Berger Audiology 10 Year Anniversary
Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since Becky decided that she could provide better service to her patients on her own than through her previous employer. At that time, her employer began dictating maximum 20 minute appointments, not understanding that a hearing test takes an hour. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She is not able to spend the time she needs to with her patients. It’s not nearly as lucrative, but she’s pleased to be able to provide better care.
Jamie Fleury did a nice article on Dr. Becky’s Berger Audiology 10 year Anniversary Open House last Thursday. Somewhere around 34 attended. She is planning a second event for Physicians and professional colleagues next month.
City of Plymouth, IN-Mayor’s Office was represented by Mayor Robert Listenberger and City Attorney Jeff Houin. Future Marshall County Sherriff, Les McFarland, was there as well as Matt Hovermale from the Plymouth Chamber. Seven nuns from the The Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ also attended. Naomi Peacock won the award for the youngest attendee. We won’t disclose who was the oldest! Becky was pleased with the turnout! Thanks to all that attended. 
Regressive Fees
We generally talk about taxes being regressive or progressive. The income tax in the U.S. is generally considered a progressive tax system, i.e. the percentage of tax paid on income progressively increases the more you earn. The Top 10% of taxpayers in the U.S. paid 75% of the total income tax paid, while the bottom 50% of taxpayers pay 2.3% of total income tax paid, per the the Tax Foundation. This is opposed to sales tax, that is applied evenly across the board, but takes a larger percentage of a person’s total income, the lower they are on the income scale. While this is debated incessantly (“Billionaires don’t pay their fair share!”), the various governmental fees are rarely factored in.
I discussed this in a post (Deposit Dilemma) last year, when we first opened Riverside Commons Apartments in Plymouth. At that time, Plymouth required a $150 deposit to start water and REMC required a $350 deposit to start electric, for a total of $500. This for an apartment where some residents were paying less than $400 for rent due to their reduced income level. A similar problem has been brought to light in Culver as the Culver Town Council struggles to meet their water service obligations.
There was a Public Hearing for a new water rate ordinance at the Culver Town Council meeting last week. For various reasons, Covid being one of them, Culver has not raised rates in nearly 15 years. Kicking the can down the road has led to somewhat dire straights and they need to do something. Even those opposing specifics of the rate change, me included, acknowledge that some form of rate increase is needed. Because water service is a service, there is no methodology to do progressive billing. Fairness prevails and the rate goes up across the board with no favoritism. Where this falls apart is in the fire protection fees, specifically fees for fire sprinklers.
The State of Indiana requires new apartment buildings to have fire sprinkler systems if they have more than two units. Somewhere in the past, municipalities were advised to charge fees for these. In reality, it is a tax, as a fee would imply there is some service provided. No service is provided beyond providing water at the street, which they would do anyway. Because it’s termed a fee, there is sales tax attached to this, despite no product or service being provided. We can talk about the life safety benefits of a fire sprinkler system to residents and fire fighters another time, but this cost appears to be without merit.
There is no inspection or scheduled inspections, no maintenance, and no record-keeping. The only justification is the cost of bringing water to the site, which the municipality would do anyway. Reasonably, water usage for a fire in a building with sprinkler system would be significantly less than that used to fight a fire using traditional methods, since fire sprinklers generally put out the interior source before the building is engulfed.
The existing fire sprinkler fee is $1,200. The new ordinance proposed a fee increase of 83% to $2,199. Several points on this:
- The fee is per system, with no adjustment for line size, square footage covered, commercial vs. residential. On a reducing scale of coverage, CabinetWorks pays the same fee as The Cove, which pays the same fee and Sand Hill Farm Apartments, which pays the same fee as one 8 unit building at The Paddocks. Because there are three separate apartment building with fire sprinklers at The Paddocks, they pay this fee three times.
- This fee had little justification before, but the increase is not tied to any increase in service or increase in cost other than the overall cost of the water system. Whether a structure has a fire sprinkler system or not, does not affect that cost.
- When this fee is applied to residential units, this results in a double hit, since the resident will experience the increased water bill for their water usage and then a second hit for the fire sprinkler fee. This may come as a rent increase for apartments or a HOA assessment for condos.
- Because this is labeled a fee, Sales Tax gets layered onto this, further increasing the burden.
