Temple named new Rockford village councilor

ROCKFORD - The Rockford Village Council witnessed the swearing in of a Rockford resident to council to fill a vacant seat Tuesday night.

Joel Temple won out over one other candidate the council was considering. The 42-year-old lifelong Rockford resident is a production manager at engineering company Danfoss in Van Wert. Temple has three sons.

When asked why he ran for the position, he said he "wanted to make a difference."

"He is a leader of people at a manufacturing company currently, so we felt pretty confident between his ability to lead and his knowledge of the village in general that he would be a good fit," council president Marcas Heitkamp said of the appointment.

Temple fills the seat left vacant by Shane Young, who resigned in September. Young was reelected last November and the seat is up for election in 2029. Temple is the brother of village administrator Aaron Temple.

In other business, councilors discussed potentially putting an additional police levy on the May 2027 ballot.

"To put it in perspective, the police budget accounts for $327,758 of our budget, or around 12.73%," Heitkamp said. "We're trying to help alleviate some of the cost and pull off of the general fund and get something going for that."

Fiscal officer Lisa Kuhn generated three different millage options. A 2.5-mill levy would generate $72,382 and would cost the owner of a $100,000 home $87.50. A 3-mill levy would generate $80,859 and would cost the owner of a $100,000 home $105. A 3.5-mill levy would generate $101,335 and would cost the owner of a $100,000 home $122.50.

"I understand that the larger goal here is to alleviate the stress that's on the general fund directly from the police budget," councilor Luke Stephenson said. "My questions would be, with any of these amounts, is there any goal within that that we can improve the police department in any way?"

Heitkamp said the funds would provide some cushion as "we're starting to operate in the negative pretty significantly without something like this; this is an option we have to pull to get ourselves out of the negative or we have to some budget cut somewhere else."

Mayor Ron Searight said he would encourage council to pursue the highest option possible so the village wouldn't have to go back to the voters and ask for more money in two to three years.

Heitkamp disagreed with that assessment and said the council should "try to get by with what we can."

"To me, the $72,000 or $80,000 (figure) isn't fun or easy to swallow (but) it's still a little bit more tolerable than what the highest level could be," he said. "I don't think it would be necessarily holistically fair to go and try to get more money now that what we really need to accomplish a goal."

Council appeared to agree with Heitkamp but ultimately made no decision Tuesday.

In other business, councilors:

• heard first reading of an ordinance to establish a snow emergency policy that would automatically declare a snow emergency if it snows a certain amount of inches.

• heard Mercer County recently executed a new electric aggregation contract with Dynergy at a program rate of 11.52 cents per kilowatt-hour. The new rate will provide long-term price stability for residential and small business participants through the June 2029 billing period. If residents want to stay in the aggregation, they don't have to take any action.

The council meets next at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 17 at the village hall.