The Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress’ efforts to combat the local opioid addiction crisis and $1 million raised in a matching grant to be used toward drug abuse prevention has been chosen by Republic editors as the top story in 2018.
After being established in 2017, ASAP took its first concrete steps to complete planning, seek funding and to begin implementing a plan to prioritize and create solutions to gaps in the county’s current substance abuse treatment system. ASAP is focusing on prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery.
Jeff Jones, a retired Cummins Inc. executive, has continued in his role as ASAP executive lead, but in 2018, the organization moved toward hiring staff members and creating a new formal hub. The hub would be located at the former United Way office in the Doug Otto Center, 1531 13th St., Columbus. The space, available for $1,500 a month, opened up as the United Way headquarters has moved across the street.
In other ASAP developments throughout 2018, the organization:
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Obtained funding for the REALM program, to provide drug treatment for men in the Bartholomew County Jail, approved for $241,365 in funding by the city and county. REALM, an acronym for Recovery Enables a Life for Men, is modeled after a successful Community Corrections program for women, Women Recovering with a Purpose.
Completed steps to set up the hub, to provide resources needed to recover from substance abuse, including referrals to already existing programming, help with navigating the health care and insurance systems and resources for connecting to community services, down to the basics of obtaining food, housing and transportation.
Made plans to hire an executive director and an operations and communications manager, both paid positions. Two other paid positions, the ASAP Hub manager and the ASAP volunteer services manager, would also be put in place. A part-time paid position for a Hub recovery specialist is also proposed. Volunteers would be used as navigators to provide referrals to community services, and provide life skills and other training to people who visit the hub. Those volunteers may include individuals who are recovering from addiction.
ASAP has launched 43 projects that are underway with more to come — 23 of them are expected to be completed by May; other projects will launch in 2019.
Project Prevent, a grant program that launched in April, has 25 projects underway, funded by about $95,000 in grant allocations overseen by the Heritage Fund — The Community Foundation of Bartholomew County and ASAP. The grant program is funded through the $1 million Mark and Wendy Elwood Substance Abuse Prevention Fund, created when the Elwoods agreed to donate $500,000 if the community matched that amount, which community members did.
Two other stories also dominated local news coverage in 2018: FairOaks Mall and school safety.
Purchase of FairOaks Mall
Columbus, which is a partner with Bartholomew County and the local hospital system in ASAP, also partnered with the health system to purchase the FairOaks mall in late 2018.
The purchase, finalized Dec. 14, was selected as the second most important story for 2018 by editors. The anticipated redevelopment of the structure will be turning the mall into a year-round community recreational and sports tourism complex.
The purchasing partners utilized a $450,000 grant from the Heritage Fund — The Community Foundation of Bartholomew County, to purchase the 35-acre mall property from FairOaks Mall Owner LLC for $5.9 million.
The partners created the FairOaks Community Development Corp. as the purchaser of the property. Its board will oversee future development of the property.
For at least the next three years, retail businesses operating in the mall — which opened in 1990 — will have an opportunity to be part of the transformation, Mayor Jim Lienhoop said. All existing tenant leases will be honored, he said.
However, Tom Brosey, a retired Cummins Inc. executive hired by the city to assist with the transaction and future redevelopment, has said the development corporation, the city and the hospital system are not interested in running a retail-focused mall. In an earlier interview, Brosey was clear about the new direction the mall property would be taking.
“We have no intention for it to be primarily retail,” Brosey said. “Retail can be complementary. For example, Dunham’s (Sports) could be very complementary to the sports and recreation programming.”
Food and restaurant services are also complementary to the suggested sports-tourism use for the mall property, he said earlier.
In January, the development board plans to appoint a design and planning committee to begin work on sending out request for proposals for a design for the project.
Board members have said the design process will include opportunities for public input and comment about the project as it proceeds.
School threats, security concerns
Ranked third on the 2018 story list are social media threats reported at area schools. The local school threats began in February after the Parkland, Florida school shootings, and continued throughout 2018.
Seven school threats were investigated by Bartholomew County deputies or Columbus police in 2018.
