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Ft. Wayne and Smaller Towns Get Solid Waste Aid for Ice Storm Cleanup

By Jeff Neumeyer
June 18, 2010 Updated Feb 10, 2009 at 8:07 PM EST FORT WAYNE, IN (Indiana's NewsCenter) --- Financial help is on the way to Fort Wayne and smaller communities in Allen County, who ran up a tab cleaning up after the big December ice storm. Originally, it was just the City of Fort Wayne that pushed for reimbursement. The city now figures it has costs of around 1.1 million dollars for brush collection, tree replacements and other things related to the big ice storm. City officials say the meter is still running, because the job of cleanup isn't done yet. The city petitioned the Allen County Solid Waste District Board for a quarter-million dollars in reimbursement aid. The board on Tuesday approved handing over the money, but it also agreed to cover 25 percent of the cleanup costs in New Haven, Woodburn, Grabill and other smaller municipalities in the county. A former solid waste board member says waste disposal fees charged to citizens and businesses had amassed too much money in that agency's bank accounts anyway. Don Schmidt/Former Solid Waste Board Member: " I looked at this as a wonderful opportunity to give some of that money back, because we were not able to do so after it was collected. So I'm really pleased that the city is going to get their 250-thousand and all of the other small municipalities will also get a share of that as well." Schmidt made a plea for the aid to be disbursed during a public hearing on the matter at the City-County Building. There will be reimbursements of maybe 300-thousand dollars total, but that shouldn’t hurt the solid waste district, because close to three million dollars had accumulated in its accounts. The City of Fort Wayne, meanwhile, still has to come up with another 850-thousand for storm damage expenses. We’re told some CEDIT funds are being diverted to that purpose.
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