Gabrielle was feeling a bit homesick and decided to bring some of the festivities of home to Fortville. It will be an exciting evening kicked off by a Pétanque Tournament.  I plan on practicing my form all weekend!

Come early and enjoy the food vendors or bring a picnic.  Then plan to stay late for the children's lantern procession and the laser light spectacle that will follow right at 10pm to close out the eventing.

More info can be found at the Fortville Bastille Day website.

I would like to thank everyone who has supported my campaign. I would like to especially thank my family, who has seen a lot less of me over the last few weeks.

I want the residents of Fortville to know that I am still committed to our town. I still plan on being involved in the community and I'm looking forward to the new Main Street association getting rolling.

I want to send a sincere congratulations to Sarah and I will be here to help.

If you live in Fortville these are your polling locations.

Not many people know that there is a reason that our election days are on Tuesdays. Back when this was established, our country was an agrarian one. Many of the people who were going to vote needed a full day of travel to go to the county seat to cast their ballots. Tuesday was chosen so that it would not interfere with the Sabbath on Sunday or the market day in many towns which was typically on Wednesday.

Just the mere fact that people would travel a full day to vote and a full day back home should tell you something about how important it was to the people who built this country. They knew that their voice mattered.

While I have been going door-to-door talking to voters, I've heard a couple of people say they weren't going to vote or that they thought their vote wouldn't matter. This couldn't be further from the truth. If you and everyone else thought like that, democracy would cease to exist. The true power is making your voice heard along with everyone else in the nation. If you share some of the same opinions as the others around you, then your voices together will be heard.

The Primary Election coming up on Tuesday is also important. These primary elections determine the choices you will have come November. Your voice matters now to ensure great choices in the fall.

I look forward to seeing all of you at the polls on Tuesday. Don't forget to mark my name for the At-Large Town Council seat!

It isn't about creating events or festivals or a bigger bureaucracy. Its about making government serve and protect while getting out of people's way. Government doesn't create new jobs or new businesses - but government overstepping its bounds can make sure potential employers go elsewhere.

A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

 — Thomas Jefferson

How does this relate to Fortville and the Town Council? Every decision we make needs to have a solid foundation built upon these values. We are here to ensure that the public can trust in our decisions and that we are dealing with the issues that matter most.

We are here to continue to build a town that will attract new citizens and businesses.  The environment that the council creates will set the stage for businesses to join our community and in turn improve our quality of life.

We now have 12 strands of fiber connecting us to the internet and are working on getting a secondary fiber connection from another provider here locally. This gives us the ability to have almost unlimited bandwidth in our offices in Fortville. We recently added backup generator power to our building so that we can provide enterprise level service for our customers and potentially to other companies like ourselves in town.

Six Feet Up is one of the largest Plone consulting companies in the United States. Plone is an enterprise-quality content management system that is easy for end-users to use. Our customers are nation-wide and include organizations such as the Indiana Historical Society, the University of Virginia Health System, Duke University Clinical Research and Oxfam America.

We aren't the only high tech game in town though. Need-A-Nerd, which is an onsite computer repair group, is also located here in Fortville. They also are growing and will be our new neighbors on Main Street, as they open their new retail location. I am so excited to see Josh growing his company and utilizing Main Street for their location.

Why is all of this important?  The per capita personal annual income in 2008 for Hancock County was $41,550, which ranks us 4th highest in the state at that time. That income level is below the floor amount that high tech companies such as ours pay. If we can grow and bring better paying jobs into Fortville, others can do the same. If others come to Fortville because we have established a group of similar high tech companies, we will need other businesses such as resturants, retail and cafes to support the groups who would work in our town each day.

These types of retail establishments can make Fortville a destination again. Fortville makes it very affordable to live in our town. These business owners and employees can have the opportunity to walk to work if they move their businesses and homes to our town. We believe in this town and are working towards making these types of businesses possible here.

I started off in Blossom Trace, which had nice sidewalks that were very conducive to walking and you could tell that people had a real pride in their neighborhood as the place was beautifully landscaped. People there also had some great front porches that were natural extensions of their living space.

I walked through Old Bridge next. They get to enjoy some of the same sidewalks, but have gorgeous mature trees and a picturesque lake. I got some great stories while talking to the residents there too.

My last stop of the weekend was in Flat Rock Creek. The neighborhood there was bustling with activity and you could see the neighbors out at each others houses enjoying the weekend together. Everyone was welcoming and chatting with each other.

This got me thinking about the walking we do in Fortville. All of these neighborhoods are very walkable from downtown Fortville as well. We have a great setup here with the proximity of each neighborhood to the downtown area.

From our house, we typically walk around Fortville to many places still on Main Street such as our office, Taste of Paradise, Jennifer's Flowers or to Tae Kwon Do practice. We will walk to our neighbors houses to socialize and we can walk to both parks in town. We will even walk to the CVS, Dairy Queen, Strough's and the Library.

We really enjoy the walking, it is healthy for us. We get a chance to notice how beautiful Fortville is and we get to know people in the community. For us it is a family activity, but it is also environmentally friendly and improves the overall safety of our community.

