Carmel and Westfield, Greenwood and Bargersville, over the past years suburban municipalities have spent millions of taxpayer dollars in legal fees in an effort to annex prime commercial land. In the unincorporated south suburban area of Center Grove, residents have decided to take the issue into their own hands and stop future annexations without expending a single taxpayer dollar.
Center Grove has grown dramatically over the past 30 years. However every time a commercial area popped up, or new businesses was built, Greenwood would annex the area, taking as little residential property as possible. Recently Greenwood and Bargersville waged an expensive court battle to grab control of each side of State Road 135, a prime commercial area. In the end Greenwood got the east side, Bargersville, the west. Those actions left many residents of the unincorporated area of Center Grove wondering why they have so little say in their community.
Rather than hiring lawyers they decided create a town. Indiana code requires a petition to incorporate must include very specific information. Residents must gather the required information, signatures of 50 property owners, and file it with their County commissioners who have the final say. The petition requires costly steps, a count of the population, a survey of the area, a budget, proposed property tax rate, and they are required to send a certified letter to each of the proposed town’s residents, all expensive actions. The law mandates no taxpayer dollars be used in the process.
That left the residents with a hard choice; raise funds to have professionals do the work or find a way to do it themselves. They opted for the latter. It took two years to learn about the “Incorporation” statute, (IC 36-5-1) gather the information, talk to local, county, and state officials from around Indiana and the United States, research how past efforts in Indiana have succeeded and failed. With limited use of a pro-bono lawyer, a lot of help from seven graduate students from IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs they did what has never been done, they fulfilled the requirements and filed a petition to incorporate the Town of Center Grove with the Johnson County commissioners.
There is more work to be done. The residents still have to finalize the plan on how the town will operate; something the statute curiously does not require. Their vision is to create a town based on what Governor Mitch Daniels calls the “Yellow Page Rule,” if a service is listed in the yellow pages as available from two or more sources then it is likely it can be provided better and for a lower cost by the private sector.
Residents took the idea a step further. They found the most effective and efficient way to provide major services to the town is to contract with the county. Although counties are not designed to provide services to heavily populated areas, they found Johnson County is efficient at maintaining roads, and police protection. The town plans to contract with Johnson County for those services. The advantage to residents is that despite no change in providers, the level of service will now be determined by an elected town council who will negotiate the terms with the county.
Untraditional? Certainly. Smart? Absolutely. The residents of Center Grove have learned from the mistakes and creative efforts of towns from Georgia to California how to create a town that promises to provide effective and efficient services residents expect from a town.
All built with no government assistance or taxpayer dollars.
LEARN MORE: Visit The Citizens For Center Grove Website here.
