Every once in a while when I’m searching for something in the ECC blog, something from the past catches my eye. I ran across a post I made when Jack Jordan was running against Jackie Walorski for the 2nd District congressional seat. I made a salient observation in that post… “He (Jack) has the basic Republican positions, but with a strong “anti-politician” message. One of his issues is term limits and he has promised no more than three terms. I wish I could believe in that… I want to believe in that… It seems though, that those that run for political office quickly become politicians. The number of incumbent politicians that believe in term limits is significantly less than those using that platform plank in their first run for office.”
The above commitment referenced serving the 2nd District in Congress, which are two year terms. State Representatives run for 2 year terms too. Jack is in his 4th term and it looks like he’ll be running for a 5th term.
A notice of a Culver Town Council Work Session came out Friday, August 4th, with the agenda listed as, “The Culver Town Council will meet to discuss goals and expectations.”
Since I have been serving on the Steering Committee for the new Culver Comprehensive Plan, I thought this would be of interest and expected there to be a full house. Because of the early time, I tried to listen in on Teams and attempt a bit of multi-tasking. Unfortunately, Teams failed again, with the sound going out about 10 minutes in. I was the only one online and after Karen (Clerk Treasurer) jumped through hoops to try and get it working for me for about 10 minutes, I told her I would just come down to the Town Hall.
I was a little surprised and disappointed when I got there that I ended up being the only one in the audience that wasn’t an elected official or an employee. Later on Karen said she had organized this as somewhat of a bonding meeting for the Council and the new Town Manager, so that made me feel a bit better about the low turnout. That doesn’t really excuse the public (and the candidates for these offices) for not getting involve. It was also an important meeting that received no press coverage…
There were several topics discussed, so I’ll hit the high points and my thoughts on them.
All in all this was a good meeting. I would have liked to have seen more participation, but I’m sure it was helpful to the new Town Manager and I’m hopeful that it was a move in the right direction for meeting Karen’s goal of reminding them of their common cause of making Culver better.
On my way into the office this morning I noticed the cute little Lakefest signs along School Street. Of course, I wondered if Lakefest was on the electronic sign, since all I had seen on my way past it was the day and date. (See right)
So I looped back to see what was on the sign:
So, I was a bit upset that the biggest event on the Culver Calendar is this month and it’s not on the sign, but then wait… “Don’t Give Up”!? Was the sign speaking to me? Ha!
For my lurkers, I’ve been harping on the sign not living up to it’s charter, let alone it’s potential for months now. I’m more tactful in public as I don’t want to offend those in charge, but I still think it would be great to see Lakefest on the Culver Sign and repeated on the other Stellar signs in Argos, Bourbon, Bremen, Lapaz and Plymouth.
So, with the encouragement of the sign itself, I decided to put out another post, encouraging the Town to make better use of this asset. Lakefest is a Culver event that should be drawing visitors from around the County, so it really should be on all the signs this month.
To some extent I understand this responsibility should fall on the Visit Marshall County, but unless the communities step up, it won’t happen. If each took responsibility to spread their respective events, this would (well should) take hold. Lets make it happen, people! Do it for the Sign!
Great to see that Marshall County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) is back on track with Annual Reports. (And not just because of my teeny-tiny picture on the cover! Ha!) Riverside Commons actually has two references in the report, though not by name.
The lack of an Annual Report was one of the major issues in my last couple of years on the board. It got contentious with that director fabricating a false schedule for producing a report that never happened. Then it was apparently just completely disregarded by the next director. I’m glad to see that the new leadership under Greg Hildebrand includes living up to commitments, the Annual Report being one of these.
I don’t know how Greg is doing on the State and National levels, but on the local level, it’s been refreshing to have a MCEDC President that is not constantly burning bridges, MIA or joked about due to the inability to contact them or find them in the office. He also doesn’t take his title too seriously. IYKYK This will go a long way to improving MCEDC’s image and returning it to the mission it had when it was founded.
I hope we will be seeing quarterly newsletters again too. The organization has to be seen and seen as productive in order to continue to move the county forward. Even at its low points, I felt it was positive for Marshall County to have MCEDC. Good luck to Greg as he strives to make it an organization of which we can be proud once again.
The Dunes at CRC 8-21-23
August 22, 2023
Kevin Berger
Commentary, Culver, READI, Sand Hill Farm
Community, Culver, government, Volunteering
The Culver Redevelopment Commission met last night and there was discussion on The Dunes project. There was a public hearing as they were entering a subrecipient agreement with the Town of Culver. (I always find these things amusing, where the Town Council comes hat-in-hand to request money from the Redevelopment Commission. Ummm… The Town Council are the elected officials that answer to the voters! They appoint the Redevelopment Commission members. If there is any issue with the CRC supporting the TOC, then there should be some reappointments made ASAP! Ha!)
The meeting was a little frustrating as there were no plans or even preliminary plans for The Dunes that they could share. They only shared verbal descriptions of what some of them had seen. The only new information that was shares was: a) The scope has increased to “300 doors” and b) the Town’s commitment to this will be greater than the $1.3MM originally contemplated in the READI grant application. My concern is that we’re getting a long way down the line without knowing what we’re doing. I had to leave the meeting early because of another commitment. I ran into a Town Council member outside who made the comment, “This isn’t like your project where we knew everything up front and knew what we were signing up for.” Well, Yeah!? Why not???
I keep coming back to The Dunes representatives being very careful with their wording. To paraphrase, “The capital contributions from the Town of Culver and READI will reduce the construction costs, but the housing created will be market rate housing.”
Market Rate = What the Market will Bear… I thought that was salient last night as there will be no requirements on the developer regarding costs. The development agreement that kicked off Sand Hill Farm Apartments included several cost controls and included requirements for 12-month leases among other things. It seems they have chosen not to pursue those this time. They (CRC) were even hesitant to use the term work-force housing as they said that it implied that it was subsidized. Ironically, wasn’t the whole reason for this discussion the subsidy they were giving? At the lowest point, the subsidy proposed is $2.6MM made up of $1.3MM from the Town of Culver and $1.3MM from READI.
A key point that was emphasized last night was that increasing the number of available housing options should bring down the cost of housing in Culver. Part of the audience’s concern was that the word “should” has been variously substituted with “could” and “ought to” and has included qualifiers like “hopefully”, “theoretically”, “ideally”, etc. This is an experiment.
In general, I am not opposed to The Dunes project and agree with the Town’s premises on increased housing options being needed. The current trends toward Culver having too many “second homes”, probably won’t be stopped by this, but could be affected by it. I am more concerned about my perception of a lack of vision for its effects. I’ve written about some of this before, but to reiterate:
I am not one to say we’re moving too fast on this. Time is money and as discussed last week, the numbers being discussed from the READI application are stale as they were put together a year ago. Blame who you like (I have my opinions), but inflation in construction costs is real. I am pleased that the Town has hired financial consultants to make sure the monetary side of this makes sense. I think they are missing a key component by not hiring an urban planning consultant to provide input. This is a major change to the community and all available expertise should be brought into this decision.
Those interested should be at the Town Council meeting tonight where there will be another public hearing on this issue. As the council member I spoke to said, “Bring a cushion…”
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