Incorporation?
We seem to get the same old story from everyone, you have two choices, vote for merger, or be left out in the cold to be gobbled up by Bargersville or become an island of unincorporated homes. What about incorporation of the Town of Center Grove? It’s been talked about, it’s been studied, people have stood up at public meetings and said, “Our taxes are going to go up no matter what happens so we might as well incorporate and keep the money for ourselves.” However, nothing happens but talk.
Over the past two years I have been covering this (yes our first article was posted in August 2008) I have lost track of the people who think self-incorporation is the way to go. However, it is the hard way; it takes a time and money. It takes my time, and other residents’ time because no government can incorporate us, we have to do it ourselves. We wouldn’t be the first and state law lays out what is required. It’s a challenge, especially with Bargersville grabbing land from the south and Greenwood having a three-mile buffer zone on their eastside.
However, there are always options. There are ways to keep our costs down; the city of Sandy Springs GA runs a town of 90,000 people with less than ten full-time employees. We don’t have create a fire department we have one, we don’t have to build sewers or provide water, we have that. We don’t even have to create a police force; we could contract with the sheriff to continue to provide law enforcement. We’ve been over this before, but if we don’t want to become part of Greenwood or Bargersville then let’s get busy. Anyone out there care to join me in giving up a few hours in front of the TV a week and see if we can build a town?
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6 Responses to “Incorporation?”
Jody – I see you are having the same problem I had before. Everyone wants to talk about it but few are willing to act. You know I’m in.
Comment made on July 26th, 2010 at 5:44 pmI’d be happy to donate my time as well.
Comment made on July 27th, 2010 at 9:57 amHow do you plan to get Greenwood’s approval? How do you raise the necessary monies to start the process? Volunteers are the least of your problems.
Comment made on August 3rd, 2010 at 8:02 pmMr. Murphy – approval by Greenwood isn’t necessary, however notification to neighboring city boundaries are according to state law. This would include Greenwood and Bargersville and is part of the petitioning process.
You are right that money would be needed for surveying fees, public certified mailings, amongst other things, but by my count about 80% of the leg work can be accomplished by residents who simply volunteer their time and talents. Overall, the process is straight forward.
The only thing that concerns me will be local politics once our ‘notifications’ are sent. It will be interesting to see how ‘neighborly’ the other city councils will be when we get that far…
Comment made on August 4th, 2010 at 2:22 pmActually, incorporation will require approval of any city within a three mile radius of your incorporation boundaries – and this occurs at the END of the process. Check Indiana Code more carefully. The portion you reference is at the beginning of the process.
Comment made on August 4th, 2010 at 7:34 pmWe don’t need to merge or incorporate. Updating county government, bring it to the 21st century, will fix the problem. It’s the least expensive and most effective approach to this issue. The talk of merging was begun not to help WRT, but getting Greenwood out of debt. The Kerner/Shephard study was cherry picked for a few ideas. Besides township government, that study also said the township fire departments should be unified as a COUNTY command. Not merged with a city department. a merger,incorporation or annexation will cost WRT
Comment made on August 5th, 2010 at 10:56 amabout a 27% tax increase. A county tune up will be about 12%
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