Monroe County man arrested for murder
Monroe County Sheriff Deputies arrested 34 year-old Bryce Leighton on the charge of Murder early Saturday morning. Leighton was found shortly after 1:30am, at 5929 East State Road 45 at the scene of a disturbance in which an unnamed, deceased individual was discovered with a gunshot to the head. Next to the body was an AR-style rifle and a stun gun. Leighton was supposedly the neighbor of the deceased.
Leighton was remanded to the Monroe County Correctional Facility. The matter is still under investigation,
*Criminal Defendants are presumed innocent unless and until convicted in a court of law
OECOSL awards $8.7M in expansion grants to early education providers
The Family and Social Service Administration’s Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning awarded more than $8.7 million to childcare providers to expand access to high-quality early education for Hoosier families. OECOSL awarded 21 grants to 11 centers, four ministries, four homes and two public schools. The grants will add 1,572 child care seats in 18 Indiana counties. Seven providers received up to $200,000 to expand existing programs by updating facilities and operations; 14 received up to $750,000 to create new programs in underserved areas of the state. Additional grants may be awarded.
Grant funds were made possible through Senate Enrolled Act 2 from the 2022 Indiana General Assembly special session. Just last month, FSSA announced the $25 million Employer-Sponsored Child Care Fund, part of Gov. Eric J. Holcomb’s 2023 Next Level Agenda, to mobilize employers and communities to create or expand child care offerings that address the needs of working Hoosiers.
In recent years, FSSA has provided $542 million in stabilization grants to more than 3,300 child care providers to help them rebuild after the instability caused by the pandemic, which led to a 29% decrease in vacant child care and early learning teaching positions from 2021 to 2022. For more information, click here.
Bloomington’s Parks and Recreation secures $100,000 grant for urban tree maintenance
Bloomington Parks and Recreation’s urban forestry program was selected from more than 840 applicants to receive $100,000 through the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service’s Urban and Community Forestry Program to maintain public trees, combat extreme heat and climate change, and improve access to nature. The total grant award of $100,000 will be distributed to the City over the next four years, effectively doubling the urban forestry program’s budget for pruning street trees.
According to urban forester Haskell Smith, focused tree maintenance along “priority streets” identified in Parks and Recreation’s Storm Response Plan will reduce overall risk in wind and storm events. Major city thoroughfares with large numbers of trees under energized power lines were identified as “priority streets”. The trees along priority streets are inspected frequently, and the power lines kept clear in coordination with Duke Energy.
The plans call for contractors, who will be selected via a competitive bid process, to prune an average of 80 to 250 trees per year for storm resilience. Pruning trees before they fail in high winds alleviates the chance of the trees incurring major wounds that threaten the trees’ life expectancy, and preserves the existing mature tree canopy. Identifying the locations of weak and failing trees, and promptly addressing dead and high-risk trees, reduces the amount of resources dedicated to tree and limb clean up following severe storms. Those resources may then be re-allocated for more tree planting, proactive pruning, and preservation of the mature tree canopy.
For more information about trees in public rights of way and along city streets, or to view the city’s live “Treekeeper” dashboard of street tree species and locations, visit bloomington.in.gov/treecare.
Poinsettia sales to support Bloomington Symphony Orchestra
This Week in Hoosier History
1904 – Charles W. Fairbanks, U.S. Senator from Indiana, was elected Vice-President of the United States under Theodore Roosevelt. The city in Alaska was named for him.
For more local news . . . Check out our archived episodes of What’s Happenin’ and Talkin’ Sports with Nick Jenkinson