La PORTE — La Porte County and northwest Indiana haven’t been getting their fair share of INDOT funding for state maintained roads, including highways and interstates, according to a report presented to the La Porte County Board of Commissioners last Thursday.
The report, which was presented by county commission Attorney Shaw Friedman, showed that during the past 10 years, 13 northwest Indiana counties have received $2.388 billion of the state funding while 15 central Indiana counties have received $4.07 billion.
In individual county comparison, La Porte County has received $55.6 million through the last 10 years while Hamilton County has received $400.5 million and Allen County received $239.9 million in the same time frame.
“We’ve complained that northern Indiana, for quite a few years here lately, (has) infrastructure that needs fixed also and we aren’t getting our fair share,” Commission President Dave Decker said. “So we are asking our legislators, our local ones, to see what they can do and see if we can get this changed around any.”
The report came as a follow up to a resolution to determine fair shares and asking legislators to work on making sure La Porte County got its fair share of the distribution of state funds.
“We’re pushing to get our fair share for the people of La Porte County,” Decker said.
In other business, plans to turn the county home into affordable independent housing for the elderly were presented to the commissioners with a proposal approved by the commissioners that would seek grant funding from the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority.
Heather McCarthy, a consultant for grant funding, said a market analysis showed the elderly in La Porte County had a phenomenal need for affordable housing.
“The need is very high,” McCarthy said, adding the need was determined by looking at all the available housing in the community and then looking at vacancy rates in terms of the demographics of the area.
“We saw that the vacancy rates for this area were at 5.7 percent. The way this is computed on a market analysis level, if those rates are lower than 8 percent it shows a dramatic need for more units,” McCarthy said.
She added that a housing crisis for the elderly in the next 10 years was also rather confidently stated in the analysis.
“I really feel that for us to move in this direction to re-purpose this building and get ready, that was we can prevent and minimize that crisis, I think would be a good thing for the county,” Commissioner Dr. Vidya Kora said.
Katie Kreifels of UP Development and Joe Dodel of GEA Architects presented the plans for the proposed elderly affordable home model of the county home, which included removing the rear addition of the county home and creating a three story addition with 23 room units with modern amenities.
Kreifels said the historic facade and front of the building would be preserved. 10 units would also be subsidized for county use for current county home residents and veterans, elderly, or disabled community members.
A partnership with Swanson Center would also add some support for the residents of the home, but still not qualify the home as assisted living.
“We feel this second financing submission, which we hope to do in November, has a stronger chance of being selected,” Kreifals said, referencing the last county home funding attempt that was not successful. “We have responded to the IHCDA feedback and will now compete for a much larger pool of resources.”
The state will make it’s announcements next spring in regard to the proposal submission.