Listening to the voices of engaged, knowledgeable residents and business owners is an important part of any planning process. Citizen participation is a process that gives private individuals an opportunity to influence public decisions. It has long been a component of the democratic decision process. The concept of citizens participating in government decision-making is fundamental to the functioning of a democratic system of governance.
In preparing the New Palestine Comprehensive Development Plan, public input initiatives were established early on in the process to ensure the issues addressed by the Plan would be influenced by the citizens of the community as much as possible. While in general, public participation is an ongoing process, an initial round of public input procedures was conducted to establish an understanding of how citizens feel and think about their community.
MEETINGS
Steering Committee
The Town of New Palestine was asked to provide a list of community volunteers that would take the responsibility to form the Steering Committee. This included not only residents of the community, but many stakeholders who participate in community life who reside outside the community. The following individuals participated on the Steering Committee:
• David Book, Town Manager
• Jim Robinson, Plan Commission
• Don Ginder, Plan Commission
• Vonda Vawter, BZA
• Adam Axthelm, BZA
• Becky Gaines, Main Street Organization
• Joe Franklin, Economic Development Commission
• Bob Yoder, Redevelopment Commission
• John Begovich, Sugar Creek Township VFD
• Rick Edwards, Hancock Regional Hospital
• Gary Halliburton, Business member
• Rob Walker, Business member
• Kim Sams, Business member
• Debbie Hildebrandt, Citizen member
• Crystal Corwin-Howard, Citizen member
• Pete Howard, Citizen member
• Danielle Daugherty, Citizen member
• Kim Diller, Citizen member
• Dave Parrish, Citizen member
The initial planning meeting was held on December 21, 2015 at the Community Room at the New Palestine Town Hall and those attending were introduced to the planning process, review of the timeline and the duties of being on the Steering Committee. The 2000 Comprehensive Plan was discussed and the steering committee was introduced to the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) exercise. (Agendas and sign-in sheets for all meetings are shown in Appendix A.)
At the second meeting on January 11, 2016, the Steering Committee met and continued the SWOT exercise to identify the positive and negative issues related to the community and to review the citizen survey that would be available on the Town's website via SurveyMonkey. They were then briefed on the upcoming first Public Meeting to be held on February 9th.
The third Steering Committee meeting was held on February 29th. The first item was the review of the citizen survey results (these can be found in Appendix B). Then a review of the SWOT exercise from the Public Meeting was discussed. The initial point of this meeting was to then begin the development the Goals and Objectives for the plan.
The fourth meeting of the Steering Committee was held on March 21st. At this meeting, the group finished the review of the SWOT issues and the results of the citizen survey. They then began the formulation of the Goals and Objectives by reviewing the previous goals and objectives from the 2000 Comprehensive Plan. New goals and objectives were then established and added to the remaining unfinished items from the 2000 plan.
The fifth Steering Committee Meeting was held on April 19th to review the final Action Plan. The steering committee then discussed future land use in both the town limits as well as the area surrounding New Palestine.
Public
The first of two Public Meetings was held at the New Palestine Town Hall Community Room on February 9, 2016 at 6:30 P.M. The meeting was advertised in the New Palestine Press and announcements were posted at various locations throughout the town. Approximately ten people were in attendance. Introductions were made and then an overview of what a Community Development Plan consisted of and why the Town of New Palestine was updating their 2000 Comprehensive Plan. The public then participated in an exercise which identified the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT's) related to the community. The results were much the same as when the Steering Committee performed the SWOT exercise.
The second Public Hearing was held on July 18, 2016 at 6:00 p.m. The meeting was advertised in the New Palestine Press and announcements were posted at various locations throughout the town. Approximately twelve people were in attendance. Introductions were made and then an overview of the draft Community Development Plan was given. The Goals and Objectives were reviewed and discussed and comments were taken.
CITIZEN SURVEY
In order to more fully determine the thoughts and desires of the community, a citizen survey was taken during the first two weeks of February 2016. It was primarily targeted to the residents of the Town of New Palestine in order to help determine the major needs and identify issues which are important for the growth and development of the town. A survey was prepared using SurveyMonkey and was available to the public via the Town's website. Hard copies were also available at the Town Hall and the Hancock County Library branch in New Palestine. Public participation was garnered by newspaper advertising, social media outreach and word of mouth. In all, 420 surveys were completed. Typically a survey return of about five to ten percent is desired. The return rate for the citizen survey was 20.8%.
