Legal Aid will be having a free clinic in Bartholomew County at the Legal Aid Offices in the Doug Otto United Way Center on 13th Street from 3 to 5 p.m. today, March 25th.

You can get up to a 10 minute consultation with a pro bono attorney to answer legal questions, to offer information or to receive other, limited, advice.

The sessions are available on a first-come first-serve basis and there is no need to register in advance.

Crews will be working on State Road 3 between Vernon and North Vernon this week. INDOT says contractors will be removing and replacing curb ramps and resurfacing the road from State Road 7 south of Vernon to U.S. 50 at North Vernon.

The work is due to start today and you will see flaggers during the paving operations. This is all part of at $787,000 pavement improvement project as part of Indiana’s Next Level Roads program.

INDOT is urging you to remember that when driving in work zones you should slow down, avoid distractions, and use extra caution.

If you are looking for more traffic information, download the WAZE app for your smartphone and join the WCSI Traffic team powered by Crew Car Wash. You can find updated traffic information on our website, on-air and on the app.

Time is running out to apply for scholarships provided by the Indiana Sheriff’s Association. The organization will be awarding college scholarships to qualified high school seniors or college students who are pursuing a degree in criminal justice studies.

Approximately 40 $750 scholarships awarded to qualifying students throughout the state. The deadline to apply is April 1st.

To qualify, the applicant must be an Indiana resident, be a current member of the association or a dependent child or grandchild of a current member of the association, attend an Indiana college or university, major in a law enforcement field and enroll as a full-time student (12 hours).

Applications needed to apply for the scholarships are available from area high school counselors and the Sheriff’s Office front desk during regular business hours. The scholarship application can also be downloaded at indianasheriffs.org.

As Severe Weather Preparedness Week wraps up emergency officials say that the biggest danger of death from natural disasters in the U.S.  is drowning and half of those deaths come from people driving or walking into floodwaters.

According to the National Weather Service, it doesn’t take much fast-moving water to sweep you away. Six inches of water can knock an adult off their feet, 12 inches can carry off a small car and if you have two feet of swift water, vans, pickups and SUVs will be swept downstream.

They are urging you that if you encounter high water over the roadway, turn around and don’t drown. Even if you think you know the area, when you come across high water on the road, you don’t know what is happening underneath. The road could be swept away.

Severe Weather Preparedness Week wraps up Saturday.

INDOT’s contractor will be holding a public meeting on Thursday to update you on the road project adding more travel lanes on Interstate 65.

The purpose of the public meeting is to give an update on the progress of the project to increase the interstate to six lanes between Seymour and Columbus. The three year, $143 million project recently entered its second phase, INDOT says.

The expansion, part of the Next Level Roads initiative, will be between U.S. 50 and Indiana 58 at Walesboro. The project also provides for a repair/resurfacing project between Walesboro and the Columbus exits. A separate project will increase the width of the interstate between those exits also.

The work so far has included adding traffic signals at State Road 58 exits and a caution light at the U.S. 31 and State Road 250 intersection.

Thursday’s meeting will be from 6 to 7 p.m. at the Hampton Inn Seymour. That is at 247 N. Sandy Creek Dr.

The final days of a 30-day public comment period for the Columbus Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Draft of the 2020-2024 Transportation Improvement Program Update. The TIP identifies transportation projects that will be funded in Bartholomew County over the next five years.

A public open-house will have information on the proposed projects. That will be held in Conference Room 3 at City Hall on Monday, March 25th from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. A presentation will be given at 5 p.m.

Public comments on the TIP may be made in the following ways:
– sent by mail to Laura Thayer, Columbus City Hall, 123 Washington Street, Columbus IN 47201;
– by email to lthayer@columbus.in.gov;
– by phone to (812) 376-2550.

CAMPO, which is part of the City of Columbus-Bartholomew County Planning Department, is charged with planning and programming federal funding for transportation projects in Columbus and Bartholomew County. The City and County manage the projects in their jurisdictions and provide the required match, which is usually 20-percent of the total project cost.

City officials say projects in the draft TIP are improvements for:
– Talley Road from 25th Street to Rocky Ford Road;
– Lowell Road from CR 325 West to Indianapolis Road;
– Sections of Goeller Road and County Road 350 West;
– Planned bicycle and pedestrian facilities include improvements for the People Trail between Noblitt, Donner and Lincoln parks. The TIP also includes capital and operational funding for ColumBUS Transit.

Six INDOT railroad projects in Bartholomew County are also included in the TIP to ensure coordination among agencies. These safety improvement projects at CR 800 N, CR 650 N, CR 550 N, Industrial Road, Spear Street, and CR 950 S.

