LCCF and LaGrange County start collecting data for comprehensive plan

The LCCF, working together with LaGrange County, kicked off a study that’s expected to last for the next sixteen months that hopes to gather a wide range of options and ideas from LaGrange County residents about their vision for the county's future. The process will help expected created a new LaGrange County Comprehensive plan that will help steer plans in years to come. Much of the information revealed will be used to help reshape the rules that govern the county’s planning and zoning department.

Plans that big are complicated, and to help create that plan, the foundation and county officials contracted with Planning Next, a Columbus, Ohio firm that specializes in producing such documents.

According to the LCCF website, LaGrange County Together is seeking input from residents in all corners of the county through a series of open houses. Those meetings will be identical in format.

The final three meetings take place next week, starting Monday with a meeting in Topeka, at the Topeka Fire Department building, 180 Crossfire Drive. The fifth meeting happens in Shipshewana, at the Wolfe Community Building, 345 Morton Street on Tuesday, and the last meeting Wednesday at Prairie Heights High School, 305 South C.R. 1150E, LaGrange. All of those meetings start at 4 p.m.

Logan Strang, a planner with Planning Next, the company hired to analyze the data collected, said these meetings help planners understand what community members are thinking

“We’ve been working on the technical analysis stuff of different topics, like housing development, education, utilities, and roadways. With that, we've also started this first of several public engagement opportunities to hear what the public has to share with us, things like what's working well in LaGrange County and what needs to be improved," he said. "After this, we're going to see how those align with each other. We'll see some areas where we're going to have some easy wins, and others that present challenges we need to work on."

These meetings are just a starting point to begin creating a far-reaching comprehensive plan.

“Right now, we just want to collect as much as we can. That will help us over the next couple of months as we start to fine-tune that data and see where we need to focus our efforts. Then we’ll come back to the community again to say here's what we heard, or, is there more we need to be looking at,” Stang said.

Participants are asked to walk into the meeting, look over about half a dozen charts, talk with facilitators when needed, and take a survey about the county's future. The whole process takes about ten to twenty minutes to complete.

Yoder said the reason for the more informal setting is to make everyone

comfortable.

"I'm having good conversations with the people who walk in, many that I've never met before. It's set up to get people to share their thoughts, their voices,” she added. “Some people aren’t comfortable sharing their opinions in an open forum but this is a way they can see what other people have said and add their voices to it.”

LaGrange County Economic Development Corporation President Bill Bradley said working to create a comprehensive plan for LaGrange County sends an important message to businesses looking to relocate.

“It shows someone from the outside we’re working on a vision about where we want to go as a community,” he explained.

Strang said once the first set of meetings are completed, his firm will begin the task of analyzing that information.

“We'll start fine-tuning that information, learning where we need to focus our efforts, and come back to the community and say 'here's what we heard from you all or is there more that we need to be looking at,’”

Digging through all the data the meetings generate will take several months.

“It’s not a quick process and it needs to take the time we need to have these conversations and bring everyone to the table,” he added. “One of the big things that we’ll identify from these conversations is who we are reaching in the county and who we are not reaching because if anybody is unrepresented, we need to get them to the table."