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Librarians Need Your help
I have a good friend who is a Librarian. She shared this with me. I have a sister-in-law that is a Library Director. We have done work many libraries throughout this area where the Librarian or Library Director are friends from our past work together. This is an important issue for Libraries and you should consider contacting your legislator about it.
The flier above gives information for legislators in Pulaski County. Since most of my lurkers are from Marshall County, our State Senators are:
Ryan Mishler if you’re a resident of District 9 in NE Marshall County
200 W. Washington St.
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Phone: 800-382-9467
or 317-232-9400
Email: Senator.Mishler@iga.in.gov
Mike Bohacek if you’re a resident of District 8 for the remainder of Marshall County
200 W. Washington St.
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Phone: 800-382-9467
or 317-232-9400
Email: Senator.Bohacek@iga.in.gov
And our State Representatives are:
Jack Jordan if you’re a resident of District 17, which covers the majority of Marshall Count
200 W. Washington St.
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Phone: 800-382-9841 or 317-232-9651
Email: H17@iga.in.gov
Jake Teshka if you’re a resident of District 7, which covers a small part of Marshall County west of LaPaz
200 W. Washington St.
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Phone: 800-382-9841 or 317-232-9981
Email: H7@iga.in.gov
App Anxiety
Like almost everyone I know, I’ve become a cell phone junkie. That said, I hate to talk on the damn thing. I’ve considered stealing a voice mail message I heard once: “Hello. This is Kevin’s phone. If this could be a text, hang up and text me. if you absolutely must leave a message, I’ll listen to it… eventually… and maybe decide to reply. if it’s still relevant by then…” To paraphrase Gary Gulman, the phone is just a seldom used app on my phone and if you call me on it, I’m immediately mad. How dare you!?!
I use the camera on my phone… though not for the selfies that most people do. I generally am using it for work. I’m a big fan of Twitter. I’m currently managing 6 twitter accounts and I strive to change the voice of each. I use Instagram… and Facebook… but mainly because I think I need to for work. If I know it’s your Birthday, I’ll probably send you a text. I don’t do the smarmy, self-congratulatory Facebook wall posts. Facebook is way to saccharin for me. I prefer the sarcasm of Twitter and I’ve recently found Reddit which I like as well. Reddit can be REALLY harsh… And those people are darkly funny!
Despite my love of the technology and the wild west of Twitter and Reddit, I’ve always had concerns. All the stories of scams and phishing concern me. Some are overblown, but when you’re offered a “flashlight” app that requests access to your contacts… well, that just doesn’t seem right.
So when our government tells me that TikTok is full of spyware, I don’t have a lot of trouble believing that. They have banned it on all Federal government devices. Even Indiana has banned it on State devices. While I’ve watched more than a few TikTok videos sent to me by friends, I have no desire to add that app to my phone. Yes, I’m pretty boring, but I still value at least a little bit of my privacy. As attested above, I rarely give out my cell phone number because I don’t want calls on it, but I’m starting to get more and more calls on it and a lot of spam calls on it. Is that because people I know are downloading TicTok and “Flashlight” apps and giving access to their contacts? Is that how my number is getting out there?
Even with all the warnings, use doesn’t seem to be going down. TikTok remains the trendy thing. I am disappointed that institutions that should know better continue to push it. We attend the Notre Dame Women’s Basketball games and they do a TikTok challenge. Often they’re bringing little girls out to watch videos made by the players and asking them to emulate them. You know that those kids immediately want to have the app and be like the big girls they idolize… I was at a local town meeting and a young (20’s) participant said that Culver needs to expand their social media presence to include TikTok. She said that she was embarrassed to admit that she, like many in her generation, is on the app 2 or more hours a day. This is someone I consider smart and with her drive, she has a bright future. Is she at risk because she has things on TikTok that could come back to stymie a future political career or job opportunity? Not that there isn’t a risk of that with any social media, but we’ve been told that this TikTok is specifically harvesting information for a hostile foreign government. If reports are correct, Chinese children on the app are bombarded with STEM encouragement. American children are bombarded with mindless drivel and worse, things that are causing body dysmorphia and the resultant depression. That’s problematic.
