in twenty twenty one Indiana lawmakers approved the creation of a northeast Indiana Strategic Development Commission.

The commission was tasked to provide a strategic framework addressing how northeast Indiana could raise wages, grow the population and increase the number of residents with college degrees or credentials .

>> This year the General Assembly established a fund to be managed by the commission to further its activities addressing the focus areas of a new five year strategic plan.

We'll learn more about the commission's scope of work across our region Sullivan County area.

This week's Prime Time and good evening ST's with us today is Ron Turpin, the chief financial officer with Ambassador Enterprises and the chairman of the Northeast Indiana Strategic Development Commission.

>> And joining Ron is Bill Khania, the president of the Regional Chamber of Northeast Indiana and we invite you to join our conversation as well.

Do you have any questions or comments?

Feel free to use the number that you see on the screen as we welcome you into the studios.

>> I'm Bruce .

That's Bill.

That's Ron was a first name basis here.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here.

>> We appreciate it.

I really appreciate being here.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Let's go back to the future just a little bit because it was only just yesterday in 2021 that the commission was created but even a little before that bill and let me ask you where did the idea come from for the founding of the creation of a strategic development commission?

What led to this?

>> We've worked collectively as a region for a long time to market a region to advocate for the region, to develop workforce, et cetera.

And we came to realize that we really didn't have a way to bring it all together into one cohesive plan.

And and so we began to develop an idea of creating a strategic development commission.

It was actually advanced originally by the mayor and commissioners caucus and the regional chamber stepped up and testified in support of it, supported the measure.

It was created and here we are.

>> Well, yeah, I would say Bruce , as a businessman, you know, we look at if you fail to plan you plan to fail.

And so we've had these big three goals for a long time not just in northeast Indiana but in in really in Indiana which is we have to grow population, we have to grow wages and we have to grow the number of our adults that have degrees or credentials to get high paying jobs the jobs of the future.

>> And so the thing missing was that plan you know, we have lots of organizations worked on different pieces but how do we have one comprehensive plan?

The legislature agreed and so put together what we consider to be a Beda for the state of Indiana which is this commission really hard work was once it was formed because then it's you know, you need to come up with a comprehensive plan and you need to do it within a year and we're not giving you any money for it either.

So you know, when the commission was formed we had to go on a fundraising trip from the private sector and the public sector and build this plan out and we did it's a plan I think we were all pretty proud of and we delivered that to the legislature at the end of last year.

>> I like the flowchart that you created and perhaps we can share that with viewers at home.

There we go.

>> Describe what we're seeing here because this sort of is the thirty thousand plus an up kind of overview of what goes on on a daily basis.

>> OK, I can't really see what I'm looking at there but we developed the commission developed essentially three goals with lots of subsets within those goals and strategies and account with accountabilities.

It it was developed over the course of nearly a year and it was developed based upon input from virtually every aspect of the region, every every piece of our economy, every stakeholder that we could reach.

We did focus groups with members of the regional chamber with Greater Fort Wayne , with our board of directors, with the strategic and excuse me with the chamber coalition of northeastern Indiana, the little council we did lots of universities and schools.

We reached out to everybody who had ideas.

We incorporated everybody's plans so that we could end up with was a strategic development plan that would reflect the ideas advanced by the private sector and public sector of the region.

>> And I do want to extrapolate a little bit one of the things was important to us was, you know, to make sure we're number one we hired a national consultant, someone who was an expert in doing this.

They knew the right questions to ask but also we couldn't have this be Fort Wayne centric.

It truly had to be a regional plan.

So Bill is right.

It was very important for us to do listening sessions throughout the entire region and they ended up talking to hundreds of people saying, you know, here are the three big goals we have population growth, wage growth, a great credential attainment and how do we what are the strategies that we need to do to attain those?

And so that listening tour took a year to do all that and literally like said, hundreds of people including which wasn't necessarily done in a lot of the ready grants and things are educational institutions are K through 12 superintendents our college presidents because that's a key piece of this you know, is this education attainment?

So how can we bring them on board as well?

So really this document was not one that nine commission members did right.

It really was one that hundreds of people spoke into and that's the the power of the graphic that we all saw a moment to go to the coordination, the advocacy, the oversight that the commission is bringing to kind of a strength by numbers when you look over eleven counties and looking for the things the ties that bind those counties together.

