LAGRANGE – The LaGrange County Community Foundation made an offer to the county commissioners that may be too good to refuse.

The Foundation’s Octavia Yoder says they are willing to seek a Lilly Endowment Action Grant that would pay nearly half the cost of a new comprehensive county plan.

The current comprehensive plan was adopted in 2005 and updated in 2010.

Yoder says a new comprehensive plan could help to address some of the concerns and opportunities raised during last year’s Community Conversations.

"There were some similar themes in the challenges and opportunities related to physical development of the communities. We know that housing is something that the EDC has already undertaken. Parkview Health has been focusing more on mental health and addictions with their new campaign. And there has been as start of a group looking at Main Street in Lagrange. Looking at a comprehensive plan would be a strategy to bring all those things together into one focus."

The Lilly Grant of $100-thousand dollars combined with another $20-thousand from other grants would mean the county would need to come up with around $60-thousand for the project.

The Foundation recommends using Region 3-A as the third party manager for the process. Commissioners took the offer under advisement.

They also updated the GIS ordinance to reflect the department being moved to the I-T department.

They also repealed an ordinance regulating the materials that could be used in horse shoes, saying that it had never been enforced.