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1996–2044 · ORDINANCE, COMMISSION, AND THE 2024 PLAN
The town's first documented zoning act is an act of joining: by Ordinance No. 15-1996, adopted 16 December 1996, Osceola adopted its zoning into the St. Joseph County system — the act Government prints, and the earliest zoning instrument for the town that any record in this build reaches. Whether the town enacted an independent zoning ordinance of its own before 1996, in the four decades between incorporation-era growth and the county adoption, no ordinance book, minute book or county history reached in this run says; that sub-item therefore closes as a NAMED GAP, settler: the Town of Osceola's ordinance book and council minute books — the same settler class as the town's other government gaps (GAP-OSGOV-6) — and the 1996 ordinance stands in this record as the town's first zoning act at reached strength, printed as exactly that.
The binding plan above the town, in succession: the prior comprehensive plan for South Bend and St. Joseph County was the 2002 Comprehensive Plan, prepared with HNTB for the Area Plan Commission. Its successor was adopted on 15 October 2024, when the Area Plan Commission passed Resolution R-267-24 — a twenty-year comprehensive plan for the county, horizon about 2044, built on eight pillars (economic development; housing and neighborhoods; quality of life; environmental stewardship; farmland preservation; government and policy; transportation and utilities; future land use) with future-land-use and priority-area maps and an implementation matrix; the consultant was Cynthia Bowen, the commission's executive director Abby Wiles, and the plan went forward to a County Council hearing on 12 November 2024. The Parks Board's minutes show the ground-level machinery working as the plan was made — the parks director, Steve Slauson, serving on the county's Comprehensive Plan Task Force through 2024 — and the town holds its own seats on the bodies that hold the pen: DJ Tavernier, of the town council, is Osceola's Town Council Representative on the Area Plan Commission in the 2025–26 agendas (and it was Commissioner Tavernier who moved the adoption of R-267-24), and Lori L. Kelly sits on the commission's Advisory Council on Town Affairs. The planning line for Osceola's ground therefore stands whole and dated: a town that zoned by joining the county system in 1996, planned under the county's 2002 plan for two decades, and planned since October 2024 under a twenty-year county plan its own councilman moved to adopt — at the size a town of 2,590 truly appears in such instruments, which is the size this branch prints.
Sources:
- Town of Osceola, Ordinance No. 15-1996 (adopted 16 Dec. 1996) — the town's zoning adopted into the county system, as carried in Government; the pre-1996 sub-item's settler is the town ordinance book and minute books (GAP-OSGOV-6 class).
- Area Plan Commission of St. Joseph County — the 2002 Comprehensive Plan for South Bend and St. Joseph County (HNTB); Resolution R-267-24, adopted 15 Oct. 2024 (twenty-year plan, eight pillars; consultant Cynthia Bowen; Executive Director Abby Wiles; motion by Commissioner DJ Tavernier; County Council hearing 12 Nov. 2024); commission agendas 2025–26 — Tavernier as Town Council Representative, Lori L. Kelly on the Advisory Council on Town Affairs.
- St. Joseph County Parks Board minutes, 2024 (sjcparks.org) — Director Steve Slauson serving on the County's Comprehensive Plan Task Force; attendance at the plan's 28 Aug. 2024 open house.
- Government and Parks — the town's planning seats and the banked frame this article completes.