The citizen survey was in three sections. The first section asked about basic demographic information. The second section asked questions relevant to the community character (quality of life issues) and to community services. The third section was more open ended and asked what respondents felt about the future of their community, their likes, dislikes, wants and needs.
Demographics
Who responded...
The demographic information showed that out of the survey responses, female responders (67.5%) outnumbered the male responders (32.5%). By age group, there were two groups with the largest response rates, those between the ages of 35 to 44 (30.4%) and those 45 to 54 (26.3%) followed by those groups in the 55 to 64 (17.2%), and 25 to 34 (15.1%).
The survey wanted to reach not only the residents within town limits, but also to those in the outlying areas of Sugar Creek and Brandywine townships since that population uses the facilities and resources of New Palestine. When asked "Where do you live?", 32.8% lived within the town limits, 49.1% lived in Sugar Creek township and 5.6% lived in Brandywine township.
Why they live here...
When asked "What the important reasons were for living in New Palestine?", respondents were asked to mark as many as they thought. The top three answers were; 'Quality of schools' (78.6%), 'Low crime rate' (71.9%), and 'Open spaces/Rural feel' (66.5%). 'Uncongested area' (58.4%) and 'Native to area/Family ties' (48.3%) were two other categories with a high response level.
When asked "How long have you been a resident of New Palestine or the area?", the majority responded 10+ years. The largest groups were those who have lived 20+ years (39.2%), followed closely by those who have lived 11 to 20 years (27.7%). When asked "if they expected to be living in New Palestine 5 years from now", the vast majority (86.3%) said they would, only 9.3% of the respondents weren't sure and only 4.4% said no they would not.
Where they work...
When asked the question "Where do you work?", the highest response were those who worked 11 to 25 miles (30.9%). If you add those who work 2-10 miles (13.3%) and 25+ miles outside (8%) to the 11 to 25 mile group you get 52.8% of the people working outside of the community. The second highest response rate were those who worked in or within 2 miles of New Palestine (27.1%). The next highest group of respondents were those who were either retired, worked at home or were students at 20%.
2010 Census info...
The population of New Palestine is 2,055 and Sugar Creek township has a population of 14,920 (second only to Center township/Greenfield). This makes New Palestine 13.8% of the total Sugar Creek population. The median age of persons living in New Palestine is 37.2 years as compared to Hancock County at 39.1 and Indiana at 37.
The median household income is $65,875, higher than both the County median of $61,052 and the State median of $47,697. The major occupation is that of management and professional services (43.6%) followed by those in the office and sales fields (29.1%). The current (2015) unemployment rate (Hancock County) is 3.9%.
The highest levels of education attained were those with a secondary education (93.7%) followed by those with a college degree (27.3%).
Quality of Life/Community Services/Growth
In these sections, respondents were asked various questions about how they perceived their community. They were asked to answer the questions on a scale of Agree, Somewhat Agree, Not Sure, Somewhat Disagree, Disagree. Some questions were open ended and respondents were allowed to choose multiple answers or write in their own opinions.
The following sections of this plan will address the results according to subject and a summary of all results are shown in Appendix B.
SWOT ANALYSIS
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and offers a structured process for a community to explore their current situation. The process helps a community gather information from a small, but representative, group of local residents and leaders. They are then asked for their community perceptions, in four separate areas. The first two areas are internal: the strengths and weaknesses from within the community. The second two categories are external: the opportunities and threats from outside the community. For example, an external threat may be the national economy, or decreased federal funding that affects local schools. When all the factors are combined, the community can then begin to form a clearer picture of the community's situation.
Steering Committee
The Steering Committee over a period of two meetings participated in a SWOT exercise. The steering committee members were given an overview of how SWOT works and then were asked to fill out a SWOT worksheet individually. The exercise was to cover five separate areas of issue: Quality of Life, Community Services, Economic Development, Land Use, and Transportation. The steering committee then discussed their opinions and worked to develop the top issues in each category. These would then be used to formulate the goals and objectives for the Action Plan.
Public Meeting
A shorter version of the SWOT exercise was presented during the public meeting where the attendees were asked about their views in each of the same five categories. These would be combined with the results from the steering committees and used to help derive the goals and objectives.