Eleven budgets and two permits

Between the fifth and the nineteenth of October, eleven public bodies in LaGrange County will meet to adopt their 2027 budgets. The county itself meets on the twelfth, and so do Clay Township and the town of Topeka. Wolcottville and Prairie Heights meet on the nineteenth. The rest fall in between.

Every one of those meetings is public under Indiana's Open Door Law (IC 5-14-1.5-3), and every one of those dates comes from a notice the body filed with the state.

In the same weeks, two companies in the county have draft air permits open for public comment. Comment closes on River Woodworking's on the ninth of October and on FN Chairs' on the seventeenth. Anyone may comment. The Indiana Department of Environmental Management names a person to write to on each notice and asks for a mailing address, so it can tell you what it decided.

Those are the two things a person can do this month. Sit in a room where a budget is adopted, or write a letter about a permit.

The budget dates are all on the state's own portal and the permit notices are all on the environmental department's. Nothing puts them together. We have, with a link to the filing each one came from.

We did not write these filings and we do not know what the bodies will do. We read what they filed, we say where we read it, and when a date passes we record what happened or say plainly that we looked and could not find out.