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Before getting to salary ordinances for the 2027 budget, the Warsaw Common Council first approved reductions in the 2026 budget.
Mayor Jeff Grose said the total amount to be cut from all the departments was $1,572,531. He thanked the council for their efforts last year to “take us into this budget cycle” and gave a “great appreciation” to all the department heads and staff for “taking a look at every line item and taking a look at the rest of the year and reducing the budget for this year. My humble opinion, that is a large amount of money coming back.”
Broken down by fund, $602,250 is from general; $160,000 is from parks and recreation; $39,000 is from cemetery; $74,250 is from aviation; $12,000 is from redevelopment general; and $685,031 is from fire territory operating fund.
The resolution for the budget reductions was unanimously approved by the council.
Human Resource Director Denny Harlan presented the 2027 general salary, fire salary, police salary and elected salary ordinances. The council approved all four on first reading.
He mentioned several points of emphasis on the general salary ordinance, including all city employees will get a 2% increase in 2027.
“We’re doing some title changes, mostly at wastewater and stormwater, just to kind of start preparing for plans in the future to support growth and turnover as people start to retire and things of that nature,” Harlan said.
A new position of assistant recreation director in the parks department will be added. Harlan explained, “Currently, they have an administrative assistant and she’s been doing a whole lot more than administrative assisting. She’s been doing really well with (Recreation Director) Stephanie (Schaeffer). Stephanie had some family issues earlier this year, and Lynnae stepped up and really did a fantastic job. We want to make sure we get that position titled correctly so that we can make sure her duties are actually in with what she’s doing.”
A new position of parts runner/inventory clerk is being created out at the Street Department. Harlan said, “Through our workforce study that we completed this year, we found that out that we have a lot of time where mechanics have to go on the road to go grab a part or something of that nature, so in order to keep those guys wrenching in the garage, we need to have somebody that can be on board to help run after those parts, and then also once that new building gets built, the shop is going to have a much more robust inventory of parts on the shelf, so we’re going to have to have somebody keep track of all that inventory and keep parts on the shelf that we need.”
Lastly, he said city employees will see a 9% increase on health insurance premiums. The last two years, those premiums had went down.
Councilwoman Diane Quance, who sits on the city’s wage committee with Harlan and Councilmen Mike Klondaris and Juergen Voss, said, “We chose a 2% pay raise for all employees, and part of our thinking there is because we have a robust longevity program and we wanted to be able to continue to fund that, so we wanted to fund it not only this year but going forward with what we anticipate might be coming up, so we felt it was important. And then with some of the changes we made in the personnel handbook last year with employee benefits increased, use of time that they have flexibility with their time off, things like that, we just felt like it was really important to keep those things. And in order to keep them and remain fiscally responsible, that’s why we went with the 2%, recognizing that it is under the cost of living adjustment, but that with the longevity and the other things they’re getting, and being able to hold the line on the health insurance costs, we felt like we were giving our employees the best package that we could this year.”
She also noted the time study the city did on its employees was very beneficial. “And so this is a data-driven decision. Any decisions we made about positions are all data-driven rather than just what we think might be a good thing to do,” Quance stated.
Harlan said they did do a very robust workforce study, “understanding that SEA 1 is coming down the pipe. Our citizens have come to expect a certain level of service, and we don’t want that level of service to drop, so we’re trying to get ahead of that to make sure that we can have the manpower and the people in place that we need to keep that service level there, even if we do take a little bit of a hit from SEA 1. We’re trying to get out in front of that monster as quickly as we can, and I think we took some giant leaps to get us there.”
The changes from the previous fire territory salary ordinance includes a 2% increase across the board for all employees and their health insurance premiums raised by 9%.
For the police salary ordinance, the changes from the previous ordinance include a 2% increase for all employees; an addition of a crime scene evidence technician stiped of $500 annually; extra duty for the benefit of city-sponsored events will pay double time normal hourly rate (same as fire territory); and health insurance premiums raised by 9%.
Quance said, “I do want to comment that because of the forward-thinking that this council has continued to support, we now have a full contingent of police officers, and that is especially important as we are developing new housing areas and there’s more patrol north of U.S. 30 that we have the capacity to handle that. So, the chief’s good reputation, the department’s good reputation add into that, so with those things combined, I’m very thankful that this council has continued to support our public safety officers.”
Councilwoman Cindy Dobbins said it’s very obvious as one drives around town and sees officers running patrols in different areas. “It’s really comforting to see them all over town,” she stated.
Klondaris said not only is the police department fully staffed, but all the city departments are. “But all these ordinances, they’re all data-driven. They’re all data-driven. We haven’t sit here and just picked numbers out of the area. We spent, I don’t know how many hours we spent, around the table this year.”
Harlan said the department heads and employees were a big part of that “as they were the ones that fed us that data. Every employee did a two-week time study and documented everything they did for a couple of weeks to give us the ability to have that data to be able to bring to you guys and say, ‘This is what the data shows us.’”
The last salary ordinance for 2027 was for elected officials. It includes a 2% increase, a $1,000 annual stipend for the board president and a 9% increase in health insurance premiums. Quance said it’s the only one that was not data-driven and the wage committee “did not try to keep up. We did not try to bring our salaries up ... we decided to hold the line.”
Clerk-Treasurer Lynne Christiansen noted earlier in the meeting that according to the council’s timeline for the 2027 budget approval process, Monday night was supposed to have been the public hearing for the budget, but some things had to be reworked so that hearing will be at the council’s Oct. 5 meeting. She said that will still give them plenty of time to get the budget in to the state on time.
