County 2: Miami

On this 92-county adventure, I planned to see a lot of the countryside in rural Indiana. The programs and dollars the state sends out reach everywhere, well beyond city limits and into the fields and farms on country roads.

That said, sometimes I see more of the countryside than I intend to. On my visit to Miami County – the second stop on the Hoosier Crossroads Tour – a wrong turn was to blame.

The day started out great with a local government discussion at the county courthouse in Peru. We happened to visit during the Circus City Festival, meaning many of the downtown streets were closed off for fair rides and fried foods.

After the meeting and lunch at the new Tollhouse Café, I met board members from the Nickel Plate Trail and the contractors who are constructing the trail’s bridge over the Wabash River. INDOT and DNR are helping to fund construction of the Nickel Plate, which will run more than 40 miles from Howard County to Rochester.



Mike Kuepper, president of the Nickel Plate Trail, shows Lt. Governor

Skillman a new trail bridge in Peru. INDOT and DNR are helping to fund

the bridge's construction. The Nickel Plate trail is a 40-mile railtrail

corridor running from Cassville in Howard County to Rochester in

Fulton County.



They gave me an official pair of Nickel Plate Trail socks, which I’ll be sure to wear while walking the trail in the future. I delivered a pair of socks to Governor Mitch as well.

After that, we took the unintentional tour of Miami County cornfields before finally reaching our destination west of Mexico (that’s Mexico, Indiana, to out-of-towners). For the record, I don’t tend to operate on “legislative time”. Sometimes I think the motto of my friends in the General Assembly is: “If you’re not 15 minutes late, you’re 15 minutes early.” But I always pride myself on being punctual, so my apologies to those who were left waiting for us.

At the site, we visited a project involving the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority and the Miami County YMCA. The Y is one of our home energy conservation partners, using grant money every year to weatherize low-income Hoosiers’ homes. This year, however, they also received an additional IHCDA grant to install solar panels on about 20 homes in Miami and Cass counties.

The homeowner we met, whose husband was disabled, will certainly benefit from the lower bills the solar panels will bring. It’s another great example of a state government that reaches everyone.