CONCLUSIONS

income for some families, and overall hardships, the region has begun its recovery from the pandemic and has entered the endemic stage.

Prior to the pandemic, the market was shifting. Retail had been shifting from brick and mortar to more online sales, manufacturing had been shifting from traditional manufacturing to automation, robotics, and technology. There has been a movement to recruit makerspaces and small-scale manufacturing into downtowns, innovation districts, and other places. When the pandemic happened, everything came to a halt and for the Indiana 15 Region, allowed for a minor reset. While the region has started to recover, it will still need to implement the actions in the plan to develop a resilient economy and prepare for the future. The actions in the Recovery and Resiliency Plan go beyond economic recovery and resiliency to provide for actions that will support population growth, diversify the economy, grow businesses and industries, grow local entrepreneurship, develop new and existing economic sectors, and revitalize downtowns, business districts, and industrial parks.

The pandemic has also offered new insights to the region and shown how working together towards common goals and sharing resources strengthens resiliency. With resiliency, the region is better positioned for greater opportunities for economic development, tourism, outdoor recreation, housing, and other quality of life initiatives. All of which together will increase population and raise wealth in the region.

The remainder of this chapter is divided into three sections including priorities, benchmarks, and funding. The priorities section discusses the importance of what strategies and actions should be implemented first. The benchmarks section identifies where the region is now and the trends and data to track over time to ensure the region is on the right course to recovery and resiliency as well as how often to be monitoring the region’s progress. The funding section identifies potential funding opportunities available for some of the action items identified in the Framework Chapter.

Priorities

With the number of pillars, strategies, and action steps throughout this plan and the limited resources to implement them, priorities need to be established. The Task Force was asked to select their top 5 to 10 objectives within each of the pillars. Then, Task Force members were asked to rank each of those objectives in order of importance. A weighted average was utilized to prioritize the objectives for each pillar. The five top objectives were then taken and then reranked to determine priorities within this top grouping. Those prioritizations are what follow. Appendix C contains the full results of the ranking of every priority by pillar, including the final 30 objectives from the combined pillars.

Top 30 Objectives to Be Completed in the Next Three to Five Years

Based on the ranking by the Task Force, the following objectives (see table on the next page) have the highest priority and are where the greatest human resources and financial resources should be spent to move this plan forward towards recovery and resiliency. As noted in the Framework Chapter, there are many partners who need to be engaged in implementing this plan. This is where all these partners should start.