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New jobs will ease the challenges for city |
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Friday, 09 January 2009 |
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By Rusty Nixon Correspondent
PLYMOUTH — There is an old story about an 800 pound gorilla in the room and for almost all local government bodies that gorilla has a name — House Bill 1001.
The bill brought to being by the state legislature early last year was intended to give citizens of Indiana the property tax relief they were loudly demanding. It accomplished that, and sent city and county government officials scrambling to get some sort of idea, just what effect the cut in tax revenue will have on government services. While nobody can agree on exact numbers, everybody agrees it will be bad.
“We still have no idea what’s going to happen,” said Plymouth Mayor Mark Senter about what he sees as the city’s biggest challenge. “Next year, 2010 is probably going to see the biggest impact, but we’re starting to see that it may have a bigger effect on our current budget than we first thought.”
Plymouth Clerk-Treasurer Toni Hutching agrees.
“When we put together this year’s budget it was a balanced budget,” she said. “Our expenses equaled our projected income. In the past that hasn’t been the case. Expenses always ran a little over. But with the economy the way it is, our interest income is way down. With the Fed (Federal Reserve) rates down our normal bank accounts are way down and our rate on CD’s is down considerably. I just renewed one with a rate that’s down to 1.2 percent. That lack of interest income is going to affect the whole city.”
The city had begun looking at ways to weather the storm with the current year’s budget. Both Senter and Hutchings say that is what prompted the suggestion of looking at “privatization” of the city sanitation service.
“We’re going to have to buy two new trucks in the next five years — one for trash and another for recycling,” said Senter. “It was a way that we could have saved money for the city. It was discouraging that the council chose to look at it the way they did, but they made their decision and we’ll have to figure out another way.”
“We’ll have to find a way to get together with our department heads. Every-body is going to have to tighten their belts,” said Hutchings. “It probably means there won’t be any capital expenditures.”
One thing that eases the blow of HB1001 is the economic development of Marshall County and the city of Plymouth. Many experts say that the way to stave off the tough economy is by having jobs. Plymouth appears to be in good shape by those standards.
“We haven’t had any major layoffs in the city, even though we have people affected by major lay offs elsewhere,” said Senter. “The AO Safety building is going up quickly and they will be up and running. We have some good news on the horizon too. I would say I feel very good about the direction of our economic development.”
Note – This is the first in a series of articles about local government leaders and their outlooks for the coming year in Marshall County.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 12 January 2009 )
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