- This unintentionally targets the most vulnerable. Renters often fall on the lower end of the income spectrum, so this fee is extremely regressive, hitting those least able to pay.
The Town Council did listen and delayed a vote on this. (Much Appreciated!) The Town Manager said he would do more research into this. I will be interested to hear the background on how this fee was set and whether there is an option for more fair and equitable sharing of costs.
Cadence
From my days in marching band, the cadence was the music played by the drumline that set the marching pace. It’s also defined as, “the beat, time, or measure of rhythmical motion or activity”. The definition that fits this post is, “a rhythmic sequence or flow of sounds in language”.
I attend a fair number of public meetings each month and many of them include the Pledge of Allegiance. With the advent of online meeting participation, you occasionally have someone’s disembodied voice from the ether, trying to participate, but because of the lag, it is just a little off. Is there much that’s more jarring? With the Pledge being removed from schools in some places, I wonder if that portends the future. I don’t remember learning the cadence of the pledge, but I do remember learning and reciting it from early in grade school. I can only imagine how jarring it was when Dwight Eisenhower signed the bill adding “Under God” to the Pledge in 1954!
Cadence shows up in other areas where we often don’t recognize it until it’s missing. Have you ever heard someone rattle off their Social Security number without a pause after the third and fifth number? Or even worse, can you even write down a phone number someone gives you if they don’t pause after the third and sixth digit? If you ever want to really throw someone off, give them your phone number with a pause after the fourth and seventh digit. Watch the brain melt that occurs! Ha!
The Lord’s Prayer also fits this description. Most of us know the cadence and can recite it by rote. Though Catholics and Protestants say it slightly differently to trip up any outliers in the congregation. Some of my nieces and nephews attended a Catholic school that tacked on, “Please provide for those with nothing to eat”. Nothing wrong with that sentiment, but it does kinda throw you off when you’re not expecting it.
The Pledge of Allegiance is variously described as a poem or lyrics. Since it doesn’t rhyme, I don’t hardly recognize it as such, but then my taste in poetry is limited to bawdy limericks… (There once was a man from Nantucket…) While the pledge doesn’t rhyme, it does have a rhythm. It’s the little things in life like this that are crutches that make things easier and bring us together. If I’m walking and hear a drum cadence, I can’t help but fall into step. I’ve never really considered myself a conformist, but I do think we need more of the things that bring us together. The little daily occurrences of cadence are one of those things. There is a downside though. All of us continue to recite the pledge and say the word “indivisible”, but more and more it is being said by rote without taking the meaning to heart.
Happy Little Trees…
It’s too bad that maintaining urban trees isn’t as easy as Bob Ross painting them… They take a lot of work and planning. There are occasional “Happy Little Accidents”, but they don’t always workout so well over time…
I took advantage of Emerson Wells’ office hours a couple of weeks ago and met with her to talk about Culver’s trees. Ms. Wells attends Indiana University and is part of the McKinney Climate Fellows program. It was an interesting discussion. I learned a bit about why Culver is working with her and hopefully contributed a little history and insight from another perspective.
One of Culver’s best aesthetic features is its abundance of mature street trees. Unfortunately, a limited budget has made if difficult to start replacement trees for when the existing trees age out. Then there’s the issue of the indiscriminate butchering of existing trees by utility companies. Ms. Wells is working with the Culver Tree Commission to do some tree canopy analysis, some targeting of tree needs and a maintenance plan to help make sure new planting thrive and older trees are preserved. It was interesting to hear that she was allowed to expand the program, working with the Lake Maxinkuckee Environmental Council, to provide insight on lake shore trees outside town limits too.
After that meeting, I heard from Kevin Danti, Culver Town Manager, that there was some consideration to planting some of this year’s trees on the two Culver Sand Hill Farm properties, Sand Hill Farm Apartments and The Paddocks. I let him know I would be interested in participating. For that reason, I also attended the July meeting of the Culver Tree Commission to hear a little more about their plans.
Despite being a serial meeting attendee, this was only the second or third time I’ve attended a Tree Commission meeting. (It’s been a while as the group is nearly all new members since my last visit!) It was interesting to hear some of their plans and their approaches to things. The Commission is a working group that not only makes the decisions at meetings, but also shoulders some of the installation and maintenance involved with municipal trees. There is some hope that a working subcommittee might be formed to help them. Ms. Wells suggested that she could bring in some people to help with training. I was also pleased to hear that they are going to do the paperwork to re-establish Culver as a Tree City USA community. Apparently, Culver meets all the standards and just neglected to do the paperwork to maintain that status sometime in the past.
