Music center bill to be discussed this week
An unpaid utility bill involving the Brown County Music Center will be discussed later this week.
Bruce Gould, representing the music center, went before the Nashville Town Council at the council’s regular meeting on Feb. 20 to ask to set up a meeting about the bill. It was set for 10 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 27 at Town Hall. When asked if it would be a public meeting, Gould, council President Jane Gore and Town Attorney James T. Roberts all said that would be OK.
An unpaid bill of about $12,000 was listed on Roberts’ agenda for the Feb. 20 council meeting. That agenda was available to the public and the media in advance of the meeting as part of the council’s new “interactive agenda” initiative. In his agenda items, Roberts wrote: “Brown County Music Center has failed to pay the initial user fee for its water and sewer hookup. The fees are about $12,000. Sean (Cassiday, town utility coordinator) has made a demand for payment, but has had no direct response. There are remedies available including disconnect.”
Gould told the council and the audience that there seemed to be “confusion” about this bill, and that’s why he and other management group members wanted to sit down with town officials.
The music center management group co-presidents did not answer a message last week seeking comment about the bill and why it is outstanding.
Council member uses derogatory phrase in meeting
During a discussion about a bill during the January Nashville Town Council meeting, a council member used a phrase that made other members audibly react.
Town Attorney James T. Roberts was talking about a contractor who had charged the town $36,000 for work involved in a legal case when the amount the council had approved was between $25,000 and $30,000. Roberts suggested that the council negotiate to pay $25,000, since he felt that the contractor performed “two-thirds of the job.”
“Just jew him down,” said council member David Rudd.
Immediately, several people in the room groaned or protested that choice of words. There was at least one laugh. “Negotiate,” someone suggested.
“Jew down” as a verb is “perceived as offensive because it perpetuates the stereotype of the shrewd Jewish moneylender or haggler,” explains Dictionary.com. “Originally, however, both the adjective (jew) and the verb were used in a neutral way by Jews and non-Jews.”
Roberts answered that “in no ethnic fashion whatsoever I will see if I can make him go lower.”
When asked later why he chose that phrase, Rudd said, “because it’s a normal phrase,” and added that he wasn’t going to change his mind about it. “You don’t want to get me started on political correctness,” he said.
This is the second instance in recent years that an elected official has used that phrase in a public meeting. In a county commissioners meeting on March 2, 2011, then-commissioner Darrell Kent used it twice when talking about negotiating for dump trucks. Another commissioner corrected him, suggesting the word “negotiating,” but Kent said it again, seemingly unaware of its connotation. A member of that audience stood up and told him she took offense, saying she was of Jewish heritage, and asked him to please not use that term again in a public meeting. “OK,” Kent answered.
Town council OKs $11,000 in contributions
In one meeting, the Nashville Town Council approved $11,000 going to three community groups from the 2020 budget.
The Brown County Humane Society will receive $5,000 this year — plus a pledge of $5,000 each of the next two years, for a total of $15,000 — toward the building of its new animal shelter on State Road 135 South.
Humane society board President Sue Ann Werling had approached the council last year about a donation or multi-year pledge commitment. At the January town council meeting, she came back to ask if they’d had a chance to review her request of $15,000 over three years.
Nashville Clerk-Treasurer Brenda Young told her that they’d found money in their general fund that was budgeted for an Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility plan, which could instead go toward the humane society. Utility Coordinator Sean Cassiday said that he’d been working on that accessibility plan and that most of it was paid for already, and if he needed more to fund it, he could find it in other places in his water and sewer budgets.
The council unanimously voted to pledge $15,000 over three years to the humane society, with $5,000 of it coming this year.
Council members — without questioning any of these donations during this meeting — also voted to give $5,000 to the Brown County (Nashville) Volunteer Fire Department. This was a surprise to Chief Nick Kelp, who was in the audience. He had just reported that during 2019, he and his fellow volunteers had responded to 569 “runs,” or calls for service. That averages 1 1/2 runs per day.
Council member Anna Hofstetter told Kelp that the council would have a strategy session in the future to “figure out the future of the fire department here.”
The council also voted to give $1,000 toward a survey that Brown County Parks and Recreation and Brown County Purdue Extension are coordinating. The program, Enhancing the Value of Public Spaces, helps communities take stock of the recreation and public space amenities and “active transports” they have and determine what others they could add based on the opinions and needs of people living in the community.
That information also will play into the five-year plan for Brown County Parks and Recreation, said Kara Hammes, a member of the parks board and a Brown County Purdue Extension educator. Hammes also is on the town’s new Bicycle-Pedestrian Advisory Council, and she said the information from that survey will be useful to that group and to the Nashville Town Parks Commission.
The public spaces program costs $5,000. Hammes asked the town council to kick in $1,000, which passed unanimously. It will come out of the town’s parks fund.
Hammes estimated that the program will take about six months to complete. It will include a community forum.
