Centre Township voters will choose a trustee and three township board members on Tuesday. Whoever they elect will run a fire department that answered 1,044 calls last year from one station on Kern Road. In April, Fire Chief Zach Mark reported that the department was fully staffed.

That is the record the incumbents are running on. Trustee Judith Galloway, Board President Tom Lindenman, and board Secretary Gail Figg, all Republicans, are seeking another term. Rhett Harris, a Republican who does not hold a seat, is running with Lindenman and Figg for the board.

For trustee, Galloway faces Democratic challenger Ron Baker. Christopher D. Bowman, Karla Kreczmer-Baker, and Brandon Wardrip are the Democratic challengers for the board.

For about 16 years, Centre and Portage townships shared a fire department through the Southwest Central Fire Territory. That arrangement ended in 2024. The territory’s fire tax applied to property in both townships, and Centre Township’s property made up about two-thirds of the total, Lindenman said.

When Portage Township left, Centre Township kept its fire tax close to what residents had been paying. That money now goes to one station instead of two, and it pays for five full-time firefighters on duty at all times, Lindenman said.

Since then, the township board has twice looked at merging with a neighboring fire territory and both times chose to stay independent.

The township ended 2025 with $2,100,908.68 in the bank, according to its December financial report. Of that, $1,327,305.03 was in the fire and EMS fund and $455,366.29 was in the cumulative fire fund. The report lists no debt. In July, the board approved spending $650,000 of that cash this year, $450,000 of it on capital purchases.

Now the township board wants to fix the Kern Road station. “We haven’t made any upgrades or any significant improvements to this facility since 2008,” Lindenman said in September. This year the board set aside cash from the township’s reserves for upgrades to the station.

If the incumbents are reelected, the work on the Kern Road station will be theirs to finish.

On Sept. 29, Redress South Bend reported that paint South Bend Community School Corporation bought with state money to renovate Brown School had turned up in the garage of a former district official.

The official had put their house up for sale. A visitor at the open house knew about the official’s work on the Brown renovation and noticed shelves of paint in the garage. The visitor photographed the paint cans and the product codes on them. According to a school board member, those codes matched the paint the school corporation bought with taxpayer money for the Brown renovation. The board member told Redress the paint in the garage was “definitely” the Brown School paint. Other sources confirmed the account.

A second board member said the new superintendent went to the South Bend Police Department after the board pushed for a report. The department opened case No. 26-10646.

Redress requested the report in person at the SBPD Records Bureau on Sept. 2 and filed a public records request on Sept. 3. Fifty-seven days later, Redress is still waiting for a copy of the report.

Tim Corbett, former Commander of the St. Joseph County Metro Homicide Unit, believes he knows why.

“I absolutely feel that report was covered for political reasons,” Corbett said.

Corbett and Joe Speybroeck are the investigators the school corporation hired to look into the district. Corbett spoke with Redress South Bend on Oct. 29. Corbett spoke for himself, not for the school corporation.

The police department that holds the report answers to Mayor James Mueller, a Democrat. Days before the election, Mueller’s party has candidates up and down the Nov. 3 ballot, and Corbett believes the report may damage Mueller’s candidates.

“You got an upcoming race,” Corbett said. “You got people in that race that need votes from different members of the community, and it’s been hidden.”

Corbett confirmed that case No. 26-10646 is connected to the school corporation. He said the report was filed with SBPD and that he spoke with the person who made the report. Corbett would not name that person.

“I absolutely trust that person,” Corbett said.

Corbett said SBPD normally lists new reports on a daily bulletin. According to Corbett, this report never appeared there.

“If you’re gonna put on the bulletin things about a homicide, a sexual offense, burglaries, robberies, anything else, why would you not put that on the bulletin about paint being stolen other than to protect someone?” Corbett said.

Corbett has not seen the police report, but he expects the report to contain what his investigation with Speybroeck documented: where the paint was seen, the photographs, the product codes, and the name of the person whose garage held the paint. Corbett said he knows what the missing material is worth. He would not provide a dollar figure when asked.

“That needs to be released in the report,” Corbett said.

