Fort Shawnee solution still in flux

FORT SHAWNEE — A plan to keep “The Fort” alive is on the table, but village leaders are not done tweaking it yet.The Fort Shawnee Village Council met for an atypically brief general meeting Monday, and while councilors discussed the village’s financial woes and took care of the regular business at hand, to the surprise of many, there were no remarks from the public and no actions taken on the village’s potential insolvency.Mayor Dennis Shaffer said he and the councilors were working on a variety of plans to see Fort Shawnee through its current crisis, but are still honing them. It’s important that they not just come up with a plan, but the right plan, he said. “We have the ability to tweak these plans put them out there, discuss them and work on them until they’re right. We need to get it right,” Shaffer said.The village has been facing increasingly serious financial troubles in recent years. It finished 2010 with a $53,000 deficit and at the current rate could be as much as $840,000 in the hole by 2015, according to Belinda Miller, a representative of the state Auditor’s Office sent to help the village sort out its problems. Village officials have considered a variety of options to balance the budget, including asking voters to pass a 0.75 percent income tax on the next ballot and even eliminating the Fort Shawnee Police Department, which accounts for 42 percent of the village’s annual budget.Councilors and a Citizens Advisory Committee have yet to settle on a plan they love. Eliminating police service would still leave the village with a deficit of more than $200,000 by 2015, and many doubt whether an income tax would pass in the current economy. The council has until July to make a final decision on whether to place a tax on the November ballot.“We all need to come up with a plan A, B, C and D and we need to do that in a very short time,” said Councilman Dan Henry.The village has announced a number of cuts in recent months. On Monday, Shaffer said they could not afford the annual spring brush pickup for village residents. But the worst sign might have come when Finance Director Jeanenne Vasquez announced she would be taking a part-time job with an area business and might soon resign from the village. When a councilor suggested they make her a full-time employee to keep her on board, she declined, saying the future of Fort Shawnee was too unstable.“I wanted to retire from here. I love the people. I love the work, but I’m worried about the future,” Vasquez said.Shaffer said that while he understood Vasquez’s desire to do what is best for herself, he remains confident the village will continue as it has for more than five decades.“I truly, truly believe that, while the village of Fort Shawnee is in a quandary about what to do next, we are actively seeking the path to make sure the village survives,” Shaffer said. “It is not doom and gloom, but it is a situation that we’ve got to address.”