Commissioners Agree To Help Beaman Home Apply For Grant
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Jordan Fouts-
Tracie Hodson, executive director for the domestic abuse victim shelter, which has operated in Warsaw for close to 30 years, presented the request along with Beaman board member Sue Creighton.
They noted their current 97-year-old, three-bedroom home wasn’t meant to house multiple families, limiting them to serving only a few hundred of the thousands of potential victims in the county. The shelter spent $300,000 on a new location on Parker Street last spring and plans to quickly move forward with a $1.8 million renovation.
They’ve already reached about 40 percent of their fundraising goal, Hodson noted, and would like the county’s help to apply for a $400,000 community development block grant.
Ed Rock, county emergency management director, cautioned that backing the grant would prevent the county from applying for another community development construction grant for about three years. Still, the vote to proceed was unanimous.
Commissioners praised the work of the shelter, though member Bob Conley expressed concern over Beaman going public with its new location.
Hodson responded that the board made the decision only after a long, hard discussion. They will model their security at the new location after other shelters that have gone public, she said, and remarked that the current location is no longer as well-kept a secret as they’d like.
“I can promise you, if you don’t know where it is, you can ask at any gas station,” she told commissioners. She also noted that their main goal over the next six months is to make the public more aware of the shelter.
Renovation plans include offices, parking lot and landscaping, a two-story residential structure and an indoor play area for children. Commissioners scheduled a public hearing on the grant application for their Feb. 26 meeting.
Also this morning, commissioners approved Kevin Planck as the new general manager of Kosciusko Area Bus Service, after previous manager Vickie Lootens left to head Cardinal Services. And they heard from County Treasurer Sue Ann Mitchell that income from investments is down by $57,000 between 2011 and 2012.
Mitchell also informed commissioners that the state Public Deposit Insurance Fund will be under scrutiny in the coming weeks, with several banks in the state seeking to create a nonprofit board to head the fund rather than leave it in state control. The fund acts as an insurance policy for certain public deposits, she said, comparing oversight by banks as a “fox watching the henhouse.”
“If you’re speaking with any legislators about anything, remember to tell them the PDIF is fine as it is,” she said.[[In-content Ad]]
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Tracie Hodson, executive director for the domestic abuse victim shelter, which has operated in Warsaw for close to 30 years, presented the request along with Beaman board member Sue Creighton.
They noted their current 97-year-old, three-bedroom home wasn’t meant to house multiple families, limiting them to serving only a few hundred of the thousands of potential victims in the county. The shelter spent $300,000 on a new location on Parker Street last spring and plans to quickly move forward with a $1.8 million renovation.
They’ve already reached about 40 percent of their fundraising goal, Hodson noted, and would like the county’s help to apply for a $400,000 community development block grant.
Ed Rock, county emergency management director, cautioned that backing the grant would prevent the county from applying for another community development construction grant for about three years. Still, the vote to proceed was unanimous.
Commissioners praised the work of the shelter, though member Bob Conley expressed concern over Beaman going public with its new location.
Hodson responded that the board made the decision only after a long, hard discussion. They will model their security at the new location after other shelters that have gone public, she said, and remarked that the current location is no longer as well-kept a secret as they’d like.
“I can promise you, if you don’t know where it is, you can ask at any gas station,” she told commissioners. She also noted that their main goal over the next six months is to make the public more aware of the shelter.
Renovation plans include offices, parking lot and landscaping, a two-story residential structure and an indoor play area for children. Commissioners scheduled a public hearing on the grant application for their Feb. 26 meeting.
Also this morning, commissioners approved Kevin Planck as the new general manager of Kosciusko Area Bus Service, after previous manager Vickie Lootens left to head Cardinal Services. And they heard from County Treasurer Sue Ann Mitchell that income from investments is down by $57,000 between 2011 and 2012.
Mitchell also informed commissioners that the state Public Deposit Insurance Fund will be under scrutiny in the coming weeks, with several banks in the state seeking to create a nonprofit board to head the fund rather than leave it in state control. The fund acts as an insurance policy for certain public deposits, she said, comparing oversight by banks as a “fox watching the henhouse.”
“If you’re speaking with any legislators about anything, remember to tell them the PDIF is fine as it is,” she said.[[In-content Ad]]
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