There were two school threats reported at Columbus North, along with two reported at Columbus East, two at Hauser High School in Hope and one at the Simon Youth Academy in Edinburgh.
All but two of them occurred within a week of the Feb. 14 school shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people died.
The North case is the only felony case currently pending before Bartholomew County’s juvenile court, with the others either settled with an admission of guilt to misdemeanor charges or being moved to misdemeanor status by the court.
Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. implemented new school entryway security measures in 2018 designed to protect students and staff from anyone attempting to enter the school without authorization.
Secure vestibules are now in place at all BCSC school buildings, requiring visitors to undergo background checks before entering a building. Doors that lead into school hallways and the main office are locked when a guest enters the building. A visitor seeking access is required to press an intercom button from a vestibule that would allow them to speak to someone in the main office.
Visitors go through a vetting process that includes background checks using a person’s identification card — such as a driver’s license. That background check will be similar to what the district already uses to evaluate teachers and staff members it hires.
The background check, which takes only a few minutes has the capability to pull a person’s criminal history, including whether the individual is on the state’s sex-offender registry.
BCSC spent about $70,000 in 2018 on security changes such as hardware and software, door locks and cameras. That is on top of $2 million that has been spent since 2013.
BCSC has budgeted $250,000 for next year to add three new school resource officers.
The district also ordered 46 hand-held metal detectors in 2018 from the state of Indiana, which provided them free. However, the district doesn’t intend to use the devices on a daily basis, noting that the school board will have to establish a policy before utilizing them.
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1 — ASAP formalizes plans for substance abuse prevention
The Alliance for Substance Abuse Progress formalizes its organizational structure. It also approves funding for programming and the hub, to provide resources needed to recover from substance abuse, including referrals to already existing programming, help with navigating the health care and insurance systems and resources for connecting to community services — down to the basics of obtaining food, housing and transportation. Distribution of drug abuse prevention grants from Project Prevent, a grant program that launched in April, had 25 projects underway in 2018, funded by about $95,000 in grant allocations overseen by the Heritage Fund — The Community Foundation of Bartholomew County and ASAP. The grant program is funded through the $1 million Mark and Wendy Elwood Substance Abuse Prevention Fund, created when the Elwoods agreed to donate $500,000 if the community matched that amount, which community members did.
2 — Columbus, hospital system purchase FairOaks Mall
Columbus and Columbus Regional Health purchases dying FairOaks Mall to redevelop it into a year-round community recreational and sports tourism complex. The purchasing partners utilized a $450,000 grant from the Heritage Fund — The Community Foundation of Bartholomew County, to purchase the 35-acre mall property from FairOaks Mall Owner LLC for $5.9 million. The partners created the FairOaks Community Development Corp. as the purchaser of the property. Its board will oversee future development of the property.
3 — Social media threats create new focus on school safety
Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. and Flat-Rock Hawcreek School Corp. are adding school resource officers and worked to increase school security in 2018. Secure vestibules are now in place at all BCSC school buildings, requiring visitors to undergo background checks before entering a building. Doors that lead into school hallways and the main office are locked when a guest enters the building. Seven school threats were reported in Bartholomew County in 2018, with several juveniles charged with felony intimidation, some regarding social media posts involving weapons.
4 — IU’s new master’s of architecture program opens in Columbus
In August, Indiana University’s new J. Irwin Miller Architecture Program opened in downtown Columbus at the former offices of The Republic newspaper, 333 Second St. There are 22 students in the first cohort at the school. The program utilizes Columbus’ more than 65 examples of Modern architecture, its size, its fabrication technology at local manufacturing companies and its coalition-building process.
