HELMSBURG — Drug deals. Home-security problems. Short-term tenants who don’t have “roots.” Properties that aren’t being fixed up or cleaned up, which affects other properties’ values.
Helmsburg residents had no trouble listing the concerns they have about their community.
They also had no trouble coming up with another list at their last community meeting: Honesty/trust. Accountability. Security. Family/friends. Neighborhood. These are the “shared values” they have for their community.
Bringing the two lists together will be a long-term challenge for residents of this unincorporated community, who’ve been getting together in steady numbers since last fall to talk about their future.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Last month, new Brown County Redevelopment Commission member Jim Kemp led them in the first of several visioning sessions.
“You have tolerated it for so long, gone without establishing community boundaries that are in alignment with your values, and the situation has gotten out of control,” he said.
“Get rid of the past. We’re talking about moving forward. Think of it as a blank canvas and you all get to recreate it however you want to recreate it. … If you don’t believe it, how in the world are you going to get anyone else outside the community to believe it?” he said.
“I think it could be adorable,” said area resident Judy Swift-Powdrill. “It used to be.”
Sharon and Leonard Richey of Indianapolis have been attending as many Helmsburg Leadership Team meetings as they can. The couple reopened the Helmsburg General Store in March at the busy intersection of State Road 45 and Helmsburg Road, and they’ve been adding inventory and options according to the community’s feedback.
In addition to grocery items and bait, the store now also offers hot Hunt Bros. pizzas and wings for carry-out, giving the community its first restaurant-like option since the Fig Tree gallery and coffee shop closed in January 2012.
Between filling pizza orders at lunchtime on a Tuesday, Sharon said the community looks to be on upswing. “We see a lot of potential,” she said.
The Fig Tree — a brick building that was originally a Masonic lodge — is one of the properties that residents have asked the county redevelopment commission to help sell, possibly to bring in new business.
At the residents’ request, the Brown County Redevelopment Commission made all of Helmsburg into an economic development area in May. That allows the RDC to buy “distressed” properties when they become available and get them into the hands of new owners. But no properties have been bought or sold in this way yet.
Kemp said residents are looking at about six in particular that they’d like to see condemned and cleaned up. He said the RDC could look at buying properties such as those if it had a builder lined up to buy the land from the RDC soon after. But it doesn’t want to be holding onto properties or buying them at too high of a price to move them on.
“We need houses that are affordable, not ‘affordable housing,’” Sandra Pool said.
However, Kemp said he’s also become aware that people living in “distressed” properties might be in some sort of distress themselves.
There’s a difference between choosing to live a certain way and having to live a certain way, and that might not be obvious from the outside, he told the audience at the August redevelopment commission meeting.
“I question myself, how many women do we have in this county whose husbands have passed away (who are) trying to live on a $600-a-month Social Security check, and when we drive by and look at the disrepair on that home, we make judgments to ourselves, when in actual reality we have a lot of people who need a lot of support?” he said.
“We have a segment of people that fall below that line and don’t have adequate resources to maintain whatever you want to define as a adequate standard of living, and then we have those that appear to have a lack of respect for community members, who don’t put money into their property to maintain it.”
Thirty years ago, Helmsburg was a vibrant community, Diana Biddle remembered. Families knew each other; their kids ran around together in the streets.
Denise Broussard grew up playing in the road outside when it was gravel. Now, “I can’t even allow my animals to be out in my own back yard,” Broussard said. She’s found hypodermic needles behind her house and in her grass, and about six months ago, a person ran through her house while she was taking a nap, she said.
Broussard is an insurance agent. She said security problems are one reason why she lost her homeowner’s insurance policy of 28 years, and improving security was high on her list of needs for Helmsburg.
“We’ve lost the feeling of our neighborhood, because it became a transient area,” Steele added. “People come in, live here for six months and go, in and out. We didn’t know our neighbors.”
Residents also mentioned needing more help to get properties condemned that are against county ordinances, for reasons such as basic sanitation and safety. In March, the Pool family bought three houses near the center of town and leveled them, and the leadership team was thankful for that.
Helmsburg Community Church — where this group has been meeting — started clearing the blight years ago when it was approached by banks offering properties for as little as $1, Biddle said. One by one, the church bought and tore down those properties that had been inhabited by “squatters,” Biddle said. “That was the best thing.”
Yet, that meant those properties were off the tax rolls, Steele noted. It also meant fewer children for the county school system.
Finding out how to reverse economic decline, grow the tax base and increase quality of life are some of the goals the county redevelopment commission has adopted, Kemp said — not just in Helmsburg, but in other areas of Brown County as well.
“I don’t have control over any human being other than myself,” Kemp said.
“But clearly, everyone in this room is interested in positive change. … So, to me, just by having this series of meetings … that’s huge.”
Despite Helmsburg’s problems, residents also listed a lot of assets it has that other areas of the county don’t: high-speed internet, sewers, a four-star school, an airstrip, a railroad, Lake Lemon access, three thriving industrial businesses, a fire station, walkable roads and even a yoga studio. It’s also an easy drive to Bloomington, not too far from where the new IU Health hospital is to be built.
Steele said since residents started coming together to talk, positive changes have started to take place. In particular, she mentioned the reopening of the general store, and some artist friends of hers that are showing interest in locating in Helmsburg.
It’s going to take years to change the culture. But that’s to be expected, considering it took years for Helmsburg to get to the place it is now, Kemp said.
“Anything of lasting value requires an enormous amount of time and energy,” he said.
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When residents at the July Helmsburg Leadership Team meeting were talking about wanting more enforcement of county laws, such as for unsafe housing and sanitation, and more police presence, the suggestion was made that maybe Helmsburg should incorporate and become an actual town.
A few residents at the table immediately said no, because they believe that would mean raising taxes to pay for that new government.
Brown County Council member Darren Byrd encouraged them to give it some thought. “The county can’t do for (Helmsburg) what Helmsburg wants to do without ignoring the rest of the county,” he said, because of fairness and budget limitations. “If you incorporate as a town and have one policeman and a town council, you would have the authority within your town to say, ‘This is a town ordinance and we are going to enforce this,'” he said. “And that’s something the town could do without having to go to the sheriff for it.”
Forming a homeowner’s association also was mentioned, but no actual plans were made to pursue either of those ideas.
After the meeting, resident Harietta Weddle said Helmsburg looked into incorporation in the 1970s. Cost was big factor.
Indiana Code 36-5-1 says that a town must make at least six of the following services available to all residents “on an adequate basis”: police protection; fire protection; street construction, maintenance and lighting; sanitary sewers; storm sewers; health protection; parks and recreation; schools and education; planning and zoning; one or more utilities; stream pollution control or wastewater conservation. There are several steps a community must go through in order to become an official town, including getting approval from the county commissioners.
Helmsburg has had a town council in the past even without being an actual town. An April 1977 story in the Brown County Democrat says the council was “resurrected over a year ago for — it is believed — the first time since the 19th century.” At that time, town residents were discussing getting funding to install storm sewers in hopes of increasing property values, inducing businesses to locate there and generally improving “civic pride and optimism.”
The last mention of a Helmsburg Town Council in the newspaper was in a 1981 letter to the editor, urging county leaders to turn their attention back to that community.
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What: Next Helmsburg Leadership Team meeting
Where: Helmsburg Community Church
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 23
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