Warsaw Redevelopment Shines Light On Street Lights
Posted
David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
While reviewing the nine 2024 budgets for the Redevelopment Commission Monday, the board branched out into discussion about street lights in housing subdivisions.
During discussion particularly on the Northern Residential TIF (tax increment financing) budget, Councilman Mike Klondaris asked, “Are they putting street lights in these developments, and, if so, who is paying for them?”
Warsaw Community and Economic Development Director Jeremy Skinner replied, “Mostly not anymore.”
Years ago, he said, they used to put yard lights in but there never would be maintenance of those yard lights and many would get torn out or not be maintained.
“We’ve done some street lights, but we have not made it mandatory,” Skinner said.
Klondaris said he thought it was important for the development to have lights, but not that the city made them mandatory. He said the city’s had requests from neighborhoods for street lights that originally didn’t have any put in. Maybe the street lights should be put in on the front end of the developments, he suggested.
“We could, and that’s a plan commission question, not for us,” Skinner said. “It wasn’t really an issue until everything went underground.” It used to be that lights could be placed on utility poles, but now “everything’s underground so there’s no more poles.” Without the utility poles in the subdivisions, there’s a question of where and how to put the lights.
Klondaris asked, “Are you saying that all the utilities going into developments are all underground?”
“All underground,” Skinner confirmed.
Klondaris said, to him, it’s forward-thinking to at least require some lights at some intersections because without lights, they can be dark and dangerous.
Skinner said it was a legitimate question for the plan commission. He also said the city would have to pay for the lights and they’re not inexpensive but rather hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“We’re looking at Shelden Street right now. If we do lights out there, we’re probably in the neighborhood of $400,000 to put in street lights. They’re not cheap, so I can see there’d be a lot of pushback from developers,” Skinner stated.
He said maybe they could put lights at problematic intersections, but the challenge there is again cost. He said the plan commission could look at the issue and lights might be something the Redevelopment Commission could pay for out of its budgets.
As for the budgets for 2024, all were approved by the Redevelopment Commission unanimously and will be presented to the Warsaw Common Council at their future meeting.
The first budget was for salaries for Skinner and the administrative assistant. Including a proposed 3% increase as requested by the mayor, the proposed salaries in the budget total $39,373.12 for 2024, up from $38,955.77 currently. However, Skinner’s salary is paid out of four different areas: Northern TIF, EDIT, sewage and redevelopment general. The administrative assistant’s salary is paid out of EDIT, redevelopment general and Northern TIF. There’s also the insurance ($16,129.17), dental ($818), PERF ($5,847.51), FICA, life/long-term disability insurance ($200) and unemployment ($2,000).
The Warsaw Tech Park funds are collected from sales tax and income taxes as they are allocated just within the Tech Park designation, Skinner said. Its budget for 2024 was presented at $1.8 million with $1.5 million of that toward capital outlays.
“There’s nothing necessarily designated for this other than we’re still trying to figure out what that incubator innovation center looks like, where it’s at and how we accomplish that. So that’s kind of what this money is being targeted for,” Skinner said.
The Redevelopment General budget was approved by the commission at $265,000 for 2024. This is the only tax-rate based budget that the commission has.
Next year will be the first budget year for the Marketplace TIF. The TIF is an insert into the larger Winona Interurban TIF but it has its own boundaries. The only money that will be coming out of the budget is the bond payments for the Marketplace shopping center project. The budget was proposed at $75,480.25 for 2024, with the bond payment in July at $75,480.25. Any shortfall in the bond payment will be covered by the developer for the next five years, with the city picking up any shortfall in years 5 through 10, per the agreement.
The Redevelopment Allocation of the downtown TIF district budget for 2024 is $620,500, with $400,000 budgeted for capital outlays.
The Northern Residential TIF is proposed at $335,000 for 2024; Southern Residential TIF at $250,000; Redevelopment Northern TIF at $6,058,344; and Redevelopment Winona Interurban at $60,000.
Commission member George Clemens made a motion to accept all the budgets, Bill Curl seconded it and the motion passed 4-0. President Tim Meyer was absent.
The board also approved claims for June, which included $1,687.50 to Baker Tilly Municipal Advisors LLC for arbitrage compliance rebate and yield reduction report; $20.68 to the Times-Union for an additional appropriations ad; $5,000 to ER Engineering Resources Inc. for Shelden Street improvements; and $13,750 to Hyett Palma for the downtown Warsaw action agenda update.
