(VERSION 1)

CANstruction is coming up this weekend. The annual event is a food gathering effort to help local food pantries. Eight teams will be building elaborate canned food sculptures in Fair Oaks Mall on Saturday starting at 10 a.m. Gary Parker with the Starving Artists team, says this will be their 10th year participating.

{02-15 Gary Parker Canstruction-1} :18 Q:the lighthouse

The plans for this year’s construction by the Starving Artists team are still under wraps. You can vote for your favorites by donating cans of food over the next week. After the voting is done, all of the structures will be dismantled and both the donations and the building materials will be donated to local food pantries.

You can hear more from Gary Parker with the Starving artist’s team, later this morning on AM Columbus.

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(VERSION 2)

CANstruction is coming up this weekend. The annual event is a food gathering effort to help local food pantries. Eight teams will be building elaborate canned food sculptures in Fair Oaks Mall on Saturday starting at 10 a.m. Gary Parker with the Starving Artists team, says this will be their 10th year participating.

{02-15 Gary Parker Canstruction-2} :28 Q: the banks

You can vote for your favorites by donating cans of food over the next week.

You can hear more from Gary Parker with the Starving artist’s team, later this morning on AM Columbus.

#######

(VERSION 3)

CANstruction is coming up this weekend. The annual event is a food gathering effort to help local food pantries. Eight teams will be building elaborate canned food sculptures in Fair Oaks Mall on Saturday starting at 10 a.m. Gary Parker with the Starving Artists team, says this will be their 10th year participating.

You can vote for your favorites by donating cans of food over the next week. The food used in the constructions and the food donated by those voting will all go to area food banks, including the Salvation Army, Love Chapel, the Hope COmmunity Center food pantry and, new this year, food pantries at Columbus North and Columbus East High Schools.

{02-15 Gary Parker Canstruction-3} :13 Q:

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(VERSION 4)

CANstruction is coming up this weekend. The annual event is a food gathering effort to help local food pantries. Eight teams will be building elaborate canned food sculptures in Fair Oaks Mall on Saturday starting at 10 a.m. Gary Parker with the Starving Artists team, says this will be their 10th year participating.

You can vote for your favorites by donating cans of food over the next week. Parker explains where the food that is donated and the food

{02-15 Gary Parker Canstruction-4} :14 Q: high schools.

CANstruction has donated more than 240,000 cans to local food banks sicne it started 10 years ago.

A community vigil will be held Sunday afternoon in memory of Xavier Scrogham, a teen who died in a motorcycle crash on a country road near Hope after a police chase last year.

Scrogham was driving his motorcycle on U.S. 31 north of Columbus in August of 2016, when he passed a patrol car driven by an off-duty, Nashville reserve officer. After fleeing from the officer, Scrogham crashed and died in eastern Bartholomew County not far from his home.

Scrogham’s mother, Carleen, says that the vigil Sunday is meant to raise questions she has about her son’s death and to bring awareness to problems in our judicial system.

One of her concerns is about the dashboard camera footage from the police cruiser. At first the video was believed to be corrupted, but Bartholomew County deputies had to serve a subpoena to get the video after it was recovered. It has the wrong date and time and is split in half, omitting the actual crash and the recovery of Scrogham’s body.

The driver of the police car pled guilty to false informing in August. As part of the plea deal, charges of reckless driving were dropped. He admitted to lying about the speed Scrogham was driving, when he began the chase. He was given a 180 day suspended sentence and placed on probation for 180 days.

The vigil will be at 2 p.m. Sunday on the steps of Columbus City Hall.

Scrogham said friends and family members will share their memories of her 18-year-old son.

The vigil is being organized by the local chapter of Black Lives Matter.

Tonight’s fireworks at Hope Heritage Days have been canceled due to the extreme heat.

The city of Columbus wants to know what you would like to see along the East Fork White River in downtown.

Jayne Farber, a consultant hired by the city’s redevelopment commission, said officials will be holding a public workshop called “Reimagine the Riverfront” on Wednesday, April 5th, to gather ideas from residents on what should be done to make best use of the area between the Second and Third Street bridges.

She said that this is the former kickoff event on the eventual decision on how to proceed with the riverfront project. Eventually, the city plans to have two sections of the People Trail meet up in that area, finally tying together the city in an entire loop of trails.

The city’s consultants on the project would first meet with more than 30 stakeholders throughout the day to gather their ideas. Then open it up to the public later in a workshop, Farber said.

Farber said part of the discussion will have to be what to do with the low-head dam on the river. The dam is deteriorating and needs work, whether it is to be retained or removed. She said that people might like to see it restored but with a stone face put on it.

Farber has her own views on what might be enjoyable in the area. She said that she might like to see a small public beach with an jetty aimed at young children so they would have a protected place to play in the river.

But ultimately, city officials want to know what you would like to see in the area, Farber says.

The public session will be from 6 to 8 p.m. the night of April 5th in the Cal Brand meeting room at Columbus City Hall.

State Street, between County Roads 100 East and 250 South in Columbus, is closed due to a traffic crash. Local dispatchers say that an accident reconstruction team has been called to the scene, so the closure is expected to be in effect for some time. You should avoid the area.

Bartholomew County is one of 18 counties in the country, and six in the state, taking part in a pilot program to try to better deal with substance abusers in the criminal justice system through evidence based decision making.

Columbus Police Chief Jon Rohde said that the program is trying to see if dealing with drug addicts as a public health problem and not just as criminals will help reduce recidivism and improve outcomes for those in the system.

The first phase of the initiative is a revamping of the way suspects are screened when they are first arrested.

Bartholomew County Council this week approved a grant that will allow the county to hire two new pre-trial assessment officers to better screen those who are arrested and determine who might be at-risk. Brad Barnes, head of the county’s court-services department, explains the plan:

06-16 Brad Barnes-1

That grant will be for just over $124 thousand dollars. The new positions are tied to continued grant funding going forward.

Bartholomew County officials say that the travel status will remain at an advisory level for the county Wednesday night through Thursday morning. Drivers should be aware that even though many of the roads have been cleared, there are still some areas with slick spots or snow covered, especially rural county roads.

Duke Energy is reporting this morning that about 58 customers are without power in the Everrroad Park area of eastern Columbus.

According to the company’s website, the power outage was first reported around 7 a.m. and power is expected to be restored by about noon today.

About 150 customers are without power in Brown County both north and east of Nashville.  Many of those customers are also expected to have power restored between 11 a.m. and noon today.