Warsaw Human Resource Director Denny Harlan, standing, presents the 2026 salary ordinances to the Warsaw Common Council, while City Planner Justin Taylor, sitting, looks on. Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — City of Warsaw’s employees will see a salary increase in 2026, from those on the bottom of the pay scale to those on the top, as well as elected officials.

At Monday’s Common Council meeting on Oct. 6, Human Resource Director Denny Harlan presented the 2026 general, police, fire and elected salary ordinances, which were all approved by the council on first reading. The council will be asked to approve the four ordinances on second reading at their next meeting.

“The dedication and hard work of our city employees are the bedrock of the services that we provide to the citizens of Warsaw,” Harlan said. “To ensure the continued excellence of our municipal operations, it is imperative that we offer compensation that is not only fair and equitable, but also competitive within the regional job market. We’ve done a really good job of keeping our employees’ salaries a little bit higher than median within the state, but I just wanted to make sure that people understand that we provide amazing services to our residents, and for that we need to make sure we are taking care of our employees who are actually out there doing all of that good work.”

On the general salary ordinance for 2026, Harlan said after a lot of discussion with the wage committee this year, “What we decided with the majority of our civilian positions is that we’re going to give a $1,600 across-the-board addition to their yearly wages.”

Typically, in the past, he said, the city gave a percentage raise, but with that the higher earners got more of a raise than the lower earners, so the wage committee thought giving an across-the-board amount would balance that out.

“Our lower-wage positions are going to get a bigger percentage of the raise this time, instead of the top positions.”

He said there was a handful of positions they did an adjustment on, but for the most part, it was across the board. Councilwoman Diane Quance, who serves on the wage committee, said they really looked at the department heads this year, too, and employees will get their longevity pay as well.

Moving on to the 2026 Warsaw Police Department salary ordinance, Harlan explained, “With police and fire, the way their pension works, it’s a little bit different than the civilian employees. So it made more sense to keep them on a percentage basis. So with our police department, we did 2% on both their base wage and their rank incentive, so it was a 2% overall for their maximum biweekly wage.”

After that was approved, Harlan presented the 2026 Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory salary ordinance, which he said was the ordinance that probably had the most change out of any of the four ordinances.

“One of the things that we have encountered quite often is that there’s a (disparity) between the base pay of the fire department against the police department. They both are in the same pension fund. So that kind of created some confusion at times,” Harlan said.

He sat down with Fire Chief Joel Shilling and the wage committee to discuss it.

“Their overall budget line item for their payroll didn’t go over 2%, but we revamped the entire way that their pay is structured,” Harlan explained. “So we raised their base pay to be competitive, and then we lowered their rank pay, so it all equaled out in the end, but it’s better set up now, not only for the newer firefighters and when they go to retire, but also a little bit more appeasing to be able to climb the rank and get into those admin. positions. We’ve had some problems with filling some administrative positions within the fire department because it was more advantageous for the firefighters to stay on shift work.”

Mayor Jeff Grose said Shilling really wanted to move in that direction. Harlan agreed, saying the fire department has been asking for this since he started as the human resource director.

“I think we did right by the firefighters by doing it this way,” Harlan stated.

That ordinance was approved, and then Harlan presented the final one, the 2026 elected salary ordinance.

“You’ll see that we made some changes within our elected salary ordinance,” Harlan recalled. “I remember when I started there was a wage study that was done and we were in the midst of doing some wage adjustments mid-year, when I first came on. And one of those wage adjustments that we were looking at was the council pay. According to the study, we were severely underwater with our council pay compared to like communities.”

The council wanted to take care of the city employees at that time, so the council pay only increased half of what the study said they should get. The following year, the council again didn’t increase their pay to where the study said it should be. This year, the wage committee decided to make that increase for the council.

“We’re going to bump the council pay up to $12,000 a year,” Harlan said, for each of the seven council members.

For 2025, council members are receiving approximately $9,600, according to Quance. According to a November 2022 Times-Union article, the Common Council salary would be increased to $8,556 in 2023. Adjustments of about 4-4.5% also were made for the clerk-treasurer and mayor for 2026, Harlan said, with the Common Council president also receiving a 10% premium (an extra $1,200 per year). The council president this year is Jack Wilhite.

In other business, the council:

• Approved on second reading the ordinance for appropriations and tax rates for the 2026 budget. The council reviewed and approved it on first reading at their prior meeting, and nothing has changed on it since then. However, Clerk-Treasurer Lynne Christiansen reported, “We did get our whole (assessed valuation) in and it went up about 11.5%. So, this advertised rating will go drastically down.” The advertised adopted tax rate for the 2026 budget, which totals $41,135,743, is $1.6543 per $100 of assessed valuation.

• Held a public hearing for the annexation of three properties, owned by Chandler Williams, on the west side of Husky Trail. The properties are two homes and a barn that sit between the apartment development and a subdivision. The council reviewed a petition for the annexation of the property over a month ago. No one spoke for or against the annexation Monday. As the next step in the annexation process, the council then approved a resolution Monday adopting the fiscal plan. An ordinance will come before the council at their next meeting, at which point they can “start the adoption of the annexation,” according to Warsaw Community and Economic Development Director Jeremy Skinner, who presented the resolution. He said the city already services that area so there would be minimal costs to the city for the properties to be annexed in. “And then, obviously, the intent would be to take that property and, hopefully, repackage it for a higher purpose,” Skinner stated.

• Was presented a petition for voluntary annexation for Ideal Construction by City Planner Justin Taylor. As the petition presentation was the legally required first step for annexation, the council was not required to take any action Monday. The property is on SR 15N, near Tecomet, and Taylor said it’s surrounded by city already. They want to keep the property zoned industrial.

• Approved Taylor’s request for a transfer resolution for $10,000 from professional services to equipment and repair. The funds will help the Building & Planning Department pay for new computers as the department’s current computers aren’t capable of being updated to Windows 11.