June 8, 2021. GUEST OPINION: Change vs. improvement — who decides and how? By Tim Clark

May 25, 2021. Guest Opinion: New Septic Ordinance — Challenges and Opportunities by Tim Clark

• The decision-making process of commissioners Biddle and Braden resulted in a disservice to the citizens opposing this ordinance, as well as to the individuals and groups that worked on its approval. Refusal to justify and defend a position can contribute to questions about motives, competence, and the overall quality of the ordinance.

 GUEST OPINION: Justification lacking for proposed septic ordinance

Nov. 24, 2020 By TIM CLARK, guest columnist The public hearing to be held by the commissioners to obtain citizen input on the proposed new septic ordinance has…

GUEST OPINION: Bean Blossom sewer plant: Delay warranted

Apr. 3, 2020 (Subscriber)By TIM CLARK, guest columnist On March 10, 2020, Ethel Morgan of HomeTown Engineering LLC presented the findings from a regionalization study of wastewater treatment…

GUEST OPINION: Septics and sewers — major changes proposed

Aug. 30, 2019 (Subscriber)By TIM CLARK, guest columnist In his Aug. 13, 2019 guest opinion column in the Brown County Democrat, “What you can learn at the county’s Septic Summit.

Letter: County needs ‘collaboration, not scapegoating’

Aug. 20, 2019 (Subscriber)To the editor: The article by Sara Clifford published in the Aug. 13, 2019 edition of The Democrat, “No resolution yet to Helmsburg sewer board…

Note: On the use of the term scapegoating, my intent was to reinforce that establishing regional sewer district boards without an overall county strategy is problematic.

GUEST OPINION: Time will tell what music center’s impact will be

May 23, 2019 (Subscriber)By TIM CLARK, guest columnist I have found the series of guest columns by Bruce Gould promoting the Brown County Music Center (BCMC) to be…

GUEST OPINION: Sewers and septic systems: What’s the problem?

Jan. 23, 2019 (Subscriber)By TIM CLARK, for The Democrat The Brown County Regional Sewer District (BCRSD) Board is taking action that could affect the quality of life for…

GUEST OPINION: Political transformation, one county at a time

Dec. 11, 2018 (Subscriber)By TIM CLARK, guest columnist Straight-ticket voting in the 2018 elections was reported by the Brown County Democrat to be the highest in the past…

Letter: A ‘referendum’ on the Maple Leaf project?

Nov. 20, 2018 (Subscriber)To the editor: In the Nov. 14 story in the Brown County Democrat, “Incumbent to serve another term,” commissioner Biddle expressed a belief that her…

GUEST OPINION: Maple Leaf: A failing strategy?

Aug. 23, 2018 (Subscriber)By TIM CLARK, guest columnist “Will more money be a recurring theme?” was the subject of my last guest opinion published in The Democrat on…

GUEST OPINION: Will more money be a recurring theme?

July 25, 2018 (Subscriber)By TIM CLARK, guest columnist The July 18 article in the Democrat, “New ‘Leaf’ turned: Work begins on performing arts center,” provided the highlights from…

Letter: Consider other ways for projects to proceed

June 12, 2018 (Subscriber)To the editor: The public presentation by DLZ on June 4, attended by the commissioners and members of the county council, identified DLZ’s final recommendations…

Letter: ‘Stop digging’ on Maple Leaf Performing Arts Center

May 1, 2018 (Subscriber)To the editor: There is wisdom in the metaphor that states that if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. The Democrat’s article published…

Letter: Limit proposed septic ordinance’s scope

Mar. 27, 2018 (Subscriber)To the editor: I participated in the public meetings last year on the proposed septic ordinance. Despite the concerns and recommendations identified at the meetings…

GUEST OPINION: Working toward ‘a more perfect union’

Jan. 24, 2018 (Subscriber)By TIM CLARK, guest columnist As individuals, we may not have too much direct influence over what happens politically at the national level of government. At..

GUEST OPINION: ‘Coming together is a beginning’

Jan. 11, 2018 (Subscriber)By TIM CLARK, guest columnist In the first part of my series, “The role of process in county’s future,” I suggested that the process applied…

GUEST OPINION: The role of process in the future of Brown County

Dec. 28, 2017 (Subscriber)By TIM CLARK, guest columnist The Maple Leaf Performing Arts Center (MLPAC) project and the process used to fast-track approval may represent a turning point…

GUEST OPINION: Success is a choice

Nov. 26, 2017 (Subscriber)By TIM CLARK, guest columnist The recent community conversation on the status of the Salt Creek Trail reinforces that using ad-hoc teams to identify and…

Letter: ‘Zoning for Maple Leaf: Not in the plan’

Aug. 22, 2017 (Free)To the editor: The Brown County Comprehensive Plan states that the purpose of the plan “is to provide guidance on decision making regarding Brown County…

Letters: Maple Leaf proposal: Let’s not fail to plan

Aug. 8, 2017 (Subscriber)To the editor: At the June 20, 2017, presentation to a crowd of approximately 100 people on the proposed Maple Leaf Performing Arts Center (MLPAC)…

Income surveys needed for economic development grant

Sara Clifford – June 6, 2017 (Free)Within the next week or so, about 3,000 randomly chosen Brown County residents will receive a survey in the mail asking about their income. Don’t…

Hometown Collaboration Initiative pitch made to state

Sara Clifford – Apr. 19, 2017 (Subscriber)Brown County has “excellent schools”; abundant art, nature and adventure opportunities; well-educated and civically engaged older residents; and a number of “success stories” such…

More discussion, data needed about referendum

Sara Clifford – Mar. 7, 2016  To the editor: Superintendent Shaffer’s column titled “School financing 101” published in the Feb. 24 issue of The Democrat provided an excellent introduction to government..

Who Benefits and How?

Stakeholders – Needs and Expectations?  County and Nashville residents and tqaxpayers, business owners, private developers,  tourists, potential new residents, non-profits, other?

• The Brown County Leader Network (BCLN) has developed several tools to support decision-making and stakeholder analysis. A stakeholder analysis precedes the development of plans.

Mar 19, 2021.  Brown County Matters – FB Post – Purchase of the Little Opry Property

Mar 16, 2021. Little Nashville Opry property has new owner By Suzannah Couch

• William Jacob Capital LLC is the new owner of the empty 6.5-acre lot. Andrew Tilton of Brown County is the registered agent for that LLC, according to Indiana Company Directory.
  • Tilton and his brother Jimmy own the Foxfire parking lot in Nashville and the kettle corn food truck there.   … The Tilton brothers bought the Hidden Valley Inn property last year with plans to update and renovate the hotel.
  • The brothers also own several pieces of land in the county, some with the potential to be turned into housing or retail.  Andrew Tilton purchased two Nashville parking lots at the Andy Rogers estate auction in the fall of 2019.
• The Opry property does not have a sewer hookup, though a wastewater treatment plant sits about a mile from it. Having to figure out wastewater treatment could raise the cost of development depending on what the new owner wants to put there.

Mar 2, 2021. Town starting process of creating a comprehensive plan by Sara Clifford –

• The Nashville Town Council has talked about several matters at recent meetings that intersect on a common question: What we want Nashville to be in the future, and what we need to do now to get it there?

• “Based on the assumption that the Redevelopment Commission could receive $4,000,000 in increment over the life of the Tax Increment Financing area, the Commission could spend approximately $4,000,000 on infrastructure in or serving the area.” (pg 30)

Oct 15, 2020 – Final. Nashville Sanitary Sewer Master Plan.  Intent includes an expansion to expand service within a 2.5 miles area of Nashville.  The plan does not include documentation of need in the areas targeted for expansion. Includes my comments on the July 2021 draft. 

Town of Nashville, Utility Services Board (NEW). Town Council hereby establishes a Utility Service Board for the town pursuant to I. C. 8- 1. 5- 3;  and hereby establishes the organization and administrative arrangements under which the town will exercise its authority and discharge its responsibility for utility service (water and wastewater services).

• President Roger Kelso (term ends 12-31-2024)

• Vice-President Bob Willsey (term ends 12-31-2022)

• Secretary Alyn Brown (term ends 12-31-2023)

• Ted Seastrom (term ends 12-31-2023) Resigned, March 2021.

• Pam Gould (term ends 12-31-2022). Owner Cornerstone Inn and several properties that would benefit from an expansion of sewer service.

 

Mar 4, 2021. Town and county appointments to boards for 2021 By Staff Reports

Saturate USA With Good News (The Gospel)

120 MILLION HOMES IN THE U.S. BY 2027

Sharing the Announcement – Facebook – Brown County Matters

The word gospel is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word which meant “the story concerning God.” In the New Testament the Greek word euaggelion, means “good news.” It proclaims tidings of deliverance.

A Quick, Compelling Bible Study Vol. 56 – Jesus’s Greatest Hits Myra Kahn Adams

The statute over Redevelopment Commissions and the use of Tax Increment Financing is found in IC 36 -7-14.

 

Nashville, Indiana – TIF-Economic-Development-Plans

• “Based on the assumption that the Redevelopment Commission could receive $4,000,000 in increment over the life of the Tax Increment Financing area, the Commission could spend approximately $4,000,000 on infrastructure in or serving the area.” (pg 30)

Apr 7, 2021. Facebook – Brown County Matters – Nashville RDC Meeting.

• Nashville Redevelopment Commission RDC) Meeting. April 6, 2021 5:30 pm.  Nashville’s Tax Increment Financing (TIF) plans were briefly reviewed.  Note:  “Indiana law now makes clear that TIF is intended to fund infrastructure to promote development that would not occur but for the added infrastructure financed by the TIF revenues. Evidence that the development would not happen
  but for the establishment of the TIF district must be presented before the TIF district is approved.”
• Ed Curtin (Nashville consultant) confirmed that they have not received any formal requests for subsidies from any developers. In the past, Hard Truth Hills has not asked for a subsidy.
• The “So What?”  A TIF directs the increases in property tax revenue from development to the Nashville RDC and not the county. The RDC borrows money to fund infrastructure with the assumption that the investment in infrastructure will generate sufficient funds to make payments on the loan (s).
• The residential TIF was also discussed. By law, the Schools are required to be involved in the plans. In the larger counties such as Hamilton, plans for residential developments can lead to a need for additional schools – thus  the need to keep schools involved. Brown County Schools have the capacity to accommodate the projected growth in housing.

Apr 6, 2021. BCD. Making it happen: New Nashville neighborhood under construction as TIF talk progresses.

Mar 2, 2021. BCD. Town proposes changes to TIF areas  By Sara Clifford

• Mar 2, 2021.  Town starting process of creating a comprehensive plan, By Sara Clifford
• Nashville Sanitary Sewer Master Plan July 15, 2020 (173 pages)

• The Nashville Redevelopment Commission has put together an economic plan and declaratory resolution which will go to the Brown County Area Plan Commission this week for approval, then to the Nashville Town Council as early as March.
• If the documents pass those two steps, they would go back to the redevelopment commission for a confirmatory resolution.

The Use of Tax Increment Finance by Indiana Local Governments, Larry DeBoer
Department of Agricultural Economics Purdue University

• Indiana law now makes clear that TIF is intended to fund infrastructure to promote development that would not occur but for the added infrastructure financed by the TIF revenues. Evidence that the development would not happen
  but for the establishment of the TIF district must be presented before
  the TIF district is approved.

The Indiana GPS Project?   Team of policy experts from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute have performed a substantial amount of research regarding Indiana’s economy and workforce, particularly through a regional lens.

The Citizenship Question

by Leo Morris

Is U.S. citizenship still worth something?

That is such a grimly disheartening question because of where it came from.

I did not hear it from the usual “America is awful” crowd, the people who either think the republic always was and always will be an oppressive blight on the face of the Earth or believe the only way it can atone for its sins is for those who have been unfairly treated to unfairly treat everybody else.

It came to me from an enthusiastic follower of the Indiana Policy Review, for which I write these columns.

That is an organization dedicated to freedom and the constitutional principles that undergird it. If those who follow that vision are losing faith in the value of their franchise, is there any future left for the country?

There had better be. This country is still the best hope for the world, and to give up on its promise is to give up on all humankind.

America was founded on the single greatest political idea in history: Rights inhere in the individual.

Somewhere between anarchy and tyranny, people have forever tried to find the perfect government, the one that will provide the proper balance of autonomy and dependence. How can we best obtain security and still preserve our liberty?

Until America, the group was always paramount. There were no rights as such, merely privileges that could be granted or withheld to favored or shunned groups at the whim of an absolute ruler.

