Tire collection is Cummins Event of the Month
Cummins volunteers earned some national recognition for helping to clean up dumped tires in Brown County.
On June 28, employee volunteers from Cummins in Columbus partnered with the Brown County Solid Waste Management District to collect a total of 4,500 tires — the equivalent to four semi truck loads.
The tires were to be shipped to Pyrloyx, a German tire recycling company based in Terre Haute. The carbon, diesel fuel and steel components will be extracted from the tires and manufactured into fuel and building materials.
The 15 Cummins volunteers won the company’s “Event of the Month” for their aid in the cleanup. The competition was not only for the Columbus Cummins branch, but for all North American operations.
Sen. Eric Koch appointed to committees
STATEHOUSE — State Sen. Eric Koch (R-Bedford) has been named to the Interim Study Committee on Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications, as well as the Probate Code Study Commission where he will serve as vice chairman.
The utilities study committee is charged with studying funding for lead water service line replacement. It also will review statutorily required reports submitted to the committee by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, the Office of Utility Consumer Counselor and the State Utility Forecasting Group.
The Probate Code Study Commission is tasked with studying issues concerning elder care, including financial protection, guardianship and abuse. The commission will also review changes to the probate and trust codes, along with any other statutes affecting estates, guardianships, probate jurisdiction, trusts or fiduciaries.
When Indiana’s part-time legislature is not in session, lawmakers serve on interim study committees that meet to hear testimony and make recommendations on issues identified by the General Assembly during the prior legislative session.
To view interim committee agendas and stream hearings online, visit iga.in.gov.
Sen. Koch serves Senate District 44, which includes Brown and Lawrence counties and portions of Bartholomew, Jackson and Monroe counties.
T.C. Steele State Historic Site reaccredited
BELMONT — T.C. Steele State Historic Site has received reaccreditation from the American Alliance of Museums in recognition of the museum’s commitment to excellence, accountability, high professional standards and continued institutional improvement.
T.C. Steele State Historic Site was initially accredited in 1988. Accreditation through American Alliance of Museums is the highest national recognition given to museums nationwide, and all accredited museums must undergo a reaccreditation process at least every 10 years to maintain that status.
Of the estimated 33,000 museums nationwide, only about 1,100 are currently accredited.
Skaarsgard attends leadership conference
Kristine Skaarsgard,a local Modern Woodmen of America Financial Representative, recently attended the Modern Woodmen Leadership Career Institute at Modern Woodmen’s home office in Rock Island, Illinois.
Top representatives and managers are invited to attend the event where elite speakers inspire attendees to become better leaders, improve results in their regions, and motivate those they work with.
Nashville car wash still under construction
The Brown County Area Plan Commission’s August meeting included a short discussion about the status of the under-construction car wash in Nashville.
The building at the dead end of Hawthorne Drive at Willow Street, next to the YMCA, has been under construction for about three years.
The owners have been working to correct some structural issues with the building, and lately they’ve been dealing with water issues, said Brown County Zoning Inspector Lonnie Farlee. High water pressure blew a pipe that was under the concrete slab, so they had to cut part of it out to repair it, he said. They also are working with a new electrician to correct some probelms that had been flagged earlier, he said.
Farlee said that he’d been getting calls about why the work was taking so long, and he’s been trying to motivate the owners to get it done, but some unforeseen issues had cropped up, such as medical problems. One of the owners wants to do a lot of the work himself, and his available time seems to be limited, Farlee said.
“I’m kind of at a loss as to how to push them anymore,” he said.
The APC encouraged Farlee and Planning Director Chris Ritzmann to think about sending the owners a letter telling them that their permit was no longer valid and that they needed to reapply for a new one. Technically, they expire after a year, but that deadline hasn’t typically been enforced, Ritzmann said.
Farlee said that there’s a clause in the permit that says that if there’s a 180-day period with no progress, the permit can be pulled, but the owners always do just enough work to get by. However, it wasn’t the intention to let projects drag on for years on end.
The owners received permission to start building after the land was rezoned for this use in June 2016. At the time, the plan was to build a 24-hour, four-bay car wash, with three self-serve stations and one automatic, as well as a dog wash station indoors and car vacuums in the front and back.
