The Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority approved its spending plans for the coming year and accepted one board member’s resignation at its meeting Thursday.
The administrative budget for running the RDA will be $1,516,960 in 2023, a 2.33% increase over the 2022 budget that was approved last year.
The RDA actually spent $393,468 less than budgeted in the past year. Most of the decrease was in personnel, as the RDA has two administrative jobs open now, including the chief operating officer position Sherri Ziller occupied before she was appointed as the RDA’s president and chief executive officer in October 2021.
The RDA’s development-related expenses for the two South Shore Line projects it helps oversee, plus planning for transit development districts, will be just under $5 million — $4,977,500 — in 2023, a nearly 16% decrease from this year’s budgeted expenses.
That budget covers the expenses for three consulting firms working as financial technical, legal and planning consultants on the projects.
Also Thursday, RDA board member Don Babcock, one of three people added to the RDA board last year, resigned from the board to run a consulting firm.
Babcock, a Long Beach resident and former NIPSCO economic development director, was appointed by Gov. Eric Holcomb to represent LaPorte County.
The board was expanded to oversee the formation and operation of transit development districts around the South Shore Line’s new stations along the West Lake Corridor and existing stations in the Double Track project between Gary and Michigan City.
Seven TDDs have been formed so far, each covering nearly a half square mile, and more are in the works. Each district has property tax and county income tax incentives to encourage development.
Tim Zorn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune
