By KEVIN NEVERS

The Porter Town Council is seeking residents of Porter Beach to serve on an overlay committee which will be charged with creating a specific zoning district in that neighborhood.

At Tuesday’s meeting, members Micheal Genger, R-4th, and Dave Babcock, R-3rd, both volunteered to serve on that committee, while President Bill Sexton, R-1st, indicated that Town Planner Jim Mandon and Town Engineer Warren Thiede, will also serve.

But three citizens are needed as well, and Sexton asked Porter Beach residents to send a letter of interest to the town hall.

Janie Hogan, meanwhile, offered to make copies available of records from 1992 and 1994, when earlier but aborted efforts were made to establish Porter Beach-specific zoning. The whole point, she told members, is to protect the neighborhood’s historic and environmental importance but at the same time to protect property owners’ rights.

Westchester Township

Fire Protection Contract

In other business, members voted 5-0 to approve the 2008 contract with Westchester Township for fire protection. Under that contract, the Town of Porter will receive $7,938 this year in compensation for it services to unincorporated Westchester Township.

That figure, Town Attorney Patrick Lyp noted, represents 20.8 percent of the total amount which Westchester Township has earmarked for fire protection: $37,500. In 2007, he said, the Porter Fire Department responded to 20.8 percent of the calls in Westchester Township, the Chesterton Fire Department to the balance.

Sexton did want to know this from Fire Chief Lewis Craig. Is the PFD well enough compensated for its services, given the fact that it will receive only around $300 more this year than last?

Craig said that it is well enough compensated. In addition to the annual contract amount, the PFD over the years has received a total of $233,533.78 from Westchester Township for vehicle and equipment acquisition. “We’re getting more money,” Craig told members. “We buy much needed equipment with it. They’ve been very generous. They’ve never turned us down for money.”

For the record, Craig observed that the PFD mostly responds in unincorporated Westchester Township to crashes on U.S. Highway 20, fire alarms at the Dunes Park Train Station, and brush fires, while the CFD mostly responds in its area of coverage to crashes on I-94 and medical calls.

No GPS Now

By consensus members declined to re-visit an issue tabled until August: a global positioning system (GPS) service contract which Public Works Director Brenda Brueckheimer said will be absolutely vital to the stormwater and sanitary sewer improvements which are coming down the pike.

Although costly at $21,000, Brueckheimer remarked, GPS will be used to plot, map, and record in digital form the precise location of manholes, outfalls, lines, pipes, and other topographical and infrastructural features an exact knowledge of which will be necessary for the raft of improvements mandated by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

Best to use it now, too, Brueckheimer said, before the trees leaf.

Without discussion members agreed to consider the issue at the end of the summer.

Posted 4/23/2008