Portage is poised to approve a $56.5 million budget for 2026.
The vote will come at a special meeting on Oct. 21.
“Incredible effort” went into this, Mayor Austin Bonta said, with his team working closely with department heads and Clerk-treasurer Liz Modesto and her crew.
“Our budget’s only going to go up $800,000 from last year,” Modesto said. That’s got to cover raises and price increases. It’s the tightest squeeze she’s ever seen, including her 24 years on the City Council.
“Cities in Indiana are in the process of being defunded over the next three years,” Bonta said, because of Senate Enrolled Act 1, a new state law that scrambles municipal finance to give property owners a tax break.
“We came in trying to be lean,” Bonta said, but identified issues with the 2025 budget.
“Our conversations were sometimes brutal, not with each other, but the cuts were brutal,” Bonta said. “It was very much need-based. We did our very best to review what we thought we would need to cut.”
Bonta and Modesto expected that going into the budget process, it would be difficult. “It was worse than we thought,” he said, because of grappling with the new state law dialing back funding to local government.
Working closely with the clerk-treasurer’s office was vital, Bonta said. “We need to have the executive branches talking to each other.”
“Be gentle and understand we’re all on the same team as we’re working this thing out,” he said.
It was a transparent and equitable budget process, Modesto said. “The city made data-driven decisions involving all stakeholders.”
The budget ensures the city’s resources are being used strategically, she said. “I feel that we have a very fundable budget, and hopefully going forward everyone stays within the budget we set.”
Council President Victoria Gresham said the Budget Committee went through the “very thin budget” line by line with department heads, Bonta and Modesto.
“If we didn’t see it, that meant they didn’t need that line item anymore,” she said.
“As we look at some unsteady time ahead, you gave us a good start,” she told department heads.
“We’re not anticipated to have much left at the end of the year at all unless we get some revenue we don’t expect,” Modesto said.
Utilities Superintendent Tracie Marshall said the solar array at the wastewater treatment plant should be operational soon, which will be a financial boon for the department.
The department bought the former Sue’s Bakery building at 5806 Central Ave., and will move the financial clerks there instead of housing them at the clerk-treasurer’s office.
An information technology person will be there as well, so the new budget shifts $400,000 from the city IT budget to the utilities department. That frees up local income tax money for other uses.
“Our goal is Jan. 1 because it’s a blank slate over there,” Marshall said.
“There will be a drive-up for people to come out and pay their bill,” but they will need to be buzzed in if they want to go inside. That’s to ensure the clerks’ safety, she said.
“Your team is working so fast” on this change, Bonta said. “The big issue will be being able to pay through the drive-through.” A box outside City Hall will still be used for dropping off utility payments, but they won’t be paid at the clerk-treasurer’s office when the new building is operational.
Councilman Collin Czilli asked how much all this will cost, noting that it was just a few years ago that the city moved the employees from a utilities building across from City Hall, selling the building, and shifting the employees to the clerk-treasurer’s office.
Marshall said she hasn’t met with all the contractors yet but would get him the amount paid for the former bakery building.
The city’s budget includes money for a new position, general counsel. The in-house attorney will be the highest-paid city employee, reducing the money paid for private attorneys to represent the city.
Attorney Scott McClure, who has been representing the city in the interim, said the new hire will be busy dealing with issues like public records requests, State Board of Accounts rules, state law changes and other issues on a more timely basis than McClure can as a private attorney working under contract with the city.
“I think there’s a lot of good that can come from this. I think it’s a solid plan, and I think he’ll be a very busy man for a number of years,” McClure said.
Bonta said the new hire will help the city get the most out of its legal budget. The new hire could start as soon as December.
In other business, Planning and Development Director Tom Cherry said a derelict house at the corner of Stone Avenue and County Line Road will be demolished by a city crew soon. The city is waiting for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to sign off on it. The property owner will be charged what the project will cost the city, Cherry said.
“There are so many steps, so many hoops you’ve got to go through,” he said. The city has been working on this for many months.
“We should have three coming down before the end of the year,” with property owners paying for it, he said.
Addressing issues raised on social media, Bonta said trick-or-treat times have been set for 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Halloween.
“You can legally dress up as a dinosaur and ask people for candy every day,” the mayor said. The posted hours for trick-or-treating are to ensure police and firefighters are available during those times.
“We’ll be flooding the neighborhoods,” Police Chief Michael Candiano said, to ensure kids’ safety, not to enforce trick-or-treat hours.
“We do not take kids to jail for trick-or-treating after the allotted hours,” he said.
Bonta said other social media posts raised questions about decorating homes with toilet paper for homecoming. He turned the other cheek.
“The quality of TP’ing is just crazy. It’s not what it used to be,” he said. “I think in time, we’re going to get better.”
With the 2020 toilet paper shortage caused by COVID-19 and supply chain issues, there might have been a loss in skills, Candiano joked.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
