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September 5, 2012

Landfill to help pay for Horizon Alliance jobs

By ROGER SCHNEIDER THE GOSHEN NEWS

GOSHEN — With the input of $64,000 in county landfill funds, the Horizon Educational Alliance will begin October with two full-time staff members.

On Tuesday morning the commissioners approved a resolution asking the County Council to spend just under $64,000 to pay for the benefits packages for a new executive director and a researcher for the communitywide education project.

All three commissioners, Frank Luccese, Terry Rodino and Mike Yoder, had high praise for the program that seeks to expand early childhood education by 50 percent for the county’s children and offer college-credit courses to high school students.

“To me, this is money well spent,” Rodino said. “I like everything the alliance has done so far. There have been some great changes in Elkhart County recently, and I think this is one of them.”

Commissioners Mike Yoder served on an advisory board for the Horizon Project, which created the Horizon Educational Alliance, and he said dozens of community organizations, five school boards and many non-profit agencies have joined the movement.

“The alliance has asked us to step to the table,” Yoder said, in explaining the request for the landfill funds. He said the County Council will be asked on Sept. 28 to approve the appropriation.

After the meeting, Yoder said the landfill funds come from the profit that operation produced and were in an environment education budget. He said there is still a debate going on within and outside county government on if tax funds should be used for the Horizon Educational Alliance. The funding will cover the employee benefits for 15 months.

“That gives us a year’s time to get a progress report and figure out what’s the next step for the County Commissioners,” Yoder said.

Brian Wiebe will be leaving his job as director of the Goshen College Music Center at the end of the month to become the first executive director of the Horizon Project. Also, the project will have a researcher, Aliah Carolan-Silva, who will work to obtain grants and research the educational needs of the community to support the grant-writing effort, according to Wiebe.

The Horizon Project has been taking a look at the future needs of the county’s work force and employers. The estimate is that a higher-level of skills will be needed in the work force to keep people employed and provide local employers with skilled workers.

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