Years from now, when we look back on this time, we’d better be able to see how important it was.
We’d better be able to see that the state of Indiana awarding $42 million to northcentral Indiana and the Vibrant Communities planning process changed our community and made it a better place to live.
If we can’t, we’ll have done something, and perhaps many things, wrong.
This is perhaps the most important time in the history of Elkhart County. Never before has there been a planning process in which the county joined with Marshall and St. Joseph counties to become one of nine regional partnerships in Indiana to make a play for a lot of state dollars.
Politically, the north-central Indiana proposal could have been ignored. It’s happened before.
But it was just too good. The year of planning made it too strong to overlook.
As one of those involved in the planning said, “Amazing what can be accomplished when it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.”
On Friday, Regina Emberton of Michiana Partnerships told a group of Elkhart County government and civic leaders, “This is a transformative time for our region.”
It’s one of the first times that county lines were blurred so much by the glare of possible partnerships. As Emberton said, this is about more than the money.
Meanwhile, the Elkhart County Convention and Visitors Bureau and Community Foundation of Elkhart County are funding a Vibrant Cities conversation. In January, a process will start to evaluate how good Elkhart County and its cities and towns are, talk about what they need and develop an action plan.
Outgoing Goshen Mayor Allan Kauffman, who will stay heavily involved in this process, said, “We’re all aware if we want to attract and retain talent in our community, we have to have a community where people want to live.”
There will be a kick-off event on Jan. 26 at the Lerner’s Crystal Ballroom. After that, there will be groups focused on Elkhart, Goshen, Middlebury/Bristol, Nappanee/Wakarusa, unincorporated areas and perhaps Millersburg/New Paris. In April, there will be an open house to talk more about the ideas. By late summer or early fall, there will be an action plan that Kauffman hopes will serve as a roadmap.
There have been other maps. The Horizon Project in 2002 looked at the economic needs and how government should look for Elkhart County to grow. Not everything that group suggested was acted upon.
In 2010, Horizon 2.0 focused on education and how to change it to better prepare workers for the 21st century. That resulted in Horizon Education Alliance, an agency getting a lot of Community Foundation funding and some from other resources to do that work.
Now there’s this Vibrant Cities effort, which could be like preparing for a marathon.
The Regional Cities Initiative money will be awarded by spring or summer. Those wanting funding for projects will get little time to prove they have the mix of public and private support. Pete McCown, one of the five appointees with Emberton to the Regional Development Authority board, said, “This is a sprint.”
“Some will be disappointed,” he said of the way funding is likely to get handed out for investment.
How the Regional Cities money gets disbursed and the things that bubble up in the Vibrant Communities conversation may overlap. Those gathered Friday said they work in tandem.
One is about the region and the other is putting Elkhart County communities under the microscope in order to make them more livable and lovable.
Regional Cities may be about doing some big stuff so that the little stuff that comes up in the Vibrant Communities conversation gets easier to accomplish.
This also comes at a time that the three cities in Elkhart County are getting new mayors. Phil Jenkins of Nappanee and Jeremy Stutsman of Goshen were at Friday’s meeting. They, along with Tim Neese of Elkhart, must be part of both processes.
As three new mayors take office, as we work to make the most of state funding, as the community as a whole is being asked to talk about what kind of community we want to become, this is a key moment in our history.
This is the time that we should be able to look back on and reminisce about how much better life got because of 2016.
We’ve been given the opportunity to make our community infinitely stronger, infinitely better. We can’t afford not to make the most of it.