On Sept. 2, I went to the SBPD Records Bureau with the date, the location, and the name of the person involved. The records clerk told me, “There is no report, so there is nothing to give you.”

When Redress filed its request the next day, the clerk said requests go through the city’s legal department and requests for police reports can take “up to six months to a year.”

Corbett said the clerk may have been telling the truth if the report never reached the Records Bureau.

“Maybe that report was intercepted before it got to records,” Corbett said. “But six months to a year to produce a copy of that, which will take all of about maybe 40 seconds? You find it, you copy it, you hand it over.”

Corbett said no one from SBPD has contacted him or Speybroeck about the case. No one from the St. Joseph County Prosecutor’s Office has either. Corbett said he understands that the prosecutor’s office does not have the case.

Corbett expects the paint case to move once the votes are counted.

“I’ll just about bet after November 3rd, this thing’ll start picking up speed, and you’ll probably get what you need because the damage has already been done,” Corbett said.

When you give money to a political campaign, you hope it buys yard signs, billboards, mailers, and television commercials.

Vic Cummings is the Democratic candidate for St. Joseph County assessor. His campaign spent money at a liquor store. Twice.

Cummings’s campaign spent money at T-Mobile and Apple. The campaign spent money at Vrbo, for what the report calls “Housing” in Fort Wayne, and at gas stations in Fort Wayne and South Bend. The campaign spent money at Meijer, Sam’s Club, and Dollar General.

Cummings signed the report, under a printed promise that the report is “true, correct and complete.” Not one of its 35 payments says what the money was for.

The report also gets its own math wrong.

A campaign finance report works like a checkbook register. The back pages list every payment, one line at a time, with a subtotal at the bottom of each page. The summary sheet on the front adds those subtotals together.

Cummings’s report has five pages of payments. Their subtotals are $416.38, $1,652.48, $2,006.70, $313.44, and $906.88, for a total of $5,295.88. The summary sheet Cummings signed says the campaign spent $3,289.18.

The $2,006.70 difference is the subtotal of one page, to the penny. Add up the other four pages, and the total is exactly $3,289.18. The summary sheet skipped that one page. The skipped page holds both T-Mobile payments and the $462.50 Vrbo charge for “Housing” in Fort Wayne.

Because of that, the report overstates what is left in the campaign account. The summary sheet says the committee had $5,402.53 on hand on October 9. Count the skipped page, and the committee had $3,395.83.

His committee, Vic Cummings for County Assessor, filed the report with the county on October 15. The report covers April 11 through October 9.

The largest payment, $1,417.75 on May 7, went to Eco Owl Press of South Bend.

The next largest are harder to explain.

The campaign paid T-Mobile $1,088.35 in two payments, $584.48 on July 18 and $503.87 on August 18. The report does not say what either payment covered.

The campaign paid Vrbo, the vacation rental company, $538.40 in two charges. The first was $75.90 on August 26. The second, $462.50 on August 28, is listed as “Vrbo-Housing” with an address in Fort Wayne. Three days later, the campaign paid $60 at a gas station in Fort Wayne.

Only St. Joseph County voters cast ballots in the assessor’s race.

Cummings’s campaign spent $903.68 at grocery and discount stores: $316.52 at Meijer, $192.81 at Sam’s Club, $73.02 at Martin’s, $65.04 at Dollar General, $30.96 at CVS, $22.47 at Dollar Tree, $18.59 at Starbucks, $72.41 at Los Humildes, $98.99 at Lowery’s Meat Market, and $12.87 at Linden Grill. The campaign paid Apple $52.46. Gas came to $287.87 in all, counting the Fort Wayne stop.

Two payments remain. On September 23, I reported that Cummings wrote on his public Facebook account on April 11, 2010: “I do NOT n any way shape or forum support Drunk Driving But….. I do drink&drive!”

The campaign paid Belmont Bev, at an address the report gives as Portage Road in South Bend, $20.31 on August 12. The campaign paid the same store $20.31 again on August 22. Belmont Beverage, a liquor chain, runs a store at 3320 Portage Ave. in South Bend.

On Sunday morning, I sent Cummings a text message asking what the Fort Wayne Vrbo and gas payments were for. The message shows as read. He had not answered by the time this column was published.

