By Chris Serio Martin, Truth Staff
cmartin@etruth.com
ELKHART -- As Elkhart County fights its way out of the recession and looks toward the future, leaders and planners may want to ask a crucial question: What kind of a place would people want to live and work?
In 2002, dozens of community leaders and thinkers founded a think tank to create a long-term vision for the future of Elkhart County and named it, appropriately, the Horizon Project.
The Horizon Project was almost prophetic in its analysis of Elkhart County industry. Businesses and their employees were making money, unemployment was low, and community leaders did not address the pitfalls of hitching a great deal of local production to a one-horse wagon: the recreational vehicle industry.
Grant Black, assistant professor of economics at Indiana University South Bend, frequently writes about the economic state of Elkhart and the area. "In recent years, employment in all manufacturing sectors has accounted for 45 to 50 percent of total employment in the Elkhart metro area," he said via e-mail.
The drop in orders for manufactured goods led to the rapid rise in local unemployment.
"Elkhart will rebound," he said. However, to be less reliant on the RV industry, Black, said that "Elkhart should consider diversifying its economic base to develop other growth sectors; work on its business retention and attraction; and strengthen its labor force through education, training and higher skills to be more competitive and useful to a broader range of industries."
Horizon Project chairman William Johnson encouraged community leaders to focus their efforts on education and building a higher skilled work force. Through urban and community planning, Elkhart County could become a great place to live and work. Johnson said these community characteristics would attract capital-intensive businesses and make Elkhart County more viable in a competitive global economy.
Based on the findings of the Horizon Project, Johnson said that two other significant changes that would help Elkhart County in the future -- restructuring Indiana government and fostering partnerships between the public and private sectors.
The structure of local government
"Our form of government is not cost-effective or cost-efficient," Johnson said in a recent interview. We live under the same Indiana government structure that was developed more than 150 years ago.
"This approach doesn't make sense in 2009." He is not alone in his concerns.
* "Indiana is a place where the taxpayers support lots and lots of governments. We maintain literally thousands of local governments, and we pay for more than 10,000 officeholders," writes Joseph E. Kernan, former governor, and Randall T. Shepard, Chief Justice, Indiana Supreme Court, 2007, as part of the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform.
* Indiana has 92 counties; 1,008 townships; 293 school districts.
Making government bigger, and asking taxpayers to pay for it, is not the answer, Johnson said.
"We can't tax businesses," he said. "We can't tax property."
Johnson said that government should provide infrastructure, regional planning and land use, promote public safety and criminal justice, and provide for public education.
"It must start with the elimination of meaningless government boundaries," Johnson said. He advocates breaking away from our current compartmentalized structure and forming a regional government that utilizes appropriate revenue sharing.
He cited the 293 separate school districts in Indiana. Each school system manages its own bus system, food service and administrative offices. Think about the buying power as a regional block, Johnson said. Think about the savings with fewer administrative jobs.
By combining efforts and efficiencies and reducing the number of school districts, we eliminate the exorbitant overhead of each of these individual systems, he said.
But he admits that things are unlikely to change because elected officials don't want to vote themselves out of jobs -- even if it would lead to a more efficient system.
Communities are already intertwined with businesses and land use, he pointed out. Regions would be better off sharing property tax revenues and urban planning across traditional boundaries. Combining these systems would result in less top-heavy decision-making and more cohesion in land development planning and building adequate infrastructures.
If the government provides this solid infrastructure, it will create an environment "where private investors and entrepreneurs can thrive," he said.
Governments do not create jobs, Johnson insists. The duty of the government is to create the infrastructure and environment conducive to job creation.
"Jobs can only be created in the private sector," he said.
Public-private partnership
One way to encourage private business to grow, provide jobs and raise the per capita income so that it is more in line with national numbers is to encourage partnerships between local governments and private business to grow our infrastructure.
"There's no greater return on invested capital than on infrastructure," Johnson said.
He uses the River Race in Goshen as one example: The city government can afford to put some money into development of the area, but cannot afford the total bill for the project. A private company might propose development of retail and residential areas along the race, but may not have the cash flow to wait as long as it may take to develop the area and build home models and retail space.
Johnson suggests the local Goshen city government consider a guaranteed loan for the project.
That way, the city benefits from eventual property tax revenue from the project, the developer benefits from the investment and the citizens benefit from enjoying the development.