Merrillville residents love their first responders, but they don’t want the council to raise their levies to pay for the services.
The Town Council, amid angry chants of “No tax hike!”, approved 4-2-1 — with Councilwomen Shauna Haynes-Edwards, D-2, and Leona Chandler-Felton, D-3, voting “No” and Keesha Hardaway, I-7, abstaining — at its October 8 meeting to approve its 2025 budget with an emergency appeal that would allow it to hire up to 34 more firefighters and up to 25 more police officers. The emergency appeal, however, has virtually no chance of getting approval from the Department of Local Government Finance, Merrillville Town Manager Griffin told the Post-Tribune previously.
The levy for which the council asked is “lowest amount possible,” the town’s financial consultant, Trista Hudson of Cender Dalton, said to the largely belligerent, standing-room-only crowd. It was “crucially, crucially important,” she said, for the town to correct information put forth by Merrillville Clerk-Treasurer Eric January and for residents to understand that the state’s tax caps protect residents and business owners from oppressive property taxes; property taxes are generated from the gross assessed valuation of a property, but by law, Indiana residents pay no more than 1% of assessed value for residential, 2% of assessed value for agricultural and 3% of assessed value for business properties.
If the property tax bills are higher, it’s because they have been assessed higher and include other fees, such as conservancy and stormwater management, Hudson said. If the one-year levy appeal is approved, however, property owners may see increases of anywhere from $130 to $479 per year, according to a table the council provided.
“Assessors’ offices create the values, but state statutes create the limits,” she said. “The town’s growth by both population and space has outpaced the rate the state allows, and there’s no way for people to have foreseen the growth.
“This is a conservative budget. It’s not beyond what you and your residents need. Will it cost a bit more? Yes. None of these people work for free.”
To further clarify the point, Griffin used an analogy that two people go out for pizza and it costs $10, each person would pay $5. If a big business came in, however, and says it wants to contribute to the pizza but not eat any of it, the pizza’s cost didn’t change, but the people’s share of it does, he said.
“It isn’t about merely dividing by the number of houses, because each of you have a different assessed value, so you’re a different component of the tax base,” he said.
January, who at one point raised his fist when the audience cheered him on, said that for business owners with no tax abatement, increasing taxes isn’t attractive to bringing people to the town. January owns a financial services business in the former American Legion Post 430 building on Broadway and wants to open a bar there.
He also said that while most of what Hudson and Griffin said was true, their saying he put out incorrect information wasn’t.
Meeting attendees, such as Brittany McQueen, made sure to emphasize how much they love and appreciate the police and fire departments when they came up to speak during public comment. But they can’t afford one more expense.
“Our homeowner’s insurance has gone up. Our car insurance has gone up,” McQueen told the crowd. “Me and my husband right now, we’re eating once a day. We don’t get any assistance at all. I cannot afford 200 more dollars. I cannot afford 100 more dollars. I can’t afford 50 more dollars.”
Merrillville Police Officer and the department’s Fraternal Order of Police President Ian Davidson-Dugan, on the other hand, pleaded with the crowd both took to the podium to laud the budget plan as a boon for their departments to understand that the council is trying to plan for the future.
“If you support your police officers, I urge you to be patient and allow the council and Griffin to take us down this path,” he said. “I’m convinced that at the end, we will have a safer and more prosperous Merrillville that will attract even more high-quality candidates to add to the ranks of the Merrillville Police Department.”
The budget appeal, however, has virtually no chance of getting approval from the Department of Local Government Finance, so the town will need to try other ways of funding, Griffin said.
If the town were to get the increase, it could conceivably hire 21 more police officers and shift over four whose salaries are currently paid out the town’s TIF district — which is a finite resource and not meant to permanently supplement salaries, Griffin said. It would also add $5 million to the town’s road fund, which would allow it to mill and resurface 20 more miles of road, the Post-Tribune previously reported.
Merrillville, the largest town in Lake County, has more than 36,444 residents and is 33 square miles with at least 181 road miles, though Engineering Administrator Steve King thinks it’s closer to 230 road miles, the Post-Tribune previously reported. By comparison, Lake County’s second largest town, Schererville, has 29,646 residents and 119.5 road miles, according to its website, while the third largest, Highland, has 23,984 residents and 89.3 road miles, its Public Works Director, Mark Knesek, said.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.