Over two months after granting money from the city’s opioid lawsuit settlement funds to the county reentry court, the city is still working out the details for a committee to recommend future disbursements.
At Monday’s Warsaw Common Council meeting, Council President Jack Wilhite said in January he sought input from the other council members on how they wanted to proceed with the committee.
Then in March, he said, he and Mayor Jeff Grose had a “great” discussion and reviewed a list of “many worthy possibilities.” This past week, he met with Councilwoman Diane Quance and Councilman Mike Klondaris to discuss key factors influencing the committee, including the substantial amount of opioid settlement money already available and ready to be utilized and additional funds will continue to come in over the next 17 years or so.
“So it behooves us, I believe, to set this up in a way that will live beyond our terms,” Wilhite said.
He reminded everyone that the funds are not taxpayer dollars, but funds received from a lawsuit. As of March 31, the city has $241,984 in its restricted opioid settlement fund and $7,913 in the unrestricted fund, according to Clerk-Treasurer Lynne Christiansen after the meeting.
“We’ve been given a unique opportunity to make significant impact on people’s lives, and with all this in mind, we decided not to rush the formation of the committee. Instead, we are focused on developing the vision and mission statement to guide its future direction, especially considering that many of us on this council will not be here when those plans come to fruition,” Wilhite stated.
He continued, “We’re also working on establishing a method to appointing committee members, rather than selecting all of them ourselves. The idea here is to leverage expertise in areas we are currently not subject matter experts. These areas include physical and mental health, legal considerations and family and spiritual support.”
While this approach to forming a committee may take longer, he said there’s no urgent pressure to act immediately.
“And the importance of this effort warrants taking the time to get it right,” Wilhite concluded.
Any questions or comments may be directed to Wilhite, Klondaris or Quance.
In other business, the council:
• Approved on second reading the ordinance approving and authorizing the Belle Augustus residential infrastructure finance (RIF) bond. The RIF loan for $1,050,000 is through the state, according to Warsaw Community and Economic Development Director Jeremy Skinner, who presented it.
“It’s basically a bond, much like any other bond we do. It’s a TIF (tax increment financing) bond. It’ll be paid back by using TIF funds out of the Northern Residential TIF district,” he said.
The bond will be purchased by the state.
Of the $1,050,000, a total of $30,000 will go toward the issuance of the bond with the remaining going toward infrastructure for phase five of the Belle Augustus housing development.
Randy Rompola, bond counselor with Barnes & Thornburg, said the ordinance approves the terms of the bonds. It has a not-to-exceed rate of 4%. The rate, currently through the Indiana Finance Authority (IFA) program, is 3.15%. He said they expect the bond to close in May.
• Approved on second reading the ordinance approving and authorizing the issuance of the Millworks project bond.
“It’s a $20 million mixed-use project with a bond to not exceed $4.5 million. It does have roughly 85 apartment units right now, with around 30,000-35,000 square foot of commercial space. The project will occupy the entire block of what used to be the old Owen’s downtown. It’s a project that we’ve been working on for a couple years to bring some additional residential development downtown,” Skinner said.
The commercial space may be a restaurant, sandwich shop or something along those lines, he said later.
The bond issue will be paid for by the now-consolidated Northern TIF District, which the Millworks project is in.
Skinner said only the funds generated by the project will pay for the bond. Any shortfall will be on the developer (AP Development LLC), not on the city.
“Whatever taxes he generates over the next 25 years will be paid into this bond, but there won’t be any other revenue associated outside of that allocation area,” he stated.
Rompola said because it’s issued as an economic development revenue bond under Indiana code, there’s no responsibility for the city to make any payments.
“In the worst-case scenario where the developer doesn’t pay the property taxes - they build it, it gets assessed properly, but the developer simply doesn’t pay the taxes - the bonds would not be paid. They would go into default, the default, as Jeremy indicated, would rest with the developer, not with the city. And there would be no impact on the city’s credit rating or, again, there’s no impact on the debt limit because there’s no property tax associated with this,” he explained.
In this case, AP Development LLC is buying the bonds.
The bonds are $4.5 million, and repayment is not to exceed 25 years with an interest rate not to exceed 8%, subject to some further negotiation.
Closing date for the bonds is expected fairly soon, Rompola said, because the developer is eager to get started.
• Approved on first reading an ordinance for the annexation of the Crouse Leasing property on the south side of CR 250N, as presented by Skinner. The council was presented with a petition for annexation last month and held a public hearing, but there were no remonstrators.
The second reading of the ordinance will be at the council’s April 21 meeting.
Skinner said Crouse is in the process of tearing down a house they bought and building a new business there, so once the annexation is complete, the business will be developed.