In 2017, when I was serving on the Culver Stellar Committee, I volunteered to set up a Twitter, now X, account to promote Culver and the Stellar activities. Through that, I connected to Madison, Indiana, our sister Stellar Award winner, and many of the State agencies with which we were working. It was something I thought was important at the time, and I was happy to help promote Culver. Since that time, I have put up posts with pictures and reports about Town meetings, sent out promotional things and reposted many of the event announcements that appeared on Town, Gown and Lake. Most of what I see says that marketing should be multifaceted and you should meet your audience where they are. I assume some of them are on X. It wasn’t too onerous, but did take time converting PDFs to JPGs and editing things to the 140 character format. I included some humor here and there, but avoided anything I thought would be controversial.
Apparently I was wrong… Last week the Town said they had received complaints about it being too political. I’m not sure if that’s just because of the Elon controversy and the fact that it is X or if there was something else. (Maybe someone was upset about me reposting Notre Dame Women’s Basketball posts?) They couldn’t tell me what the issue was as this was decided without looking at the site, so it will remain one of life’s mysteries. I have at time posted or reposted things from elected officials, but never from candidates. In any case, I was asked to take the references to the Town off the feed or shut it down. 1) I was doing this as an promotion for the Town and if they don’t want that, I just won’t do it. (Thus this post’s title.) and 2) It’s not worth my time to figure out either of those things, so I made one last post and I’m letting it sit idle.
I’m choosing, mostly, to take this as a time saver for me. I do think it was a positive for Culver or I wouldn’t have continued it. Out of curiosity, I went back and looked and the site had 327 followers, including: News/Talk 95.3 MNC, Michiana Life, Pulaski County Community Foundation, Startup South Bend, INDOT Northwest, The Ron Rubin School for the Entrepreneur, Marshall County LLN, Swan Lake Resort, Anita Goodan (reporter), Purdue Center for Regional Development, Leadership Marshall County, Madison Main Street Program, Argos Hardware, Visit Marshall County, Marshall County Blueberry Festival, Summer Horan ABC57, The Pilot News, The Lakes Magazine, Patronicity, Indiana Philanthropy Alliance, Indiana Bond Bank, Jeff Rea (South Bend Chamber, South Bend Tribune, Economic Outlook), Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs (OCRA), South Bend Elkhart Regional Partnership, US Fish and Wildlife, Hoosier State Chronicles, Suzanne Crouch (former Lt. Gov.), Launch Indy, Max 98.3, Visit Indiana, Marian University, Inside INdiana Business, Indiana Economic Development Corp. (IEDC), AIM, Marshall County EDC and that’s every entity and none of the people. Many of those sites are from outside Culver, so they were seeing Lions Club Pancake Breakfasts, Lakefest calendars, and other events they might not have otherwise seen. Honestly, I don’t know if those are all still active sites, but they were at one time when they chose to connect to Culver. And maybe having that many followers is the problem, since I’ve been so political and controversial! Ha!
Most people don’t know that I was behind the @CulverISstellar site and I mostly took pains to keep it that way. I was doing this as something to give back to the Town. I feel it was an asset to the Town or I wouldn’t have been doing it. As is typical with social media these days, apparently someone couldn’t just scroll on. If there had been a negative comment with someone questioning a post, I would have just taken it down. I hope it was not just at Town control issue, because that would be even more sad. I made 6,547 posts over the last 8 years. With X, it’s hard to tell who is looking unless you’re controversial. I wasn’t.
In any case, this is another end of an era for me. Such is life.
Years ago I was part of a group that went to New Bremen, Ohio. We went there as a delegation from the Culver Chamber of Commerce to meet with Jim Dicke II, to discuss how to turn around Culver and possibly get his assistance. Jim had been instrumental through his company, Crown Equipment, in revitalizing New Bremen. From that small group and the then Culver Chamber Board, the Culver Second Century Committee was born. (More on that another day.) One thing he said in that meeting has stuck with me over the years, “Communities are either growing or dying. There is no such thing as staying status quo.” (I don’t know if it was a personal statement or someone else’s, but I always attribute it to him.) I’ve repeated that over the years in multiple settings. I generally try and attribute it to Jim, but even when I don’t, I’m not too concerned, because it fits with one of my other favorite quotes, “Plagiarism is the Sincerest Form of Flattery.” Which I first saw in a B.C. Comic by Johnny Hart…
In this case, I am asking that question about Marshall County, as one of the first actions of the new County Commissioners was to enact a moratorium on projects that involve Solar Farms, Battery Storage Facilities, Carbon Capture and Data Centers. While I understand some of the arguments about Solar (though I don’t necessarily agree, I’ve discussed that here and here), I am particularly interested here in stopping Data Centers.
