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DLGF strength 2023–2026; the instrument's form from the statute
The township is still the provider unit, the town still carries no fire fund, and the territory's money stepped up sharply in 2025. The Department of Local Government Finance's certified budget orders for St. Joseph County, read at the two units' pages for 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026, carry the territory's two funds under Unit 0012, Union Township, in every year — fund 8604, Special Fire Protection Territory General, and 8692, Equipment Replacement — while Unit 0862, Lakeville Civil Town, carries only its general, road and cumulative-capital funds, no fire fund of any kind. The series prints: 8604's certified budget and levy run $173,867 / $183,473 in 2023 and $179,100 / $190,810 in 2024, then step to $711,050 / $650,616 in 2025 and $971,800 / $676,629 in 2026, the rate rising from $0.0839 to $0.2568 and $0.2663; 8692 holds at its $0.0331 rate throughout. The 2026 order adds a fund that appears in no earlier year, 1187 Emergency Fire Loan ($391,965 budget, $424,831 levy), beside the continuing fire building and equipment debt funds. The trustee's own account of the increase, at press strength, is that she appealed a DLGF denial "sentence by sentence" and the fire budget rose roughly 250 per cent — consistent in shape with the certified series, whose numbers govern. No withdrawal, addition or change of provider unit appears in any record reached; the township minutes of February 2025 still treat the town as the territory's other party — "The Bond will be paid back by the township, and not the Town of Lakeville taxes," and, on the town's position, that if the town "doesn't want to help… the Fire Territory shifted, the Town would be put in a position to follow along with the Township or provide their own service" — with realignment discussed and nothing adopted in the minutes reached; the formal caveat stands that a budget order proves the provider and the levy, not a participating-unit list, and the DLGF's determinations list for the county carries no Union-Lakeville item. The backdrop the minutes give the money is the ambulance break: the township's arrangement with the Union-North Ambulance Service ended in 2024 — "Union North Ambulance Service was 100% North Township board members" — and by April 2025 it had "been over a year since Union Township has provided a local ambulance service," the county's ambulance running under the county's contract with South Bend. On formation, the Tax Court's order in Union Township v. DLGF (12 November 2015), read whole, settles existence and shape at court strength — the township and territory appealing jointly for an excess levy in July 2012, the court citing the provider-unit statute for the township's fund — and recites no formation date, no ordinance or resolution, and no DLGF determination; the 2013 statute it construes, IC 6-1.1-18-18, is re-verified whole, expired 30 June 2016 by its own terms. What the statute book does settle is the instrument's form: under IC 36-8-19-6 a territory is established by identical instruments of every participating unit — an ordinance of the town, a resolution of the township — adopted after 1 January and before 1 April, taking effect 1 July of that year. A formation in the 2012 cycle is therefore consistent with the July 2012 appeal, and it is printed as consistency only, not as a date: the gap stands, its settlers now precise — the town's ordinance record and the township board's minute book for a January-to-April window of the formation year, and the DLGF's territory file.