A fixture is something you bolt to the wall and leave there. Stephanie Ball says she’s one.

“A fixture in South Bend Democratic Party politics,” according to her campaign website. Ball offers that to voters as a reason to make her clerk of the St. Joseph Circuit Court, the office that keeps the county’s court records and runs its elections.

So let’s take Ball at her word and have a look at the fixture.

Ball has worked on campaigns for former State Sen. Cleo Washington, former Gov. Joe Kernan, and Common Council members Oliver Davis Jr. and Karen White. Ball served as secretary of the South Bend chapter of the Indiana Democratic African American Coalition. Ball’s website lists all of this, proudly.

Then there’s the side of Ball’s résumé that pays her bills.

From 2003 to 2011, Ball worked for the Housing Authority of South Bend, a public agency, according to her LinkedIn profile. Then the South Bend Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit that reported $1,468,253 in government grants on its 2024 federal tax return, about 31 percent of its revenue.

Then the school board. Ball ran for the District 4 seat and lost. In 2019, the board appointed her to that same seat anyway, by a 4-2 vote, after the member who held that seat left to become city clerk. Ball later won the seat outright in 2020 before ultimately losing the seat again in 2024.

A loss like that might slow some people down.
A fixture just looks for another seat.
Two years later, Ball is now on the ballot for county clerk.

And what does the fixture do for a living these days? Ball is program manager of the South Bend Financial Empowerment Center. The city calls the center “a City program.” In January 2024, the city asked its Redevelopment Commission for $350,000 to run the place for two years, and the request spelled out what the money would buy: one full-time FEC program manager and two financial counselors. The city says the commission approved the money. A nonprofit, Near Northwest Neighborhood Inc., runs the center and employs the staff.

What does the center do? Free counseling on debt, credit, and savings for anybody in South Bend who walks in.

In January 2024, a debt buyer called Midland Credit Management sued Ball over a credit card. Ball never answered the lawsuit. The court entered a default judgment that March. When I checked the docket Thursday, the balance was $5,785.05, and the court’s records showed zero payments.

I called Ball on Thursday to ask whether she had paid anything on the judgment. She didn’t answer and she did not call back. She didn’t call back on Oct. 6, either, when I asked about her state tax warrants.

Fixtures, apparently, do not return a reporter’s phone calls.

The plea agreement in State of Indiana v. Timothy Barber lists its sentencing terms in bold type. The second term is six words long.

“State remains silent as to placement.”

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Rebecca J. Soto signed the agreement in July 2022. Barber, then a South Bend police officer, pleaded guilty to child seduction and official misconduct. The victim was a 16 year old girl.

The victim’s account was documented in a probable cause affidavit filed by Detective Jon Yoder of the St. Joseph County Special Victims Unit. She worked at the Chick-fil-A on South Michigan Street. Barber came in wearing his uniform, talked with her while she worked, and asked for her phone number. In August 2021 he picked her up from work in his patrol car, drove to a secluded spot, and had sex with her. Later that month he came through the drive-through on duty and exposed himself. Another time he brought her candy, and when she reached for it, he put her hand on his genitals. In September he picked her up again in the patrol car.

She told investigators that when she told him her age, Barber said he had looked it up “in the books” and found nothing wrong with having sex with a 16-year-old. GPS data from his patrol car matched the dates she gave. She said she felt like she had to go along with it. She felt intimidated, she said, because he was a “cop.”

The office of Prosecutor Kenneth P. Cotter, a Democrat, charged Barber on Oct. 19, 2021, with six counts: two of child seduction and two of official misconduct, all felonies, and one each of public indecency and public nudity, both misdemeanors. On all six, he faced up to 18.5 years, The Washington Post reported.

Nine months later, Cotter’s office let four of the six charges go. One was the second count of child seduction. Two were misdemeanors for exposing himself at the drive-through. The fourth was the second count of official misconduct. Barber pleaded guilty to what was left: one count of child seduction and one charge of official misconduct. His sentence could not exceed four years.

