Elizabeth Township starts budget talks

By CHRISTINE HAINES
chaines@yourmvi.com
The preliminary Elizabeth Township budget is balanced at $7,286,953, but that does not include funding to complete a comprehensive plan or any of the extras residents have discussed at recent meetings.
The department heads and commissioners Andrew Kuzma and Kyle Walk recently reviewed the preliminary budget with office manager Joelle Whiteman, who noted the sanitary budget, while balanced for operating expenses, does not include the additional 10% required under its financing agreement.
The budget meeting was open to all of the commissioners, Whiteman said.
“We need to find $200,000 in the sanitary budget,” Whiteman said.
Kuzma, who serves as commission chairman, suggested they use part of the interest earned on a bond issue to cover that part of the budget.
“We have $236,000 in interest that we could transfer,” Kuzma said.
The budget includes $80,000 for police overtime. Kuzma asked if that amount could be reduced by hiring part-time officers. Chief Dave Kerestes noted that most of the overtime expense is for officers to attend court hearings.
Code Enforcement Officer John Snelson said that while his department’s expenses are up because of the addition of another employee, revenues will also be higher than currently budgeted because the department will be doing all of its own residential building inspections, so the township will be receiving 100 percent of the inspection fees. When the inspections are done by a contractor, the township receives only 20 percent of the fee, Snelson said.
One item not in the budget is a new salt shed. The current shed has holes in the fiberglass covering which are extremely difficult to repair.
“We have a quarter-million dollars in salt and the salt shed is terrible,” Walk said.
Those at the budget meeting discussed various options, including the possibility of building a new, larger salt shed, none of which is possible before this year’s salt delivery.

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