Shown from left are county attorney Ed Ormsby, Commissioners Bob Conley, Cary Groninger and Sue Ann Mitchell, and county administrator Marsha McSherry. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

KOSCIUSKO COUNTY — Plans for the county to cut back their use of Reedy Financial Group’s services this year has been altered due to changes made by the state during the past legislative session on Indiana’s budget.

And Kosciusko County Auditor Alyssa Schmucker presented a further engagement letter with Reedy Tuesday to the county commissioners to assist the county with its tax increment financing areas and redevelopment for the county.

Currently, the county is paying Reedy about $5,000 a month for financial services, or a total of $60,000 for 2025.

“As you know, we’re engaged with Reedy right now with financial advisement, and we had asked them to give us a price for TIF financial advisers and for redevelopment guidance, if needed,” she said. “We did get a contract back from them. The first contract was carved back a little bit for some services that they offer that we are able to do. We’re able to do all processes in our office, however, it would be nice to have somebody at a more professional level who knows all the ins and outs of all the TIF rules and laws to help us doublecheck the work that we’re doing in our office to be sure that we’re collecting the maximum amount of TIF dollars that we are allowed to do.”

After carving that contract back, Schmucker said the total engagement now is $52,000. Reedy advised that the county could use about $9,000 of funds from county TIFs to go toward the fees of the contract.

“I wanted to present it to you today. It doesn’t mean you have to act on it today, you could wait until the next meeting, but I wanted to at least get you before you for your consideration,” she said.

County Councilwoman Kathy Groninger has been the contact person with Reedy for the council. She said she just wanted to show her support for Schmucker and having the commissioners sign the contract.

“Reedy has been a great help to us, but, as a council, we were looking — I just thought you should know — that we are looking at trying to cut back on our engagement with them. We were kind of hoping to do that this year, but with the changes in (Senate Bill 1) that’s come to the property taxes and the way that whole thing is going to work out, we don’t feel like we can do that right this very minute, at least for this year. But our whole hope is for next year that we’ll cut back on our contract with Reedy, we’re hoping. We’d kind of like to get it down to 50%, if we can, and so those funds that we were previously using toward Reedy, we were hoping to be able to transfer and let Alyssa’s office use that for the TIF needs that they have,” Kathy Groninger said.

The county recently was advised that if they didn’t have a financial adviser at this point, they should probably get one, she said.

The county council supports Schmucker and her use of Reedy, Kathy Groninger said, and Schmucker and her office are doing a great job.

County Commissioner Cary Groninger asked how many TIFs does the county have. Schmucker said the county has about 40 TIF areas. Some of them have one parcel, some have thousands of parcels.

“And then, with where we’re at in engagement, along with that SB1 forecast and trying to figure out where we’re at, is any of that enrolled into this or is that another agreement we still need to talk about?” Cary Groninger asked.

Kathy Groninger replied, “I think that what we’re currently using Reedy for, they can get us through all the changes and stuff that we need for this year. Previously, we were hoping to kind of cut back on that, but when they passed that legislation, it’s so different, that we don’t think it’s wise now to go ahead and cut them back when we really need them.”

She said Reedy will get them a quote for next year’s budget. Since Reedy is already serving as the county’s financial adviser and Reedy has all of the county’s information, she said she didn’t think it was wise for the county to completely cut them out, but services could be reduced to the council next year.

Commissioner Bob Conley stated, “I think that’s a wise thing to do. Sitting in on these Reedy Groups and gleaning the information that they bring us, it enlightened me that there’s a lot of things we’re doing in the county I didn’t know about. So we’re brought up to speed on that stuff through this Reedy Group.”

He questioned paying $52,000 to Reedy for doing something he believes the county is capable of doing itself. “It’s something we need to take a look at and I request that we look at this for two weeks and come back,” Conley said.

Cary Groninger asked if there was a time essence on the contract. Schmucker said the county will be starting the TIF process for pay 2026 in July. “We started the process already. It’s not like we were just sitting, waiting to see if you guys were going to tell us we could do this because we still need to do the work, whether they’re going to help us or not,” she said.

Cary Groninger asked if $9,000 of the $52,000 contract can come out of TIF, where will the rest of the funds come from?

Schmucker said they were going to do some looking for those funds. Cary Groninger said it would be good if they knew that by the next meeting.

The commissioners tabled the matter to the 9 a.m. June 2 meeting.