Whiteland staff introduces 2026 stormwater utility budget, flags consultant discrepancies

Staff presented an introductory draft of the 2026 Whiteland Town stormwater utility budget and told board members the document will change after reconciling two large transfers provided late by a financial consultant.

Staff said last year—ight pilot fees totaled $17,823 and this year the consultant estimated $16,716 for the payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (pilot) line. For depreciation transfers staff cited last year—stimate of $224,955 but said the consultant, Adam Stone, estimated $364,532 for the coming year. Staff said they received Stone's spreadsheet only an hour before the meeting and found discrepancies between his numbers and the staff-prepared budget.

Staff walked through other elements of the draft: capital projects include a $250,000 placeholder for new capital work and staff noted the town is evaluating a new vacuum truck with an estimated purchase price near $600,000 that would be cost-shared across water, sewer and storm funds. Staff emphasized the presentation was introductory and that, because this is a utility budget rather than an ordinance, numbers can be adjusted before final adoption.

Board members pressed staff for the consultant etail and requested the spreadsheet. One member said they preferred last year's presentation format and asked to review the consultant's backup. Staff said they will meet with the consultant early next week to reconcile differences and will circulate corrected figures before the next meeting; final adoption is planned for December.

Because several numeric lines were garbled in the meeting transcript (audio/text confusion), the exact base budget number as spoken to the board cannot be confidently reported from the record; staff told members the base budget (excluding pilot and depreciation transfers) would be just over $5.9 million but the transcript included inconsistent numeric fragments. Staff committed to distributing reconciled figures.