I would like to make it even easier for Fortville residents to have more reasons to go out and walk around town. I want to help Fortville have more destinations such as cafes, ice cream parlors, live music, etc. We have so much potential on Broadway and Main Street to brings more places for people to walk to in Fortville.

You may see a lot of signs out around town, but the signs don't vote, people vote. You need to hear what each candidate has to say so you can make an informed decision in the coming primary election.

I'm excited that Fortville is sponsoring an event to all the public to get to know about each candidate. The event is this Saturday at 9am at the Fortville Municipal Building. I have the event listed on my site along with the newspaper articles about the At-Large and Fortville District 2 town council candidates. Brush up on the candidates issues and come prepared with questions!

Council has only a short time together, and that time needs to be used effectively. As a council member, I will make sure agendas are properly set, and that meetings are neither longer or shorter than they need to be. I will also make sure the public is informed in advance of the items on those agendas.

In the meetings, we will stay on task and work from the agenda and utilize Robert's Rules of Order as a basis for conducting the meetings per § 30.08 of the town's own code. Our meetings should produce clear action items. Once finished, we ensure that we review the minutes at the next meeting and the publish them back to the public for review in a timely manner. 

It will be my responsibility to be prepared to handle the issues presented to us during the meetings. We can not waste the time of the others on the council, the employees of Fortville or the public who is attending the meetings. Our job is to stay on target.

In business, these types of activities are key to staying competitive and ultimately alive. I know this because I run a business which works because of communication and clear directions. We have focused in on our target and grown our company over the past 10 years, even during a downturn.

Our Main Street has a lot of potential for retail and commercial office space, but with the state of some of the buildings it is tough for some people to truly envision what is possible here. This is one area where working with the Indiana Main Street group and the excited group that has been meeting locally to work with the building owners will go a long way in improving the look of our downtown. Once we can shift the perception to a more positive vision of Main Street, we will have a lot better chance of attracting the right businesses to our town.

I'd love to see more companies like ours come to Main Street. This might help be the tipping point needed to bring in the other services and infrastructure that are needed to support the additional offices such as restaurants and retail shopping. It sounds a bit like a chicken and egg problem, but I think we have started down the initial steps by growing our company here to show it can be done.

While growing our company here we have also brought in some additional infrastructure that may benefit other groups like ours such as fiber connections to the internet and backup power. If we can leverage these to attract similar groups we are well on our way to building a Fortville built on the next generation of Knowledge Workers and supporting services.

Then comes the real fun of enjoying what we have built together as a community.

[1] Haag, S., Cummings, M., McCubbrey, D., Pinsonneault, A., & Donovan, R. (2006). Management Information Systems For the Information Age (3rd Canadian Ed.). Canada: McGraw Hill Ryerson

My great great grandpa, Max Herrlich, was a serial entrepreneur. In 1885 he moved to Hancock County and in 1888 established himself as the funeral director in New Palestine. Max Herrlich also established an ice storage house and made concrete blocks used in buildings around New Palestine. Not only was he an entrepreneur, he also cared about the welfare of the community. 1902 Max Herrlich furnished the capital for the New Palestine waterworks system and he aided many other public enterprises.

My great grandma started a Shell Station, an Appliance Store and a housing subdivision in New Palestine. Before moving back to Indiana, while she was in Washington D.C. she ran an auto accessory store. She also was heavily involved in the welfare of the community and helped many of those in need.

My grandpa took over the mortuary which was originally founded in 1888 by his grandfather, Max Herrlich. It is still running strong today as Hendryx Mortuaries in New Palestine and Cumberland and is currently owned by my uncle.

My parents have also been bitten by the bug and have owned a bicycle shop located in New Palestine. They also operated a woodworking shop building, shelves and furniture.

And it turns out I am also an entrepreneur. My wife and I founded a software development company called Six Feet Up, Inc. in 1999 and moved it from San Francisco back to Fortville in 2003. We have grown each year by 50 to 100 percent and now employ 18 wonderful folks that come to our town each day. We also have a real estate company and have owned a child care business.

I want to continue the tradition of being involved in the welfare of the community and serving Fortville.

I want to thank Sherry Dwelle from Memorable Signs for the quick turnaround and great looking sign for our building on Main Street. Please feel free to come upstairs and visit Six Feet Up to see what we have built in Fortville.

I spent the whole day yesterday getting to know the people of Fortville better. In the morning I was invited to attend the Fortville Optimist Club breakfast. Luckly for me, they didn't have a speaker lined up so I got volunteered. They are a great group that does so much for the youth in our area.

Later in the morning the Fortville Lion's Club held their first open house in the Fortville Community Center. Again, here is a great group of people doing so much for the community. They brought in the Blood Mobile and they offered free vision screenings during the event.  While I was at this event I met a few of the more senior members of the club and got some great stories about Fortville. One member reminisced about the old movie theater that was in downtown. He was there for the last show they ever put on the screen.

The rest of the day, I walked a portion of the town talking to folks door-to-door. I think this has to be one of the most rewarding ways to campaign. The people I met were very interested to hear what I had to say and they also told me some stories of Fortville. One of my favorites was about the bandstand that used to stand where the Greenfield Banking Company is now. Every Saturday night there used to be a band playing and people would all come to town to meet and enjoy the music together. Many others also commented on how this town used to have everything you could have ever wanted without leaving town.

