Ferdinand Town Council meeting discussed 2013 budget, grants, awards and new police station

The Ferdinand Town Council met for their monthly meeting Tuesday night and adopted their 2013 budget as advertised in the amount of $2,182,544.00. The expected tax revenue is $661,720.00 with the advertised tax rate for 2013 at .7132 per $100.00 of assessed valuation. The rate for 2012 was .5857.

In other actions, Town Police Chief Ted Bieker went out of his way to thank the other town departments and staff for helping in preparing the new Police Station at west 10th and Missouri Streets.

Bieker pointed out that they are beginning to move into the new station and Town Manager Marc Steczyk told the council that the move should be completed within 30 days. He also recommended having an open house at the appropriate time after the move is done.

Bieker says he is thankful for all the help that they are getting in moving in. “The different departments in the town did an excellent job on pulling together as a team,” he said. “We’re all ready to just get our feet wet and jump right in and get everything moved in so we can call that home for quite some time to come.”

Meanwhile, the question of what to do with the old police department was discussed at the meeting. Town Council President Ken Sicard says they already have several interested parties in the building. “Before I wanted to sit down and talk to them I had to find out what legally we could do. And tonight we were told that we had to go out and get two appraisals. And we are allowed to take the average of the two…and then go into a sealed bid type piece. We’re also allowed to make one small deviation if it’s for like a VFW or an American Legion we can reduce the amount by 10 percent.”

Sicard reports that the council is in agreement that the Town has no use for the building and will try to sell it as soon as they can.

Sicard also displayed the Governor’s Award for “Greening the Government” as given to the town at a recent event in Indianapolis for the town’s green efforts. “This was a true example of our town employees coming together with some ideas,” said Sicard. “It was backed up by every department including our Street department, fire and electrical department – everybody working together to make this go.”

Ferdinand was one of only eight municipalities to get an award and for Sicard, it just magnifies the significance of the award even more.

Ferdinand also recently received a $400,000 grant for the Wollenmann home restoration. Sicard reported the town received official word Tuesday and they will be signing the contract soon. “Probably be doing that within the next few days. And then after that we’ll just have to follow our way and hope by January some time we can start working on the outside of that building.”

The Town Council also passed Halloween hours; they will be from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, October 31st.