By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — Warsaw Common Council approved the 2026 budget, tax levy and tax rate ordinance on first reading Monday night, Sept. 15, after having the required public hearing on it with no comments from the public given.

The second reading will take place at the council’s 7 p.m. Oct. 6 meeting.

Before the public hearing, Clerk-Treasurer Lynne Christiansen explained to the council, “This is what we have come up with through working through everything and Senate Bill 1 and all of the advice we’ve been getting from various sources. It’s heavily high due to unknown important things that we need to know to set it. Some information is missing from the DLGF (Department of Local Government Finance) that they have not received yet.”

She said one of the reasons it’s higher was because “last year, when we did the fire territory, we didn’t go to their max levy. We have gone to the max levy on this budget for next year. We went to the max levy on the civil side as well, which we always try to do anyway. We made the levy a little bit higher than the max levy due to the unknowns that we still have, plus the street department bond, we had to levy that in for next year as well (for the) payments. So, that’s where we’re at.”

Mayor Jeff Grose said, “Historically, as you guys know, usually very conservative. Lynn said high, but the reason you do this is so you can be very conservative, and, as she said, with the many unknowns that are heading our way, heading in the next year, and probably more importantly the next couple years to come, it’s good practice to do this. Numbers, just general speak, you can lower them, but you can’t raise them.”

He said the tax rate in the ordinance of $1.6543 per $100 of assessed valuation is a lot higher than where the city is this year, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.

“The unknowns, as they come in and become known, is only going to help us, and with (Christansen’s) work, we’re obviously hoping that we’ll have a more accurate picture and the number won’t be that high,” Grose said.

Christiansen said all of the budgets have at least a 15% reserve. She said they did put a little extra in for the bonds due to their tax caps “but we know that they’ll only be able to have a 15% reserve in the end. The DLGF will cut some of that as it’s sent to them for approval before our 1782 Notice. If they cut anything from the civil side, it’ll be out of the general budget, so, again, we did make that a little bit higher so that if they do cut, we are still good. And the same with fire territory. If they take anything out, it’ll be from their operating budget, but they should be good.”

Councilwoman Cindy Dobbins said she assumed they will still be doing some line cuts from the budget.

“We haven’t had any cuts from this year’s budget, and then if we need to add some more line cuts from next year’s budget, in response to the 1782 Notice, then we’ll do that when we get that notice,” Christiansen responded.

The city doesn’t know its latest assessed value yet, which will impact the tax rate.

“If our assessed value comes in higher, which I’m assuming it will, then the rate will go down,” Christiansen said.

Dobbins asked, “Where were we at last year?”

Grose said it was at $1.33, but Christiansen said they didn’t have the bond and didn’t get to the max levy for the fire territory. According to a copy of the ordinance, the city’s budget for 2026 totals $41,135,743. It includes $200,000 for casino/riverboat fund; $100,000, rainy day fund; $20,054,051, general fund; $258,500, debt service; $275,480, fire pension; $279,650, police pension; $300,000, local roads and streets; $350,000, motor vehicle highway fund; $3,443,800, parks and recreation; $340,875, park bond; $2,016,635, aviation/airport; $945,912, cemetery; $70,000, cumulative capital improvement (cigarette tax) fund; $625,000, cumulative capital development; $1,863,750, economic development income tax; $293,730, redevelopment general; $0, redevelopment capital; $1,212,500, redevelopment bond; $7,114,410, special fire protection territory general; and $1,391,450, special fire protection territory equipment replacement.

The home-ruled funds, not reviewed by the DLGF, total $12,251,681 and includes such things as the wheel tax, park non-reverting operating funds, other funds, tax increment financing districts and opioid settlement funds. Council President Jack Wilhite made the motion to approve the ordinance on first reading, Councilman Mike Klondaris seconded the motion and it passed 7-0.

Winona Lake Trail Fest is happening Sept. 26-28.

In other business, Megan Carr, a board member of KCV Cycling Club, made the council aware of some upcoming community events. The Trail Fest is Sept. 26-28 and is for the whole family. She said there’s mountain bike races, kids events, camp fires and food trucks and more. She said it’s a newer event that has been growing and is a fundraiser for the trails and what the club has been doing there. She said they hope to break ground on the future bike park this spring, which the Trails Fest is also a fundraiser for.

“Another thing that we do as part of our education, I am the chair of the education committee, so we do different programs,” Carr said. “… We have a program called Tracey’s Trailer that has been around since 2017.”

The bike rodeo is coming up.

“We’ve been in about five schools for about most of our time in Warsaw. Third grade is what we do the program in, and in the last two years we have doubled that. We are now in all eight Warsaw elementary schools and then also Lakeland this coming spring, just got added, and Sacred Heart, so we’re in all 10 Warsaw elementary third-grade classrooms now and going forward. So we’re very excited. It was a goal we had and we just reached it,” she stated.

The bike safety program is for five weeks and they’re in the classroom for a couple of those weeks and then they take the students outside to the parking lot, where the students practice their bike safety. Each kid gets a free helmet and bike lights. KCV Cycling has 10 lead certified instructors in the Warsaw area that teach the program. Carr said they hope to expand the program eventually to other communities in the county.

“When we started in 2017, we’ve been in the third-grade program, in the classroom, we’ve done over 2,400 kids total. But just this spring alone is 300. So now every year it’ll be like 600, which is kind of like what Warsaw’s graduating class is, around 550, so we’ll have 600 a year added since then. Total, between Fat + Skinny and these Family Safety Days we’ve done in this third-grade program, we’ve done over 3,000 students in the last seven years, eight years of the program,” she said, referring the council to the website at kccycling.org and winonalakestrail.com.

Fred Helfrich, KCV Cycling, said Warsaw and Winona Lake are a Bicycle Friendly Community. They are a Silver status, like South Bend and Carmel. There’s one Gold in Indiana, Bloomington.

“Our goal now is to get us up to the Gold level, so we’ve got a bunch of boxes we’ve got to check off. Education is only one element of the various things we’ve got to prove to the Bike League in order to obtain that status,” he said.