Cass-Pulaski Community Corrections needs some Pulaski County residents to serve on its advisory board. Pulaski Circuit Court Judge Michael Shurn told the county commissioners last week there are several openings to be filled, in order to reach equal representation from both counties.
Cass-Pulaski Community Corrections Director Dave Wegner said the board is made up of people from many different backgrounds. “The statute calls for appointments made by either the office holders, which would be the office of the sheriff, the prosecuting attorney, the mayor, DCS, and JDI; or through the criminal court judge, which would be for the criminal judge and the juvenile judge,” Wegner explained. “The rest are through the county executive, which are the commissioners, which is a public defender, a victim, an ex-offender, a city council position, probation officer for adult and juvenile, and education administrator, and then four laypersons.”
The commissioners didn’t make any appointments to the community corrections advisory board last week, but they agreed to start looking for candidates. Judge Shurn said he already has some ideas, “I think Dan Foster’s already been coming, for example, as the education administrator, and Bob Klitzman used to come. Then one of the laypeople is supposed to be a minority, and then one of the lay positions can be a county council member. So you might want to see if a county council member can do that. And the commissioners – you probably want to have a commissioner on there. Some of them are already listed there, so it makes it a little easier.”
Wegner explained that Cass-Pulaski Community Corrections consists of a work release residential program in Logansport, as well as a home detention program. “So our population runs around 400 per year,” he said. “We receive funding from the DOC at a current rate of $560,000 off our base, and then $124,000 off of 1006 funding. So those are the funds we have to pay for most of our full-time employees. The rest of the budget that we work with comes from user fees. We charge the clients to be on the program. So our overall budget’s somewhere around $1.7 million.”
Also during last week’s meeting, the commissioners appointed Nathan Origer to the Kankakee-Iroquois Regional Planning Commission, replacing Commissioner Jerry Locke. The commissioners also voted to keep county council member Mike Tiede on the Northwest Indiana Solid Waste District Board.