>> Yeah, we did when we put this together when you look at it's a twenty five page plan and there's a two page summary that we had done for the legislature and what we said is here are the three big goals and there are thirteen strato within those three goals that we think are are key and what we've said is we believe that the return on this investment legislature if you make this investment in us, we're going to leverage this money two , three, four or five acts with the private sector in order to do unlike Reddy which is bricks and mortar.

This is about strategic conversations and strategies and discussions.

So bringing people together to solve problems and how can we do the funding for that and then really looking at that saying we're going to leverage this and we believe if we can do this that the outcomes we normally would have in population growth, wage growth, degree credential attainment we're going to double that in the next five years because the legislation says that we have to redo our strategic plan every five years.

So the plan that you've seen this twenty five page document has to be reviewed in the next now three and a half years.

So so the timeline is ticking on us and so we've said if you give us this funding, here's what we believe we can accomplish.

And the whole goal of this is is that ultimately with this investment how can we have a maximum return on investment for the region and for the state of Indiana?

And then we believe with this it's a way for every region in the state of Indiana to leverage that in order for growth and in that regard too for anyone who has been through a strategic planning process, you can set your goals and then there are always those KPIs those performance indicators, the metrics and the legislative mandates weigh those things come together.

Those appear in the plan as well as in the summary.

We can show them to you right across the board.

>> But I thought before we get to the actions of the General Assembly in this year, if you could take us through these, we'll break them down.

Let's put the first one up which speaks to that notion of population growth.

There's a an anticipated moderate goal and then there's that accelerated what if everything aligns correctly with the universe goal, right?

Yeah.

One of the challenges that we have in northeast Indiana there are areas that are growing.

You know, if you look at Allen County right now it's growing.

Some of the other areas are growing but some are not.

And so how do we make sure that we have growth in every county and a lot of these are quality of place initiatives.

Housing is a major problem we have especially our rural communities.

We know that we've seen data that we are 15000 housing units short in every county and then 8000 in Allen County.

So if you look at that we are twenty three thousand houses short of what we need to be right now in northeast Indiana.

Well, if we can't have those we can't attract people here.

We can't you know I know I need workers.

I know a lot of bills.

Investors need workers and so they need housing and so how do we accommodate that?

>> That's one of these strategies within this plan that's it's actually a critical strategy as as Ron mentioned particularly particularly acute in the more rural communities we've been able to develop some jobs and it's been difficult filling them.

>> It's been especially difficult to fill them from people who live in those counties.

>> And even if we are fortunate enough to have county residents who graduate from high school or college and wish to enter the workforce and they want to stay in in my particular Wabash County it's difficult because there's no place for them to live.

>> So we lose a lot of them not only as residents but some of them we lose as members of our workforce and as residents of the region.

>> Let's look at the second focus area if we could and that notion being one of education also key to and we are blessed with many post-secondary and trade schools that are able to pick up a pick up their skill sets and move.

>> Yeah, this to me is is the key one.

Certainly population growth, wage growth but it all centers on this one.

And Bill's a former school board member.

I'm a current school board member.

We see it you know, if you look at today we're we're at forty three percent of the adults in northeast Indiana have a higher education degree or a higher skilled credential.

And the critical piece about that is to in order to have the kind of jobs that you need to have to have a a wage sustaining life , you know, to pay for housing and all those pieces you have to be able to have that either credential or the degree to do that.

>> So how do we come alongside our K through 12 institutions and say, you know, for students who don't want to do college, you know what?

That's OK.

There's lots of opportunities to grow your skills in the trades, you know, and other things.

Look at what we built here steel dynamics.

I mean, you know, you look at I'm a manufacturer so a lot of our jobs you pay fifty, 70, 100 thousand dollars a year.

How do we get our young people skilled up to do those jobs?

And so that's a critical piece.

The more we raise this metric the more that we're going to attract high wage jobs to northeast Indiana because what they're looking for when they want to bring jobs here or grow jobs and it's the same thing when we sit down and say do we want to expand jobs here or somewhere else, we're asking the question where's the where's the job base at?

Where can we find workers and if we expand this we'll have the trained workforce to do it.

It makes us growing that and if we can do that population grows and wages grow and kind of build on that just a little bit as an example, one of our members SNH Metals in Lagrange County when they first began their business he operated for the seven first seven years without electricity and without telephones.

>> Today they have lasers.

They have they have advanced manufacturing techniques.

