Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory firefighters give a JAWS demonstration at the 2024 Family Safety Day at Central Park. This year, the event will be from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Sept. 13. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — All four 2026 proposed budgets Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory Chief Joel Shilling presented to the territory’s board Tuesday, Aug. 5, were unanimously approved. They go before the Warsaw Common Council at 6 p.m. Aug. 18.

Councilman Mike Klondaris, who sits on the territory’s board, was impressed with what he saw.

“All I want to say is these budgets that we just looked at are impressive. What you’ve done, I think, kudos to you. I’ve never seen budgets like that in all the years I’ve been doing this,” Klondaris told Shilling.

Shilling said he appreciated that, but it wasn’t just him.“I couldn’t do it without our department. Kind of how the fire territory is set up, we have a captain who is in charge of each station. And, again, it’s them submitting their budgets. It’s the TRT leader. It’s the dive leader. It’s the group of all the individuals who are in charge of the different things that help make my job a little easier. Again, Heather’s help. Karen, the admin. of C.A.R.E.S. It’s all of us coming together to do that. So it’s not just me,” Shilling explained.

Klondaris gave kudos to all of them and repeated that the budgets were “very impressive,” adding the council reviewed half of the city department budgets so far and was impressed by all of them so far. He said the fire territory’s only increases were in personnel, “taking care of our people.”

“And that’s what is important,” Shilling agreed. “If we don’t have the people, we can’t get to these calls.” At the end of the day, he said there were three things he wanted to make sure happened: “One, our people get paid. Two, we have fuel in our trucks that we can go down the road and go to these emergencies. And then, three, we have the equipment that we are fixing and maintaining to keep going.”

Klondaris said the fourth was that “everybody comes home safe.”

“That is a must as well,” Shilling stated. “So, at the end of the day, those are the important things to me. Each team took cuts. They all understand where we’re at. They all understand what the future could look like. Again, it is what it is and we’ve all got to work through it together.”

The first budget Shilling presented to the board was the operating fund. In the fund’s personal services category, Shilling said the wage committee, through the city council, set a blanket of a 2% increase for employees. There was an 8% increase in medical insurance.

“Our pension contribution that the fire territory contributes on behalf of all of our employees, the state has changed that rate from 20.3% to a total of 23.3% for ’26. So that’s why you see that ($328,000) increase there,” Shilling said, noting that the employee benefits went up 18% in 2026 from 2025. The total proposed operating fund budget for 2026 is $7,114,410, a 5.18% increase over 2025’s $6,764,115.

In the fire territory equipment replacement fund, under other capital outlays, Shilling noted $450,000 for 2026 for training center building or upgrades. “So, if you were to go out to our training center right now, I don’t want to say it’s in a little disarray, but it does need some maintenance done to it, it does need a little bit of upgrading. The guys, as I do these reports, you see their training hours. You see the amount of time they’re spending out there training. And the props get worn out and the stuff wears out and just needs replace,” he said.

Not only that, but Shilling said there’s a lot of storage containers that the fire territory has out there. As some of the equipment sits out there in the weather, they’re not climate controlled so some of it goes bad. So there’s funds budgeted for next year to build a storage building that is climate controlled out at the training center.

The total proposed for the 2026 equipment replacement fund is $1,391,450, a 49.13% decrease from 2025’s $2,735,518.

“That’s pretty impressive,” Klondaris said.

He asked Shilling if he anticipated building the training center in 2026. Shilling said that’s the hope, but there’s conversations to be had first. The hazardous materials response fund was put in place by Indiana code. Indiana code allows the fire department, if it goes out on a hazardous material response where there is certain criteria, to bill for some of the services and equipment they utilize, Shilling explained.

The fund’s 2026 budget is proposed at $2,100, a 67.69% decrease from 2025’s $6,500.

The last budget presented was the fire territory pension fund.

“So this pension fund is the fund for the members of the fire department that were prior to our 1977 fund, which is handled through NPRS down at the state,” Shilling explained. “So we still have five members, or widows, that get paid out of this fund.”

The 2026 proposed budget is $275,480, a 4.94% increase over the $262,514 budgeted for 2025.

The final item on Tuesday’s meeting agenda was Family Safety Day.“Family Safety Day is our annual event that we do down at Central Park. Again, a huge thank-you to (Warsaw Parks and Recreation Department Superintendent) Larry Plummer and the parks department for everything they do to help us have this event down there,” Shilling said.

This year the annual event will be from 9 a.m. to noon, Saturday, Sept. 13 at Central Park, 225 E. Fort Wayne St., Warsaw.

Activities will include a junior firefighter challenge, demonstrations, a community resource tent, Gummy Worm surgery, NOAA flooding model, emergency vehicles,  pet adoptions, vision screenings, Kasey the Fire Dog, prescription medication take back amateur radio and bicycle and car seat drawings, according to a provided flyer.

Sponsors include Kosciusko REMC, Creighton Brothers, News Now!, Lutheran Health Network, Lutheran Kosciusko Hospital and The Dr. Dane and Mary Louise Miller Foundation.

“Just a great event in the community that I would encourage everyone to attend,” Shilling stated.