Dueling agenda’s, conflicting meetings
Monday July 20th is a big day in White River Township, at 6pm the Bargersville town council takes its first official step toward annexation of 13 square miles of the southern portion of the township (click to view map). A number of rural residents made a presentation to Bargersville about annexation at a meeting on April 30. They requested to be annexed by Bargersville rather than take a chance on being part of Greenwood should the reorganization effort succeed. (Find meeting coverage and video here) The annexation also includes a number of sub-divisions whose developers agreed that they, and future land/homeowners, would not fight annexation in exchange for Bargersville providing sewer service. The town is required to have consent from 51% of the parcels in the area; they now have about 85% and will move forward with the annexation. The council could approve the final plan as early as August 20th. The annexation may not take affect until January 1, 2010 since federal law prohibits changes in community boundaries the year prior to a census. The meeting is not being held in the Bargersville town hall but at Maple Grove Elementary school (MAP) located east of Saddle Club Road on the south side of Whiteland Road, an area that is not part of this annexation effort.
Starting one hour later at the Greenwood city council chambers (meeting details here) a joint meeting of the Greenwood common council and White River Township board will receive an update from reorganization committee chair Pat Sherman. At the last reorganization effort the plan began to move beyond an outline and provide a broad view of the direction the plan. For example the suggestion was to hire five additional Greenwood police officers to patrol the current unincorporated area, to replace the seven county sheriff’s deputies who are currently assigned to patrol the area.
Mr. Sherman is quoted in Saturday’s Daily Journal as saying we are starting to “add meat to the bones” of the skeleton plan they have previously discussed. Updated information from the governance committee, which has recommended maintaining the mayor/council form of government but adding more council members, and the parks and recreation committee recommendations will also be updated. The parks subcommittee had recommended a tax be added to each home sold in the current unincorporated White River Township in order to fund park and trail development. However that plan has run into some possible legal issues since a “tax” would most likely require legislative approval. We can expect to receive updates on that plan along with any new information gathered by the committee and subcommittees at Monday’s meeting.
With two meetings at essentially the same time what do you do? Fortunately there are two of us and one of us will be in Bargersville and the other in Greenwood. In addition to stories and commentary we will provide the taped video of each meeting on CenterGroveInc.org. At this time we do not plan to stream either meeting live. Should that change we will post a message and send out an email.
Commentary: Things are moving quickly, the incorporation effort, centergrovetown.org, is still requesting volunteers. I am not asking you to “take sides”. No matter what the outcome of the Bargersville annexation, the reorganization/merger effort, or a future town of Center Grove, what happens will affect your future, no matter where you reside in White River Township, an unincorporated area, Bargersville or Greenwood, get involved, get your friends and neighbors involved and at a minimum stay informed and voice your opinion.
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