Mill Race Center is announcing this year’s Great Decisions classes starting later this month.

Great Decisions is a discussion program on world affairs developed by the Foreign Policy Association, featuring foreign policy challenges facing Americans.

Topics this year will include subjects such as outer space, climate change and Russia and the U.S.

The series runs once a week on Thursdays from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the evenings, March 24th through May 26th with in-person and virtual options via Zoom.

The cost is $35 for Mill Race Center members and $45 for non-members. Registration is required. You can Mill Race Center at 812-376-9241 or stop by the center at 900 Lindsey Street in Columbus to sign up.

A Bartholomew County woman has been chosen as one of this year’s 500 Festival Princesses. The festival is announcing that Melissa Aceves, a senior at IUPUI has been chosen for the program.

Aceves is a Columbus native and graduate of Columbus North High School. She is studying community health at IUPUI.

According to the festival organizers, hundreds of women applied and the princesses were chosen based on leadership, academic stewardship, community involvement, and their embodiment of the Hoosier spirit.

The 500 Festival Princesses will participate in the 500 Festival Leadership Development Program and each 500 Festival Princess will receive a $1,000 scholarship, made possible by Marlyne Sexton, an Indianapolis philanthropist and president of The Sexton Companies, and the 500 Festival Foundation.

500 Festival Princesses take part in the 500 Festival’s statewide outreach program, educating Hoosiers about the history of the 500 Festival and legacy of the Indianapolis 500. The princesses take part in more than 1,500 outreach events, reaching more than 50,000 people.

The 2022 Marlyne Sexton 500 Festival Queen Scholar will be announced on Saturday, May 21st. The 500 Festival Queen Scholar will receive an additional $1,500 scholarship.

Photos courtesy of 500 Festival.

If you have wondered what’s behind the gates at Tony Stewart’s Youth Camp Road home, now is the chance to find out.

This week, Stewart, a Columbus native and NASCAR legend, has put the hunting lodge style home and property up for sale through a Carmel-based realtor Carrie Holle of the Carrie Holle Group and Compass Property Management.

According to the listing, the 20,000 square foot home includes six bedrooms, eight full bathrooms and three half baths, an 8,700 gallon aquarium, two-story waterfall, bowling alley and indoor golf course. The property features 415 acres of prime hunting ground and a nine acre stocked pond.

The realtor called this the most exclusive property ever listed in Indiana.

And if you want to move in, you can buy the place for $30 million dollars cash.

You can find photos of the property here.

The Schneck Guild is announcing that it is accepting applications for the Kim Quilleon Varnell Memorial Scholarship through the end of the month.

The Guild awards up to three $1,000 scholarships annually to students planning a career in healthcare.

To be eligible, a candidate must be a past junior volunteer at Schneck Medical Center and have completed the minimum 28 hour requirement for the summer, be a graduating high school senior, and enrolled in college in the healthcare field.

Applications for the scholarship are available online at www.schneckmed.org/volunteers.

Applications must be completed and postmarked by March 31st to be eligible for consideration.

If you have any questions you can call Amy Cockerham at (812) 522-0439 or [email protected].

Local beauty and bath products company garb2ART is announcing that Columbus native Chuck Baker will be serving as vice president and general manager, a new position for the company.

garb2ART founder Dawn Andrews said that the company is making expansion plans due to strong sales growth over the recent years and Baker will be key to those plans. He has 20 years of sales and management experience in the retail, restaurant and fashion industries.

Andrews also said that garb2ART will be moving all of its manufacturing to a workshop facility on Long Road in Columbus as of April 1st. She said that will more than double the current manufacturing space.

She said several exciting wholesale projects are in the works and she expects 2022 to be a big year.

garb2ART is a retailer and wholesaler of beauty and bath products. Their products are handmade in America and packaged in recycled, reusable, or recyclable materials.

Photo: garb2Art produced hand sanitizer during the pandemic. Photo courtesy of Dawn Andrews.

