IN|Whitley County Sept. 14, 2017

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Staff reports

COLUMBIA CITY — Several local churches and businesses are collecting items and donations for hurricane relief in Texas and Florida. Columbia City United Methodist Church began collecting donations Sunday to purchase flood bucket kits — which cost about $65 a piece. Brewha in Columbia City is also accepting donations for hurricane relief. Marybeth Johnson is leading a collection of items for crisis care kits for Sugar Creek Fellowship Church of the Nazarene. Items needed are 12-18 ounce bottles of shampoo, bars of bath soap, 4-6.4 ounce bottles of toothpaste, toothbrushes, Band-aids, fingernail clippers, sturdy hair combs, hand towels and pocket-sized tissues. Each kit will also have a new beanie baby or stuffed animal in it so the children will have something new. However, the church already has plenty due to a donation of 100 beanie babies. Johnson is also taking monetary donations to help purchase items. For more information, contact Johnson at 248-2030.

S. Whitley fall fest begins Friday Staff reports

SOUTH WHITLEY — South Whitley’s annual fall festival begins this Friday and runs through Sunday in downtown South Whitley. The festival includes a car show, musical groups and more. Cleveland Township’s Fire Department will host a lunch 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday.

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September 14, 2017

County clashes over payroll By Tyler Roebuck troebuck@kpcmedia�com

COLUMBIA CITY — A room full of furious county employees voiced their opposition to changes to payroll Whitley County Council approved for 2018 at its Sept. 6 meeting. Every 11 years, the biweekly pay system on

which the government operates includes an extra paycheck in the year. Instead of the normal 26 pay periods in a year, 2018 has 27. The County Council elected to take the normal annual wage of salary employees and divide it by 27 and give a universal $1,730 cost of living raise

to all county employees except for the council, County Commissioners, part-time workers and employees, such as the judges, whose wage is dictated by the federal government. Because of the division by 27 rather than 26, 44 county salary employees will receive less pay per

period while performing the same amount of work. Any salaried employee who makes more than $45,000 through the county will bring home less pay with each check than last year. “To ask employees to work with less wage, in my 21 years working here, we’ve never done that,”

Environmental Health Specialist Scott Wagner said. The ordinance passed 5-1, with Councilman Jim Bayman opposing and Councilman Bill Overdeer absent. Chief Deputy Jason Spencer asked, “so to be See COUNTY, Page 5

Whitley County ranked 7th healthiest in Indiana for 2016 By Tyler Roebuck troebuck@kpcmedia�com

TYLER ROEBUCK

The tractors began plowing in the early morning, and continued until the field was complete.

Whitley County celebrates 9th annual Plow Day By Tyler Roebuck troebuck@kpcmedia�com

SOUTH WHITLEY — Hundreds of Whitley County residents came together this weekend for the ninth annual Plow Day and Benefit, hosted at Doug and Terry Reiff’s farm. Festivities included a multitude of children’s games, an

animal petting barn, ample Amish food and, of course, the trademark plowing of a field. What makes this family-friendly event stand out is the way it brings the whole community together. As attendees remarked, the Amish and “English,” or non-Amish, seamlessly enjoy the event side-

by-side. “[The planning committee] wants to bring the community together for the whole neighborhood to enjoy it like a family get-together,” said Steve Sickafoose, a member of the committee. “We are always

WHITLEY COUNTY— A study recently released by County Health Rankings named Whitley County the 7th healthiest county in the state for 2016. County Health Rankings is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program. Environmental Health Specialist Scott Wagner is happy with the result. “We’re pleased with last year’s and even though this year’s is lower, the change was less than 5 percent,” he said. The 2017 study, while still in the works, is projecting Whitley County as the 12th healthiest. The County has a number of programs that help boost the numbers, all available through the Health Department, such as the Healthy Start program which encourages and educates mothers on the dangers of smoking while pregnant or with infants. “We have nutritional programs and vaccinations that help,” Wagner said. “Then we do a lot of preventative measures like placement of wells and maintenance of sewer systems that help too.” The study considers physical and mental health, birth weight, smoking, obesity, food access to healthy food, physical inactivity, excessive drinking, alcohol-impaired driving deaths, sexually transmitted infections, teen births, excessive drinking,

See PLOW, Page 4

See HEALTH, Page 5

WCCS enrollment up from last school year By Nicole Minier nminier@kpcmedia�com

COLUMBIA CITY — The numbers are looking up for Whitley County Consolidated Schools, as administrators estimate a 67-student increase in enrollment this year. The official count

will take place later in September, but Superintendent Patricia O’Connor said she’s cautiously optimistic that this year’s count will be higher, meaning the district will receive more state funding. An increase of 67

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students would provide the district with about $355,000 more. “Which is great; we sure can use it,” O’Connor said. Twenty-one of those new students live outside the school district. In total, there are about 125 out-of-district transfers into WCCS. “These students actually don’t live in our WCCS area and they’re being brought in every day to go to our schools,” O’Connor said. With the increase in enrollment, WCCS added staff. Among them is

an additional teacher at Coesse, Northern Heights and Little Turtle elementary schools and “numerous” paraprofessionals, O’Connor said. “We’ve added additional support for teachers in classrooms that did not quite qualify for an additional teacher,” O’Connor said. Bus driver wage increase

Whitley County Consolidated Schools administrators are proposing a wage increase for bus drivers for field trips and athletic events.

O’Connor said with the low unemployment rate, the district is having difficulty finding employees. “This started with the bus drivers,” O’Connor said. “We have put ads in every paper in the area, we have buses parked outside with help wanted signs on them, our students at Eagle Tech made an advertisement for Bones Theater. We know we need to look at pay.” O’Connor will be asking the board to consider a pay increase from $9 to $11 an hour See WCCS, Page 7


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