Ferdinand Councilman Ken Sicard: Legislature still hurts cities and towns

Thank you for reading my previous article where I commented on the property tax reduction efforts of our Indiana Legislature.

When I wrote the first article, the Senate had just revised this bill and my article did not reflect the latest updates. I did state that the revised bill went from disastrous to bad.

Concerning the property taxes collected, these are distributed to the following local government entities:

For the Town of Ferdinand, 41.2% of the 2025 budget is funded by property taxes (2025 Certified Levy from property taxes is $1,044,809; 2025 Certified Town Budget is $2,534,596; so, $1,044,809 / 2,534,596 = 41.2%).

In the original bill, the Town of Ferdinand was looking at an average reduction of $166,500 each year (2026, 2027
and 2028).

The new bill reflects a decrease for the Town of Ferdinand’s property tax revenue as follows: Calendar Year 2026 a reduction of $50,740; in Calendar Year 2027 a reduction of $97,180; and in Calendar Year 2028 a reduction of $132,620.

In Indiana, we produce a budget after the State’s Department of Local Government Finance gives us the amount of taxes we can plan on. Normally this number may increase each year by 2 to 4 percent. For consistency’s sake, in my figures below I will show a 2-and-a-half perent increase that might be allowed by the Sate of Indiana.

For 2025, we were told our property tax revenue is $1,044,809. With this number in mind, if we figure a two-and-a-half percent increase that we are not certain will be allowed, in 2026, we could currently figure our property tax revenue might be $1,070,929 (based on my non-financial math). Yet, based on the decrease, we would have to figure our revenue as $1,020,189, or about $24,620 less than what our 2025 property tax revenue was.

Using the above process, here is the outlook for the next three years for the Town of Ferdinand.

As you can see, it will be very difficult to maintain our Town as it is now in 2025.

As one example, in the past few years, we have been working very hard to increase the pay of our police department so we can keep our officers. Other larger departments had been using us as a training ground where we have paid the officers to attend the Police Academy, get them trained, and then they step in and offer them more dollars to lure them away. It will be very difficult for us to maintain our competitive wages with these reductions coming at us.

By 2028, we are looking at a decrease of funds of over $200,000 as compared to what we have now in 2025. This will mean a decrease in services from the Town that will affect our public safety departments (police and fire), town roads (repairs, replacement, and snow removal), town parks and our Town Hall support.

The Town Council is in favor of property tax reductions if there is a replacement mechanism for the dollars we are losing. Otherwise, we will be in a difficult position of determining what services we will stop doing because we no longer have the dollars to cover the expenses.

Just wanting to keep everyone informed.

Respectfully,
KEN SICARD
Town Council President