I guess this isn’t too surprising when millions of Americans are sending off DNA samples to trace their ancestry, despite the accompanying sign-offs that say the company can do what they want with the DNA information provided. How much more personal can you get? At what point will that information be available to employers, insurance companies, divorce lawyers and others that may use it to harm us? At what point will it become common place enough that it’s required? Will the history questionnaire at the Doctor be replaced by a tube to spit into, at which point they’ll know anything they want about you and your ancestors?
As with anything, it is the camel’s nose under the tent… And doesn’t that metaphor really shows this has gone on forever!?! Bad things would be stopped if they happened all at once, but work up to them bit by bit and most people will go along.
Remote Workers
Inside Indiana Business reported that three Indiana Cities took positions in the Wall Street Journal’s list of Top Ten Places for Remote Workers: Evansville was #3, Lafayette was #5 and Fort Wayne was #10. The topic of remote workers comes up often at the Culver Crossroads meetings. While Culver has done a lot to become attractive to remote workers, I’m not sure we’ve done much to actually attract remote workers.
Culver saw a lot of remote workers during the pandemic. Not surprising that a community of second homes became a desirable location to shelter-in-place. One advantage that Culver had over the cities listed above (for sheltering in place) was our small size. We have many of the necessary amenities without the large population. We undoubtedly missed an opportunity to capture more of those remote workers.
While we have boosted our amenities, we can’t compete with small city amenities such as colleges. (Though to some extend, Culver Academies fills a lot of that gap. That’s not necessarily obvious to someone looking in from the outside.) What we should do is promote our proximity to these. Two of the above cities, Lafayette and Fort Wayne, are within 75 miles of Culver. Lafayette gives us proximity to Purdue. South Bend and Notre Dame are 45 miles away. Chicago is only 76 miles away! Michigan Wine Country is only 76 miles away. We’re only 100 miles of Indianapolis. Yet we only continue to promote Culver as a destination. The Culver Visitors Center promotes itself as Find Culver.
What if we were to also promote Culver as a hub? Marshall County Economic Development Corporation has been doing this with manufacturers for years, pointing out the manufacturing centers and vast population within a 200 mile radius of Marshall County. (One of those interesting statistics is that there are more people within 200 miles of Marshall County, IN than within 200 miles of Atlanta, GA.)
I know we’re still working on things and there are some issues, such as broadband, yet to be solved, but I don’t think it’s too soon to talk about why Culver is a great place to live, not just a great place to visit. This is an across the board thing. Look at the sign CabinetWorks has promoting working in Culver (above) and the image from their website promoting Culver itself (right). How do we extend their suggestion of working in Culver to living in Culver. Culver assisted Sand Hill Farm Apartments and The Paddocks bringing in workforce housing. They are in the process of helping two other developers bring in upper income housing. Is it possible to broaden the Culver Visitors Center’s mission to include finding new residents, not just visitors?
Construction Career Month in Indiana
Governor Holcomb has declared October “Construction Career Month“. It’s great to see this recognized, but we at Easterday Construction Co., Inc. (ECC) promote this year in and year out.
Over the years, we have sent dozens of employees to various forms of construction training in order to advance their careers. This has varied from National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) accredited Apprenticeship Training through Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) to leadership seminars to task certifications, such as welding to various safety training events. We believe strongly in helping our employees advance their careers.
Over the years, we have also participated in Culver Community Middle School Career Days. It has been interesting having the opportunity to spark interest in the construction trades, dispelling myths and touting benefits. One of my favorite things, that seemed to garner interest, was to point out that with a successful career in construction, you can drive through your community and see the results of your efforts in the building projects with which you’ve been involved. In my case, there are four generations of Easterday Construction projects in Culver and the surrounding communities.
One class was particularly memorable as it had a student that was a daughter of one our our superintendents. Not only did she listen raptly, I heard that she repeated my presentation at home. It was obvious she was proud of the work her father performed. While these kids are too young to be concerned with the financial side of obtaining a higher education, they were generally surprised to hear that construction offered a career path with similar outcomes to many college degrees. Hopefully, sometime in the future, this will make them think hard about taking on college debt. Maybe they’ll come to see me to talk about the advantages of construction apprenticeship… where ECC picks up the cost of their education.
Our Customers Say…
MacKenzie Ledley - Executive Director, Pulaski County Public Library
Planning Conundrum
March 20, 2023
Kevin Berger
Commentary, Marshall County, Tips
Community, government, Tips, Trends, Volunteering
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:
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.
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