I had the opportunity last Tuesday night to visit some of the founding members of VTAC, Veterans Therapeutic Art Center. I sat down with Larry, Terry, Richie, and Dan at the MoonTree Studios facility (MoonTree Community Studios is a Ministry of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ) where they have been allowed to use the woodworking shop as a start up location. The organization is going to cover a seven county area serving veterans and their families. Their information shows that there are over 50,000 veterans in this area and they are conservatively estimating a clientele of around 150,000 when they include families. These four men are all veterans and they shared with me some of the struggles in coming back and reintegrating into society. They explained that many veterans tend to pull into a shell, never leaving home, and often end up resorting to the bottle to cope. The organization is very young and just recently received their 501(c)3 designation. Despite this they are already working in multiple venues beyond the woodworking, providing culinary arts, an art studio, music studio, multimedia computer lab, photography studio and metal sculpturing. Currently experts in these fields are volunteering their time to provide these services. They have hopes of expanding into auto mechanics and other hands-on fields as well.
They are hoping to set up facilities throughout their territory with various opportunities to draw out the veterans. Their feeling is that by including families, family involvement will encourage the veterans themselves to participate. They know that veterans are very independent and often introspective. In many cases they have skills that are valuable but they have issues that prevent them from integrating into a regular workplace. One of their other plans is to form a barter system where veterans can share their skills on a peer to peer basis. For example they discussed the possibility of being able to have a veteran electrician do work at a home in exchange for something like accounting services if the recipient has those types of skills. The possibilities are somewhat unlimited with that type of program so it could be a huge resource. This is also another way to get the veterans involved in a sub-community, if not the greater community at this point, and should help them integrate back into society. As the organization is young they do not know exactly what they will morph into but their long range plan is to expand the group into additional 7 to 8 county hubs throughout the region and eventually nationally.
They discussed with me the problems with the current veteran programs that are out there. These programs often are available, but they are not run by veterans, so there is no connection of shared experience. They surprised me when they told me that in these programs, even including the VA (U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs ), the personnel are rarely veterans. Often the programs are known, but the details on how to access them are vague. Not only will VTAC be providing their in-house services, but they also hope to be a clearing house where a veteran can come and find out about other services. VTAC will try and connect them to someone who has been through the paperwork and other requirements to apply for help.
They showed amazing enthusiasm and energy for getting this project off the ground. It truly looks like they have found a need that can be answered and they have found a unique way to address it. It will be interesting to follow their progress. I want to wish them every success!
They are having a silent auction and open house event October 20th from 10:00 AM until 2:00 PM at MoonTree Studios. They are hoping that this will be a way to bring veterans together and inform the community about their programs. The auction will then be a fundraiser for the program and will include some of the furniture pieces that they have refurbished in their woodworking shop. Mark your calendars to be there!
Last night the Culver Chamber of Commerce sponsored a Community Conversation bringing together representatives of the Chamber, Second Century Committee, LMEC/F, Town Council, Plan Commission, Redevelopment Commission, the Town Clerk and Town Manager as well as others. Linda Yoder of the Marshall County Community Foundation was also in attendance. Dawn Brockey with the Culver Coffee Company and current Chamber President was kind enough to host the event providing wine and light appetizers for the group.
The goal was to discuss strategies to strengthen the business community in Culver. Ralph Winters brought up the proposed new Comprehensive Plan. I was asked to discuss how it would affect the community (20/20 Vision for Culver!) and there was a spirited dialog. There was discussion as to how the various groups could participate and what funding sources were available. One thing that Ralph emphasized was that everyone needs to read the current plan before we start on the revisions. I thought that was an excellent recommendation.
There was quite a bit of discussion on how to extend the business season beyond the summer. There was discussion of how the Triathlon, Winefest and Ice Fishing Tournament can help the retail merchants. (One sad note was hearing that the L’Max Film Fest will be moved to the Culver Academies and away from the downtown theater.) There was a request for brainstorming for other events like those. I’ve been negative on the Marshall County Tourism in the past, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear how they were helping with many of these events.
There was discussion regarding a need for a community calendar. I found that discussion interesting since there have been many attempts at this which have not gotten support. One of those, IHeartCulver, is still up, but struggling and close to being taken down due to lack of support. It would seem that an existing model such as that could be built on and support a local entrepreneur in lieu of reinventing the wheel.
All in all there was good discussion. It will be interesting to see how the Chamber moves forward with the input they received.
Last night the Culver Redevelopment Commission met for their regular monthly meeting. Kathy Clark spoke to the group in support of some projects that had come before them. (Kathy was the chair of the Redevelopment Commission when it was first formed.)
She was there to help my cause of getting the Redevelopment Commission to fund the new Comprehensive Plan. She stated that the Comprehensive plan is an integral part of retaining and bringing new business to Culver by setting goals and planning on where development should occur. She cited examples of how the original Redevelopment Commission used the Comprehensive Plan to determine how to layout the TIF districts and where to spend the money that was provided by the TIF districts. She also gave her reasoning on where TIF money should be spent. The Commission was moved by her insights and has chosen to fund the Comprehensive Plan. They did put some caveats on the cost and they did ask for involvement in selecting the consultant, but overall it was a big step forward. Culver just may get 20/20 vision before 2020 arrives!
Bob Porter, Culver Utilities Superintendent, was there to request funding for a clock to be added to the Downtown Revitalization Project. The Commission agreed to fund this too, probably due to Kathy’s pep talk. Bob didn’t give a lot of details other than that it would be a four faced post clock which would be set in the Right-of-Way somewhere around the intersection of Main Street and Jefferson Street.
Tom Kearns and Mike Stallings were there from the Culver Tree Commission requesting funding for a tree project to improve School Street starting at the intersection with S.R. 10 and running south to Academy Road. (See sketch) Tom indicated that they had the support of all the property owners involved. He also stated that the tree selections were made with the power lines in mind as well as a goal of having color throughout the year. It was a good night to visit the Redevelopment Commission as they chose to fund this project as well!
Despite diligent campaigning on my part, my proposed successors all lost yesterday’s election. I will be Chairman of the Marshall County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) for another year. I have enjoyed the interaction in the position and feel I have learned a lot, but I had offered to step down. It is not an onerous position, but I often cannot devote the time to it that I think it warrants. My real job often gets in the way of my extracurricular activities! For better or worse, my peers on the board disagreed with my self-assessment.
My involvement in MCEDC serves multiple personal and business goals:
Regarding other board member updates, Roger Umbaugh was reappointed by Marshall County as their representative. Don Mahoney was reappointed by Argos as their representative and accepted another term as Treasurer. Bill Davis, Bremen’s representative, accepted another term as Vice Chairman.
I’m looking forward to another year of making a difference. As always, suggestions are welcome.
20/20 Vision is what I’m dubbing my attempts to get Culver on track for a new Comprehensive Plan. Judging from the last one which has taken a little over 10 years to revise, shooting for a plan that would lay out goals for completion by the year 2020 seems like the place to start.
I’ve been pushing for this for a while. (See here as well as a couple of other times.) At the September Culver Plan Commission meeting I was rewarded punished for my diligent nagging by being appointed to a committee of one to look into it. Hopefully this will be expanded to a larger group in the future, but I was asked to get things moving.
At the October Plan Commission meeting I reported on some of the issues I thought should be addressed by a revised comp plan, the steps required, the State Statute regarding Comprehensive Plans and options for a planning grant.
A few of my concerns with the existing Comprehensive Plan include: