Culver

Culver Action Plan

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In October I pressed the Town Council to move forward with an Action Plan to start implementation of the Comprehensive Plan.  Unfortunately the first meeting scheduled was a bust and at the next Council meeting discussion of another meeting got tabled until after the first of the year.  I understood why the Action Plan meeting was put off until after the first of the year, but I think there are discussions that can be had now.  The Town Board, Plan Commission and Redevelopment Commissions are the ultimate arbitrators of how this moves forward.  I put the following thoughts down in an email to chairs of those entities in hopes of getting this moving forward.

  • I pushed this last month because I thought we should develop an interim plan, with the goal of reviewing an action plan in late May or June before budgets are prepared.  I think the Action Plan needs to relate to the budgets, but there are also things that could happen in the next six months that would require time rather than dollars.  The Action Plan should be reviewed and updated annually before budgets.
  • The Action Plan should be part of the jumping off point for the Capital Improvement Plan.  Having a rudimentary Action Plan in place will give Bob and the new Town Manager a jumping off point at the first of the year.
  • The Redevelopment Commission isn’t hamstrung by the annual budget timing, so they could possibly move forward on some spending items that fall in their purview and are suggested by the Action Plan.

Low/No Dollar Action Plan for the next six months: 

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Affordable Housing Task Force

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The Dream of “Affordable Housing”

At a meeting Thursday evening I was asked why MCEDC (Marshall County Economic Development Corporation) is included in the Affordable Housing Task Force for Culver and I didn’t give you the best answer.  Let me see if I can do better here.

One of the things that came from the MCEDC BEAR meetings was the need for more good employees. In the last six months the unemployment rate in Marshall County has dropped another percentage point to 4.5%.  (Doug Anspach, former PEDC Director, used to say that at 4% unemployment everyone that is able and willing to work is working.)  Since no one is stepping up to address this employment issue, we have added “Workforce Development” as one of our four main action items in the MCEDC strategic plan.  Housing is just one of the issues that needs to be addressed under workforce development. 

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Living History Exhibit

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Murphy Veterans Interview FlyerA while back I wrote about my grandfather being interviewed by students from the Weidner School of Inquiry regarding his service in World War II.  The exhibit at the Marshall County Museum that resulted from this is open.  This is a flyer for the Open House a couple of weeks ago.  That’s my grandfather as the poster boy for the event!  Unfortunately my grandfather was recovering from double pneumonia at the time and didn’t get to attend.  Stop by and check it out.  My grandfather turned 100 this year.  There are not many WWII veterans still around.  We need to learn from them and remember them.

 

Culver Comp Plan Implementation Meeting

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As a partial rebuttal to my own post yesterday, I attended the Culver Comprehensive Plan Implementation Meeting on Tuesday night.  This meeting was held at the Depot and was part of Houseal Lavigne‘s contract for preparing the Comprehensive Plan.  Several of us on the initial comprehensive plan steering committee requested that this be included in hopes that the seed would be planted with Town officials on why the plan needs to be a reference document and not something just completed and set aside on a shelf.

Here’s the partial rebuttal part…  The Town Council, Plan Commission, Redevelopment Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals as well as the original Steering Committee were requested to attend.  Drumroll please…  4 0f 5 Town Council members were there, 4 of 9 Plan Commission members were there, 3 of 5 Redevelopment Commission members were there and 2 of 5 Board of Zoning Appeal members were there.  For Culver, that’s a damn fine turnout!  It’s a partial rebuttal because this was the regular night for the Plan Commission and they also had a plat review on their agenda.  There shouldn’t have been any issue getting a quorum there on their regular night!

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