The Pilot News - City budget to be cut by $100,000

While this may sound like a monumental task, with a little ingenuity Ingle has been able to accomplish it without cutting any jobs.
•Clerk’s office: Upon examining the clerk's budget, Ingle realized that one of the clerk's pay could be moved to utilities.
Funding for utilities comes from user fees rather than from city funds.
Ingle is also no longer a part of PERF.
Overall, this will cut the clerk-treasurer's office budget by $47,237 for 2009.
•Fire, EMS: Three positions have been removed from the Nappanee EMS and two from the Nappanee Fire Department. These were positions that were already empty due to employees retiring, changing jobs and so forth. Ingle stressed that this move has simply eliminated already-vacant positions from the budget and no jobs will be lost.
This plan will decrease the fire department's budget by $1,615.
•Police: The Nappanee Police Department will also face some cuts for 2009. First to go will be an additional position that the city budgeted for several years ago but never filled. For eight years Nappanee Police Chief Mike Anglin has requested budgeting to allow the department to hire a new officer. Because the appropriate grant has not been available to help offset that cost, Ingle will also eliminate that from the city’s budget.
In addition, the department will go from replacing three cars a year to replacing two, as they have done in the past.
With this plan the police department's budget will go down by $33,145.
Police pension fund: Under the category of police pension fund, pension for retired officers decreased from $76,515 in 2008 to $55,322 in 2009. However, death benefits went up from $9,000 to $12,000 with the death of one retired officer.
EDIT
Ingle also said that the city will be able to recover leftover funds from EDIT because several items in the 2008 budget were not used. These funds will be moved to the 2009 budget.
TIF
Nappanee is beginning to see TIF (Tax Increment Financial) funds generated in its new Combined TIF District. However, what was generated in the pre-existing TIF districts must go to the areas formerly covered by those districts. Thus TIF money from the West Side Industrial district will go to improvements to Tomahawk Trail, while revenue from the Heritage Farms district will go into the C.R. 7 improvement project.
About a year and a half ago Nappanee decided to combine its three TIF districts, including the downtown district, the West Side Industrial district and the Heritage Farms district into one. This came about because, while some of the districts were generating plenty of income, others were not.
In a TIF district, funds can only be used for the district in which they are generated.
Variance
The city granted a request that they received from the board of zoning appeals for a variance at 2165 E. Market St. John and Kay Fisher filed for the special exception variance that will allow them to build a 21-foot, 4-inch by 32-foot attached garage onto the east side of their house.