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Major Moves in Lagrange County: What is the impact?
By: Tim Murray - Friday, October 25, 2019

(Analysis)

LAGRANGE – What has Major Moves meant to LaGrange County? What difference has it made?

That depends on how you view the question.

It seems unlikely that there would be sewer and water infrastructure at the intersection of State Road 9 and the Toll Road without Major Moves. That infrastructure could have been funded in other ways, but given how long it took even with Major Moves, it seems quite possible to imagine a lack of political will to go those other routes.

That area now has Morgan Olson and Therma Tru occupying previously vacated buildings, and the RV industry has expanded a foothold there. So the Fawn River Crossing area has meant jobs for the county. But undeveloped land remains.

ExOS also brought jobs to the Howe area along State Road 9. But they were already there when Major Moves helped fund water service to the plant. The addition of sewer and water in the Howe area may be key to helping the community bounce back from the closing of Howe Military.

Roads like 200 North near Pallet One, and State Road 3 in South Milford at Mill Street are safer thanks to Major Moves investments.

Michiana Event Center got its start thanks to a loan from Major Moves and has since moved to Shipshewana and a big new arena and expo center.

Some Major Moves investments are harder to quantify, like the money that went to the start up of New Tech at Lakeland High School. Some graduates say they were better prepared for their futures thanks to project based learning. Others fled the district. It remains to be seen how many will return to LaGrange County to launch careers here.

Perhaps one of the largest impacts Major Moves had is in keeping property tax rates in the county low. More than $8-million dollars went to government needs that might have been paid for by raising taxes. But most of the eleven townships in the county rank quite low for property tax rates compared to most of Indiana’s 2000-plus taxing units.

You would be hard pressed to point to one or two major projects funded by Major Moves that proved to be transformational to the county...something that steered us into a bright new future. That home run that development experts are all looking for.

With $16-million still in the fund it’s possible we could still see such a home run. But the buying power of the Major Moves Fund continues to diminish. Inflation keeps eating away at it. If spent 13 years ago, that original $37 million dollars had an extra $10 million dollars in buying power compared to today.



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