Then came our Declaration of Independence and Constitution to lay the foundation for a better way. Each individual person has rights – call them natural or God-given – just by virtue of being human that are beyond the purview of government. In fact, the chief justification for government is to protect those rights.

That is the basis of American Exceptionalism, a point President Obama missed – deliberately, I suspect – when he blithely said something to the effect that, well, all people think their country is exceptional.

America is exceptional because it found the exception to submission to tyranny.

And, yes, its behavior is often not exceptional. It does not always live up to its promise. You can find plenty of complaints from all across the political spectrum. The oligarchy is taking over. Cancel culture is rampant. There is anarchy in the streets. Equality of results has replaced equality of opportunity. Income inequality is out of control. And on and on.

I have my own concerns, especially about the leviathan state. I worry that the federal debt will crush us. It bothers me that the Supreme Court declared my property available for an economic developer with deep pockets, and that the state of Indiana declares the right to take people’s possessions by accusing them of crimes they have not even been tried for. It is astonishing that two presidents – Obama and George W. Bush – gave themselves the authority to have any American anywhere killed on their order alone and that there was no national outrage.

But consider: Those are holes in the only ship of state we have. If we abandon it, to which shore do we swim?

I am proud of some of the things I have done, ashamed of others. I try to take responsibility for my own actions, as all moral people should.

I try to avoid grand pronouncements about things outside my control. I cringe when people say they are ashamed to be an American, and I would never say I am proud to be an American. That is but an accident of birth.

But I am glad to be one. It is gratifying to be a citizen of a country that not only stands for the right thing but acknowledges its failures to live up to its own standards and always tries to do better.

If this nation, founded on the concept of natural rights, gets so many things wrong about freedom, imagine what the world would be like without America’s striving as an example. The more mistakes we make, the more we demonstrate how much we are needed.

“For if they do these things in a green tree,” it says in Luke 23:31, “what shall be done in the dry?”

I will leave it to the biblical scholars to offer the religious interpretation of that passage. But we can divine a secular meaning.

The world with America is a green tree, still capable of giving and nurturing life. The world without America would be so very, very dry.

Leo Morris, columnist for The Indiana Policy Review, is winner of the Hoosier Press Association’s award for Best Editorial Writer. Morris, as opinion editor of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, was named a finalist in editorial writing by the Pulitzer Prize committee. Contact him at leoedits@yahoo.com.

A strategy that leverages the interrelationship between Christianity, Citizenship, and Quality Management.

Presentation (14 slides): 2021_02_ 06 C2QM Apologetic

Terms: Non-secular – based on a biblical worldview: Secular – non-religious based.

Common Ground?

• Shared vision: Reducing variation from the ideal results in outcomes where everyone benefits or at least, are not any worse off in the long-term.
• Common language: Anyone that has made a successful change has applied the variation principle. using different terms. Knowledge of common and special causes of variation, stable (predictable) and unstable systems can lead to more success. Common references to “systems” are routines and habits.
• Common Method: Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Improvement Cycle.

March 3, 2021. $50,000 Settlement.  The settlement that the county insurer paid was reported to be $50,000.   I have requested a copy of the settlement from the Commissioners to confirm. Commissioner Biddle told me she would provide.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.  JOHN SIMPSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. BROWN COUNTY, et al., Defendants-Appellees. No. 16-2234 Decided: June 26, 2017

• JOHN SIMPSON v. BROWN COUNTY _ FindLaw

“This appeal presents a classic test of procedural due process. As the case comes to us, we must assume that a county board revoked a man’s professional license without giving him prior notice or an opportunity to be heard.”

Stipulation Dismissal and unsigned order

DE 108 Order of dismissal – signed – dated 8/2/18.

 

 

CVC Budget 2021 – Requested from Auditor

GuideStar – Nashville Brown County Convention and Visitors Bureau Inc (CVB)

IRS Forms 990: Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax – Open to Public Inspection.

The IRS requires all U.S. tax-exempt nonprofits to make public their three most recent Form 990 or 990-PF annual returns (commonly called “990s”) and all related supporting documents. They must also make public their Form 1023, which organizations file when they apply for tax-exempt status.

IRS Tax Exempt Organization – Search

EIN: 35-1613552

• 2015 (IRS)
• 2016  (GuideStar)
• 2017  (GuideStar)
• 2018  (GuideStar)