Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
LEESBURG - Seven students pursuing careers in the construction industry each received scholarships Tuesday from the Builders Association of North Central Indiana (BANCI).
Julia Moore and Matt Podlesak, the scholarship committee for BANCI, presented the scholarships.
“As many of you know, we started this scholarship program, I think it was about five years ago. It’s really taken off. We’ve got seven award winners this year,” Podlesak said.
He announced the three who weren’t present first, two of whom are repeat winners. Ty Brooks, attending Indiana State University for engineering and construction management, and Finley Bailey, attending Ball State University (BSU) for architecture, are past recipients. Drew Bingamon will be attending Carpenter’s Training Center.
The four recipients who attended the dinner at Steuby’s in Leesburg, and received $1,000 scholarships, were Mason Shoemaker, who will be attending BSU for architecture; Dylan Barkey, who will be attending BSU for architecture; Cora Ransbottom, who will be attending BSU for architecture; and Griffin Williman, who will be attending Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. Barkey, Ransbottom and Williman are Warsaw students, with Shoemaker from Wawasee.
“I appreciate everybody applying and I’m hoping that those who still have school to go to keep applying,” Podlesak stated.
Guest Speaker
Guest speaker for the dinner was Kosciusko County Council President Tony Ciriello, who introduced himself and the duties of the county council.
“So we have a lot going on at county. We’re getting ready to do budgets. If you know anything about the county budget, we’re about $47 million overall for our entire county budget,” he said. “The sheriff’s department has 11 different budgets. The county highway has like 10 or 11 different budgets. Most offices have one budget, but we’ve got to tighten our belt. We’ve got to figure out what’s best for us and what’s best for you guys because we don’t want to overtax you because that’s not our intention, but Indianapolis controls what we do.”
Ciriello said they want to make sure they get the best bang for their buck so the county can take care of its employees as well. There are over 200 county employees, he said. In the private sector, he said raises are normally common, but not always.
“But in government, we have to base the raises that we give county employees on what their budget is and what they’re able to cut and save us so we can provide that little bit to the county employees,” he stated.
Ciriello said when they give county employees 2% raises, that’s not a lot of money. He mentioned he himself worked for the county for a long time as a sheriff deputy and the coroner, but is now on the county council. Back in 1992, the county council gave county employees raises of $100 one year.
“So we want to do better than that for our county employees because we can’t operate county government without them,” he said.
On a county parking garage and the Syracuse and Warsaw libraries’ requests for bonds, Ciriello said, “There’s no decisions made on any of those things yet, other than the Warsaw City Council did turn down the Warsaw-Wayne Township Library for a $17 million bond. We’re looking at tackling the Syracuse Library at our June meeting, which may get pushed off, we don’t yet, but we’re looking at facing that at our June meeting. It’s a lot of money.”
The Syracuse Library is seeking about $7.3 million for a new library building on property given to it.
“Everybody’s concerned about a parking garage. We don’t have any numbers yet. We don’t what a parking garage is going to cost us. We’re hoping to get those real soon, but the priority has to be, we take care of what we have,” Ciriello said. “If you drive by our Justice Building, as you well know, several months ago we had a collapse. Fortunately, no one got hurt or killed, but it’s all boarded up and it’s got to be our priority to fix that building, so our employees are all safe.”
If that means putting the parking garage off for a year, or two, or three or four down the road, “so be it because we have to make that building safe for our employees,” he said.
On average, per month, Ciriello said about 8,000 people go through the Justice Building.
He went into comments about the county looking at needs over wants because the county doesn’t know where its next money is coming from because of Senate Bill 1 (SB1) going into effect.
“It changed the way we collect taxes, so we’re not collecting. People say, ‘We’re losing money.’ We’re not losing money, we’re not getting the same amount we used to. So we have to look at the bottom line as any accountant would. So what can we do and what can we do with the money we have. If we’ve got to make cuts, we’ve got to make cuts,” Ciriello stated.
Next year is a budget year for the state legislature, so if new legislation goes through, there might be a change and the county might get a little more money.
“We don’t know. Based on what’s currently there, is we’re told property taxes are this, this is what we get. Income taxes are this, this is what you can do. So one of the things Indianapolis came up with was the possibility of having to raise your local income tax (LIT). Nobody wants that, right? We pay enough in taxes. But Indianapolis, by the way the law is written, would force us to do that by 2029 and we’re hoping in 2027 that changes. We don’t know,” Ciriello said, adding they’ll know more by the end of April 2027 of what the county can and can’t do financially.
“Right now, we have to treat it as if that money is not going to be there and go forward from there and make those tough decisions. We do not want to touch services. We do not want to get rid of employees. Like to give them a raise, but, again, that’s going to be up to their department head whether they get raises or not, depending on what cuts they can make within their budget they can live with,” Ciriello continued.
He said over the years, the county council has been fiscally responsible so there’s money in the bank.
“We have a savings account, if you will. But we don’t want to spend that savings account unless we have to, because what happens if an emergency comes up and we need that money? So we want to try to save that money and conserve that the best we can and operate within our means and not operate on what everybody else’s means are,” he said.
In his 20-minute comments, he also mentioned he plans to serve no more than two terms. He’s currently finishing his last year of his first four-year term and is seeking re-election this year for a second four-year term.