The main suggestion I gave Ms. Wells was to consider plantings on the town’s property at the NE corner of Davis and Ohio Streets. This is the new well location and adding some environmental protection there would be good. Plus there are some storm water drainage problems in that area that would benefit from removing some of the impervious surface on that site. Since I couldn’t talk the town into improving the South Main Street/Davis Street intersection with a traffic circle, making it more aesthetically pleasing would be a fall back position. It won’t provide the same safety improvements, but such is life…
Fingers-crossed that Ms. and the Tree Commission are able to do all they hope to do. I think the plans will be a benefit to Culver. Having a plan for the future and not just this year is a big step in the right direction.
Water Street Townhomes – Firemen, EMS & Fire Sprinklers
August 4, 2025
Kevin Berger
Commentary, Culver, Politics, projects
Community, Fire Sprinklers, government, Water Street Townhomes
Last Month, Chief Holm, allowed us to host the Plymouth Fire Department for a tour of Water Street Townhomes in Plymouth. This was done over three days to cover all three fire department shifts.
We have done this in the past at Sand Hill Farm Apartments and The Paddocks in Culver. We also did this at LaPaz Commons in LaPaz. We generally try and do this at least once during the framing stage so the fire fighters get the opportunity to observe how the framing goes together in case the worst happens and they are fighting a fire in the building or rescuing someone. We generally try and invite EMS as well since it’s a good opportunity to see how to access the building.
In the case of Water Street Townhomes, we showed them where the electric service entrances are with the associate disconnects, where the electrical panels are, where the Knox Box will be and other pertinent information. For emergency access we showed why entrance from the rear might be a better choice due to tight access with a 90 degree turn at the front door.
The buildings are wood framed using modern framing techniques such as engineered wood products. They react differently in a fire than dimensional lumber. We also have 2-hour rated, double 2 x 4 stud, insulated fire walls between the units. These walls have minimal penetrations and have two layers of Type X, fire rated drywall on each side.
In the commercial space on the end, we were required to install sprinklers on the second-floor apartments because those units were over commercial space. While showing this to the firemen, one of the firemen asked why the entire building wasn’t sprinkled? Ah! A teaching moment!
As discussed in this post last week, municipalities charge a fee for buildings to have a sprinkler system. This is a somewhat random fee, for no actual service. Plymouth Water Department Utility Superintendent, Donnie Davidson, said this when asked what the fee covers: “What service is provided is providing water and pressure to the system, the city does nothing else. Everything from the property line is private.”
I took the opportunity to suggest the fireman advocate for the removal of this fee. Municipalities should be doing things to encourage fire sprinkler systems, not discourage them. In the case of Water Street Townhomes, the cost to sprinkle the two 1-bedroom units is $15,800. This is just the installation fee, then there is the $1,500 tap fee and the $537 annual inspection fee. Now on top of all of that, Plymouth charges $54 in its annual Fire Sprinkler Fee. The fee goes up by line size, so this is low as a 1-1/2″ line. Culver would charge their current flat fee of $1,200 + tax (or the new proposed fee of $2,199 + tax) for these two apartments, just as they would for 8, 24, 100 units, etc.)
There is a cost to install the fire walls between the units too, but it is a one-time cost which is less than the cost of installing a fire sprinkler system. (It also does double-duty by providing sound dampening between units.) I won’t leak or require maintenance or inspections. It is one and done. Is the protection as good as what you get with a fire sprinkler system? Probably yes as far as unit to unit spread, but probably not for saving the unit that catches fire. Plus, much more water is used in fighting a fire from the exterior of a building than that used to when a fire sprinkler system douses the fire at the source when it first starts. But as demonstrated with the two flats at Water Street Townhomes, this is only a solution when there is a horizontal division of units, not a vertical division.
I hope the fire fighters I spoke to speak up to City officials and suggest that this fee be removed. The huge and unjustified increase being contemplated in Culver is why these types of fees are scary to developers and building owners. The fact that they are a regressive fee on renters and discourage additional protection for fire-fighters just adds to the negatives.
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