Warrick County Capital Improvement Plan and Program

The Warrick County Commissioners authorized the development of a transportation capital improvement plan and program (CIPP) to assess and prioritize transportation improvements over the next 20 years. The purpose and mission of CIPP was to develop a prioritized list of needed infrastructure projects based on a 20-year horizon (the “plan”), and a revenue-constrained list for the first 5 years (the “program”) of the plan. An updated and thorough CIPP helps ensure that public funds are strategically invested in infrastructure to provide the greatest public benefit. At the same time, the CIPP prioritizes county transportation projects for local financial investment and helps ensure eligibility for state and federal grant programs.

Nothing was safe from the COVID-19 pandemic, including community outreach. When developing the Capital Improvement Plan and Program for Warrick County in Southern Indiana, our team had to completely rethink our public engagement strategy. Face-to-face interactions were no longer an option, but we still had to find a way to educate the community on the program. We decided to move from the group meeting structure to Zoom calls with individual stakeholders to preserve the element of connection. Even if we couldn’t be in the same room, we still wanted residents to know their importance to our team as well as the planning process. We coupled those conversations with the implementation of Seekbeak – a revolutionary platform that gave us the ability to conduct virtual open houses and collect data and feedback from participants. This experience pushed our team to grow and stretch our creativity, proving there is more than one right way to handle public engagement.