Warsaw City Planner Justin Taylor tells the Board of Public Works and Safety on Friday about a parcel donated by The Groninger Group to the city for a pocket park just west of the Downtown Warsaw YMCA.Photo by David Slone, Times-Union.

By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — A parcel of land in The Grove donated to the city of Warsaw from The Groninger Group LLC will be developed into a small park.

The Warsaw Board of Public Works and Safety accepted the donation at its meeting Friday, Aug. 2.

City Planner Justin Taylor submitted the request for the board to accept the donation of lot A in phase 2 of The Grove (formerly Gateway Grove) planned unit development subdivision. The vacant parcel is directly to the west of the Downtown Warsaw YMCA at Main and Fort Wayne streets.

He said the Warsaw Parks and Recreation Department and Parks Board approved to develop the property into a small pocket park, if the city acquires it, for the benefit of that neighborhood and the city as a whole.

Warsaw Parks Superintendent Larry Plummer said, “In our five-year master plan, we were looking for some place to put a park on the west side of town. This opportunity came in front of the board. Cary Groninger was very generous and bought all the equipment for the park, the playground. Our crews are over installing borders right now and we anticipate the installation of the playground next week starting, so it’s a win-win for both of us, I think, so we’re happy to have that and appreciate Cary’s help on that.”

Cary Groninger is the manager of The Groninger Group, which is developing the site of the former Madison Elementary School and Gateway Educational Center, and the middle district county commissioner.

Board member and Warsaw Common Councilwoman Diane Quance said, “I think we should make a motion to approve this donated parcel with thanks to the Groninger family for their donation.”

She made the motion, Mayor Jeff Grose seconded it and the motion passed 3-0.

Taylor also presented a mobile merchant fee waiver or reduction request on behalf of the owners of Brain Washed ’70s.

He requested they reduce the county resident merchant fee from $300 to $150 as one of the co-owners of the business does have property in the county and half the year is already over.

“I believe that the merchant was quoted $1,000. I’m not sure that came directly from us, but their primary residence is outside of the county, however, the co-owner of the business does have properties within the county, so I believe they should have been charged the $300 county resident fee, anyway. They weren’t charged the fee yet, but when they heard that initial number they had some concerns,” Taylor said.

A letter from one of the owners, Nicholas Clark, expressing their concerns with the fee was provided to the board.

Part of the letter states on July 18 Brain Washed ’70s set up with their bus in the old Marsh parking lot (which is owned by the city). During that time, they were made aware of a $1,000 vending permit fee for the year. Shocked by the amount, they looked up the permit fees for the surrounding areas and what they “found was evidence that the (city) of Warsaw is drastically out of date and above market value.”

Taylor said he did “see” some of the concerns in the letter and he wanted to work with the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce to see if there was anything the city could do with ordinances to alter the mobile merchant fees. The purpose of the fees was to protect the city’s brick-and-mortar businesses.

The current one-year fee for a resident of the city is $100; $300 for a resident of the county; $1,000 for a resident of the state; and $3,000 for a resident outside of the state.

The city previously changed the fees a number of years ago when there were furniture vendors coming from out-of-state and throwing a bunch of couches in front of the old Holiday Inn and local furniture stores were not happy with that. The council approved the fees because they didn’t want out-of-state merchants that were not paying any taxes to have the advantage of being able to set up on a main road and compete against local merchants.

In his letter, Clark provided a list of other towns in the area and their permit fees. Plymouth is $10 per day and $50 per year; Elkhart, $5 per day; Fort Wayne, no fee if applicant has an Indiana retail license; Chicago, $25 for a five-day pop-up for $150 per year; Indianapolis and Johnson County, $10 for six months; Columbia City, $500 per year; Kokomo, $19 for 90 days; and Carmel, $100 for four months.

Taylor said that some of those number are “more complicated than they might appear. So Fort Wayne has a system that is kind of difficult to enforce, so I wouldn’t even recommend us going down that road.” However, he said he wanted the city to look at any “reasonable” thing they could do.

Quance suggested that when Taylor looks into the fees that the council would appreciate some statistics on how many out-of-county merchants there are, etc.

The board approving reducing the fee to $150 for the remainder of 2024.

Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory EMS Chief Chris Fancil asked for permission to apply for a Family and Social Services Administration Division of Mental Health and Addiction grant for Community Assistance, Resources, and Emergency Services, whose deadline was July 29.

He said they currently utilize FSSA DMHA grants to run the C.A.R.E.S. program, along with an Rural Communities Opioid Response Program grant. Both of those grants end in August 2025.

“So we were made aware about mid-July about an opportunity to apply for another grant through FSSA DMHA and it’s a three-year grant,” Fancil said, but he had to apply for it by the end of July. Even though he was seeking permission to apply for the grant after the fact, Fancil said the good news was that it wasn’t a matching grant and there was no financial investment on the city’s part.

If they are awarded the grant, he told the board he’d come back before them to accept the grant.

“But what I applied for was actually to cover the salaries and benefits for both of our two full-time C.A.R.E.S. people, and also to cover a little bit — Karen Smith, who works in our office at station 13, does a lot of administrative duties, and we’ve maybe kidnapped her just a little bit to help with the C.A.R.E.S. program, and so we’d like to cover 25% of her payroll and benefits as well,” Fancil said.

In the grant application, he put in for all three of those people for all three years. There’s also some printed materials, handouts, mileage for vehicles and other things that he put into the grant application. The total of what he ended up applying for was $680,000.

Though the grant application closed July 29, Fancil wasn’t sure when they’ll start awarding the grants.

The board unanimously approved the grant application.