Montgomery County

Alongside U.S. 231 in the small Montgomery County town of Linden, just south of the railroad museum, there’s a colorful new installation.

Row upon row of panels sits on the site of the Tipmont REMC headquarters. The ones that face north are bright orange – designed to reflect sunlight onto the ones that face south. Those are photovoltaic cells, navy blue with a crosshatching of wires running through them.

There are 240 of them in total and Tipmont spokeswoman Sasha Clements took a second at their unveiling to explain to the crowd how they’d be allocated.

4:30 p.m. UPDATE:

Crawfordsville Mayor Todd Barton says negotiations on the expansion started around the first of the year and seemed all-or-nothing in nature.

Barton says if Crawfordsville hadn’t landed the additional jobs, it was likely the plant would have closed entirely as Penguin Random House streamlines its operation.

The company now has two national distribution centers. The other is in Maryland.

Original story:

Hoping to prevent violent actions like those at the Tippecanoe and Howard County courthouses, Montgomery County officials are trying to expedite security upgrades to their courthouse.

County Commissioner Phil Bane says a judge recently received a phone call threatening his life, leading to discussions about how to make the structure and its inhabitants safer.

The City of Crawfordsville and Montgomery County are working with a developer who wants to acquire the Culver Hospital building, which has been vacant for nearly 30 years.

The city is pledging $150,000 to Sustainable Solutions to buy one of the three parcels that make up the property. The county is helping the nonprofit with the other two parcels, which have issues with back-taxes. The plan is to rehab the building for affordable housing.

The history of Montgomery County is highlighted in the Indiana Archeology journal.

A group from Ball State received a nearly 50-thousand-dollar grant from the Historic Preservation Fund to examine 915-acres of agricultural land northeast of Crawfordsville.

Archeologist Christine Keller says the information offers details on how early inhabitants of the area lived.