Commissioners Agree To Buy First Christian Church Bldg.
Posted
Tim Robertson-trobertson@timesuniononline.com
Kosciusko County Commissioners approved purchasing the First Christian Church building, 202 W. Main St., Warsaw, today.
According to the county's purchase agreement with the church, the county will purchase the property for $300,000. Commissioner Ron Truex said the building will be used to provide extra office space for some county agencies and extra space for meetings.
Truex said the property's location was an important factor in the purchase.
"It keeps county ownership adjacent to other buildings," he said. "Adjacent property is worth more to us than other property."
Commissioner Bob Conley said decisions have not been made as to which county agencies will relocate to the church building.
"There are just a lot of groups that need some space," Conley said. "It's one of those cases where real estate became available and we were able to negotiate a price that we thought was fair. It's preparing for the future."
The purchase agreement calls for a closing date to be set before July 1, 2008.
In other news, County 911 Director Tom Brindle reported to the commissioners on efforts to make up for shortfalls in funding county 911 service. Brindle is part of a committee examining the problem statewide.
Indiana 911 directors are concerned about the decrease in funding as an increasing number of people cancel their landlines in favor of cellular telephones.
Brindle said his department's annual budget is about $1.2 million. The county collects $1 from every landline and 34 cents from every cell phone in the county. This year, the county collected about $600,000 in landline fees and less than $200,000 in fees from cell phones.
County Auditor Sue Ann Mitchell and the Kosciusko County Council discussed the problem at a June 14 meeting. Mitchell told the council that the county is losing 911 fees from landline phones at a rate of 8 percent each year.
Today, Brindle told the commissioners the committee is making progress.
"Last Monday, I was invited to address the state senate on the 911 situation in the state of Indiana," Brindle said.
Brindle said the committee is examining the ideas of equalizing all 911 and collectivizing 911 funding statewide. Equalized fees would mean users would pay the same fee for a cellular phone as they would for a landline. With a collectivized funding system, all 911 fee money would go to a state pot and each county would receive money to run their 911 service based on population of their service area. Brindle said the mathematics department of Ball State University is conducting a study to establish how much funding each county 911 system needs.
Brindle said a solution for the funding problem is far from established.
"We just want to get all the options on the table," he said. "At this point, I'm feeling good about it."
Conley expressed concerns about a collectivized funding system for 911.
"I think we need to have some local control," Conley said. "This thing of letting someone else take care of our business, I'm totally against."
