By: John Stehr, Zionsville Mayor
Feb. 19, 2026

After decades covering local government as a reporter, I found myself on the other side of the equation in 2024, when I took office as Zionsville’s 4th Mayor. I had decades of scrutinizing from the outside. Now, from the inside, I see daily the opportunities and the limitations that exist in every municipality. I’ve learned much in the past few years, starting with how government operates at a different pace. There are few daily deadlines. Everything must be viewed through a longer lens. A defeat today can turn into an opportunity tomorrow.

It’s also a team sport – and sometimes that means joining more than one team. There’s the local public safety team, economic development team, and the broader team that focuses on the welfare of our region beyond the borders of the municipalities we serve.

That can bring together some unlikely teammates. At first blush, it might be hard to see what Zionsville has in common with Lawrence, or how the interests of Elwood and Speedway might be aligned. Yet, there is a common goal that serves everyone’s interests – economic benefit for all.

You see where this is going. If we are honest, the Central Indiana Regional Development Authority (CIRDA) team came together to give us all a voice in obtaining funding through Indiana’s Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI 1.0). That mission continued through the implementation of READI 2.0. Between the two iterations of the state program, our region pulled in $90-million to support projects that enhance quality of life, quality of place, and economic opportunity. Our message was unified and strong, and CIRDA has become a model for other regions around the state.

Now, the game is changing. With READI coming to an end, our playbook must shift to projects like “Creative Economy” that highlights Central Indiana’s arts and cultural amenities and “Catalyze Central Indiana”, which seeks to align public, private, and philanthropic organizations to focus on common priorities to support sustainable economic growth and increased wages throughout Central Indiana. We are beginning to take on subjects like water policy, utilities, and with Jenna Bentley on board, having an even stronger lobbying voice at the Statehouse.

In the beginning of my tenure, I was afraid that the work of CIRDA would be focused on the municipality that was guiding it, with the rest of us fighting for the scraps. But that has not been my experience at all. Our municipalities have come together with a common understanding that we all rise and fall together, that progress for one of us means progress for all, and that the region is more than a sum of its parts. The true value of what we are trying to achieve will be fully realized decades from now.

Yes, all of this takes time. By definition, playing the long game always does. While all elected officials want to leave their municipalities better than when they took office, CIRDA is helping provide the framework to help make that happen, and, in the long run, all of us in Central Indiana benefit from that.