numbers he reviewed.
Mitchell mentioned that money out of the public defenders fund could be used to offset the increase.

“Because if we don’t continue to use that money to offset the increase, there’s nothing else to use it for, unless – that’s the other thing that is being considered – is increasing the amount that public defenders are being given,” she said.

Miner said if the council wanted to do $725,000, that would be more than it was. Mitchell suggested bringing it down from $725,000, maybe halfway between where it was last year at $525,000 and the requested $750,000. That would be what the budget out of the general fund would be, and the balance of it would be taken out of the supplemental public defenders fund.

The council discussed budgeting pauper counsel at $650,000 for 2025, and then doing a supplemental from the public defenders fund so no additional appropriation would be needed.

Superior Court II Judge Torey Bauer mentioned, “We are running out of public defenders that we can assign cases to and still stay in the parameters sent down state to receive the 40% (reimbursement). So at some point, you’re going to have to make the hard decision to give up that reimbursement because we can’t keep numbers in a way that satisfies the state and/or” have a public defenders office. He said that supplemental public defenders fund may be able to help get a public defenders office off the ground. Bauer said it’s going to take some hard choices being made.

Bauer said most attorneys here in the county would much rather be operating under a public defenders office.

Judge Mike Reed said the flip side of that is the county would have to have as many public defenders as it does prosecutors. The public defender chief deputy would have to receive the same salary as the prosecuting attorney chief deputy. They’d also to have staff.

Bauer said now he has 12 public defenders working for him, with eight of them being out of county because enough local attorneys can’t be found.

Miscellaneous

Other departments the county council heard from Wednesday were Circuit and Superior I and IV courts, probation, community corrections, surveyor, clerk, treasurer, soil and water, the county council and redevelopment.

Departments scheduled to present Thursday include highway, coroner, Kosciusko County Convention and Recreation Visitors Commission, area plan, assessor, recorder, emergency management, health, Purdue Extension, auditor and veteran affairs, followed by the wage committee recommendations.