Rants

Build Your Future Indiana

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Build Your Future Indiana CoverLest anyone think I know when to stop beating a dead horse, I thought I would share some pictures from the Build Your Future Indiana guide. It’s sponsored by Associated Buildings and Contractors of Indiana/Kentucky and as a Board Member, I received a copy at a meeting last week. The guide promotes construction as a career in Indiana. (I plan to share my copy with Jerry Chavez at MCEDC the next time I see him.) It gives job descriptions and base wages for careers in various construction trades.

Build Your Future Indiana BackOne of the things that currently is a problem in Indiana is finding construction workers. We need to encourage young people that the construction industry is a viable career and educate them that it is a career with potential, but one that requires mental as well as physical skills.

So about that poor horse… I’ve reprinted the rear cover of the guide to the right. Notice the Wind Turbines in the background? Seems that when I go to most other areas of the State, they’re proud of Indiana’s alternative energy initiatives. But not Marshall County… Even though we have people that work in the wind conversion industry living in our county and manufacturing parts for the industry in our county.

Build Your Future Indiana Wind Turbine TechMost pages in the guide have three trades per page. The Wind Turbine Maintenance Tech gets his own page and apparently around $46k per year. Sounds like it could be a sweet gig!

Okay, I’ve beat the poor beast enough. As if I hadn’t beat him enough here and here and here. Feel free to search for “turbine” in the search box on the right if you want more. Try “Extended Territorial Boundary” if you want to see me get really wound up!. No guaranties that I won’t run across something else that warrants a rant about this, but the poor horse could be an extra on The Walking Dead at this point…

DST – Another Washington Boondoggle

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Image borrowed from www.hudsonhorizons.com

So here we are starting another round of Daylight Savings Time Hell.    I can walk around the house and move all the clocks forward by an hour, but my internal clock doesn’t reset that easily.  I’ll be grumpy in the morning for the next couple of weeks.

In a previous post here, I discuss learning that most countries don’t participate in the DST sham.  So why should it surprise me that Washington would jump on the band wagon for this program?  It even has a typical, false advertising name like so much Washington legislation.  Daylight Savings Time…  There are no savings with this…  It’s just a compressed version of Robbing Peter To Pay Paul that is a signature of so much that comes out of Washington.  Can you say Affordable Care Act?  What about the Social Security Lockbox that doesn’t exist to save the money currently being  put into the program.  Like I said… I’m grumpy…

Marshall County Vision (Culver Thoughts)

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I was very pleased with the turn out Saturday for MCEDC’s presentation on Marshall County Vision.  There was good participation and good support.  When the discussion turned to Regional Cities, I didn’t see much enthusiasm.  That concerns me.  Whenever I speak to anyone about Culver’s place in Regional Cities I get one of two responses (Or sometimes a combination of both.):

  1. We don’t have enough information to do anything yet.
  2. We don’t have much chance of getting any of the money.  What little comes to Marshall County will go to Plymouth.

First off, we should acknowledge how fortunate we are.  Out of seven regions, we were selected as one of the top three.  Then it was decided to award to the top three in lieu of just the top two as originally planned.  The scuttlebutt is that we were number three and   And then think about Kosciusko County.  They are probably kicking themselves right now.  They were invited to be part of our region, but instead decided they would be better served being part of the Fort Wayne Region.  Now instead of being one of four Counties dividing up $42 million they are one of thirteen!

But Marshall County and the Marshall County communities needs to get off our collective butts and start figuring out how we can benefit from this.  We are starting out at a disadvantage.  The other two Counties in our region, St. Joseph and Elkhart, have dedicated staff that are working on this.  The cities of South Bend, Mishawaka and Elkhart have City Engineers that they can dedicate to this.  Marshall County doesn’t have the equivalent staff put on this.  We’re going to have to overcome that in order to move things forward if we don’t want negative attitude #2 above to come to fruition.

As far as the lack of information goes, everyone in the three winning regions is in the same boat.  Are they just sitting and waiting?  The Fort Wayne region has CEDIT.  (Remember how we’re one of the few counties in northern Indiana that doesn’t have CEDIT?)  They are down at the State House lobbying for the ability to raise their CEDIT in order to have the extra funds needed to fully fund their matching $42 million.  It doesn’t sound like they’re sitting on the sidelines waiting for more information…

My thought process is that “planning” costs very little.  The County needs to convene a meeting with the communities and work through prioritizing their projects.  Rather than working on these tasks individually, we can maybe pool resources and make the most of what we have.  Additional “shell buildings” are included for several communities.  How about we sit down and look at Plymouth’s shell building as a model.  Do we want to duplicate that?  Probably not.  So what do we want to change?  We can talk to land owners and try and tie down sites.  We can get contractor estimates.  None of that costs money, but any of that time spent now would move things ahead.  Ditto for the Entrepreneurial Hubs.  We could be determining locations.  Talking to other communities that have them and figuring out the good and bad.  Getting contractor estimates.  This thinking could apply to all of the projects on the original submittal.

Culver is on the list for both of the above items plus a few more.  Jerry Chavez and MCEDC thinks Culver may have the best opportunities to advance these things.  Opportunity is knocking.  Or as Jerry is fond of saying, “The economic development train is passing right by us.  It’s our obligation to flag down that train.  It’s not going to stop here of it’s own volition.”

State of the Union – Two Empty Seats

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I wrote about my distaste for the State of the Union address last year at this time in a post here.  This year is shaping up to be no less the embarrassing spectacle.  Listening to the Sunday morning news shows yesterday, I heard that President Obama is planning to leave two seats empty, to which I say, “Good Start!”  Maybe if they were all empty this sham would be recognized for what it is and it would be the last one we had to endure.

The quote to the right is from an article by Kevin D. Williamson, written for the National Review, titled Great Caesar’s Ghost.  If you’re interested in reading it, I’ve linked it here.  It’s a couple of years old, but still worthwhile.