While Pulaski County is forecast to continue losing residents over the coming decades, a number of opportunities exist to reverse that trend. That’s according to David Terrell. He’s the executive director of the Indiana Communities Institute at Ball State University and the Rural Policy Institute Center for State Policy.
“I salivate when I see the Tippecanoe River snake through, and you’ve got a bike trail,” Terrell said during a presentation offered Thursday as part of the Community Foundation of Pulaski County’s Forward-Thinking Leadership Initiative. “Tons of communities would kill for that. And I’ve seen communities grow just with those two resources. They’ve grown because of what’s there, those natural amenities. They build other amenities around it. They do other things around it, as well, but they’re great starting points.”
Terrell noted that job creation does not lead directly to population growth, as the traditional approach to economic development would suggest. “‘Jobs’ is a politically expedient measure. It’s a very, very wrong measure, but it’s politically expedient,” Terrell said.
He said that people are more likely to choose where they live based on things like the quality of schools and public services than where their job is located, a trend likely to continue as remote work becomes more common. Terrell said Pulaski County’s schools are strong, and the number of establishments in the county has remained remarkably stable, even as the population has taken a sharp dip.
Pulaski County may also be able to take advantage of the growth that’s inching closer through Jasper and Marshall counties. “It may take a half a generation. It may take a generation. But it’s happening,” Terrell said. “Where the leadership is in terms of that, understanding how to manage that, that’s a huge challenge, I think, for Pulaski County to think about.”
Terrell said it’s important to get a critical mass of leadership on the same page and felt the Forward-Thinking Leadership Initiative is a good first step.
