Forward Kosciusko County had an open house at Mentone Town Hall on Wednesday, Nov. 17, which gave information on planning for Kosciusko County’s future. InkFreeNews photo by Leah Sander.

By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

MENTONE — Kosciusko County residents recently got a sneak peek at what the future could hold for the county.

That was during Forward Kosciusko County’s open house at Mentone Town Hall on Wednesday, Nov. 17. According to a statement on its website, “Forward Kosciusko County is a unique, countywide, collaborative effort to develop a bold and innovative plan for the continued and shared success of the communities of Kosciusko County.”

Taylor Siefker Williams Design Group of Indianapolis is helping local leaders with the process, and the planning is spearheaded by county government, the K21 Health Foundation and Kosciusko County Community Foundation.

Wednesday’s event was the latest in a series of meetings to inform the public of how the process is going and collect input.

Taylor Siefker Williams Principal Scott Siefker gave an overview of the process to at least 30 people before they looked at boards which showed projections of how growth could occur in the county and ways the county could adapt to better serve its residents. Taylor Siefker Williams Community Planner Alec Pormen also was present.

The information on the boards was compiled through various means, including via a survey offered to residents.

“Ultimately, each community in the county, etc., uses the comprehensive plan as they look at and evaluate for instance growth in the communities or growth in the county or as they look at perhaps going after future funding, say for parks, recreation and open space,” said Siefker during the overview. “A lot of the programs require … that a community or a region or a county has to have the comprehensive plan even to be eligible for implementation of different kinds of programs, and so this gives a kind of a nice baseline to kind of document that vision.”

Siefker noted a new plan was important because the county hadn’t done one since 1996 and communities in the county would get their own individual plans through the process.

The overall plan should be complete early next year. To learn more about the planning, go to www.forwardkosciusko.com.

Providing feedback

One person gave his feedback right away after Siefker asked for public questions.

He expressed doubt that growth could occur around Mentone and in the southern part of the county due to believing owners would not sell their farmland to allow for expansion. He also stated that there wasn’t enough housing in Mentone to allow for growth and worried about how the town would pay for the construction of additional utilities.

Siefker noted that the information presented was merely a forecast and that the town could apply for funding in the future to help with growth if needed.

Mentone Town Council Member and Mentone Chamber of Commerce Vice President Tim Croy shared a more optimistic view of growth with InkFreeNews.

“Just because we’re landlocked now, that doesn’t mean that we will be years down the road,” he said. “And that’s what a lot of people don’t understand is, if you don’t grow, your town’s going to die off. So you’ve got to grow.”

“My big thing is, we need affordable housing,” added Croy. “I don’t know if you’re going to get a bunch of industry down here and if that could possibly happen, but being on the Chamber also, we get so many people that contact us looking for affordable housing. They want to come to Kosciusko County. They look at the Warsaw area. Houses are so expensive out there, so now they’re looking at further out, the Mentone, the Silver Lake, the Pierceton, Milford areas where they can afford something.”

Billie Sexton, a realtor from Mentone, offered her take to InkFreeNews.

“If they would do affordable housing in Mentone, they could get it to spread,” she said. “But they’re wanting to spread this way (westward) when we need to spread more toward Warsaw (eastward).”

“I work with a lot of first-time home buyers. They can’t afford the $250,000 to $300,000 homes,” she continued. “And so if we could get some affordable housing in the $150,000 to $180,000 range, that’s more doable.”

Mentone Fire Chief Mike Yazel said he hoped the county would incorporate addressing emergency services needs in its planning.

“There’s going to have to start to be some definite thought go into emergency services across the county, how you’re going to fund it and how you’re going to manage and how you’re going to make all that work because there are some real issues,” he said. “You’ve got to figure out a way to staff fire stations and you’ve got to figure a way to staff ambulances.”

“I mean the state of Indiana, by law you have to provide fire coverage, you don’t have to provide any medical coverage, but people expect medical coverage and it’s under a lot of pressure right now,” he added. “Your first real wave of paramedics have retired out or are retiring out of the system and there’s nobody to replace them.”

The Village at Winona Managing Director Nick Hauck, who also is one of the leaders of Kosciusko County Velo, said he was pleased that an emphasis on parks and active transportation figured into the county’s planning thus far.

He also said affordable housing should be part of the conversation on the county’s future.

Kosciusko County Commissioner Cary Groninger, who also serves on the steering committee for Forward Kosciusko County, said the need for housing in general would be vital to the county’s growth in the future.

“Realistically, I think residential development is going to be the new economic driver as far as factories are going to move to where there’s people there,” he said. “Like our county’s in the 3.2% employment rate. Anything less than 5%, the people who want to work have a job, so you’re not going to get a factory to want to come to your community if we only have a 3.2% unemployment rate because they know there’s nobody to hire, so they’re going to have to draw people from further away, so if we don’t build some residential capacity to where there’s places for people to live, I think we’re going to see or … we’re going to struggle with our economic development growth because … there’s not going to be any employees here, so businesses aren’t going to come here.”