The Chesterton Town Council will meet at 7 p.m. Monday at the town hall.
At that meeting, the council is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the
petition of Growing Kids Management Corporation (GKMC) for the vacation of
platted easements on three parcels at the southwest corner of the
intersection of 1100N and 11th Street, the proposed future home of Growing
Kids, a learning center and child-care facility.
Those parcels were originally platted in 1984 as a planned unit development.
But GKMC wants to start from scratch and treat the three parcels as a single
parcel, necessitating the vacation of the current easements, which will then
be withdrawn.
Members are also scheduled to approve an ordinance which would set the
amortization schedule of the $1.5 million bond being issued to finance a
raft of paving projects. The bond is expected to work this way: the Porter
County Treasurer’s Office will loan the town $1.5 million, at an interest
rate of 2 percent over five years. Of the $1.5 million, around $500,000 will
be used to re-pave roads in the tax increment financing district, which
means that the Redevelopment Commission will pay for the jobs with TIF
moneys. Chesterton property taxpayers will be on the hook for the balance of
$1 million, which Town Attorney Chuck Lukmann has estimated will increase
the liability of a $200,000 homestead by $32.45 over the bonds’ five-year
lifetime.
Redevelopment Commission
Earlier in the evening, at 6:30 p.m., the Redevelopment Commission will hold
its regular monthly meeting, at which it’s scheduled to call a public
hearing on an amendment to the economic development plan for each of the
town’s three TIF districts.
That amendment would make the installation of fiber-optic infrastructure a
TIF-eligible project.