The agreement spells out what those two counts carry. A Level 5 felony carries one to six years, with an advisory sentence of three. A Level 6 felony carries six months to two and a half years, with an advisory sentence of one. Run back to back, the two advisory sentences come to four years.

The prosecutor’s office announced the deal in a July 14, 2022 press release. It said the agreement was reached after consulting the victim and her family and spared her from testifying. The agreement states that she and her parents were notified of the terms.

The silence term mentioned above meant the State could argue for how long Barber would be sentenced, but it could not argue for where Barber would serve his sentence. Prison was off the table for the State before Sanford ever heard the case.

Judge Jeffrey L. Sanford held the sentencing hearing on Sept. 9, 2022. The South Bend Tribune reported that the victim and the State asked for the four-year maximum. The Washington Post, which obtained a transcript of the hearing, reported that the girl asked the judge to send Barber to prison. Under its own agreement, the State could not join her.

Sanford called Barber’s conduct “outrageous,” according to the Tribune, but said he could not be “vindictive.” The Post reported that he expressed concern for Barber’s safety behind bars. “I’m giving you a break,” he told Barber.

The court’s case summary records what that meant. On the child seduction count, four years. Barber received credit for the two days he spent in the St. Joseph County Jail after his arrest. The remaining three years and 363 days were suspended. On the misconduct count, a year and a half, all of it suspended. He never went to prison.

When Barber was charged, South Bend Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski said in a statement to WISH-TV that he would ask the Board of Public Safety to place Barber on unpaid leave pending trial. The department said it would “take action to terminate” Barber if he were found guilty, the Tribune reported. Barber submitted his resignation on Sept. 15, 2022, six days after sentencing. The board accepted it on Sept. 21. A city spokesperson later told the Tribune that the city cannot fire someone who is no longer employed.

State law required the department to report Barber’s felony convictions to the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy. According to the state agency, it did not. When the Post asked Ruszkowski why the department had not sought Barber’s decertification, he replied, “decertification is state law.” The academy began proceedings in June 2024, less than a week after the Post published its investigation. It revoked Barber’s certification that December.

In May, Ruszkowski won the Democratic primary for St. Joseph County sheriff with 66.2 percent of the vote.

In September, I reported that under a policy set by Cotter, the prosecutor’s office has pledged to make no plea offers in criminal cases arising from crime or violence at Eddy Street Commons, the shopping district near Notre Dame. Chief Deputy Prosecutor Amy Cressy told the Tribune that Cotter made the pledge last year, after meeting with Notre Dame, local police, and Kite Realty. Cressy has been chief deputy since 2022. Cotter endorsed her to succeed him, and she has said she intends to keep the policy. She faces Republican John Maciejczyk on Nov. 3.

On Sept. 8, 2026, the court dismissed the no-contact order that had protected the girl since 2022. The docket gives the reason in two words.

“Probation Completed.”

St. Joseph Circuit Court records show Stephanie Ball has not paid one cent toward her $5,785.05 judgment in 31 months. On Nov. 3, she asks voters to make her clerk of that court.

Midland Credit Management sued Ball in January 2024 over an unpaid credit card account. The court found she had been served. Ball never answered the lawsuit. On March 20, 2024, Magistrate William L. Wilson entered a default judgment for $5,628.05 plus court costs, with 8 percent interest.

When I checked MyCase on Thursday, the balance stood at $5,785.05, which includes $157 in costs but not interest. The payment and credit columns both read $0.00.

Ball’s campaign leans on her experience with exactly this kind of case. Her website calls her a Certified Credit Counselor and describes years at the South Bend Heritage Foundation helping homeowners in foreclosure file with the courts. She writes of neighbors “one bad day away from small claims court or an eviction or foreclosure notice.” In her own collection case, Ball filed nothing.

The state took Ball’s unpaid income taxes to the county clerk in back-to-back years. The Indiana Department of Revenue filed the first warrant, for $147.70 in 2021 taxes, in June 2022 and released it that September. The second, for $310.01 in 2022 taxes, was filed in September 2023 and stayed open for nearly 20 months. Ball still owed the state when Midland sued her and when the court entered judgment against her. The second warrant was released in May 2025.

