Pulaski County Courthouse

March 2024 Extra Edition for Pulaski County Courthouse

Please enjoy the total solar eclipse on Monday, April 8, then come back to Winamac to show support for the Courthouse renovation! You can come to the Commissioners' meeting at 6:00; the bond issue will come to a vote at the 7:00 joint meeting of the Commissioners and Council. This meeting will be held at the County Highway Garage.

Just when we think we've passed every hurdle, another one appears. This time, it appears in the form of a motion to reconsider tearing the Courthouse down and building something else to replace it. Some candidates for County Council are making this a campaign issue, and some on the current Council and Board of Commissioners appear to want to drag us back to 1950. Below, you will find several bullet points for your consideration, and following this information will be general fiscal information for the County. The fiscal data comes from Nathan Origer, who, as he admits himself (!) (love you, Nathan!) is obsessed with the fiscal health of the county.

I edited the bullet points and fiscal data down quite a bit. It is only for those truly interested in seeing where we stand, and how NOW is the right time for us to push forward. If you want to read through quickly, the topics can be found IN CAPS. If you want additional information, send me a message and I will forward Nathan's entire (excruciatingly detailed) email.

I'll end here with my original request, that you attend this meeting on April 8, that you contact everyone you know that is interested in preserving this building to ask the same of them, and that you be willing to stand up and be counted when the time comes. And please SHARE THIS E-NEWSLETTER with people who may be able to attend this important meeting..

Full disclosure, this e-newsletter is being written by Kathi Thompson, a member of the Council that will be mentioned below, and a supporter of the Courthouse renovation project. The fiscal information and most of the bullet points were developed by Nathan Origer, Director, Community Development Commission.

A FEW BULLET POINTS TO BRING YOU UP TO DATE

The Courthouse is historic. It is sturdy. It anchors the town and the county with its presence. That's the end of my sermon.
After 4-5 decades of benign neglect and numerous starts and stops to effect renovations, in 2019, the Commissioners had come to a decision to demolish the building and ... well, we won't go into the ideas they had for how to deal with the courthouse offices. It was at this point that Indiana Landmarks stepped in with the offer to pay for the services of an architectural firm to assess the possible future of the building and to estimate the costs of renovation vs destruction and replacement. The projected cost of this avenue was found to be more expensive than saving it.
The Commissioners made a decision to move forward, and the County Council approved payment for what I will call Phase One, with the understanding that we would incur more expense in interest payments if we funded the entire project at once.
Phase One has been completed. The Justice Center has been renovated, and the Circuit Courtroom and the Prosecutor's Office are now housed there.
You will hear complaints about not moving the Clerk's Office over. This decision - to shave something less than 1 million, maybe $800,000? from the project - was made by the Commissioners as they decided to move forward. It is a ship that has sailed.
In preparation of the renovation of the courthouse itself, all courthouse offices have been closed and departments moved to buildings around town.
A Building Commission has been established and they are now the legal owner of the Courthouse and Justice Center, which helps the county financially. (I admit to not being completely on top of this issue, so my verbiage may be a bit off.)

EXPENSES ALREADY INCURRED, DOLLARS THAT CANNOT BE RECOUPED IF A BOND IS NOT ISSUED

To date, the county has spent $1,309,257.13.
$116,046.51 has been on things that could be considered for bond reimbursement for a new-build project (I.T. for temporary locations, mover fees, rent for a temporary location, furniture refinishing, document scanning and destruction and various odds and ends).
This leaves a total of $1,193,210.62 in project-specific expenditures that the County would not recoup if a bond is not issued.
$127,538.29 on bond-related costs to date (Barnes & Thornburg, Baker Tilly, and appraisals of the courthouse and justice center),
$1,064,649.44 on design work) a significant percentage of the base contractual amount plus fees for several instances of additional services as we've requested substantial changes and had to revise drawings for re-bid), and
$1,022.89 on project-specific legal advertisements.
These totals do not include countless hours of payroll and investments made in structural improvements in the attic, the installation of a new elevator, and the construction of new restrooms, all of which happened several years ago.

THE FIGHT TO SAVE THE COURTHOUSE

The fight to save the Courthouse has been protracted. As county officials considered options with Courthouse renovations, they also had to deal with significant fiscal challenges. Nathan has encapsulated the fiscal history. It's important that you understand the entire picture, because the short answer is, YES, WE CAN AFFORD TO CONTINUE THE COURTHOUSE RENOVATION PROJECT. We cannot afford to go backward.

THE COUNTY IS FINANCIALLY THE HEALTHIEST IT HAS BEEN IN YEARS.

COVID relief (CARES and ARP) and the upward impact on local incomes have contributed to this.
However, the bulk of the credit goes to the 2019-2020 County Council for overhauling the income tax structure and thawing the levy freeze..
Between 2021 and 2023, the County generated an additional $4,163,203 in Local Income Tax (LIT) revenue over what it would have brought in without the Council's work in 2020.
In 2024, the extra LIT revenue generated, again, thanks to the 2020 decision, will be $1,773,803.
These values exclude current revenue from the Property Tax Replacement Credit LIT because it is credited as property tax revenue.

