June 2009 Entries
Tuesday June 30, 2009
Defending yourself in court can be pricey.
Thus far, Elkhart County has incurred $850,000 in legal fees and other expenses in connection with the lawsuit filed by the parents of Nicholas Rice, the Elkhart County jail inmate who died in custody in 2004.
Gordon Lord, the Elkhart County attorney, expects the county’s insurance will cover all but $100,000 of that. Still, it’s been intense and the costliest case for the county at least since Lord’s tenure as county attorney started in 1977.
No other case involving the county “remotely approaches this,” he said.
And it’s...
Thursday June 25, 2009
Things keep buzzing at the Economic Development Corp. of Elkhart County and the Elkhart city libraries, all thanks to the sour economy.
Spurred by the attention Elkhart County has received because of sky-high unemployment, outside businesses have been contacting the EDC in droves, inquiring about setting up shop here.
Between 2001 and 2006, the non-profit agency helped an average of five prospective firms per year, according to EDC president Dorinda Heiden-Guss, who took over in 2007. In 2008, the EDC helped 89 while the number of prospects in just the first three months of 2009...
Tuesday June 16, 2009
The rash of meth lab busts in Elkhart County of late stems from aggressive law enforcement and a higher quantity of manufacturers of the drug to start with, Sheriff Mike Books suspects.
Speaking to the Elkhart County Council on Saturday, he singled out the efforts of the special covert county task force that’s been behind many of the arrests of those trafficking the drug. That, he continued, forces locals to make their own, hence all the recent discoveries of small labs.
In that vein, a couple other county officials, touching on the meth issue...
Wednesday June 10,2009
Crime doesn’t seem to be on the rise here in Elkhart County because of the soft economy.
Sheriff Mike Books told a group of Elkhart County leaders on Tuesday that “property crimes” might be up, at least to a degree. “People crimes,” though, seem to be down and the overall number of people in the county jail has held pretty steady through it all, typically ranging from 750 to 850.
Elkhart County Prosecutor Curtis Hill, for his part, said he’s noticed no correlation between criminal activity and the weak economy.
Conventional wisdom holds that a down...
Friday June 5, 2009
The money keeps trickling in to Linton’s Enchanted Gardens from Elkhart County, $16,751 this time.
To make way for the planned widening of Six Span Bridge, the C.R. 17 connector over the St. Joseph River, the county bought out Linton’s spot off the southeast corner of the crossing for $1.5 million. It also paid the nursery $261,000 to cover costs to relocate to its new location further south along C.R. 17 last year.
That didn’t end matters. The firm got another $15,000 last March for additional moving costs and on Monday, Elkhart County commissioners appropriated...
Friday June 5, 2009
Maybe things in the local housing market aren’t so bad after all, at least if you go by the reckoning of a national group that collects housing data across the United States.
The Indiana Association of Realtors reported last week the median sales price of homes sold in Elkhart County in April totaled $90,500, an 18.5 percent decline compared to the $111,000 median price in April 2008. That was nearly double the 9.7 percent decline statewide in the period, to $97,500 from $108,000.
If you look at numbers compiled by First American CoreLogic, however, things...