Community

Ginny Munroe – Soaring Eagle

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Last Thursday evening Becky and I were pleased to be invited to attend the ceremonial dinner where Ginny Munroe was awarded the LaSalle Council of the Boy Scouts of America Soaring Eagle Award. This award is given to individuals who have been successful in their field of endeavor and have demonstrated integrity, a record of volunteer leadership, and service to youth and their community. Soaring Eagle Award honorees are people who have been unselfish in their service to others on an individual and community basis.  They seek no return for their service, other than satisfaction of aiding their fellow citizens,  their community and their nation. Ginny definitely deserves the recognition for what she’s done for Culver and recently extended to Marshall County.

Ginny and I didn’t really know each other before she joined the Culver Town Council, but since that time we have counseled each other and collaborated on things. We have a mutual respect that has only become more important to me as it has grown. I have continued to tell her that she is leaving a legacy in Culver for which she can be proud. And as is her way, she demures from that.

From her first term on the Town Council, Ginny was motivated to make things happen. She wanted to move the town forward; often fighting the opposition that wanted things to stay the same. I related to her more than once what Jim Dicke had told the Culver Chamber of Commerce years ago; to paraphrase, “Towns are either growing are dying. They cannot stay the same.” Ginny embodied that push for growth. She quickly formulated a plan that included early infrastructure improvements that prepared Culver for other moves forward. When I was pushing the Plan Commission to do a new Comprehensive Plan, she quickly grasped the value and made it the next priority. Then unlike most community leaders, she took that plan, held additional meetings and created a Strategic Action Plan to implement the things the Comp Plan recommended. Most communities let their Comp Plan sit on a shelf, unused and seldom referenced. Ginny has made Culver’s Comp Plan obsolete by completing a majority of the action items and making progress on many of the aspirational items as well.

One of her initiatives that I’m most familiar with was the formation of committee that came to be known as the Entry-Level Housing Committee. For decades, affordable housing has been a problem in Culver and it has only gotten worse. The Comp Plan noted this as a recognized need. Businesses can’t find help and full-time residents are being priced out of the market. I joined that committee as a contractor, with interests in construction, but due to Ginny’s energy and the lack of others stepping up, she motivated me to become a developer! As a step forward in this, MCEDC arranged for me to meet with Bill Konyha, then head of the Indiana Office of Community Development and Rural Affairs (OCRA). He suggested that Culver pursue the recently created small community competition for Stellar designation. When we brought this back to Ginny, she seized it as a great way to move Culver forward, not just in the initial goal of affordable housing, but for community wide improvements. I believe that Culver’s loss in their attempt to win Stellar in 2016 was as much due to politics as anything else, but despite some initial hesitancy, Ginny recommitted Culver to achieving Stellar Designation in 2017. And while working on resubmittals, she moved the Town forward on two of the 2016 projects, the Damore Amphitheatre and the Sand Hill Farm Apartments. I believe that demonstration of “working the plan” made a difference in Culver’s competitiveness and and success in achieving Stellar Designation in 2017.

Marshall County Stellar was a different challenge. OCRA asked Ginny to step up for this because of Culver’s success. She did this while in the middle of a half dozen Culver Stellar projects. Despite the advances made by County Development for the Future, there was still a competitiveness between the communities in Marshall County that didn’t always allow collaboration. Too often, individuals tried to take control or take credit or conversely work against others, rather than letting group collaboration work as it should. Ginny was able to see the problems that caused the first loss and massage the group into a successful second attempt. It was extremely disheartening at the Marshall County Stellarbration when Ginny’s contributions (as well as others) were misappropriated to undeserving individuals. Obviously Marshall County still has issues to overcome.

When Ginny was considering the move to Culver Town Manager, she asked for my thoughts. I was mixed on this. I was concerned that the Town Council would suffer without her leadership and I wasn’t sure that she would be as effective leading from behind. I was also concerned for Ginny, who I consider a natural leader, not being able to lead. So far, my concerns have been mostly unfounded and Ginny has continued to help move Culver forward. Again, she is adding to her Culver Legacy. The Soaring Eagle award is much deserved…

Kevin

Roger Umbaugh

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Easterday Construction lost another good friend last week. Roger Umbaugh passed away Thursday evening, August 5th. (Obituary here.) We completed several projects for Roger at his home on 12th Road, including a re-siding project with Mary Ellen Rudisell. That was one of those projects that could have become contentious as it seemed that every day we would find a new underlying problem that we couldn’t foresee. The home was a RT house that Roger’s father had constructed and that designer/builder had a reputation that his homes were guaranteed to leak. It was a cool home though! Roger and Carol took the odd construction discoveries and issues in stride.

Personally, I really became friends with Roger when we were tapped to start the Marshall County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) in 2007. Roger was asked to do this by Kevin Overmyer as a representative of Marshall County. I represented the town of Culver. At first meeting of the group, Roger forgot to invite me! He followed up, apologized, and we went out to dinner with our wives, Carol & Becky, so he could bring me up to speed. That went so well and we all got along so well, that it became a regular thing. We rarely went more than a month without a night out together and one year we vacationed with them at their cabin in Pagosa Springs, CO.