THE COUNTY'S FINANCIAL PICTURE IN GENERAL

The county ended 2023 with $31,244,718.31, which is $1,187,355.84 ahead of where we started, and that doesn't count the more than $1,000,000 to be reimbursed to Fund 1112 by the courthouse project bond. (In 2019, we closed $8.66 million below the end-2023 balance.)
These numbers (per Nathan) contain a lot of "noise." There are pass-through funds for the distribution of revenues to other units in the county, donation funds, the Revolving Loan Fund, and various COVID relief funds, among others. There is no accounting for inflation. If you want to dig in, he made a spreadsheet. If you want it, please ask me.

Link to the March 2019 newsletter, which announces the Annual Meeting. Todd Zeiger from Indiana Landmarks is the featured speaker. He discussed the current issue of the Courthouse, which was in danger of being demolished. The rest of the newsletter carries historical information about the Courthouse, starting with the birth of the County.

Link to the June 2020 newsletter, which gives an update on the Courthouse. In this issue, we inform our readers that the Courthouse has been placed on Indiana Landmarks 10 Most Endangered list.

Link to the November 2020 e-newsletter. The Courthouse has been removed from the 10 Most Endangered List.

A link to the Decenber 2021 e-newsletter which gives additional details about the courthouse being "saved."

A link to the May 2022 e-newsletter, wherein we learn that Indiana Landmarks is only "cautiously optimistic" about the future of the courthouse.

Counties all over the state have restored their landmark courthouses. Counties around us have restored theirs, and our name comes up in their meetings. When they do something to enhance their heritage, you might hear, "We don't want to be like Pulaski County." It's time we stood up and said, neither do we!

THERE'S MORE

In 2020, the County Council overhauled the County’s income-tax rate. The rate dropped from 3.38% to 2.85%. 0.30 of that 0.53 drop was attributable to the expiration of the Special Jail LIT; however, the loss of that fund meant a loss of more than $700,000 in operational revenue that was going to create problems quickly. The Council didn’t just let it expire and cut another 0.23 points off of the rate: it drastically overhauled the rate structure so that revenues would increase measurably even with a rate reduction.
The County has six allocations within its LIT rate: General Fund, Levy Freeze (also General Fund, replacing revenue lost to a long-frozen property-tax levy, which the Council only thawed in 2019 for 2020 and beyond), Economic Development, Public Safety, PSAP (911), and Property Tax Replacement Credit (PTRC, which, as noted above, gets credited as property-tax revenue); before 2021, we did not have a PSAP rate (but we had the Special Jail LIT Fund).
In 2019, the County’s share of the LIT rate (excluding PTRC) generated $3,948,673; it increased by less than 1% to $3,952,111 in 2020. In 2021, LIT revenue climbed 12.715% to $4,454,625. Had the County had the same LIT structured in 2021 as in 2019 and 2020 — simply letting the rate fall from 3.38% to 3.08% (or even all the way to 2.85%) without restructuring the entire thing based on Baker Tilly’s guidance —, 2021 revenue would have been $3,162,430 — a drop of 19.98%.
Between 2021 and 2023, inclusive, the County generated an additional $4,163,203 in LIT revenue over what it would have brought in without the Council’s work in 2020. (In 2024, the extra LIT revenue generated thanks to the Council’s work will be $1,773,803.)
Late last year, the Council approved the comprehensive wage adjustment, increasing pay across County government, after initially only approving this for the Sheriff's Office and County Highway. Per Nathan: "I don't know if you all remember this (because I'm not sure that we really drove the message home), but [County Council President ] Ken [Boswell] had initially been hesitant to present more than $500,000 in pay increases and only was comfortable doing so once the Department of Local Government had reported much higher 2024 LIT revenues than we had been anticipating, so that, at least for this year, those raises are more or less budget-neutral."

A SURPLUS. REALLY.

The comprehensive *2025 budget that the Council approved clocks in at $25,222,571. It's on the website. If you want the address, please ask me.
If you want the entire scenario, please message me and I will forward Nathan's (excruciatingly detailed) email. !
There will be a surplus of at least $11,135,854, at least $12,224,146 after the Courthouse reimbursement, and this is without touching COVID-relief funds.

CONCLUSION, AND EDITORIALIZING FROM NATHAN

"I don't think I need to remind any of you that we can't take this for granted and rest on our laurels; none of us knew that a worldwide pandemic was going to throw wrenches into the economy and drastically affect inflation, and we can't be certain about what surprise may be waiting for us around the next bend. We must all remain vigilant, act wisely, and think about long-term effects as well as short-term needs. That said, I believe that the 2019-2020 Council — Ken Boswell, Mike Tiede, Rudy DeSabatine, Kathi Thompson, Brian Young, Jay Sullivan, and Scott Hinkle — deserve a round of applause for making tough decisions that got us heading back in a much better (if maybe not quite perfect) financial direction: thawing the levy freeze and reducing the PTRC LIT within a year of each other had the potential to make a *lot* of large property owners very upset, but they made these decisions with the best interests of the whole community in mind, and we're all in a better position for it."

SO, AGAIN, PLEASE ATTEND THE APRIL 8 MEETING

If you are talking to friends and neighbors, having the information regarding the County's fiscal health could be important. If you made it to the end, bless you. And please let me know if you want the entire email from Nathan.