New Carlisle tax levy not certified for May ballot

“We are looking into that and seeing what our options are and if we have any legal recourse,” said interim New Carlisle city manager Howard Kitko.

City officials submitted a proposed ordinance instead of an approved ordinance, Baker said. The election board’s legal counsel said the wording was a problem so the ordinance was not approved for the ballot, he said.

“We did it exactly how Springfield did it in 2021, (but) theirs was certified and ours was not. We followed basically how they submitted their petition,” Kitko said. “(We) found a number of cities we also researched and were approved as well in the same method that we did.”

The city submitted the petition on Dec. 19, 2024 and found out on Feb. 11 that the levy wasn’t certified.

“If there were any issues, potentially if they would’ve responded back sooner, it would’ve given the city time to correct the issue and resubmit prior to the deadline,” Kitko said.

A tax levy was previously passed Nov. 5, 2019. This was a five-year levy that began collection in July 2020, so it will expire this summer.

Kitko said the city has two levies — a standard 1% income tax that supports the general fund and a 0.5% levy for police services.

The levy that was not certified by the board for the May election is the 0.5% levy for police services. This would be the third renewal for this levy, which is the one expiring by July and renews every five years.

As for the future, Kitko said they would not be in any initial financial danger and would have enough in the police fund to take those services at least until the end of this year or the first quarter of 2026.

“The city is able to do a lot more things for the citizens with the 0.5%, (so we’re) hoping it never stops completely. We’ll have to go back to the general fund and it won’t take but a year or so and we’ll be back in having issues with funding and trying to keep a police force,” Kitko said.

Kitko said they are working to find out the specifics and doing some research because it’s unknown if they is any legal recourse or what the next steps will be.