5 — Three river deaths have residents questioning safety
Three people died in Columbus rivers in 2018, a 26-year-old kayaker who disappeared on the Driftwood River in April after heavy rains had passed through the area, a 6-year-old boy who was swept away in high water near an overlook at Mill Race Park in June, and a Faurecia engineer who drowned while canoeing on the Driftwood River in September. Keygan Matlock, 26, of 3950 Deer Court in Tannehill Park, a mobile home community west of Taylorsville, is believed to have launched his 6-foot-long commercial grade fiberglass kayak April 4 into the Driftwood River near his home, in the vicinity of Heflin Park. His body was found in the Driftwood three days later near his kayak. Six-year-old Brendon Sperry was found in the East Fork White River by the Bartholomew County Water Rescue Team on June 16, three days after he was swept away by a strong current while wading in the water in Mill Race Park. The boy was playing on a sandbar during a family outing and was wading in the river at an overlook area on the northwest side of Mill Race Park, investigators said. In the third drowning, Siddharth S. Panicker, 27, an engineer for Faurecia in Columbus, had been canoeing on the Driftwood with about 15 friends on the afternoon of Sept. 15 when his watercraft capsized. Panicker’s body was found the next day near where his canoe capsized.
6 — Two double fatality accidents at rail crossings generate concern
The Columbus and Edinburgh communities grieved the loss of four people who died in two car accidents involving trains in 2018. On Oct. 8, two people in a sports utility vehicle were killed and a third was seriously injured at a northern Bartholomew County railroad crossing near Edinburgh. That accident happened at 11:47 p.m. along County Road 900N, about a mile east of U.S. 31 in the Edinburgh Industrial park area. The Bartholomew County Coroner’s Office identified the victims as Joshua Lee Kelso, 30, of Cloverdale and Justice Marie Llewellyn, 20, of Franklin. In the second fatal accident on Nov. 16, Matthew K. Newland, 18, and Carmyn M. Elkins, 17, both of Columbus, had traveled to Indianapolis for an Indiana Pacers basketball game and were returning home. Their vehicle turned into the path of an oncoming southbound Louisville & Indiana train at U.S. 31 and West County Road 550N. Both died later that night. The fatalities caused greater concern because longer, heavier and faster trains have begun traveling through Columbus after CSX and Louisville & Indiana railroads received federal approval to do so.
7 — Greg Pence elected to Congress
On Nov. 6, Hoosier voters elected Greg Pence as the next 6th District representative in the U.S. House. Pence, 61, a small-business owner and former Marine seeking elected office for the first time, won the congressional office that his brother, Vice President Mike Pence, held before a successful 2012 gubernatorial bid and joining Donald Trump’s presidential ticket in 2016. He is succeeding Republican Luke Messer, who served three terms before running unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate this year, losing to Mike Braun in the GOP primary.
8 — Milo Smith retires from Indiana legislature; Ryan Lauer elected
In January, state Rep. Milo Smith, the Republican lawmaker from Columbus, announced he would retire from the state legislature at the end of the year after completing six two-year terms in office. His announcement came a day after Ryan Lauer, also of Columbus, filed for a third time seeking the Republican nomination for Smith’s 59th District seat in Indiana’s House of Representatives, which represents all but northeastern Bartholomew County. Lauer went on to win the primary and then the November general election for the 59th District.
9 — Wrongful death lawsuit against Tony Stewart reaches settlement
A confidential settlement approved by a federal judge in April ends a lawsuit against Tony Stewart and allows him to avoid a trial where jurors would have determined if the Columbus resident should be liable for the death of another racecar driver. Stewart, a three-time NASCAR champion and current NASCAR team co-owner, and the parents of Kevin Ward Jr. had notified the court April 2 that a settlement had been reached and that a scheduled May 7 jury trial would not be needed. Stewart, of Columbus, and Ward competed in an Empire Super Sprints race Aug. 9, 2014, at Canandaigua (New York) Motorsports Park, where Stewart’s car struck and killed the 20-year-old Ward.
10 — Carpet Mania fire destroys businesses
A massive four-alarm fire at Carpet Mania on Jan. 24 damaged three local businesses, destroying the carpet business and Deathproof CrossFit. A third business, Advantage One Imaging Center, had significant water and smoke damage. The cause was eventually ruled as undetermined. Damage to the building at 1428 10th St. and the contents was estimated at $2 million, firefighters said.
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- A list of the Top 10 local stories of 2018, as chosen by Republic editors.
- A 12-page special section, "Year in Review," recaps the top local news stories of each day throughout 2018.
- A roundup of the top local sports stories can be found today on the front page of Sports, Page C1.
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