Columbus Regional Health Foundation is still planning to hold its 27th annual Reverse Raffle in person again this year after two years of virtual events, but they are changing the date.

The 2022 Reverse Raffle is now scheduled for Sept. 30 at Harrison Lake Country Club. The event was originally announced as a week earlier.

The annual event is the largest fundraiser for VIMCare Clinic. Proceeds from the annual raffle make up about a third of the clinic’s budget.

Organizers plan to have the specific details for the event finalized by early spring.

In 2020 and 2021 the CRH Foundation hosted the Reverse Raffle in a virtual format.

The VIMCare Clinic provides medical services for the uninsured and underinsured patients in the community. The clinic was previously called Volunteers in Medicine.

A former jail and prison inmate has cleaned up his life and wants to give back to the community and has found a prominent supporter. That’s according to Bartholomew County Sheriff Matt Myers, who met with the former prisoner, Lowell Smith, earlier this week.

The sheriff said it was gratifying to see the way Smith has turned his life around, paying his nearly four-year debt to society, getting sober, finishing his education with a GED and becoming a productive member of society. For his part, Myers said seeing people choose to have a better life, rather than just putting them in jail, is why he became sheriff.

Smith came to the sheriff’s department on Monday to talk to the sheriff about a proposed Garden of Hope he would like to build. The sheriff said the garden would be for recovering addicts and their families, with proceeds going back to the family.

Smith is looking for 2 to two and a half acres of land to use for the project.

The sheriff says anyone who wants to help with the project can contact Smith through the Salvation Army at 812-372-7118.

Photo courtesy of Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department

The city of Columbus is going to take another look at the feasibility of a downtown hotel and conference center.

The Redevelopment Commission this week approved a $27,000 contract with Hunden Strategic Partners to study the proposed project between Second and Third streets across the street from the county jail. Originally linked to a downtown grocery and apartment complex development, the hotel conference center to be developed by Sprague Developers was put on hold when the tourism and travel industries declined during the pandemic.

Now the city wants to have an update to the 2018 market and feasibility study that led to the downtown plans. Rob Hunden with the company said that they would come up with a revised assessment and would work with Sprague to determine if they are still interested in the project. Hunden said bright spots in the hospitality sector include the expansion of the leisure industry nationwide, with people being interested in taking long weekends for travel and in a rise in business travel for face-to-face discussions and sales meetings.

The redevelopment commission approved an expedited option for the study, to be completed in about four weeks.

A review of a salary study commissioned last year by Bartholomew County left some members of the County Council asking for legal action against the company that produced it.

The council held a work session this week to hear the report from Waggoner, Irwin & Scheele, a Muncie based company commissioned last spring by the county at a cost of $25,000. Kent Irwin with the company outlined the results of the study, which he said compared thousands of salaries in both the private and government sectors and took the salaries in the middle of the pay ranges to come up with the best models for Bartholomew County government employees.

However, several council members said they were frustrated and dissatisfied with the final product, especially the timing.

Councilman Matt Miller quizzed Irwin on why the study took so long, why it wasn’t done in time to set employee salaries last year at budget time, and whether the timing met the requirements under the contract with the company.

Council President Greg Duke also questioned the validity of the comparisons in the study, such as concerns about why northern Indiana counties were included.

Miller and Duke said that they wanted the county’s attorney to review the contract, but because it was a work session no action could be taken.

Two Bartholomew County deputies were recognized by the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute for their years of service as certified drug recognition experts.

Sgt. Andrew Dougan and Deputy Ryan Smith were honored at a Friday ceremony with the Traffic Safety All-Star awards. According to the institute, only 1 percent of the officers in the state are certified as drug recognition experts. Officers must complete more than 100 hours of coursework and training before they can test for certification. They also must complete annual in-service training as well as evaluations to maintain the certification.

Photo courtesy of Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department.