Dear Neighbors –

I hope you have had a great summer! With school back in session, it feels like fall is officially here. I’m definitely looking forward to the leaves changing color, the chillier days, and football season.

August Meeting Recap: Our August meeting included a presentation by Dr. Scott Robison, Superintendent of ZCS, along with Mike Shafer and Becky Coffman regarding the two school referendums that will be on the ballot this November. The second part of the meeting was a mayoral town hall with Tim Haak and Emily Styron. I would like to extend a big thank you to all of our guests that night for taking time out of their busy schedules to meet with our VRA members and hear our questions and concerns. We had a great turnout for the event and hopefully everyone learned something useful that evening.

Weekly E-mails: You may have noticed VRA weekly update e-mails showing up in your inbox each Sunday evening. I have started compiling a list of Village/Zionsville events each week, along with any news articles I find about the Village or Villagers, and sending it out each Sunday. If you know of any good news or event sources, please let me know. I’m always happy to find new sources of information. As a reminder, if you do not wish to receive the weekly e-mail but would still like to get the monthly Village Voice e-mail, you can change your e-mail frequency settings in the footnote the e-mails. Choose “Less Frequent” for monthly e-mails only.

Annual Picnic: Our VRA annual picnic will be on Saturday, September 21 at 6pm. In honor of this election year, we have invited Tim Haak and Emily Styron, our two mayoral candidates, along with the At Large, District 4, and District 5 Town Council candidates to the picnic. We are also looking for volunteers to come up with ideas for kid games/activities. If you are interested in coordinating the kid activities or just have an idea pass along, please e-mail me at president@zvra.com.

September VRA Meeting: Our September meeting, a town hall with the At Large, District 4, and District 5 candidates, will be at 7:30pm on September 24 at the SullivanMunce. This will be another great opportunity to get to know the candidates that will be on the ballot this November and hear about their platforms. If you have any questions for the candidates, you can e-mail them to me at president@zvra.com. You may also ask questions to the candidates at the event via index cards submitted to the moderator.

Last but certainly not least, please tell your neighbors about the VRA and invite them to join! They can either sign up through the website or attend the next meeting. There are several benefits to joining, such as meeting others in the Village community, learning about plans/events that affect the Village and participating in VRA social events.

Best,

Julia

president@zvra.com

I had a nice lunch with our fire chief, Jamie VanGorder, a few weeks ago to hear about progress in the department and how the general mood is these days (spoiler alert: it’s good).

One interesting discussion item we had was about our Insurance Service Office (ISO). ISO is an independent company that serves insurance companies, communities, fire departments, insurance regulators and others by providing information about risk. The ISO classification system ranks departments on a scale of Class 1 to Class 10, with 1 representing the best in property fire protection and 10 indicating that the area's fire suppression program does not meet ISO's minimum criteria.

ZFD recently improved from a 4 to a 2 (effective November 1), placing them in the top 2% of fire departments in Indiana. While it is good to know that we have a top-notch fire department ready to serve our community, there is also a financial benefit to each of you with this rating. Communities with lower (better) ISO ratings have lower homeowner insurance rates because actuaries know ISO can impact how quick and how much loss can be mitigated through the work of those first responders. You may want to mention this to your insurance company to see if there are additional breaks offered with our recent improvement. We can all thank Jamie and the department for that extra cash in our pockets.

Speaking of cash, Council recently authorized automatic CPR machines for the fire department. These are machines that perform CPR on a patient in a very controlled and rhythmic way allowing first responders to concentrate on getting a patient to a hospital. An added benefit is eliminating both errors and fatigue as CPR is performed during transit.

As the Town continues to grow, so does the fire department. They are hiring for Full-Time Firefighter/EMT, Firefighter/Paramedic, so if you know anybody interested please have them either visit www.zionsville-in.gov/jobs or get a paper application from the Zionsville Fire Department Administrative Offices at 1100 W. Oak St., Zionsville between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. EDT Monday through Friday.

Lastly, as Jamie and I finished up our lunch, I asked him if there was anything he’d like the neighbors to know. He told me that if you have an issue (smoke, fire, medical) to please call them. They are here to serve you and want to help. That echoes the same sentiment given to me by ZPD Chief Rob Knox.

At Home in the Village of Zionsville

In 1849, Polly and Elijah Cross sold a piece of property in Zionsville, to Mahala and John Bragg. John was a Civil War veteran and a member of the Grand Order of the Republic, an organization of honorably discharged veterans of the Union Army, Navy, Marine Corps who had served between April 12, 1861 and April 9, 1865. John, a Master Bricklayer, was well-qualified to make the bricks he needed for their home. But first he needed to build the kiln in which to fire the bricks. John worked hard to complete the home before the birth of their first child. Most likely he worked day and night, digging the foundation, making and stacking the bricks, pouring over plans in the day light and by lantern light.