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.
Through my position on the MCEDC (Marshall County Economic Development Corporation) board, I have met Regina Emberton, President and CEO of the Michiana Partnership. Michiana Partnership is a regional organization that includes Marshall County and they are involved with marketing our area.
She shared the forum information below regarding IEDC‘s (Indiana Economic Development Corporation) promotion of their Regional Cities Initiative. It’s not something I can attend, but I thought it was worth sharing here.
I truly believe the old adage that “A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats”. We need to work together as a region to grow our economy and our fate is at least peripherally tied to the success of South Bend/Mishawaka.
INDIANA REGIONAL CITIES FORUM
November 21, 2014
10:00 – 11:30 a.m.
Gillespie Conference Center at the Hilton Garden Inn
53995 Indiana 933
South Bend, IN 46637
The Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) is holding regional forums across the state to discuss the governor’s Regional Cities Initiative and key findings from the study that benchmarks peer cities around the nation.
We are relying on you as leaders in your communities to invite others who should also attend. You can do so by simply forwarding this invitation. The types of individuals in your community who may wish to attend could include school superintendents, college/university leaders, Rotary and other volunteer groups, chambers of commerce and other business groups, elected officials, community foundations, religious leaders, arts organizations, economic development professionals, and other civic or business leaders. All are welcome to this meeting.
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!
Monday night I went to the regularly scheduled meeting of the Culver Redevelopment Commission at 5:00 at the Culver Town Hall. I arrived to find the door locked. I looked at the notice on the bulletin board and it stated that the regularly scheduled meeting had been changed to 4:00 and that they had added a joint meeting with the Town Council which they had moved to the Culver Library at 5:00.
As I’ve said here before I tend to cut volunteer board members a lot of slack. They give a lot of time and often only receive slings and arrows from the public in return. I don’t think that’s an excuse for making public participation difficult. My position as Culver’s representative on the Marshall County Economic Development Corporation Board means that my representation there is closely tied to the work the redevelopment commission does. I attend almost every meeting of the redevelopment commission. It is on my calendar to be there on the third Monday at 5:00. It frustrates me to no end when I make a special effort to be at a meeting only to find that they moved the meeting, with private discussion between meetings. I’m not special. They don’t have to let me know. But I think it’s disrespectful and says something about their relationship with MCEDC. While they have fulfilled the letter of the law by posting it on the bulletin board at the Town Hall I also feel it does a disservice to the community. There is also a page on that same bulletin board listing all of the regularly scheduled meetings. If someone other than myself had gone down to see when the next meeting was, read that list and didn’t check later to see that the meeting had been rescheduled they would have been standing out there fuming like myself.
It appears that Culver will be without a Town Manager again. Dave Schoeff‘s resignation was announced in the Culver Citizen last week. Our track record on retention for this position hasn’t been great, but I think good things have come from this position and I hope the Council will move quickly to fill it.
I have been involved with the Town Manager issue from the beginning. I was involved with the Culver Second Century Committee through the Mary Means & Associates Needs Assessment and the Ratio Architects Charrette (1998). The subject of a Town Manager was discussed in both of these. When the first Town Manager was hired, a task force was formed including Town personnel and members of the public. I was one of the latter. Other task force members included Chandra Meavis (Town Clerk), Russ Mason (Councilman) and Lance Overmyer (Fire Chief).
The task force spent a considerable amount of time doing an internal assessment. I have to admit that I was skeptical that it could work in Culver, but after listening to presentations from three different Town Managers from area communities of a similar size, I was swayed to believe that Culver could truly benefit from the creation of this position. What made the difference for me was that two of the Town Managers that we interviewed had no formal training in government, but were good managers and were extremely effective in organizing their respective towns to run better because of this.
The task force took on the creation of a job description and the creation of a chain-of-command hierarchy. We also defined the function of the department liaisons, something that was a carry over from before we had a Town Manager. From there we wrote the ads for the position and culled the applicants down to three. At that point, the Town Council joined us in interviewing the final three applicants and our first Town Manager, Mr. Jeffrey Sheridan, was selected. The task force was disbanded at that point. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake. Our experience in researching and defining the position may have been useful in working with the new Town Manager and the Town Council in order to make the position successful. Since I was not a Council Member, I was not briefed on all the “problems” that led to Mr. Sheridan leaving, but at least some of those problems regarded issues that we thought we had settled. (Jeff went on to serve as the Town of Cumberland Town Manager for 8 years and is currently the Tipton County Economic Development Director.)
Since that time we have had four other Town Managers bringing the total to 5 in 10 years. All resigned for different reasons. All five Town Managers advanced the agenda of the Town and were able to accomplish things that part-time Council Members cannot be expected to handle. In the time before and between Town Managers, much of the administrative work has fallen on the Clerk Treasurer. This is not fair to the Clerk Treasurer as they have other responsibilities and often their need to work with the employees and the Council makes it difficult to also wear the hat of “manager”.
I’m concerned that the limited retention rate of Town Managers in Culver will affect our ability to hire another. From past experience, the task of replacing the town manager has been tedious and slow. In the interim, projects languish and at times past advancements are lost. Hopefully the Council has already begun advertising the position.
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 
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The task force took on the creation of a job description and the creation of a chain-of-command hierarchy. We also defined the function of the