{"id":10534,"date":"2011-07-12T04:42:20","date_gmt":"2011-07-12T09:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/?p=10534"},"modified":"2011-07-13T03:06:24","modified_gmt":"2011-07-13T08:06:24","slug":"city-council-looks-at-cra-request-oks-city-wage-hikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2011\/07\/12\/city-council-looks-at-cra-request-oks-city-wage-hikes\/","title":{"rendered":"VW City Council looks at CRA request"},"content":{"rendered":"

DAVE MOSIER\/<\/strong>independent editor<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Mark Brown (standing) of Brown Contracting LLC shows Council members Don Farmer and Joi Mergy plans for a Family Dollar store to be located where the Van Wert Armory building now stands. (Dave Mosier\/Van Wert independent)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although Van Wert missed out on a Family Dollar distribution center earlier this year, the city could at least see a Family Dollar store in its future.<\/p>\n

Mark Brown of Brown Contracting LLC came to a meeting of City Council\u2019s Finance Committee Monday evening seeking tax abatement under the city\u2019s Community Reinvestment Area program. Brown\u2019s company plans to build an 8,000-square-foot store where the former Van Wert Armory building now stands in the 200 block of South Washington Street.<\/p>\n

Brown and his firm are seeking a 90-percent tax abatement for 10 years as part of the agreement, and would create at least 10 jobs with the $850,000 project, which Brown said he hoped would be operational by April 2012.<\/p>\n

Legislation was later approved by a vote of 6-0, with Third Ward Councilman Jon Tomlinson abstaining to approve the terms of the CRA abatement.<\/p>\n

Council members also unanimously approved a 2-percent wage hike for both bargaining unit and non-bargaining unit city workers.<\/p>\n

City Council first adopted legislation approving a collective bargaining agreement with the Van Wert Police Department\u2019s bargaining unit and later adopted legislation giving non-union city workers the same increase.<\/p>\n

Safety-Service Director Jay Fleming said the raise was well earned, noting that city workers hadn\u2019t had a raise in nearly two years and had cooperated fully in keeping costs down during the recession.<\/p>\n

While City Auditor Martha Balyeat said she had some concerns with General Fund revenues remaining mostly flat — especially with a planned 50-percent state cut in Local Government Funds over the next two years and the curtailment of the state inheritance tax — she had no problem with giving city employees a raise.<\/p>\n

Balyeat said the 2-percent increase would likely only cost the city about $20,000 a year.<\/p>\n

Council also approved allowing the city administration to apply for approximately $440,000 in Issue 1 funding that would be used for a variety of local infrastructure projects. Several supplemental appropriations were also approved.<\/p>\n

Committee meetings were also scheduled to hear a request for $20,000 from the Community Improvement Corporation and to hear information from Bill Badish of Palmer Energy aimed at providing electrical energy savings to the city.<\/p>\n

Per a Property and Equipment Committee meeting held prior to the regular City Council meeting on Monday, Council members decided to amend language in a city policy for use of city-owned vehicles, allowing them to be used for both city business and personal use, within set parameters.<\/p>\n

Law Director Greg Unterbrink was also asked to research possible wind turbine zoning issues within the city.<\/p>\n

City Council also approved the tax budget following a public hearing in which no opposition was raised.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAVE MOSIER\/independent editor Although Van Wert missed out on a Family Dollar distribution center earlier this year, the city could at least see a Family Dollar store in its future. Mark Brown of Brown Contracting LLC came to a meeting of City Council\u2019s Finance Committee Monday evening seeking tax abatement under the city\u2019s Community Reinvestment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-02 14:42:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}