The planning line whole: zoning to comprehensive plan

BRANCH · PARKS & PLANS · THE PLANNING LINE

Lead: The town's planning line, sequenced from its own ordinance book, runs shorter than a century of town life would suggest — and its first link is the one link this history could not date. The current zoning ordinance dates itself exactly: Chapter 152 of the town code, adopted as Ordinance 1221, passed 26 January 2010, effective at 12:01 a.m. that same day, under the authority of Indiana Code 36-7-4. Its §152.006 repeals, as of that effective date, “the Zoning Ordinance for the Town of New Carlisle … as previously adopted by the Town Council as Chapter 10, Article 1 of the 1992 Code, and all amendments thereto.” A town zoning ordinance therefore stood codified by 1992. The ordinance that first enacted it — its number and date — is not carried in the code text read, and no earlier ordinance was found online; the first zoning ordinance prints as a named gap, its settler the town ordinance book behind the 1992 codification.

The comprehensive-plan end of the line is documented in motion. A comprehensive plan update was drafted chapter by chapter across 2022 by Lehman & Lehman, Inc., off a steering committee that sat 2019–2021 and a council then presided over by Samantha Rush with Marcy Kauffman as vice president; the draft's own adoption line — “adopted … by Resolution 2022-____,” effective December 2022 — was left blank in the draft as posted, so the 2022 update prints at draft strength, not as an adopted act. By 2023 the Area Plan Commission's annual report records its staff assisting the Town of New Carlisle and MACOG with drafting the town's new comprehensive plan, and the plan that emerged is cited in 2025 proceedings as New Carlisle's 2024 comprehensive plan — also styled the town's 2040 plan in Area Plan Commission staff findings, where it was applied, and found inconsistent with a prime-farmland rezoning. Its first implementation step is likewise on the record: on 15 July 2025 the St. Joseph County Area Planning Commission voted 5–0 to send a favorable recommendation to the Town Council for APC 3071-25, repealing and replacing Appendix A, the zoning ordinance's permitted-use table, expressly to align zoning with the 2024 plan — phase one of a contracted unified development ordinance. The county's own comprehensive plan, approved in October 2024, is a separate instrument and is not the town's. The riverfront line prints as tested: the plan's chapter sequence as posted — land use, residential, business, growth, transportation, community facilities, parks and open space, image and identity, key focus areas, implementation — carries no riverfront chapter, and no riverfront plan for the town was found. The town's river is the Kankakee edge; that is a boundary and a pointer, and no riverfront plan is invented here.

Sources:

1. Town of New Carlisle Zoning Ordinance, Chapter 152, §§152.001–152.006 (St. Joseph County document center) — Ord. 1221, passed and effective 26 January 2010; repeal of the 1992 Code Chapter 10, Article 1 zoning ordinance.
2. New Carlisle Comprehensive Plan Update draft, Lehman & Lehman, Inc. (New Carlisle–Olive Township Public Library posting, 2022) — steering committee 2019–2021, chapter sequence, blank adoption resolution line.
3. St. Joseph County Area Plan Commission, 2023 Annual Report and 19 March 2024 agenda packet — assistance to the town and MACOG on the new comprehensive plan.
4. Area Planning Commission proceedings, 15 July 2025 (APC 3071-25) and September 2025 (APC 306625) — the 2024 / 2040 plan cited and applied; 5–0 favorable vote on the use-table rewrite.