It's become a tricky thing, time.
Elkhart County officials don't want to fiddle with it, and their counterparts in St. Joseph County want to build the case for changing it. Both counties, and others in the region, say they want to be in sync with one another in the end.
Word this week from the federal government on how the time zone issue will proceed doesn't resolve matters, officials from Elkhart and St. Joseph counties say.
It doesn't change their stances, either: Officials here will stay out of the fray and, by default, accept Eastern time, while across the St. Joe county line, leaders likely will petition for a switch to Central time. Both still hope for the same outcome -- a uniform regional time.
In Elkhart County, Commissioner Terry Rodino said applying for a time-zone change, even if the county wanted to, would be difficult under the Sept. 16 deadline the U.S. Department of Transportation imposed this week. The federal agency seeks economic and demographic statistics that Rodino said counties would be hard-pressed to gather on short notice.
"To have all that put together is almost impossible," he said. "I don't think there's any county in northern Indiana that can put it all together to petition for Central time. You'd almost have to have someone working full time just on that to meet the deadline."
Following Rodino's thinking, the region would fall into the same time zone -- Eastern -- because counties would run out of time to seek the alternative.
St. Joseph County Commissioner Cindy Bodle views the issue differently.
Though in the midst of 2006 budget talks this week, Bodle said officials there probably would meet next week to plan how to move forward on the time issue.
She acknowledged that petitioning for Central time would take a lot of work in a small amount of time.
Before the transportation department announced the deadline, mid-September was the date St. Joseph County leaders had tentatively set to start that work, Bodle said.
Told about Rodino's thought that the deadline was simply too tough to meet, Bodle said: "That's an issue we may run into, but if we petition, I'd still like to ask that the four counties (Elkhart, St. Joseph, Kosciusko and Marshall) be kept together. I'm not sure what weight that will carry, but we'll try."
In their announcement, federal officials essentially say that each county that wishes to switch time zones must document how the change would enhance the community in such areas as commerce and transportation.
If federal officials determine the evidence meets a certain standard, they will schedule public hearings before making a final decision.
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