Politics

Meeting with Jackie Walorski

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Representative Jackie Walorski

On Tuesday April 30 I was invited to a meeting with Jackie Walorski at the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce.  There was some interesting discussion (more than what was printed in the paper) but I was disappointed in the participation.  I know that invitations were sent to the other Community Chambers and there were no other representatives there.  Of those in attendance only three of us brought up issues for the congresswoman’s consideration, despite her obvious willingness to answer questions and work on issues.  This was a follow up on a meeting she held at the Plymouth Chamber in January which I attended, and I have to say I was impressed that not only did she remember me, but she came back with answers to some of the questions I posed then.

There were only about four of us that put questions in front of the congresswoman and because of lulls where no one else asked anything, I actually put three in front of her.  She was receptive and honest, when she didn’t know she said she would find out and get back to us.  I don’t think we can ask for any more than that.

As much as I am disappointed in the goings on in Washington, I felt that the interest from Congresswoman Walorski was refreshing and was a counterpoint to the disinterest from those that bothered to come.

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Who should lead?

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I was invited to attend a work session of the Culver Town Council last night.  The work session was the result of the efforts of MCEDC to energize Marshall County communities to plan and prepare for growth.  Unfortunately last night’s meeting degenerated into random complaints from various attendees about some Culver boards and commissions with very little positive discussion or resolution.  I had invited Jay Bahr, MCEDC‘s new Executive Director, to attend this meeting and was somewhat embarrassed.  It wasn’t exactly what I would have liked him to see with his first introduction to Culver’s leaders.

Image borrowed from Aliexpress.comIn February, MCEDC held our first County-wide economic development summit with attendees representing all of the communities in Marshall County.  As a result of that meeting I had met with several Culver Town Council Members to see what action steps could be taken. My thoughts on this involved encouraging the Town Council to be the pointy head of the spear.  In other words, set an agenda for growth and improvement and pass that mandate down to the boards and commissions that serve beneath them.  Theoretically, the Town Council is the elected body that represents the people and through them the citizen’s will should be enacted by the appointed boards and commissions.  Without a cohesive plan of action to implement, the boards and commissions either proceed on their own agendas or in some cases are rudderless and accomplish no agenda.

There has been some progress.  Retention meetings have been held with Elkay and discussions have been had regarding how to make Culver more accessible to business.  All positive steps, but ones without a cohesive goal.

Image borrowed from Granitegrok.comThe Comprehensive Plan will fill part of this need, but it needs the will of the citizens and their elected officials, the Town Council, to be reflected in that.  Even though completion of the Comprehensive Plan is as much as a year away, the Town Council needs to be gearing up towards implementation and as I’ve tried to express to them, the Comprehensive Plan process can’t be an excuse for doing nothing now.

Last night’s meeting showed a lack of respect for the Town Council’s position of authority in the Town.  It was a good step towards leadership, but it’s clear that they are going to need to TAKE their leadership back.  There will be no shortage of complaints, but complaints don’t fill the leadership void.  Culver’s unofficial motto has always been “Change is bad even when it’s change for the better”.  The Town Council needs to ignore that and be the instigator of change.  Change for the better…

Tax Freedom Day

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I know that National Tax Freedom Day is somewhat randomly calculated, but I think it’s a good exercise to remind us of the cost of government.  Unfortunately, I didn’t hear much about its passing yesterday.  Are we getting immune to it?  According to the Heritage Foundation it was five days later this year due to the fiscal cliff negotiations.  The Tax Foundation breaks the number of days to pay each tax into calendar days.  That’s a bit sobering too.  Hit the “read more” button to see their chart.

As Hoosiers, we can take heart in the fact that we’re only the 25th most taxed State, so our Tax Freedom Day was actually April 13th according to the Star Press.  It was hard to celebrate this Saturday when I was still finalizing my 2012 taxes to mail out on the 15th…

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Letter to the Editor

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I shared some of my rants regarding the changes to the zoning boundary with Jeff Kenney of the Culver Citizen and he suggested that I send him a letter to the editor on the subject.  I am a little freer with my writing here in the blog since I know my audience is different, so I wrote a separate Letter to the Editor and cleaned up my prose a bit.  Hopefully it will encourage people to get involved and do some of the research themselves.  My earlier piece included all of the links and drawings, so I’ve made it easy for anyone to follow my research.  What do you think?

PS – If anyone can tell me why I lose my paragraph breaks on text I cut & paste into a post, let me know!  Drives me nuts!  It looks right in the editor and then loses the spaces between paragraphs when it posts…  I guess I’ll go old-school and add indents…

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Two Mile Zoning Boundary (cont.)

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facepalm
Face Palm…

I went home pretty frustrated last night.  I had shared my previous post on the Two Mile Zoning Boundary with the Town Council and Plan Commission last week.  I am also on the Steering Committee for the Plymouth Comprehensive Plan review and attended that meeting Monday evening.  (6:00 until 9:45!  Sheesh!)  The topic of the Two Mile Zoning Boundary came up and there was a lively discussion.  Yesterday I sent the following email to the Town Council and Plan Commission ahead of the Plan Commission meeting last night:

All,
 
I attended last night’s Plymouth Comprehensive Plan review on behalf of MCEDC.  One of the items that Jackie Turner with Ratio Architects had in the draft plan was ceding some extra territorial control back to the County. I questioned why this would ever be considered as the extended territorial control was there to allow the municipality to control its destiny.  She replied that if Plymouth was looking at the plan as a 10 year document, then they might want to divest themselves of the burden of supervising areas that weren’t planned for annexation in the next 10 years.  I asked why a municipality would EVER want to cede control to the county and shouldn’t our vision be for 50 years, not just 10?  I then asked about problems with residential development surrounding industrial areas making expansion difficult, the problem with subdivisions just outside the territorial boundary which used services, but did not pay for them (fire, police, parks, etc.) and and the difficulties of leapfrogging areas that had been developed that resisted annexation to serve new development or other older developments that needed services. This started a rather spirited response from Plymouth departmental staff naming specific instances where this is already a problem. 
 
Ms. Turner agreed with my points for the most part, saying she was just giving that as an option to be considered as part of the comprehensive planning process. She said there still may be areas of no growth where Plymouth might want to consider this, but all the points I made need to be considered before making that decision.
 
I’m paraphrasing the discussion above, but I double checked it with Brent Martin who was also in attendance. Ralph Booker was there also. One of the big points I think Culver should take from this is that determining the extended territorial boundary is a discussion that should be had as part of the Comprehensive Planning process. There is no reason that we can’t put this off until our planning process is complete.
 
Kevin
After sending that out yesterday, I had a meeting with the representatives from Houseal Lavigne Associates who were here doing interviews to start our Comprehensive Plan project.  I was there representing MCEDC.  As part of our discussion, I laid out the scenario of the property swaps to Devin Lavigne and he agreed with me that it probably was not appropriate to give up any control since it was so hard fought to obtain.  He also agreed that this should be part of the comprehensive planning process we were just beginning.
At the Plan Commission last night Ralph Booker, Marshall County Plan Director, presented the maps including a calculation of the acreage of the land that was swapped.  Ralph Winters, Plan Commission Chairman, called for a vote without audience input and it was passed without discussion.  My arguments were not mentioned.  Our new planners, sitting in the audience, were not consulted.  Opportunity missed.  Do you like the Face Palm GIF?  That was me last night!
Passing this last night puts it in front of the Town Council for approval.  I’m not sure when that will happen or whether the Town Council will buck the Plan Commission on this again.