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INDIANA LAND USE PLANNING CONTENTIOUS ISSUE
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. ã Land use is a confusing and volatile issue in the Hoosier state in the '90s. If you don't believe it, ask Purdue University's Janet Ayres.
In her role as Purdue Cooperative Extension Service assistant director for leadership and community development, Ayres was called last year to lead a meeting designed to open a dialogue among the citizens of a southern Indiana community.
Some were concerned that the conversion of 1,100 acres of farmland into a manufacturing site would hurt the community, and that the billboards, fast-food restaurants and traffic that accompany growth would be a blight upon the landscape.
In stepped Ayres and the Purdue Land Use Team, an 11-member committee of Extension faculty established to help communities plan their own futures.
"Our goal is to develop awareness," Ayres says. "We try to bring as much knowledge to the issue as we can, based on the available facts. We want to help people know what their options are, what tools and techniques exist in their communities."
Ayres opened the meeting by asking a simple question. "Let's think about this county's future," Ayres offered. "What would you like to see and what would you not like to see?
"One man stood up and said 'I don't like you educated people standing up there and telling us what we can do and what we can't do. What we usually do with people like you is that I know how to tie a noose and slip it around your head. Twenty years ago (at a similar planning meeting), I brought the rope. And I brought it with me tonight. If you lead this group to accept zoning, you won't leave this county alive!'"
Ayres received police protection that night.
The disagreements are heated and heartfelt, and no one is immune. It is an issue, says Bill Hoover, that touches us all.
"Land use is going to affect the quality of everyone's life in the future," says Hoover, a Purdue forestry professor and principal author of "Indiana Land Use on the Edge," a report of the Indiana Agriculture and Natural Resource Land Use Working Group commissioned in 1996 by then Lt. Gov. Frank O'Bannon.
"It is probably the dominant factor that sets the theme for how people live their lives. Land use has to do with how we feel about things around us and can actually affect how we feel about ourselves. If we are in a physical environment in which we feel stressed, that's going to affect everything we do."
Indiana has no statewide land use policy. What is allowed in one county may not fly in the adjoining county. Policy varies from one community to the next, even within the same county. This is by design, Ayres says, allowing people to have a say in what their community should look like.
And what does Indiana look like? U.S. Census of Agriculture figures indicate Indiana lost 675,000 acres of farmland to other uses between 1982 and 1992. That's more than twice the size of Marion County. Only 19 of Indiana's 92 counties have not lost sizable chunks of farmland during that time.
But it's about more than just farmland, Ayres says. Forest lands are cleared and converted to residential properties and commercial real estate. Livestock operations, bean fields and pasture lands disappear. In their place, tract homes, minimalls, even landfills pop up.
Urbanites, in the migration to become ruralites, take issue with their new neighbors, the farmers, who probably weren't spreading manure the first time the real estate agent showed the city folks the property. Bad feelings grow while available land shrinks.
Johnson County Extension educator Rick Chase wrestles daily with the problems of land use, as he sees the suburbs of Indianapolis creep farther and farther into northern tier of his county.
"When I came to Franklin in 1984, there was a Ponderosa Restaurant and that was about it," Chase remembers. "Now we've got three McDonald's in Franklin. I ask myself how is it possible that we need three McDonald's in Franklin? At times, it seems growth is almost out of control.
"If I stood up in a meeting, any meeting, and asked, 'How many of you want the government to tell you what you can and can't do with your land?' I'll guarantee you, nobody would raise their hand.
"But the question is, do you want landfills across the road from you? Do you want to live next to a mobile home park? Do you want a dump or a factory across the street? Do you want a farmer farming next to you? These are the issues the planning and zoning boards deal with in protecting the community so that people don't interfere with each other or hurt each other."
As an Extension educator, part of Chase's job is to teach county residents about zoning laws, and to encourage them to take a role in shaping the future of their county.
But Chase has an even more influential voice in the future of Johnson County. Indiana law specifies that a county Extension educator serve on each county's planning commission. In Johnson County, it's Chase.
"It is difficult (to do both), because as an educator, you try to remain neutral. You try to present both sides of an issue and then let people make their decisions. That is the ideal situation," Chase says.
"But as a planning commission member, you take a side, there is no question. When you vote, you take a side. I have always tried to vote in the best interest of the community. I try to look at the whole community and say 'What do I think would be best in this situation?'"
There are no easy answers, hence the creation of the Hoosier Farmland Preservation Task Force, chaired by Lt. Gov. Joe Kernan. The task force will present recommendations for farmland preservation and other land use issues to Gov. O'Bannon and members of the General Assembly for the 1999 session. In the meantime, Kernan says the task force will offer information and guidance to any community wrestling with these problems.
"We're not in a crisis situation yet," Kernan says. "But with a growing population and the anticipated future demand for food, we need to work to make sure we're not in a crisis later."
Ayres agrees wholeheartedly.
"We need more informed public decision making," she says, "more informed judgments about the use of land, and more discussions in the public arena, because it is a public question."
Sources:
Janet Ayres, (765) 494-4215; e-mail: [email protected]
Bill Hoover, (765) 494-3580
Joe Kernan (317) 232-8770
Rick Chase, (317) 736-3724; e-mail, [email protected]
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