There used to be multiple soda fountains in town and an ice cream shop where I know of at least one business deal that was signed there. We had a roller skating rink. There were multiple grocery stores here, including a Kroger right on Main Street. There were multiple jewelry stores and even a store dedicated to buying only hats. Fortville was probably superior to one of today's new trendy outdoor malls.

I walked for over 6 hours yesterday and enjoyed every minute. While it would be impossible to have Fortville be exactly the way it used to be during those days, it is possible for Fortville to realize the potential that it holds. Working with groups like the Indiana Main Street Organization, we can build a new Fortville that can be a destination for people. We have many great things here in Fortville such as our downtown buildings, the quaint old houses and the great location that is a mix of a rural settings and close proximity to a metropolitan area. On top of that we have a local community that wants to see the town thrive again based on my discussions with the residents of Fortville.

According to a 2003 economic impact study in Austin, TX by Civic Economics, for every $100 spent at chain store, $13 of that money stayed in the community. Contrast that with the their findings that for every $100 spent at local business, $45 of that money stayed in the community.

I have personally found that dealing with local businesses also gets you a much more personalized level of service. There is something to be said for establishing a relationship with the people you do business with.  This holds true for big and small transactions. I'd suggest you make an extra effort to buy local when you can and make sure to talk to the businesses and let them know if there is something they can do for you.

I'm hopeful that Fortville can also attract more businesses to allow more residents to get what they need here in town. It saves gas, saves time and brings more dollars directly back into the community.

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30080293@N02/3052989539/

Eliott went out with me to get a few pictures of the signs.  We'll post more as we go along the campaign trail.

See larger pictures of the Signs.

There is no doubt that Indiana has some great universities and colleges contained within its borders. What we have been producing has been leaving the state though. Here are some interesting facts:

• 45% of all Indiana public post-secondary graduates leave Indiana after graduating
• Indiana ranks 44th among states for its share of population over the age of 25 with a bachelor's degree

I was part of this problem when I graduated from Purdue in 1998. After living my whole life in Hancock County, I left during the dotcom boom and went to the Silicon Valley. I learned so much from being in this environment. But when it came to cost-of-living and quality-of-life, we had to make a decision on where we really wanted to live.

It was during this time in the Valley that we founded our software company Six Feet Up. Our company has been self funded since the beginning and we needed a place to grow that wouldn't require outside capital to do so. Coming back to Indiana was an easy choice since we got both the cost-of-living and quaility-of-life benefits we were looking for.

This also gave us an excellent reason to bring all of the things we have learned and our enhanced set of skills back to the midwest with us. Since we have returned from California we have gone from a 2 person start up to employing 18 people right here in Fortville. Some of our employees have even moved from out of state to Fortville. I'm hopeful that we can make an environment that is conducive to attracting other companies to this area.

We really enjoy living in the town. The ability to walk to work is something everyone should experience at some point in their life. I have been blessed to have this situation more than once in my life. The walkability of a city or town is a factor that can actually improve the health of the citizens that live there.

Fortville has many things going for it in this area. We have a downtown that isn't directly on a busy highway. We have multiple parks that are accessible by walking. Many of the restaurants in town are also not far from the beaten path. We also have some areas that need improvement. We need to attract a greater variety of retail and restaurants to our town. This is something that Six Feet Up struggles with as we grow. We need places for our employees to eat lunch and do quick shopping that is close by.

I was very happy to see that the Town Manager, Joe Renner, has started organizing some meetings with people interested in the Main Street area. I met with this group last week and it was very positive. We had a representative from Indiana Main Street present to talk to us about the benefits of their program which is free of charge to use to utilize. I think with the support of the community in efforts such as this and the guidance of groups such as the Indiana Main Street organization Fortville can get the grants and businesses need to increase our "Walk Score".

I'm planning on putting them out this week.  Please email or call me at (317) 863-4203 if you would like one for your yard!  I'll deliver and pick it up for you.

The front porch is our gateway into the community and not many people are leveraging that anymore. One thing I have really enjoyed about Fortville is the fact that the houses have nice porches on them.  Some are actually nicer than some of the rooms in my house.

In the days before air conditioning and cable TV, this was the social hub of the community and the only way to keep cool in town during the summer.  I rode around town today and actually saw quite a few people resting on their porches and enjoying the beautiful day.

This is a great way to meet your neighbors and talk about new ideas for your area of town or express concerns with others.

Professional Porch Sitters Union Local 244

I'm annoucing the formation of our own Professional Porch SItters Union.  I'm giving it the number 244 since that is where I live and it will make it easier for new folks to come and join me on my front porch. Feel free to join me anytime you see my on my porch or at least wave as you walk by. For extra credit, you can bring some refreshments with you.  See you on Main Street!

For More Information on Front Porch Life check out these links:

Sitting on the Porch: Not a Place, But a State of Mind

An Open Letter to Porch Sitters

This is from in front of my house looking south down Main Street.