Visitors Center reopening Memorial Day weekend

The Brown County Visitors Center is reopening Memorial Day weekend.

Brown County Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Jane Ellis reported in a meeting on May 13 that the visitors center was reopening with one veteran staff member returning to help.

The Visitors Center will be open Thursday through Monday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. until further notice, Ellis said.

The center had been closed since December due to a lack of funding, but a $65,000 payment of innkeepers tax in April from the Brown County Convention and Visitors Commission helped to get the doors open again. The CVC also approved another payment of $65,000 at the May 13 CVC meeting.

A suggestion was made that volunteers from the Brown County Music Center help run the Visitors Center while BCMC is closed. CVB board President Debbie Bartes said at the May 13 meeting that the CVB board would put together a committee to further look at the idea.

“We’re ready to embrace that. We’re getting a committee together to explore that. While the visitors center can’t be run by volunteers, it could be assisted by volunteers, definitely,” she said.

BCMC Executive Director Christian Webb will join that committee. The BCMC already has a volunteer program in place. The BCMC also requires their volunteers to shadow other volunteers before they can volunteer on their own. Webb said it would make sense for the CVB to use parts of their program to train Visitors Center volunteers.

“We may not be able to run it with all of them, but these people are passionate and they are dedicated,” Webb said.

“They are the backbone of everything we’re doing down there at the music center.”

Ellis said volunteers would be helpful from Sept. 15 to the day after Thanksgiving because that is the busy season in the Visitors Center.

“That would be our goal to maybe bring volunteers in that window,” Ellis said.

Redevelopment commission approves TIF areas

The Nashville Redevelopment Commission adopted two new economic development areas on May 4, the end of a multi-step process that began months ago.

The Central Nashville area covers downtown businesses and shops, as well as the Brown County Inn and businesses on Hawthorne Drive and the Salt Creek Plaza.

The Hard Truth Hills area includes the Hard Truth Hills campus on Old State Road 46 and connects to the Quaff ON! brewery on State Road 135 North via Old 46 and Artist Drive.

Previously, Nashville had one economic development area to go along with its one TIF district. TIF is tax-increment financing, a process by which a portion of new assessed value is captured for use on specific projects. Economic development areas, EDAs, are the areas where that money will be used.

For these two new TIF/EDA areas, only new taxes on increased assessed value will be captured for business-zoned properties.

The Nashville Redevelopment Commission also voted to retain the net assessed value for the Central Nashville economic development area. Each year, a vote is required on whether or not the assessed value will be captured or released back to the taxing units that otherwise would receive it if those properties weren’t in a TIF district. Taxing bodies that could be affected are notified.

Nashville has had a TIF area since 2012, but because of declining assessed values in that area, the redevelopment commission has not captured any TIF money for future projects. This redrawing of the EDAs and TIF districts is an attempt to reset the “base year” of assessment in hopes that growth will occur from here on out.

Employers who hire minors face new requirements

The Indiana Department of Labor’s Bureau of Youth Employment announced last week that Hoosier employers must adhere to new requirements regarding employees younger than 18 years old, beginning July 1.

The new requirements eliminate the need for work permits and replace them with a new employer registration platform known as the Youth Employment System, or YES.

“Schools will no longer be responsible for issuing work permits, or tracking and registering minor employees,” State Labor Commissioner Joe Hoage said. “That latter responsibility will now fall to employers via YES.”

Effective July 1, employers who employ five or more minors at each location will be required to register via the new YES online platform.

Required information will include the employer’s corporate and individual facility location, and minor employee information, such as name and age, once the minor is officially employed. Upon termination of employment, the employer must remove the minor’s information from the YES active-employee registry.

The YES registry will go live in early June, giving employers an opportunity to register and “test drive” the system, Myers said. As of July 1, employers who fail to comply with the new registration requirements may face penalties of up to $400 per infraction.

The new YES requirement will not impact the state’s work-hour requirement for minors, and all employers must still comply with the Teen Work Hour Restrictions and Prohibited and Hazardous Occupation restrictions for minors.