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Huntington mayor to propose garbage pick-up fee to help cover budget shortfall

Just days after ordering the layoffs of six city employees - including his wife - Mayor Steve Updike plans to urge the Huntington Common Council to institute a $10-a-month fee for garbage pick-up in the city.

"If we don't get the fee, the insurmountable thing will be more layoffs," Updike says.

Those actions come as the city attempts to make up a $1.7 million shortfall in income from property taxes.
Updike says he learned of the shortfall only three weeks ago, but Huntington County Auditor Kathy Juillerat says the problem should have been apparent to someone in the city administration as early as December 2008.

That's when the city received a check for the second installment of property taxes paid that year. The check written by the auditor's office and sent to the city in December 2008 was for $3,022,357, almost $1 million less than the city was expecting, Juillerat says.

The same thing happened this year, Juillerat says. The check sent to the city in August was short by nearly $700,000.

Those two checks were reduced to make up for property tax refunds given to city property owners who had successfully appealed their assessments, she says.
The city will receive a second check for 2009 in December, Juillerat says, and it will also be reduced.

While appeals were filed on properties throughout Huntington County, Juillerat explains, the city was more heavily affected because of the number of industrial facilities in the city that filed successful appeals. Industries generally pay much more in property taxes than homeowners, so a reduction in their assessments is a major hit to the city's tax revenues.

Some of the refunds were for appeals covering multiple years.

Updike says he became aware of the shortfalls only "three or four weeks ago" when Juillerat happened to mention them to Pam Updike while the two were riding together to a meeting in Indianapolis.

Updike says he doesn't know why the problem wasn't brought to light earlier.

"The check goes to the clerk-treasurer," Steve Updike says. "She's the one who handles the books. We had not been informed."

"We just get what they give us," says Huntington Clerk-Treasurer Christi Scher. "We assume we're getting what we're supposed to get.

"We didn't realize it was short. We just knew it was enough to get us in the black at the end of the year."

The clerk-treasurer's office was preoccupied in dealing with other aspects of the property tax collection, such as the circuit breaker, that could have cause a reduction in collections.

And, she says, there was no warning from either the auditor's or the assessor's offices about the large amount of property tax refunds - a problem that is now being rectified.

Once the shortfall was realized, Scher says, each city department was asked to cut spending for the remainder of the year.

But, she adds, "Eighty percent of the budget is labor."

Updike says the city will save about $250,000 with the layoffs of the six employees, which began on Tuesday, Nov. 3, at about 1 p.m.

In addition to Pam Updike, who was laid off as executive assistant to the mayor, laid-off employees included Jennifer McCann, of the clerk-treasurer's office; Cindy Scribner, of the Parks and Recreation Department; Judy Gaskill, of the water department billing office; Margo Breininger, of the Huntington Police Department records office; and Ordinance Officer Larry Hayes, who is responsible for enforcing parking violations and nuisances such as tall grass.

Updike says he also considered canceling the Christmas light display at Sunken Gardens, which would have saved $4,000 in electric bills plus overtime pay for Park Department employees assigned to work at the display. He's decided to let that go on, for now, but may seek community and corporate help to help fund the Christmas tradition.

For the last few weeks, the city has been accepting garbage from Gas City and Marion at its landfill. The six trucks a day - 30 a week - generate payments of $5,000 to $5,500 a week to the city, Updike says.
Updike's proposed $10-a-month garbage fee would generate an estimated $650,000 to $720,000 in new revenue over the course of a full year, he says.

If the council doesn't approve the garbage fee - and quickly - the city may halt all garbage collections, forcing city residents to pay for private trash service, Updike says.

Updike says eight part-time city employees will lose their jobs after all the fall leaves are picked up.
He also points out that he has left unfilled 11 union positions within the city that have become vacant since he took office in January 2008. Two vacated police department positions have also been left unfilled, he says.

The "missing" $1.7 million was destined for the city's general fund, which is used to pay for police and fire protection, parks department, street department and other general city expenses, Updike says.

"The biggest part of it pays for police and fire," he says.

If it can't be made up, Updike says, "We're probably going to have to borrow money, get a loan to make ends meet. There will be pretty much a major shutdown of the city."

A representative of Umbaugh, an Indianapolis-based CPA company that serves as a financial advisor to the city, will be at the Nov. 10 council meeting to discuss the city's financial woes, Updike says. He has also asked Juillerat to attend the meeting to discuss the shortfall in property tax receipts.