Kosciusko County Commissioner Cary Groninger, right, speaks to Kosciusko County Parks and Recreation Board members. From the left, Aggie Sweeney, Matt Metzger, President Rob Bishop, Vice President Troy Turley and Mike Cusick after the board’s meeting Thursday about a master plan for greenways and blue ways.

By David Slone
Times-Union

WARSAW — After approving the parks master plan for 2023-27 Thursday, April 13, the Kosciusko County Parks and Recreation Board began looking at the next steps for a greenway and blueway master plan.

The master plan draft — which the board has been working on for months with the Michiana Area Council of Governments — is due to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources for their review by Saturday, April 15.

“It just seems like yesterday was the first day that we met, but we have our completed draft master plan, subject to potential approval today,” Board President Rob Bishop said Thursday. The county commissioners approved an ordinance creating a county parks and recreation department and board on May 10, 2022. The board met for the first time on Aug. 18, 2022.

MACOG Senior Community Development Planner Donny Ritsema told the board now that the public comment period on the master plan has ended, “We can kind of just focus in on what those final outcomes can look like and, again, these aren’t like priorities that necessarily need to be changed, but it was more for confirmation of what the prioritization activities as a board and steering committee came up with, which I think, of what the public had said, did reconfirm our initiatives were on the right track.”

After thanking the board for allowing MACOG to participate in the process for the master plan, Ritsema reiterated that MACOG provides technical services to help communities do the planning work, as well as the implementation.

He said he believed there could be updates to the master plan with the IDNR as it was a living document but he wasn’t familiar with that process.

Bishop asked what the timeframe for the plan was after the board approved it. Ritsema said the submission deadline is Saturday, and he thought he would be sending it off Friday. He expected, at a minimum, the IDNR would take about 30 to 60 days to review it.

During the public comment period, Ritsema said they had three open houses — a north, central and south. In total, 40 members of the public attended the open houses. There was a public review form available for online submission, as well as paper copies. Online, 185 individuals formed the form out and they received two paper copies.

The public was asked to select up to three goals out of the eight that the board and steering committee came up with through the planning process. Ritsema said the one that received the highest response — “which again reconfirms why we’re even doing this in the beginning” — was the trail connections. The second highest response was establishing a linear park system, primarily along Tippecanoe River and the waterways.

On specifically where respondents wanted to see those trail connections, Ritsema said the No. 1 connection people wanted to see in the county was between Pierceton and Winona Lake, particularly the Heritage Trail. The second highest vote-getter was Warsaw to Silver Lake, and then Warsaw to Mentone.

“I hope the public understands though that we can’t do everything all at once, but we’ve got to start somewhere so I think maybe this might help as a board maybe where to start,” Ritsema stated.

Board member Mike Cusick said he wasn’t seeing anything surprising and a lot of the goals in the different sections “almost build on each other.” He said their roadmap still remained the same in terms of each of the areas, but maybe it helped the board be focused in some certain areas of the county.

Board member Matt Metzger said they have all these “wonderful” ideas but they’ve still got to figure out how they can pay for them.

Now that the board has a master plan, Ritsema said hopefully the state will concur and approve it and they will be eligible for land and water conservation opportunities. He believed an eligible activity for that program is land acquisition for the establishment of park lands.

Discussion came up about amenities in the southern part of the county and where in the southern area a park would be feasible. Cusick said the hard part about it was they could end up with some blank spots in the southwestern portion of the county, like Silver Lake, as well as the northwest region toward Nappanee. He said they wouldn’t be able to serve everywhere in the immediate future, even with the linear parks.

Ritsema suggested, “Maybe the most feasible thing for Kosciusko County, your park system, might look like, it might just be a linear park where it’s a linear way versus more of this spreading out tracts of land kind of way. I think if opportunities come up for that buying up large tracts of land to do a park would be great, but if it does take the form of more a linear park, trails and blueways, I think it’s a win-win for everyone.”

K21 Health Foundation Chief Executive Officer Rich Haddad, a member of the steering committee who was watching the meeting virtually, said, “I love the trail concept, that makes a lot of sense for us as a county, but in the plan is underserved pockets, and so that maybe where we as a county think about providing amenities in smaller communities for smaller settings. So, again, Silver Lake might be a good example. We want to connect them to Warsaw, but what does Silver Lake have to offer in its own community, right? Or, if it’s underserved, like low socio-economic, how do we enhance Enchanted Hills on the east of Lake Wawasee. Those sort of things, to me, would be kind of smaller projects instead of this vast land acquisition idea.”

While he said he loved the primary focus being the trails, he said the secondary focus is where are the underserved people and how do they do something for them.

Haddad pointed out that Silver Lake is looking at starting a new, second park near the actual Silver Lake. The town will be using their K21 pledge money to fund about 75% of that. The current park in Silver Lake is on the east side of SR 15, and the new one is being planned for the west side to make it safer for residents to get to the parks.

Lisa Harman, Live Well Kosciusko executive director, said she lives between Claypool and Silver Lake and she was there as a resident to advocate for a trail between the two towns. She even said she had some acreage she would be willing to donate.

Commissioner Cary Groninger talked about the Hoosier Enduring Legacy Program Strategic Investment Plan that the commissioners approved Tuesday and the county council was scheduled to vote on Thursday night. One of the county’s projects proposed in the HELP SIP is the extension trail for Chinworth out to Creighton Brothers or on out to Atwood. Other projects were the blueways and greenways master plan, as well as the canoe launch possibly on James Lake. Grant funding for the projects is to be determined. Those decisions will be made within the next 30 to 60 days depending on the income surveys and grant funding.

After the board unanimously approved the draft for the parks master plan, the request for proposals for the blueways and greenways master plan was discussed. The board scheduled a special meeting for 2 p.m. April 28 in the county courthouse to work on that.

Check out a draft of the master plan online at macog.com/docs/community_devel/park_plan/Kosciusko_ParksPlanDRAFT_web.pdf.