by Denise Massie
Do Logansport and Cass County need separate comprehensive plans?
City and county officials say the answer is yes.
Logansport Mayor Mike Fincher said officials had talked about combining the two plans, but he said consultants had encouraged separate plans.
County Commissioner Dick Rusk said having separate plans was important.
“Certainly the county has unique issues and the city has unique issues,” he said. “We need to take a look at both sides of this.”
Rusk said the plans would provide a detailed analysis for both city and county and would offer two different sets of goals.
Both plans were overdue for updating. The current plans were created in 1981 to set a vision for the next 20 years. Stan Williams, the city-county planning director, said the goal generally was to update the plan every 10 years.
The last time the plans were updated, one group of consultants put together both. There was one main problem with that, he said.
“They developed a very urban plan for the city and gave us the same plan for the county,” Williams said. “It did not have any innovative rural preservation. It didn’t address the issues the county was dealing with.”
This time, the city and county applied for separate grants to hire separate consultant teams and put together two separate plans. The city and county were both awarded community focus fund grants from the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs. Each received $50,000, which will cover all expenses, Williams said.
The city’s team will have a more urban focus, while the county’s team will take a rural and small town focus, Williams said.
Fincher said the two teams would work together for certain issues, such as land use.
While the city started the process in March, the county effort is just now getting under way.
Williams said the county held its first meeting on Monday to determine what issues needed to be addressed and to develop a plan for community involvement.
The meeting was led by a citizens advisory committee made up of representatives from different Cass County communities, said Williams. The committee’s purpose is to keep county officials and consultants on the right track.
Like the city’s plan, he said, two major factors needing to be addressed in the county’s plan are the impact of the new Ivy Tech campus and the Hoosier Heartland Corridor.
Rusk said a lot of issues will need to be addressed. He mentioned economic development, recreational opportunities and quality of life.
Fincher hopes the rewrite of the two plans will benefit both entities.
“We wanted a new focus, a new vision, something we never had before,” he said. “That is what we hope comes from this — a new vision not only for Logansport but for Cass County.”
Denise Massie can be reached at (574) 732-5151 or via e-mail at denise.massie@pharostribune.com
