Parts of ’22 budget plan sent back to committee

The Gary Common Council is pushing up against the deadline to approve a complete 2022 budget or risk it reverting back to the 2019 amount.

The council Tuesday moved to return the salary ordinance and general operating budget back, as well as a couple other departments, to committee for further discussion Oct. 12 while approving budgets for the Gary Public Library, the Gary Public Transportation Corp., and the Gary-Chicago International Airport.

Council members also moved approval of the ordinance authorizing the American Recovery Plan Act spending plan back to committee. Officials have said they want to approve the spending plan in tandem with the 2022 budget.

Council President William Godwin, D-1st, and Vice President Tai Adkins, D-4th, said there were lingering questions about the salary ordinance and updates from some departments to include the 3% across-the-board pay increase proposed by Mayor Jerome Prince that must be included.

“There are still a lot of questions and concerns around that,” Godwin said.

Adkins said it is important to get the updates in to create and make any changes in order to approve a clean ordinance. There also are lingering questions about the operating budget.

Mileak Harper, city controller, said the 2022 operating budget of $58.6 million represents an increase of about $2 million over the 2020 budget.

Karl Cender, with accounting firm Cender and Associates, said officials must approve the budget and upload it to the state’s Gateway system by Nov. 1. He said approval cannot happen at the last minute because it takes some time to load the full ordinance into the state system.

While the ordinances were referred back to committee, the council conducted the public hearing for both ordinances to help ensure it will be able to move forward quickly and approve the budget in time to meet the deadline. Officials expect to approve both ordinances at the Oct. 19 meeting. There was no comment for either public hearing.