The circuit court clerk keeps the county’s court records, handles the money that moves through the courts, and runs the county’s elections, as I reported in July. The Midland judgment against Ball sits in that office’s files. Any voter can read the case on MyCase under 71C01-2401-CC-000258.

I called Ball on Thursday morning and left a message asking whether she had made any payments on the judgment or planned to before the election. She did not call back. She did not return my call for the October story on her tax warrants, either.

Stephanie Ball’s campaign for county clerk promises “attention to detail.”

The Indiana State Board of Accounts filed its latest federal audit of the South Bend Community School Corporation on Sept. 30. It covers July 1, 2023, through June 30, 2025. Ball sat on the school board for the first 18 months of that stretch.

Special education grants work on reimbursement. The district spends the money first, then asks the state to pay it back. Each request is supposed to be backed by records showing exactly what the money paid for.

The district filed 23 of those requests during the audit period and collected $12,668,761. Auditors could tie 10 of those requests to the district’s spending records. The other 13 requests could not be traced to anything the district provided. Some of those requests did not even say what dates they covered. Instead of a date range, the requests read “Entire Grant Period.” That made it hard for auditors to tell what the district had already billed for.

With 13 requests that could not be reconciled, auditors could not pin down which expenses the money covered. Without that, they could not say whether the district followed federal rules. So they questioned all of it, every one of the $12,668,761. A questioned cost is not proof of misspending. Auditors question a cost when it may break grant rules or is not backed by adequate records, and it is not an improper payment until it is reviewed and confirmed. The report warns that the district could be required to pay the federal money back.

A second federal grant had the same kind of trouble. The district received $3,530,669 from a federal program that funds incentives for teachers and principals. It could not show auditors the award letters that set the rules for spending that money. Every director who had run the grant had left, and auditors found no current employee who understood its requirements.

Auditors then checked 60 expenses paid with that grant. Seven expenses were not allowable, including advertising costs and reimbursements for alcohol. Twelve were stipends the district could not show the School Board ever approved.

Most of these problems were not new. The last federal audit flagged 10 expenses. In its own summary included with the new audit, the district says eight of them still had not been fixed. Six of those eight date to the 2021-22 school year. Ball was on the board then. She was still on it for the first 18 months of the two years in which the district says they remained unfixed.

In the fall of 2024, Ball described a trustee’s job in answers to a WSBT candidate questionnaire.

“A Trustee must be thoughtful and evaluative of how we deploy our resources and challenge the administration to demonstrate whether we are hitting or missing the mark,” she wrote.

She lost her seat that November to Carlos Leyva.

Now she is the Democratic candidate for St. Joseph County Clerk of the Circuit Court. Her campaign site calls her “a fixture in South Bend Democratic Party politics.” It lists campaigns she has worked on. One is Common Council member Karen White’s.

White has already appeared in a state audit. A State Board of Accounts report on the district, filed in April, describes two $25,000 payments of federal pandemic relief money meant for Reaching Higher Grounds, a nonprofit for which White is the registered agent. The first, in April 2022, rested on a “general statement” signed by then-Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance Kareemah Fowler. The second, in April 2023, relied on the same statement with a new date written in by hand. No invoice supported it. Both checks were made out to White, not the nonprofit.

For the April 2023 payment, auditors found the docket listing the claim “was approved by the School Board after payment was made to White.” They saw no evidence the board ever approved the agreement. Ball was on the board for both payments.

In July, I reported on a default judgment against Ball in a collection case and on errors in her campaign finance report.

The district agreed with every finding in the new audit.

The clerk’s office, Ball’s campaign site says, is responsible “for managing court filings and finances.”

In the spring of 2020, Stephanie Ball looked into a camera and asked South Bend to pay more property taxes.

“I’m here asking you to support South Bend Schools by voting yes on June 2nd,” Ball said. She introduced herself as “your fourth district representative on the South Bend School Board,” then walked viewers through requesting an absentee ballot.

Months earlier, on December 2, 2019, Ball had voted to put the tax on the ballot. The resolution said the South Bend Community School Corporation could not “carry out its public educational duty” without at least $20.8 million a year in new property taxes from 2021 through 2028. Ball also voted for a second question seeking $54 million for buildings. Together totalling over $220 million in new taxes.