Clarifications: An earlier version of this article had information that was incomplete. It has been updated.

Emergency dispatchers and paramedics are seeing an increased workload.

The Columbus Emergency Ambulance Board met Thursday afternoon at city hall. Mary Ferdon, the city’s director of administration, explains that this is an annual meeting required by ordinance, as CRH is contracted with the city and county to provide ambulance services through the end of 2020.

Adam Hoskins, EMS manager for Columbus Regional Health, delivered the presentation. Figures from 2018 indicated a one-percent increase in overall call volume over 2017. Hoskins says that of those 11,380 calls, about 27 percent were “non-emergency.”

Response times were a bit slower compared to 2017. Hoskins says the average city response time in 2018 four-minutes and 50 seconds. That’s 20 seconds slower than 2017. The average county response time of 10 minutes and 43 seconds is 21 seconds slower that 2017 figures. CRH says these delays were anticipated due to construction on I-65 between Columbus and Seymour and flooding issues throughout the year.

The number of ambulance sites have also decreased from five to four. One ambulance was removed from Fire Station 6 in Walesboro and moved to the ambulance station on Central Avenue. That change was made because the Walesboro ambulance was not utilized as often as originally hoped.

Hospital officials say that they are still beating the response times required under their contract. The city/county contract requires that an ambulance be on scene within 9 minutes, 90% of the time. CRH met that goal 91.6% of the time.  County responses require arrival in less than 18 minutes, 90% of the time.  CRH  hit that mark 92.2% of the time.

CRH says their ambulance service had a net-loss of approximately $72,000 in 2018. Hoskins explains that their largest provider is Medicare, which pays $247 per ambulance trip. Second is Medicaid, which pays only $97 per trip. Hoskins says the average non-emergency ambulance ride is billed at $701. Officials say they will continue to take steps to reduce the red ink. This includes taking additional non-emergency runs and other measures.

City Councilman Frank Miller, a member of the EAS Board, expressed concerns about the increasing number of calls. He says that there is a need for new dispatchers at the Emergency 911 Center. To better study the issue, Miller is set to spend time at the dispatch center Friday afternoon to observe. Miller says he expects additional discussions at the county and city levels next month to address his concerns.

The town of Hope is moving forward with a grant request for a project to beautify and brighten the town square. The Town Council this week approved a request from the non profit Main Street of Hope organization to apply for up to $600,000 in state funds for the project.

The project, if approved for funding by the state Office of Community and Rural Affairs would have two major components — replacing more than 40 aging and dim street lights in and around the square, and upgrading the sidewalks and trails through the small park to make them accessible under ADA standards.

Susan Thayer-Fye, director of the Main Street group explains.

Thayer-Fye, director of the Main Street group explains that the grant will require a 20 percent local match. That include actual cash and in-kind donations, such as the architect’s fees for the landscaping.

The grant deadline is June and all the matching funds need to be accounted for by then.

Thayer-Fye said that the street lights in and around the square are aging, dim and inefficient. The council chose to go with a private supplier, rather than Duke Energy, and the new lights will match the town’s historic square

The deadline to apply for the grant is late June.

The Seymour Police Department 911 Dispatch Center and the Jackson County Emergency Management Agency are giving away five public alert weather radios in recognition of Severe Weather Awareness Week.

The agencies recommend that everyone have at least two methods to receive severe weather alerts. The National Weather Service sends out alerts whenever severe weather happens in your area.

To win one of the five radios, you need to go to the Seymour police Facebook page and comment with the words “Storm Awareness” on the radio giveaway post. Winners will be randomly chosen on Monday.

You can see the post below:

Two elementary schools in Johnson County will be closed to students and staff on Thursday.

Franklin Community Schools says a second round of air and soil gas sampling took place over the winter. Samples of air were taken from below the concrete floor at Needham Elementary and Webb Elementary and sent to a lab for analysis. FCS received preliminary results Wednesday. They indicated that three out of seven samples at Webb Elementary and two out of 10 samples at Needham Elementary were above the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s screening levels.

The latest testing comes after testing done over the summer cleared both schools. That came about after parents expressed concerns about possible contamination, as both schools are located near an old manufacturing site. Additional sampling is set for over spring break, which is set to begin after classes on Thursday.

FCS will be implementing an E-Learning Day for Thursday, March 21st for Needham Elementary and Webb Elementary only. Other schools in the district will remain in session.

FCS officials say they will provide an update on Thursday.