05/11/2026
A sad week in Indiana Township only gets sadder. A settlement was reached in the Gouwens v. Indiana Township Board of Supervisors case, which allows for the Indiana Trails development to proceed in modified form. If you remember, Indiana Trails was the 99-unit Planned Residential Development (PRD) to be built on Dorseyville Road with an entrance not far from the intersection with Fox Chapel Road. The settlement provides for some moderate improvement to the plan: the 30-unit apartment building has been substituted for 13 townhome units. Nevertheless, after years and years of brave fights by our citizens to stop it, we now face the very bitter reality that mass development will be coming to the Dorseyville Road-Fox Chapel Road corridor, one of the most beloved open spaces in Indiana Township.
During the Public Hearing, not one Indiana Township resident spoke out in favor of Indiana Trails. EVERY CITIZEN WHO SPOKE OUT WAS AGAINST THIS DEVELOPMENT. The Board of Supervisors majority openly defied the wishes of the taxpayers and approved this development anyway. The Board majority claims they had no choice but to follow the PRD law. What they don't tell you is that we do not need to have a law allowing PRDs in Indiana Township. It is their choice to have a PRD law, and it is their choice that PRDs are built at all in Indiana Township. For years, Sarah Hertweck, Township Supervisor and I have been calling for the elimination of Article IV from our Zoning Code, thereby banning all future PRDs and the destruction they inflict on our community.
The Board majority claims PRDs keep our taxes low. But they are only talking about your Township tax, not your School District taxes. They approve these developments without the slightest consideration of the number of new students brought in and how that impacts your School District Taxes or the quality of education in our district. For all the bluster about how PRDs are fiscally sensible, the Board majority has never provided the slightest proof that these extremely unpopular developments lighten the overall tax load of the citizen rather than just add a little padding to the Manager's Budget. It bears repeating: WHAT'S GOOD FOR THE TOWNSHIP ISN’T NECESSARILY GOOD FOR THE TAXPAYER. They have also provided no study on how each development will impact public safety. They approve these developments without any insight into how hundreds of new homes affect our Fire, EMS, and Police services. They are FOUR YEARS late in finishing a new Comprehensive Plan that would at least give us some big picture idea of how we want Indiana Township to look 10 years from now. To make matters worse, the lawsuit that citizens brought to stop mass development on Dorseyville Road was fought by the Township with our tax dollars. There are few examples of local government working so flagrantly against the interests of its tax-paying citizens than the sad story of Indiana Trails.
At this point, we must learn from the mistakes of Indiana Trails and ban PRDs in Indiana Township as quickly as possible. Outside moneyed interests know they have a gullible and compliant Board majority, and they will move to cram as much destructive development into our community as possible before the 2027 election. We need citizen involvement to ensure that the Indiana Township we know and love is not destroyed by mass development in the next 18 months. At the Board of Supervisors meeting this Wednesday at 7:00 PM, we will be voting on the Consent Order in the Gouwens case that gives the Township's approval of the settlement. This is a good opportunity to remind the Board majority that the citizens hate PRDs and the only good PRD law is no PRD law at all. I look forward to seeing you there!