They have computer driven S.A.M.

and they had to give up their employees to be able to do that.

>> They had to educate their employees to be able to do that.

>> The thing that is really kind of neat is Legrange County by terms of percentage is the fastest growing county in the region and it leads to a question too.

I'd love both of your thoughts.

But before we get to the third item and that is this notion of economic development, your growing skills for jobs but then the flip side is you're looking for additional employers to come through or existing employers to expand their offerings to create those jobs to that for which could be a match for the skills.

I don't think it's totally chicken and egg but it seems like it is a dance of a kind and I'm wondering what that's like, Bill in your in your working with the regional chamber for example.

>> First of all, put our softball out there for you to take cutout in dealing with site selection consultants nationwide.

We generally hear today the first the three most important things are where am I going to get my workforce?

Where am I going to get my workforce and where am I going to get my work and are not just talking about numbers.

They're talking about skills.

They're talking about education.

They're talking about the ability to perform in a 21st century economy now and take a very well and I think a key piece of this is you know, in order for us to have a low tax environment in order for us to have the amenities we need to have in our community to encourage people to move here, we need to have a diversified tax base and that is business, you know, and that is having more bodies because you see in those counties where they're losing population and they don't have a business base, their taxes are much higher.

And so for us the more that we can make these strategic investments to grow the tax base, you know, the more it's going to ultimately lead to a decrease in tax for everybody and more amenities.

So that that's a key piece of this.

You know, you look at it as you build housing, you know, as you put more housing in you know those people pay property taxes and as they pay property taxes that eventually lowers everyone's because you have to do a less rate in order to support the services you have.

So that's a key piece of why we have to have more business here.

We have to have more housing here because the more we diversify that out the more that we're going to have that infrastructure to grow and a lot of that growth translates then to into point three which is worth sharing and that is income.

>> Another happy ending.

>> Yeah, we know and looking at this one, if you go back 30 or 40 years in northeast Indiana we would have actually been at one hundred percent of the federal average when it comes to average wages.

You know today word about eighty two percent and the challenge with this one is now obviously back then we were highly manufacturing.

You had GE you had Navistar a number of those and we still have a number of great, great companies throughout this region.

We are tremendously blessed with what we have but we also need to grow those jobs that pay you know, 50, 70, 100 thousand dollars a year and to do that because if we do that then they have the income to improve their housing.

They have the ability to invest, you know, in growing their life .

So that's something that's key to do that.

So the more that we can grow that and people may say well the cost of living is less here, well it may be less than it is in California or in New York City but it's not less than Des Moines, Iowa or Chattanooga, Tennessee.

So that eighty five percent the eighty two percent is a false number.

You know, we really need to move that as close as we can to 100 because that provides the wage base.

We need to have everyone have the opportunities to have a successful life .

>> And so now we have a strategic development commission.

We have authorization through the General Assembly.

We have the five year strategic plan approved and then this year the General Assembly comes through with the appropriation for the authorization it seems thirty million over two years in the biennium.

Tell me about the the journey through the approval of the Senate bill.

>> Three forty four.

This has been an unusual year unique here.

>> It's unusual each each year in the General Assembly has its own unique set of challenges.

Sometimes are social, sometimes they're economic.

They're all over the place.

One of the big problems we had this year was we began a session with a substantial budget surplus, a lot of cash on hand and revenues that continued to beat the forecast.

>> And so we're it looked as if it was going to continue to be great as a result of that every entity, every everybody in the world it seemed had an idea they developed a better mousetrap.

They needed it funded.

And so I mean there were eleven hundred bills introduced and most of them had money attached to them and it was really hard to get traction most of the most of the time I want to acknowledge our legislative delegation, the entire delegation of twenty one members but I really want to focus on people who really worked hard on this particular piece of legislation, this funding that would be like Travis Holdman who was an absolute champion and Matt Laman both both absolute champions in getting this across the finish line.

>> But we also had Craig Snow, Dave Hynie, Chris Judy and Ben Smoltz on the Ways and Means Committee Phil Jackson or the minority leader in in the House and Senator Liz Brown and Senator Bush who also participated on the appropriation Committee.

>> This would not have been possible had they not been unified and held firm on this matter because it was challenged from everywhere Travis Coleman really worked hard to get this across the finish line.

>> We really deeply appreciate that surrounding me ask you what this thirty million dollars do for the potentials list?

