Marshall County
Electronic Sign Update
Well, following up on my previous sign posts (Pun Intended), there was some improvement around graduation with some good info on schools and congratulatory posts, but that ended rather quickly. We’re back to Date & Time, Affirmations and the Farmer’s Market.
I didn’t see anything about LaPaz’s Sesquicentennial celebration last weekend. There’s been nothing about the Mayor’s Months of Music kicking off at River Park Square in Plymouth. I know there are a lot of other things going on throughout the County we could share.
Locally we have a concert at the park on Saturday. The Park has a movie night on June 23rd. We have calls for Miss Maxinkuckee entrants. The library has programs almost weekly. It’s never too soon to start promoting Lakefest coming up July 14th. There is no reason to ever see the Date & Time on that sign! Ha!
Kids Rule
It often comes up that Marshall County is disadvantaged by not having public transportation. This is one of many “Save the Planet” initiatives and often called out as a CC problem. But I can’t help but wonder how effective it would be when we don’t use the one that’s already in place? I’m talking about School Buses…
I’m not picking on the current generation in school (except for Greta), because this has been an issue for decades. The number of kids on the buses continues to dwindle as the parking lots at schools continue to grow. There’s some justification in the older kids that have extra curriculars and maybe after school jobs, but it doesn’t negate the fact that we have a working public transit system that is largely being abandoned.
To some extent, this appears to be a trained response. Schools are forced to accommodate the “car line” phenomenon, where increasingly, kids at younger ages are dropped off and picked up by a parent. Despite new accommodations, there are still traffic jams around schools in the mornings and late afternoons as parents line up to pick up their kids. Watching from the outside, I don’t see many cases of carpooling in these lines either.
I know a few school administrators that would probably shoot me for pushing more bus use, since they are constantly looking for drivers, but allowing for the personnel problem, the rest of the system is already in place and budgeted. Are there options for creative scheduling to at least accommodate the extracurricular things? Would promoting school bus use for students help stem the tide of personal vehicle use? Could school buses be repurposed during non-school delivery times to serve as public transportation, saving the creation of new infrastructure?
Honestly, I’m not sure how viable public transportation is for rural areas; school buses or otherwise. Even at the size of Plymouth (10,000), I’m not sure there’s sufficient mass to justify the cost, let alone for all of Marshall County. But my point is, if we’re not weaning the next generation off individual car transportation, then it’s not going to matter. If we continue to cater to them, acting as personal chauffeurs for 5-year-olds, and making personal car ownership a right of passage at 16, then the trend won’t be broken. Kids Rule…
++++++++++++++++
For more of my thoughts on school buses, try Commuting Observations.
Electronic Sign Update
At the Culver Town Council meeting Tuesday, the Council voted to allow the High School administration to have access to the electronic sign. The school will be required to follow the Town’s policy on what can be posted, but this should take this off the Clerk’s plate and allow better allocation of this resource, i.e. fewer instances of just Time/Temperature postings.
I think this is a good first step. Adding school functions here is a better allocation of the resource, but if that’s all that’s done, it is still going to be underutilized. As discussed in a previous post, we’re missing the cross-county advertising potential, a Stellar Region goal, as well as missing the visitor events. Hopefully the school will step up and post those events too.
Barring that, I think it would make sense to give Amber Cowell, Executive Director of the Culver Visitor Center, one of these access keys. I would trust her implicitly, but for those who wouldn’t, she is a Town employee, subject to the associated controls that go along with that. I am confident that Amber would make sure all the Culver events were listed. (It would be a literal part of her job.) I am also confident she would take the initiative to get us listed on the surrounding community signs as was the original goal. I truly believe that if we start that kind of networking, it will quickly become a two-way street and the cross-advertising goal will be reached.
Planning Conundrum
Because I can’t say no, and because I generally believe in giving back to the community, I agreed to be on the Subdivision Ordinance Review Committee for Marshall County. (Currently I’m on the Plymouth Comp Plan Committee, (2x) and the Culver Comp Plan Committee (3x)) Marshall County Plan Director, Ty Adley, wisely recognized that the proposed new sewer districts working their way through the County could result in an increase in requests for new subdivisions. Apparently, for the first time in many years, a subdivision application was made last year, alerting him to issues with the old ordinance.
There’s lots to change and I think we can make major improvements. Apparently there have been some updates, but never a rewrite. There are issues where it ventures into Zoning requirements and thus creates some conflicts.
One of the larger discussions at the last meeting was how to balance fairness and good planning when it came to subdivisions that could reasonable be expected to be gateways into additional property. So in Sketch 1 to the right, there are properties A, B, C & D all under separate ownership. Properties A, B & C are of sufficient size to support 15 lots while parcel D could reasonable support 90 lots. The owner of parcel B comes to the county and proposes a 15 lot subdivision. They would be required to access the highway from one point. They would, at a minimum, be required to stub their road to their property line (2) with parcel D, to allow access to that property. If the county determined that they wanted to limit access points to the highway, they would require road stubs connection parcels A & B as well. (road stubs 1 & 3 on the diagram.) This is good planning. Good planning would also suggest that the road connection to the highway be sized to accommodate the potential growth. This might include Accel/Decel lanes, turn lanes and a traffic blister or island. It might include heavier duty pavement specifications due to the anticipated traffic from trash collection trucks, moving vans and the anticipated traffic from the adjacent developments. While the county doesn’t currently have But there’s the rub…
If the county requires the owner of Parcel B to include all of those things because of the potential development on parcel’s A, C & D there are a few possible results:
- The cost per lot of all these improvements will be born by the first 15 lots, in lieu of being spread out over the anticipated 135 lots. This could potentially kill the 15 lot project.
- All of the improvements could be made per county requirements and no development ever happens on parcels A, C & D. Assuming the streets are dedicated to the county, the county is then maintaining infrastructure that isn’t needed.
- Standards change, so if the adjacent parcels do not develop quickly, then there may still be additional work needed, disturbing the current property owners.
- The development plan may change. Generally a temporary cul-de-sac is a reduced version designed to fit within the road right-of-way without a bulge. What happens if it becomes a permanent cul-de-sac because the adjacent property is developed without using that access point?
We didn’t really settle on any solutions, but I will follow up on this post with some potential ideas as I work through them. I think there’s a way to make at least some of this reasonably fair to the initial developer, though it will be hard to make it totally equitable.
MCEDC Annual Report
June 19, 2023
Kevin Berger
Commentary, Marshall County, MCEDC, Sand Hill Farm
Community, Economic Development, Marshall County, Marshall County Crossroads, MCEDC, RIverside Commons, Volunteering
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.
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