New city will be named “Greenwood,” have multiple districts

The Greenwood/White River Township Reorganization Committee has begun to make decisions – Updated with video

During their meeting tonight the Reorganization Committee made their first two decisions that will be incorporated into any proposal they form. First, they decided the new city would be called “Greenwood.” And, second, they decided that the new city will include at least two taxing/service level districts, urban and rural in particular.

Paul Reed, chair of the finance sub-committee, studied the impact of changing the name of the new city to something other than Greenwood. He found there were about 4,400 business in the greater Greenwood area. A name change would mean new business cards, letterhead, shipping documents, invoices and signage for many of these businesses. Some may even incorporate the Greenwood name in the name of the business, something that might be impacted should the new area have a different name. In addition, city, county and state signage would have to change to accommodate a new name.

Mark Messick, Chair of the White River Township Board, spoke to the interests of citizens living in the Bargersville area and historic areas such as Smith Valley and Banta. It is not clear that mailing addresses would necessarily change just because a property fell within the bounds of the new city. Mailing addresses are determined by the U. S. Postal Service.

After some discussion, which included a recognition that they committee should consider the unique identities of each of the areas affected by the proposed merger, the committee unanimously voted for the Greenwood name.

The second decision concerned the need for more than one “district” within the new city. The easiest to consider is the difference between the rural and urban areas. There is a high probability that there would be needs for different services and possibility different tax rates.

During this discussion committee member David Payne expressed concern that they were “putting the cart before the horse” in making decisions before the sub-committees had a chance to conduct further investigation. Chair Pat Sherman countered that these were basic decisions that would allow the sub-committees to do the hard work, such as determining how many districts are needed, where to draw the lines and the levels of services and taxes for each district. The concept of multiple districts also passed with unanimous vote.

Click here to watch the video of this discussion. The video is divided into two parts, when the first part ends click the “Next Clip” link below the video player.

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