By KEVIN NEVERS

A year ago the three blocks of Dave Brandenburger’s Honors Economics students at Chesterton High School undertook a special project: an in-depth analysis of Duneland’s economy.

Over a period of weeks the students conducted scores of interviews and collected scads of data. Then, at a special meeting of the Chesterton Town Council in the auditorium of Chesterton Middle School, each block presented its findings in the form of recommended strategies for stemming the so-called brain drain in Duneland: the permanent loss of its most talented and motivated youth to more percolating regions of the country, because there simply isn’t enough employment here to sustain a highly educated workforce.

The project—implemented by Chesterton residents Eric Kroeger and Gerard Pannekoek in consultation with CHS Principal Jim Goetz and Duneland Assistant Superintendent Monte Moffett—was deemed a great success. For their exceptional efforts five students were awarded a total of $2,000 in scholarship money and several others summer jobs.

This year, Brandenburg’s Honors Economics students are taking a crack at another special project: this one a study of the desirability and feasibility of Chesterton’s hiring a town manager.

The issue of town manager emerged in the fall of 2006, in the run-up to Chesterton’s referendum on city status. Numerous residents viewed a town manager as a preferable alternative to a mayor, and it’s conceivable that some of the voters who overwhelmingly cast ballots against city status mistakenly believed that they were voting for a town manager.

Be that as it may, Town Council Member Jim Ton, R-1st, volunteered after the referendum to draft a document on the ways and means of hiring a town manager. He submitted that document to his colleagues in January 2007 but they promptly shelved it, chiefly for two reasons. First, members were then in the last year of their terms and supposed that no candidate for the position of town manager would accept a job offer knowing that the composition of the Town Council would likely change—and therefore possibly his or her employment status—in the municipal election in November. Second, members expressed doubts about the town’s ability to fund the new position.

To date the new Town Council has not broached the issue of town manager.

The Honors Economics students will use Ton’s document as a jumping-off point, Kroeger told the Chesterton Tribune last week. Among other things, each of the blocks will be required to prepare an implementation plan for the Town Council, including the identification of funding mechanisms, by which the municipality could proceed with plans to hire a town manager. Each block will also be required to interview representatives of five municipalities in Indiana and other states which utilize the town manager system, to determine how successfully or unsuccessfully that system works and why.

Two weeks ago Town Council Member Dave Cincoski, R-3rd, and Town Attorney Chuck Lukmann kicked off the project by giving the students a run-down on the history and legalities of the issue. The three blocks are scheduled to present their plans to the Town Council at a special meeting on April 24, probably at CHS.

For the students the benefits of the project are several, Kroeger said. They will acquire experience with “real-life projects” and in the process learn something about the workings of local government. More important perhaps, the project is intended to foster in the students a “buy-in,” to get them thinking about their personal and even their professional stake in the community, and—in the long term—to give them a reason to return to Duneland when they’ve completed their university education.

Meanwhile, Kroeger said, he, Pannekoek, and the Duneland School Corporation are working on a way to transform this annual special project into a “year-long course,” possibly under the auspices of the International Baccalaureate (IB) program when CHS receives its IB certification and including internships in government, the media, and business.

A course of such scope, however, would require a specialized funding source to cover the estimated $50,000 needed annually to pay an administrator and facilitator, Kroeger said, and right now he and Pannekoek are hoping to find a corporate or institutional sponsor or sponsors who would be willing to make that investment in Duneland.

“We’re really looking at taking this to a new level. We want it to be a self-sufficient project with multiple components,” Kroeger said.

Posted 3/27/2008

Posted 3/27/2008

Posted 3/27/2008

Posted 3/27/2008