THE VOICE OF THE TOWNSHIP
To quote the words of the Wayne Township Senior Supervisor, “you don’t know, what you don’t know” is the subject of this week’s Voice of the Township. There are three groups of people that find their way to the Wayne Township Office to seek assistance: those that need help and qualify for Township assistance, those that need help and don’t qualify, and those that don’t need help and try to get all of us to take care of their responsibilities. Someone never needing help in the way of public assistance before is certainly unaware of all of the wonderful resources this great community has to offer. Your Wayne Township Trustee’s Office has put more miles in on the information superhighway to obtain and share public service and assistance than at any other time in history. Let’s be fair though, times have changed, information is far more available and we are certainly making the most of it!
In our quest to become the model township in Indiana, the Wayne Township Office has traveled to many of the state’s townships with model programs to see how they operate these services to benefit their citizens. Several years ago, we visited the Wayne Township Trustee’s Office in Wayne County located in central Richmond, Indiana. This was the site of the first “Township Payee Program” and Trustee Marge Sweet and her staff were wonderful in sharing all of the necessary information to help us implement this program for the citizens of Wayne Township. With more than one hundred families on our program, it is now larger than our southern Indiana advisor, and has drawn rave reviews from pastors, community leaders, health care professionals, and many others in its value to help citizens of this community with disabling conditions. Virtually all of the citizens receiving our help by way of this program do not qualify for township assistance, but truthfully can be considered equally in need as the most low income of our clients.
To date, the Wayne Township Trustee’s Office has reciprocated information with this and other communities, agencies, pastors, community leaders and the most valuable asset of all, you. I just received a letter yesterday from the executive director of one of northeastern Indiana’s most respected agencies that included the quote: “We know how difficult the barriers are to achieve self-sufficiency and we are thankful we can all work on these issues together. Your concern for your customers is legendary and your sincerity to constantly improve services is substantiated by your response to the issues we discussed.” By sincerely and diligently seeking to follow the advice of our oldest and arguably wisest supervisor, we have increased our ability to help know many things we didn’t know.
You may have heard me speak before about our Ministerial Outreach Program. We decided to make our office accessible to every minister in Allen, all 440. We invited them to our office to explain our programs policies and procedures. We also provided them with strategies on how they could keep people from coming to them and expecting cash benefits.
By providing the clergy with information on how to verify need, we helped them reduce the amount of money they expended from their benevolent funds. They now have a way to check on clients before they provide any cash benefits. The best part of the whole scenario was having the chance to fellowship with clergy and listen to their ideas about the efficiency of our office. It turned into a win/win situation for us all.
The Wayne Township Trustee’s Office is always accessible to share knowledge to benefit citizens in need. Our accountability to those taxpaying citizens who help us support those currently struggling is documented to the penny and published annually in the newspaper. Our reputation for always being willing to help reinforces the public’s perception of our “legendary concern for our customers”. Accessible, Accountable, Always willing to help! I guess you could call the Wayne Township Trustee’s Office the AAA Township of the information superhighway.
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