Harris Township: the trustee, the board, and the township's own services

FORMED JANUARY 5, 1836 · ROSTER AS OF NOVEMBER 11, 2026

Harris Township is the senior government of the designated place: formed by order of the county commissioners on January 5, 1836 — an earlier order forming a Washington Township on overlapping ground, dated May 4, 1835, was canceled — and trimmed twice on its west side to build Clay Township, it is the frame inside which Granger first existed, and its trustee is the closest officer this unincorporated place has to a mayor. The township's own published statement of its bounds runs: the Michigan state line on the north, the Elkhart County line on the east, Gumwood Road and Main Street on the west, and Douglas Road on the south — some 22 square miles, holding 24,397 people at the 2020 census. The civil frame has not changed in form since the nineteenth century: an elected trustee administers the township's services and assets, and an elected three-member township board adopts the budget and the tax levies that fund them. The board organizes each January, reviews the trustee's annual financial report in February, and holds its budget hearing and adoption in the fall — the working calendar the township publishes for itself. The township office stands at 13981 State Road 23, Granger, in the same building as the fire station that is now Clay Fire Station 24; the ground the office sits on is the township's own civic center, and the farmers market and township hall on Adams Road complete a civic strip no city ever planned.

The current seats, verified November 11, 2026: the trustee is Kenneth E. (Ken) Lindsay, in office since January 2015 — the township's own newsletter of April 2015 opens, "Since taking office as Harris Township Trustee in January, Kenneth E. (Ken) Lindsay has been drafting improvement plans" — and the author, in that office, of the township's published history in the Granger Gazette of August 2020, drawn from Germaine Goff's The History of Harris Township (1980). The three members of the township board as the township prints them in 2026 are Bob Fox, Charles (Chuck) Sulok, and Karen Vargo. Lindsay's hold on the trusteeship through 2026 is not in question; his hold on the term beginning January 1, 2027, was put to the voters on November 3, 2026, and is treated in the elections entry below. The services the township itself performs, as its own record states them, are these. Fire and emergency medical service are provided to the township by the Clay Fire Territory under the territory's agreement — with the exception the township itself prints: the portions of Harris Township that lie inside the City of Mishawaka are served by the city's department. The township holds two of the five seats on the territory's fire commission, and its site carries the forward note that once the fire-territory boundary change acted on in early 2026 is approved by the state, a new board will be constituted and the township's representation on it may change. The trustee administers township assistance — poor relief in its modern statutory form, emergency assistance to residents who appeal for it — the service Indiana township trustees have carried since the nineteenth century. The township maintains two cemeteries: Salem Cemetery, on Ash Road against the St. Joseph–Elkhart county line, north of Brummitt Road, and Harris Prairie Cemetery, on the south side of Adams Road less than a mile east of Fir Road, whose sign reads "est 1834" — a burial ground older than the township itself. Each holds hundreds of grave sites; the township sells no new sites, and burials require proof of ownership of the lot. And the township runs parks: Harris Township Park at Brummitt — thirty acres the township owns near Brummitt and Beech Roads, with the Sue Dytewski Playground — the trustee's own spelling, in his Granger Gazette account of August 2022; the township's published course prints "Dylewski," and the conflict stands whole in the Parks leg — and the Harris Township Park at Elm Road, with its pavilion, basketball and pickleball courts. A farm township of 481 people in 1900 now runs a park system, two cemeteries, an assistance office, and a two-fifths share of a fire commission, for a population past twenty-four thousand.

Sources:

1. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907), vol. 1, ch. VIII §3, read first-hand (the canceled Washington Township order of May 4, 1835; Harris formed January 5, 1836; the Clay detachments of 1840 and 1842), as carried in the Story of Granger section and Before the City.
2. Harris Township official site, harristwp.com, read November 11, 2026: the About page (bounds; office at 13981 State Road 23; the trustee-and-board structure; the sitting representatives as printed — Trustee Kenneth E. (Ken) Lindsay; Board: Bob Fox, Charles (Chuck) Sulok, Karen Vargo; the meeting calendar; the two fire-commission seats and the pending board reconstitution); the Fire & Rescue page (Clay Fire Territory service by agreement; the Mishawaka-served portions; the five-person Fire Commission); the Cemeteries page (Salem and Harris Prairie cemeteries, their locations, the "est 1834" sign, no sites for sale).
3. Granger Gazette, April 2015 (township newsletter, on harristwp.com): Lindsay in office from January 2015; the thirty acres at Brummitt and Beech operating as Harris Township Park. Lindsay, Granger Gazette, August 2020 (the township history; the 1970 population of 2,860; the volunteer fire era within living memory).
4. U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 census (Harris Township population 24,397), as carried in the Story of Granger section.