Salary, budget figures get City Council approval

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Go figure, city finances and salaries for 2016 were center stage this week for the Greencastle City Council.

Acting on the second and final readings of three separate city ordinances at its October meeting, the Council unanimously approved 2016 salaries of the elected officers of the city and the 2016 salaries of city employees as well as appropriations and tax rates for the year 2016.

The crux of Ordinance 2015-9, which fixes the salaries of elected officials for 2016, is that the mayor and city clerk-treasurer will receive increases, while members of the Greencastle City Council will not.

For 2016, the position of mayor -- to be determined by the Nov. 3 election between Democrat Bill Dory and Republican Haywood Ware -- will receive an annual salary of $54,100. That represents a $2,000 increase over what retiring two-term Mayor Sue Murray has received.

The clerk-treasurer, a position held by incumbent Republican Lynda Dunbar, will get a $1,000 pay increase for 2016 whether Dunbar is re-elected or upset by Democrat Eric Wolfe. The 2016 salary for the city clerk will be $50,523, following unanimous adoption of Ordinance 2015-9.

Members of the City Council -- a number that will jump from five to seven with the addition of two at-large members following the Nov. 3 city election -- will receive $4,878 apiece annually for their services for a total outlay of $34,146.

Meanwhile, the crux of Ordinance 2015-8 is that fulltime department employees in the City of Greencastle will receive $1,000 across-the-board raises for 2016.

And finally, the crux of Ordinance 2015-7 is the city tax rate for 2016 has been adopted at $2.0024 per $100 assessed valuation.

That adopted rate is designed to produce an adopted city tax levy of $5,349,172 (including $3,201,384 in the General Fund and $936,421 in the Motor Vehicle Highway Fund). The city's total adopted budget was listed at $14,614,670.

After unanimous adoption of the ordinance, those figures were sent on to the Department of Local Government Finance (DLGF), from which the city is likely to get final budget and rate approval in January or February, Clerk-Treasurer Dunbar said.

During first reading of Ordinance 2015-7 back in September, Dunbar noted that the adopted tax rates "are not anything close to what they will be," explaining that they are typically advertised much higher than they actually will be once finalized and imposed.

For example, the 2015 rate ended up $1.60 per $100 assessed valuation -- more than 40 cents per $100 less than what has been adopted for 2016.

Much of the difference stems from the unknown factor of where the city's assessed valuation will fall. The larger the assessed valuation, the smaller the tax rate needed to create the maximum levy.

Figures for Ordinance 2015-7 were achieved using $265 million as the city's assessed valuation, while that figure could potentially be $55 million higher, city officials said in September, indicating an assessed value of $320 million seems more likely to be closer to the final figure.

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  • THANK GOODNESS THE POLICE DEPARTMENT GOT A RAISE. THEY SURE DESERVE IT. BUT WHEN COMPARED TO OTHER POLICE DEPARTMENTS IN THE NEARBY COUNTIES THEY ARE STILL UNDERPAID.

    -- Posted by Queen53 on Sat, Oct 17, 2015, at 10:59 AM
  • Why a raise- the Federal Government just sent out that all Social Security payments would not receive a raise due to the low rate of inflation.

    -- Posted by Trying hard on Sun, Oct 18, 2015, at 4:23 PM
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