A Seymour man is under arrest after gunfire in a mobile home park Tuesday night.

According to Seymour Police Department reports, officers were called to the Village Green Mobile Home Park Tuesday night about shots being fired. Police took one person into custody and then sought a search warrant for a home in the 600 block of Peak Drive.

Police found a handgun, ammunition, methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia during their search.

21-year-old Rodolfo Salinas Jr. was arrested on preliminary charges of criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon, possession of methamphetamine and possession of paraphernalia.

The Bartholomew County Health Department is offering a drive-thru flu clinic next month at the Bartholomew County 4-H Fairgrounds.

According to the agency, everyone six months old or older should get a flu vaccine.

The health department will be charging $20 for Quadrivalent, and $60 for high dose for those 65 and older or for FluBlok for those who are immunocompromised. Most insurances can be billed for flu vaccines. If you are uninsured or your insurance does not pay for flu vaccines, you are eligible to receive a free vaccine.

Children under the age of 18 must have a parent or guardian present.

The flu clinic will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 4th.

You can get more information at 812-379-1555, option 1.

The town of St. Paul will received nearly $700,000 from the Community Development Block Grant fund to improve its water system.

Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch and the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs announced yesterday that 21 rural Indiana communities will receive more than $12.9 million in federal grant funding.

St. Paul on the Decatur/Shelby County border is receiving a $697,000 grant under the wastewater/drinking water program. That will go to demolish the existing elevated water storage tank, rehabilitate a storage tank and replace a supply well. It wall also be used to replace a supervisory control and data acquisition system, rehabilitate the water treatment plant, replace customer water meters and install ten hydrants and main line valves.

The state distributes Community Development Block Grant funds to rural communities, which assists local governments with community projects such as infrastructure improvement, downtown revitalization and economic development.

The Indiana Department of Health is adding locations to its online map that are offering the new bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccines. The vaccines protect against the two most common strains of the virus,

In Bartholomew County, bivalent vaccines are available at the county health department, at the CVS Pharmacy on Jonathan Moore Pike and at the Walgreens pharmacies on Beam Road and Jonathan Moore Pike.

Additional locations will be added to the site as vaccine shipments continue to arrive in the state.

The FDA authorized the bivalent boosters on Aug. 31, and the CDC endorsed their use Sept. 1.

Appointments are not yet available online but can be made by contacting a pharmacy or healthcare provider, or by calling 211 (866-211-9966) for assistance.

You can get more information at www.ourshot.in.gov.

IUPUC’s Tom & Barbara Schoellkopf Community Counseling Center will be having an open house next week.

The Schoellkopf Center is a training clinic which provides mental health counseling services to students enrolled at IUPUC, Ivy Tech Community College Columbus, and Purdue Polytechnic Columbus. Services are also available t0 residents of Columbus, Bartholomew County, and surrounding communities.

Counseling services are provided by students in the Master’s in Mental Health Counseling degree program and supervised by clinical professors. The center screens clients to ensure they can provide appropriate care.

The open house be on Wednesday, September 20th from 4 to 6 p.m. The open house will include brief remarks, tours of the facilities, and light refreshments.

The event is free and you are invited to attend but reservations are requested. You can get more information about the center and register for the open house at iupuc.edu/tbsc

The Bartholomew County Council has approved a tax abatement requested by a company that plans to bring high-speed internet to rural parts of the community.

But that comes after a sometimes angry debate and the threat of a lawsuit from a coalition of internet providers.

Meridiam Infrastructure through Hoosier Networks are proposing a project to bring fiber optic internet with gig speed to rural parts of the county. Their agreement with the Bartholomew County Commissioners calls for bringing the high speed internet into almost 12,000 homes.

But the company said it needed a tax abatement on the investment and without the tax break, the project is not affordable.

A coalition of Internet providers, called the Indiana Cable and Broadband Association, threatened that the county was opening itself up to legal claims, if Meridiam moves forward with the county agreement, saying that the county would be excluding other internet providers from providing service, among other concerns. But Meridiam representatives and the commissioners disputed those claims.

Several residents said that they were in favor of the efforts to bring high-speed internet to their rural homes, citing problems even selling a property that has no internet access, in addition to problems with school, work and health care in this connected era.

The County Council listened to nearly three hours of public comment and debate before ultimately deciding to approve the tax abatement and to declare the entire county an economic revitalization area.

A Shelbyville woman accused of abandoning her young nonverbal autistic child in a woods near Cincinnati earlier this year has taken a plea deal.

33-year-old Heather Adkins has been facing charges including kidnapping but will avoid a trial after pleading guilty yesterday to child endangerment. Investigators say that Adkins dropped the five-year-old off in February in the rain and simply drove away. He was later rescued by strangers who took him to authorities. Adkins faces a maximum of three years in prison.

Story courtesy of our news-gathering partners at TTWN Media Networks Inc.

Bartholomew County Commissioners say that having the state give the county a bridge, is sort of like someone giving you an expensive new car.

Except now you have to maintain that vehicle for the rest of its life, says Commissioner Carl Lienhoop.

The discussion came up during a $41,000 contract with USI Consultants to plan for a bridge overlay project and study the bridge over rural 25th Street near the former county landfill site. The bridge was built in the 1930s and then piers were added in the 1960s by the state, says County Engineer Danny Hollander. It was turned over to the county in the 1990s.

The consultants would be looking at the structure to see how long it can go before needing a complete replacement, a project which Hollander estimated at a $5 million project for the county. Commissioner Larry Kleinhenz said that the hope is to extend the life of the bridge 20-30 years.

Kleinhenz said the state is considering relinquishing more bridges in the southern part of the county.

Commissioners voted to approve the contract with USI Consultants yesterday.

A reminder that IUPUC will be holding a voter registration drive on Wednesday.

Trained volunteers will be on hand to help people fill out the registration forms. They will also be able to answer your questions about eligibility, where to vote and even whether you are already registered.

The voter registration event will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesday at the campus at the airport on Central Avenue.

An already delayed bridge project on State Road 58 in Jackson County is being delayed again.

Work was set to start Monday on the bridge over Branch Runt Run on State Road 58 near Spraytown, closing the highway for up to three months. However, INDOT is announcing today that the project has been put on hold again and a new start time will have to be announced.

Milestone will be the contractors for the $2.7 million project, which includes several other small drainage structure replacements in 2023. The work was originally set to start in August, but was delayed because of material shortages.