The ballot listed what the referendum money would buy: more courses, career and trades programs, teacher raises, and counselors, college coaches, and social workers in each building.

Voters approved both referendum questions on June 2, 2020.

In February of 2026, the Indiana State Board of Accounts released its audit of the school district for July 2022 through June 2023. Ball, who was re-elected in 2020, served on the board during the year in question.

The auditors questioned $767,585.46 in district spending and sent their report to the Indiana attorney general and the St. Joseph County prosecutor, as we reported in May.

Some of the questioned spending came out of the referendum fund. The fund paid ditch fees, including a delinquent tax and a penalty. The district bought a Chevrolet Equinox from the fund. Referendum money also covered utilities, staff parking, a maintenance worker’s salary, and bottled water for teacher lounges.

“None of these expenditures were included in the resolution passed by the SBCSC’s Board of Trustees or in the referendum presented to voters,” the auditors wrote.

Ball voted for that resolution.

Of 48 bills the auditors tested across the district, 39 were paid before Ball’s board approved them.

Ball lost her board seat in November 2024. This fall, Ball is the Democratic nominee for clerk of the St. Joseph County Circuit Court, the office that keeps the court’s records and oversees county elections.

The last time Stephanie Ball sat on an elected board, she voted for eight years of higher property taxes.

There are two ways to run against an incumbent. You tell voters what the person you’re challenging has done wrong, or you tell voters what you would do better.

Ranjan Rohatgi, the Democrat challenging Republican Councilwoman Amy Drake for the St. Joseph County Council’s District B seat, has found a third way. He promises to do what Drake is already doing.

His top promise is a ban on new data centers. Drake had already filed legislation for one. The county council passed Drake’s resolution 6-3 and sent the ban to the Area Plan Commission to draft before a final vote.

Ranjan Rohatgi is running to be Amy Drake.

His campaign website says he was the first candidate in the District B race to call for a ban. Maybe he was. In politics, calling for something first is worth about as much as calling shotgun in a car somebody else is driving.

Ranjan also says the county council has become “driven by partisan ideology.” He told WSBT data centers shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Good news for Ranjan. Four Republicans voted for the resolution. Bad news for Ranjan. Two Democrats voted against the resolution.

So if you live in District B and you want a ban on new data centers, you already have an incumbent council member pushing one. Ranjan is asking you to fire Drake so he can also ban the data centers Drake is banning.

I went looking for the rest of Ranjan’s platform.

He wants the county to focus on “paving, plowing, and fixing road hazards.” Drake’s campaign also promises to invest in roads. Nobody in this race is against plowing or fixing roads.

He promises “REAL solutions” to affordability. Other than capitalizing the word “real” on his website, he doesn’t offer any solutions. Drake points to a property tax cap for homeowners 55 and older that keeps their bills from rising more than 2 percent a year. Ranjan doesn’t say whether he’d keep the cap.

Ranjan teaches math at Saint Mary’s College. Math teachers tell students to show their work. His issues page doesn’t include a single dollar figure.

Ranjan is clear about what makes him mad though. His website says he got into the race “after Portage Manor was shut down and members of the Council attacked our police department, health department, libraries and even our schools.” He says the county council “decimated the Health Department.” He names the New Day Intake Center, a NARCAN program, and crisis response teams.

He doesn’t say which of those he’d fund first, or where the money would come from. Being mad is a reason to run. A plan is the reason anybody should vote for you. He has not shared his plan.

For the record, I’m no Drake fan. I’ve written critically about her, and I don’t much care for her personally. I also happen to favor data centers in this county. I’d vote against the ban both of these candidates want.

So I don’t have a dog in the data center fight. But you don’t fire somebody for doing the job you’d do.

The Area Plan Commission is drafting the ban now. ABC57 reported the zoning changes are expected back before the full county council within 60 days of the resolution vote. That vote took place at the end of September. If Ranjan wins District B, he wouldn’t take office until January, after the vote.

So the biggest promise in Ranjan’s campaign will be settled before he could even hold office.
Amy Drake will cast that vote.