Porter County continues to lay the groundwork for getting stricter on littering and nuisance noise as the Board of Commissioners has been receiving monthly updates on where state and local laws currently stand.
At Tuesday’s board meeting, County Attorney Scott McClure told commissioners the county’s littering law allows for a $50 fine per item. He said state law sets littering as an infraction with fines up to $1,000, as well as court costs, depending on the infraction level.
Board of Commissioners President Jim Biggs, R-North, asked McClure to continue research into the subject “because there’s a preponderance of trash ending up in our ditches, as well as our farm fields.” He attributed the litter to two main causes. “We’ve never had more retail than we have today,” he said, and added, “Many of our garbage trucks, they’re going down the roads without their screens on.”
Biggs would like to make fines “noticeable” to discourage the problem. “We can encourage garbage companies to use that screen, and we can force retailers to pick up their parking lots.”
Commissioner Barb Regnitz, R-Center, said garbage trucks are far from the only culprits. On Smoke Road, “people are just constantly throwing litter,” she said.
“I think we can chill organized dumping,” McClure told them. “It’s not as difficult to track as it once was.”
Noise, however, will be a bit more difficult to curtail, he said, due to the nature of noises made by farming equipment and recreational shooting, which are part of the unincorporated landscape that cities and towns don’t deal with. The county does not have a noise ordinance, but if one were to be adopted, McClure said its enforcement would need to involve a mobile noise meter that could take measurements on property lines.
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It would have to be calibrated and available on every shift, with training for county employees on how to use it. McClure said complaints are not typically made between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., when most county employees are working, so additional staffing may also be an issue.
In other business, the board voted to declare an emergency regarding the condition of Bridge #132 over Salt Creek on 200 W/Babcock Road south of U.S. 6 in Liberty Township. Development & Storm Water Management Director Mike Jabo and a staff engineer explained the deterioration discovered on the 100-year-old bridge.
It will take up to 24 months to replace it, but that is the most cost-effective, permanent solution to the failing, 30-foot span of adjacent box beams on a poured abutment. Input from a geotech firm is the next step in the process.
The bridge was closed Aug. 7 after a county employee voiced concern over a collapsed side wall and top slab of the structural member, as well as deflection of at least 1” in the superstructure.
Bridge inspection consultant United Consulting was brought in and advised closing the bridge. Original substructure plans date to 1924, with the adjacent box beam superstructure dating to around 1974.
The county has 43 adjacent box beam structures built in the 1960s and 70s in its inventory. All have been inspected. Only nine are in very good condition.
Finally, the board will be taking citizen applications for up to three appointments to a new Plan Commission subcommittee that will focus on the oversight of potential data centers in the county’s unified development ordinance (UDO). Biggs said each commissioner will be able to make an appointment to the subcommittee.
“Certainly, when we created that UDO data centers wasn’t on anybody’s mind,” Biggs said. The UDO was written in 2005 and ‘06 and adopted in ‘07.
Applications will be accepted until 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 21, and the appointments will be announced at the next commissioners’ meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 28.
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.