Data Centers have been protested in other areas for many reasons. One of them, NYMBYism, seems to be the main one behind these efforts. The protests are not coming from our Amish community, so most of the protestors have cell phones and use the internet. I assume they’re not against them as a concept. I also find that interesting coming from the Commissioners, some of whom have expressed their support for our new President, Donald Trump. In a January 7th press conference, President-elect Trump introduced an investor group, DAMAC, planning to bring $20 billion dollars in data center investment to the U.S. In the speech, he specifically called out Indiana as one of the places to benefit from this investment. Though apparently not Marshall County, per our moratorium.
The others reasons don’t seem to apply or could be controlled. There are complaints from other areas that they use too much power… but that’s what’s drawn them here… our somewhat unique position as a crossroads of power grids. Interestingly, the same reason that the solar farm developers have been drawn here, though for the opposite use, i.e. solar farms uploads power and data centers downloads power. The second complaint is excessive use of water, but that’s been mostly corrected and we don’t have a water shortage here. Also, in other areas they are concerned about the draw on existing water infrastructure, but this moratorium is in the County… which does not have a water system. The third complaint is potential pollution from back-up generators, but again, we’re on a major grid line and if that goes down, there’s a lot more to worry about than back-up generator exhaust! A couple of interesting resources here and here.
The main point here is that we seem to be moving towards an anti-development stance in the county. This despite a new national movement to reduce development impediments, Marshall County seems to be focused on setting up road blocks. I realize that some of this is grassroots, but that doesn’t mean it’s based in facts. It seems to be more based in NIMBYism and lack of knowledge. All of these things would increase our tax base, with minimum disruption to our communities. Yes, they should be researched and possibly controlled, but two years from now, we may lament being passed by.
While a data center wouldn’t employ a lot of people in the long term, it would generate jobs during construction. Once completed, it would be low impact on roads, i.e. no semi-traffic as with other manufacturing. Besides the building itself, they do not use up as much land. They are often taller than our general manufacturing construction, sometimes building 90 feet high. They don’t have larger numbers of regular employees, so no acres of asphalt parking lots. We already have setback requirements, impervious surface requirements and if we don’t want to give exceptions on heights, we have existing height restrictions.
But we currently have a moratorium. So what is our alternative? MCEDC has spearheaded three shell buildings in the past, with what seems to be great success. Are more on the horizon? The last one the building in the Plymouth Industrial park at the SE corner of Pioneer and Jim Neu Drive, which currently houses Divert. It has been occupied since 2022. Is there another in the works? Seems that there should be.
I don’t know what the answer is to the growth question. MCEDC is trying, but it’s hard to do without the County behind them and with headlines that make us seem anti-development. If the County Commissioners and County Council have another plan, I haven’t heard it yet. Hopefully they have something in mind. Because Communities are either growing or dying and I don’t think they want to preside over the latter.
Edit: Yesterday, January 28th, 2025, I attended the PIDCO Annual meeting. The guest speakers were from NIPSCO. The topic of data centers came up as well as wind & solar. Several things of note were mentioned that I thought were worth adding here:
I’m always amazed when I see snow covered solar panels. Even some of of the ground mounted panels that are at a significant angle during the winter months often have snow clinging to them. In the case of the Culver home in the picture to the right, not only is there a reasonable angle on the panels that you would think would let the snow slide off, but you can see that the snow has melted off the rest of the roof around them. How is it staying on the black solar panels!?
So, I have a few ideas about this:
Someone is missing a good opportunity here. Maybe Elon is already working on this, but if he isn’t, he should be…
Indiana used to be as smart as Arizona, but Mitch Daniels dumbed us down. Or as those of us in Marshall County remember, put us on Heim Time…
DST – 2025
March 10, 2025
Kevin Berger
Commentary, Humor, Personal, Rants, Tips
DST, government, Humor, Rants
How do I feel? Pretty much as crappy as the Daylight Savings Time (DST) change always makes me feel. To add insult to injury, we were at a conference in Vancouver, Washington, the end of last week and just got back yesterday, so DST got multiplied by the three hour time difference to make it all the more fun!
I know President Trump has made some comments about ending DST. I have a little bit of hope that the nonsense could end. Marco Rubio is in the cabinet and as Senator, he championed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would do away with DST. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement surely would support this as well, considering the negative health effects related to DST, i.e. increased heart attacks and strokes.
As always, this is your warning to give me a little leeway for the next week or so. I’ll be grumpy (grumpier) in the morning as my internal clock is slow to reset.
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