Roger and I shared a sense of pragmatism and impatience that fortunately wasn’t turned against each other too often. (No relationship is perfect, ha!) We both were officers for MCEDC nearly our whole tenure there. For better or worse, we went through 4 executive directors. In the end, the issues caused by the last one under our tenure became too stressful for Roger and he had to step down. I had stepped down a couple months prior to that and Roger said that played into his decision as it wasn’t as much fun without us there together.

Marshall County Philanthropy Center
Roger helped make this building possible.

Roger left a legacy at MCEDC as a founding member, but at times that legacy was as much in his support role as when he was out in front. He was my vice chair when I chaired the organization. When I wanted to gather the communities together to foster better understanding and cooperation, he worked behind the scenes to help me. That became the quarterly County Development for the Future (CDFF) meetings, which made Culver Stellar designation and Marshall County Stellar designation possible. I don’t know that I could have made those county meetings happen without his help. He was also the one that made the New Market Tax Credit project happen. Without him, the financing of the pool and the new building for the Marshall County Community Foundation (MCCF) would never have happened. It was his knowledge and contacts with the State that made it viable. These are just a couple of the things that I was closely tied with and can relate. I know there are many others. But Roger wasn’t one to want credit. He was just happy to see the groups he supported succeed.

We remained friends after MCEDC, kabitzing from the sidelines. We also served on the MCCF Investment Committee together, so our civic service together continued to the end. We continued to have nights out together though the last couple of years they were fewer due to Covid and Roger’s health issues. Both of these fueled his impatience. He never liked dealing with things he couldn’t affect!

Thanks for all the great times, wonderful support and unending wisdom, Roger!

Kevin

Elkay Visits Sand Hill Farm Apartments

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One of Elkay’s crews at the Sand Hill Farm Apartments Site Visit October 16, 2018

Earl Lilly, Plant Manager of Elkay Wood Products in Culver, brought a large contingency of Elkay employees to observe the cabinets going in at Sand Hill Farm Apartments this past Tuesday. Representatives of several divisions that worked on these cabinets were there including engineering, scheduling, production & shipping. They often don’t get to see their products in place, so this was a great opportunity to see a large installation underway just a block from the plant. Steve Deford of Deford Kitchens, the cabinetry installer for the project, was onsite to discuss how the installation was going. The installation is going well!

It was great to see some of the people that work in our community and could potentially be future residents at Sand Hill Farm Apartments at the site. The optics of the private/public partnership that occurred here was instrumental in Culver’s success in the Stellar Communities program. Elkay Wood Products and Easterday Construction Co., Inc. helped developer Culver Sand Hill Farm, LLC step up to the challenge of creating affordable housing for the Town.

Shelby Harrell, editor of the Culver Citizen, was on site to document the event. Her article appeared in The Pilot News on October 18, 2018. (See the article to the right.) The exposure can only help the project’s success. We count this as part of the community effort to see more entry-level housing in Culver. Thanks Shelby!

Unfortunately progress is currently impeded by the late start on the street. Lack of utilities is slowing us down and may force a stop soon. Currently we’re moving 5 gallon buckets of water to the site from our office in order to keep working. NIPSCO could not bring gas and electric to the building without the completion of street utilities. The furnaces are ready but can’t be fired without gas and electric, so we’ve started providing temporary heat with space heaters in order to keep things warm enough for the various sealants, adhesives and paint needed to finish out the project. The fire sprinkler system is full of water and in danger of freezing with the cold nights we’ve been having.

The lack of fire protection is also a concern, since the sprinkler system has water in it within the building, but does not have a hook up to the Town water system yet. The fire hydrants that serve the building currently have no connections. We’ve been assured these things will be available soon.

Dress Appropriately

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“Dress Appropriately” is the two word dress code at General Motors according to this article. In our current litigious society, where it appears HR department attorney’s are compensated by the word, I found this reduction to basics fascinating. It’s also refreshing to find that it seems to be working for them.

A friend from a larger company related struggles they had with trouble makers finding loopholes in their policies. One example he cited was an employee that objected to their policy that everyone wear hard hats. In protest, the employee childishly wore a hard hat strapped to his knee, citing the policy back to them that he was indeed wearing a hard hat. He would have had a hard time defending his action as dressing appropriately.

I don’t know if this is a solution to all things, but it refreshing to see the move to put responsibility for common sense back on employees, rather than treating them as imbeciles. As the article suggests, employees can, and should be expected to, think on their own… to do the right thing… to use common sense…

I am fortunate to have good people working here that I can trust to do the right thing… the appropriate thing… 99% of the time. That other 1%? We all have lapses in judgement, but they’re generally small and self-correcting after some good natured ribbing from their peers. “______ appropriately” could well be the correct policy for a multitude of things that fit in that blank.

 

Image borrowed from Keep Calm-O-Matic. You can purchase their products here.