The Portage City Council is considering a $60.9 million proposed budget for 2027. The final budget will be less.
“We already know we’re over the maximum on the tax levy,” Clerk-Treasurer Liz Modesto said at Tuesday’s council meeting.
“We always advertise higher because once you advertise the budget, you can’t go higher; you can only go lower,” she said.
Modesto’s office and Mayor Austin Bonta would be sharpening their pencils over the next week, she said, looking at ways the budget could be revised.
As it stands, the budget is about $1.1 million higher than the current year.
Property tax caps are significantly higher, she said.
The Budget Committee hadn’t met to review the budget before it was proposed on Tuesday. That will come before the council meets at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 20 at City Hall to vote on it.
The Oct. 20 vote won’t be the final budget, however. The budget then goes to the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance, which reviews it before sending back a final budget to the city.
“I do not recommend Indiana’s budgeting process to any new state that might be created in the future,” Bonta said.
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Modesto had good news for the city. The city is getting back $140,000 from a state insurance fund created decades ago.
She credited state Rep. Chuck Moseley, state Sen. Ed Charbonneau, Sen. Rodney Pol Jr. and his predecessor Karen Tallian for working for years to get that money refunded.
Moseley said the sausage-making for this outcome began about eight years ago. Instead of having the money in liability and catastrophic loss funds go into the general fund, legislators wanted it to go back to the local communities that paid into those funds.
During the 1980s, he said, local government premiums for this insurance “just spiked and went off the charts.” The General Assembly passed a law allowing the Indiana Department of Insurance to establish a pool of dollars for local government to be covered, making coverage more affordable.
In the 1990s, the cost of those types of insurance began to dramatically drop, so local units of government began dropping out of the fund. “The fund dropped down to a very small number of members,” he said. As the pool got more shallow, its value in spreading risk lessened.
Portage got coverage on its own, but it still had dollars committed and sitting in the liability fund pool.
It took a long time for the Department of Insurance to work out how much each unit of government should receive, Moseley said. “It all boils down to where you put your dollars at the time.”
“Your funds, once they go down to Indianapolis, they get mixed in with a lot of other funds,” he said.
“These are your dollars,” Moseley said. “The last thing we wanted to see was this to go to some slush fund,” mixed in with other dollars.
In other business Tuesday, the council voted 4-3 to approve rezoning 30 acres at the 5500 block of U.S. 6, near Swanson Road, for a luxury apartment complex. Redwood USA requested the rezoning from C2, commercial, to M2, multifamily.
Redwood USA, which plans to build about 150 units at the site, is proposing single-story buildings with a two-car garage for each unit.
Vice President of Acquisitions Kelly McIvor said the residential development would be behind a four-acre site along U.S. 6 left open for commercial use.
Bonta said it’s in keeping with the idea of more population density near commercial properties and less dense residential use behind that.
Each unit would have four to six residences, McIvor said.
Residents typically come within a five-mile radius, attracting empty-nesters, and are ADA accessible inside and out.
“My only concern is the affordability of the rent of these units,” Councilman Bob Parnell, R-2nd, said. “To me, it seems very, very high for Portage.”
Depending on the size of the unit, rent would be around $2,400 per month. “The term of art is affordable housing. That’s not what we build,” McIvor said.
It’s appropriate rent, given the buildings are single-story with an attached garage, she said. “We are confident, or we could not move forward.”
At the Promenade development downtown, a two-bedroom, two-bath unit is similarly priced, Councilman Collin Czilli, D-5th, said.
Councilwoman Penny Ambler voted against the rezoning, along with Melissa Weidenbach, R-At-large, and Council President Victoria Vasquez, R-3rd.
“Traffic in this area is already really bad,” with lots of homes yet to be built in subdivisions already approved, Ambler, R-4th, said. Her constituents want restaurants and places to shop, not more homes, and the land was already zoned commercial, she said.
Czilli said the development is a smart move for the city, especially since Redwood will plow the streets and pick up trash within the development. “We’re going to generate significantly more tax revenue on this development than we would a big box store,” he said.
“In the past, I have been anti-development,” but this project looks different, Councilman Ferdinand Alvarez said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
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