City officials now have a road map for the future of the downtown after the Warsaw Common Council unanimously endorsed the Hyett Palma Study Monday.
Mayor Joe Thallemer asked the council to adopt the study, which he sent a copy of to each councilmember a few weeks ago to review.
“We’ve gotten together with our community stakeholders. We had about a 2-1/2-hour meeting. Went through it and met the approval of the stakeholders as well,” he said. “This does not bind us to any project. It just merely sets the direction for the future planning for downtown. It’s just giving us a focus and direction to continue the trajectory of the improvements that were stimulated by the 2001 Hyett Palma.”
A community meeting about the downtown took place May 15 as part of the study with consultants Doyle Hyett and Dolores Palma gathering information from the public. They also toured the city and met with stakeholders during that week.
“Really, I have no reason to be anything but totally positive about it,” Thallemer said Monday.
City Planner Justin Taylor stated, “I just think it’s worth pointing out how valuable the previous version was from 2002. We’ve used it over the last 20 years and you can really tell that when we follow those steps, it really did improve things in our downtown. I think it was a great effort.”
Jeremy Skinner, Warsaw economic and development director, said, “Anytime you create a road map, you give yourself kind of a path forward. I think it’s a good thing and that’s kind of what this study does - it lays out a path forward and there’s a lot of good things in it. There’s a lot of challenges ahead of us, so this is a road map to face those challenges and hopefully accomplish some of those goals.”
The thing Thallemer said he really saw with Hyett Palma Study 2.0 was that the city didn’t go it alone.
“We’ve had a pretty significant group of stakeholders - the Chamber, KEDCO, Foundation, all the folks we’ve had around the table. This is going to have to be a community effort, looking at the way this is laid out,” Thallemer said.
Councilman Mike Klondaris said the 2.0 study came with something that was not part of the first study and that was a community coordinator. He said having that was imperative.
Council President Jack Wilhite said goals are good as they give you something to strive for and give you a vision for moving forward.
He also said the study was very good, though some of its ideas weren’t “earth-shattering.” He “wholeheartedly” supported the study.
Mayor-elect and Councilman Jeff Grose said, “It’s not just downtown and 2.0. It’s what you said, it’s community. And there will be more heavy lifting, I believe, if we can make this a reality.”
Grose and Thallemer joined the Warsaw Common Council in 1999 and they were a part of the first study, he said. He and Thallemer agreed they still refer to the first study today.
Diane Quance, councilwoman, said she and Councilman Josh Finch had the privilege of sitting on an economic development initiative for the last seven months.
“You will see when that comes out that it is very much in line with the Hyett Palma study, but another whole group coming in, another whole different set of eyes on every thing, coming to very similar conclusions and that one had a huge number of community stakeholders that were present,” Quance said.
Finch agreed it was interesting to have two completely different groups of people come up with similar results.
“Looking at 2.0, there’s some pretty sophisticated projects that are being done. They will certainly have to involve the county. The downtown housing projects, the Owens project, potentially the reconsideration of the Buffalo Street project - those are all high priority, and, again, this just points us in that direction,” Thallemer said.
Grose made a motion to adopt the study, Klondaris seconded it and the council approved the motion 7-0.
In other business, the council approved:
• A request by Warsaw Street Department Superintendent Dustin Dillon to transfer $385,000 from street salaries, with $54,000 of that going into street repairs and maintenance supplies and $331,000 going into street repairs and maintenance.
The transfer will purchase new printers as recommended by the city’s IT Committee ($21,000), equipment parts ($33,000) and additional microsurfacing of city streets ($331,000).
• A request by Warsaw Police Department Chief Scott Whitaker to transfer $19,000 from police salaries to repairs and maintenance; $24,000 from police salaries to machinery and equipment; and $46,000 from police insurance to repairs and maintenance.
The transfers are to replenish the funds due to unforeseen expenses and to add audiovisual equipment to the newly remodeled training facility. The funds also will replace the ridge cap on WPD’s roof to prevent rain and snow from causing further damage to the ceiling inside the building.
“We had the roof repaired, I think, in 2019 and now this is the final project. The roof is under warranty, this is not,” Whitaker said.
He also said $20,000 of the $24,000 being transferred into machinery and equipment will be taken out of the 2024 budget where it originally was going to be spent.
• An ordinance on first and second reading updating and “cleaning up” the city’s traffic control device ordinances to make corrections. The Traffic Commission approved it at their meeting Aug. 9.