>> Well, the first is when I got a call that this was going to be approved, my first response was oh because it's a great thing for the region but we have a lot of work to do because we've made some promises and this is not just give us thirty million dollars and you know, trust us.

>> You know we've said in this report if you give us this money we're going to provide an ROIC for the state of Diana that we're going to take this money and leverage it one, two , three five x in order to solve these three big problems that no one's been able to solve so far and this will be a solution we feel for the entire state of Indiana.

You know, give us two years, give us an investment and we feel we can take these dollars and Máxima as these for the state so that really the thirty dollars million investment turns into something much more significant because if you think about unlike building a building where I build this asset and it's there and depreciate what we're talking about is building collaborations, building strategy, building alliances to get big projects done and so that has a much higher impact than just one building might have.

And I'm I'm all for building buildings but this is much deeper than how do we build people and how do we build life betterment for people.

And so but the pressures on us now is that you know so thirty million sounds like a lot of money but when you have thirteen big goals like we have and they're big goals over an eleven county region with eight hundred thousand people, it's a daunting task that you know I was telling Bill earlier and I've told some of our commission members we have to expect to work an this is going to be a lot of work and it's going to involve a lot of people, you know, as we build this out because it's not just you know, eleven people on the commissions voices.

It really is.

How do we bring other people along side each of these thirteen areas to solve some big issues and then how do we give metrics and data back to the legislature that we're accomplishing something and so all of those thirteen under could be fifteen by the time you get the gang together how do you determine who's up first or do you do in a perfect world maybe several simultaneously?

>> I think that's a good a good thought.

One of the strategies we've talked about are you look at these thirteen when we bring our commission back together probably next month we're going to ask the question of them.

All right.

Which of these are the lowest hanging fruit ?

What are some things that are already happening like for example, we know that there's a lot of regional conversation going on right now about early childhood in particular, you know, early child care and we've got a big issue because we have a number of people that want to go to work but they can't go to work because they can't afford child care.

>> So and there's not enough child care providers especially in our rural communities.

>> So there are models Bill was a big advocate for a TRICARE model that was put through the legislature this year that kind of fell out.

But how do we have a Tricare of the family plan a third in the business that benefits putting a third in and the government putting a third in knowing that you're taking someone who's not paying payroll taxes and now they are paying payroll taxes so this is a perfect one that this may be one of the first things we want to tee up.

There's other discussions about a housing pool.

How can we put a housing pool that would help prefund some housing for rural communities?

We would be paid back by TIF districts that would be in those communities.

There's a big conversation right now about workforce development partnering with our K through 12 institutions.

So I think there's a number of those things we have to look at.

Let's find five, six, seven of these that we can build teams on that can really start doing the work because again we have to by the end of this year start showing the legislature we're making traction because part of this legislation is we have to give an update report every year.

It's not just wait two years and then tell us what you're doing.

No, no, I want to know every year what's going on and I like that accountability.

I mean it's the same accountability I would ask from any of the companies that we have is that we want to know how the money you're invested in you is being spent and so that's exactly what we're doing.

>> Yeah, I put out the same accountability my board of directors, our staff to me and I'd also point out one of the things that Ron Ron mentioned is when it comes early childhood care, early childhood education as we presented our proposal to the Senate committee, I had at least three senators ask us if we got the thirty million we were asking for for our Strategic Development Commission could we invest in early childhood care?

>> So there are already thinking the same way we are anyway and I think that's kind of important and as the point that Ron made is we talk about a five year payment plan with about three and a half years we have to be accountable for we actually have to be accountable for it by next November.

>> Yeah, yeah.

Every November we have to report what we're doing and it is an interesting dynamic to recognize that we live locally.

We live regionally at the same time.

Right.

And if you would like to find out more about your place within the region and its economic development, you can go online.

Of course you can find an executive summary and the full strategic plan there at the bottom the Northeast, the Strategic Development Corporation Commission rather dog and of course northeast Indiana advocates where the regional chamber lives and we seem to stay in touch.

>> But gentlemen, thank you so much for being here.

>> It's been a very fast half hour.

We're we're moving on to July and and a full celebration of birthday number two for the strategic committee.

>> Thanks for having us for everything.

Ron Turpin, the chair of that board and of course Bill Khania, the director the executive director of the Regional Chamber for All of us with PrimeTime Bruce Haines.

>> Take care.

We'll see you next week.

Good night