On October 28th, Council-at-Large Councilmen Drew Storey held an unofficial meeting to talk about the city’s most current issues with two other City Councilmen: Darrin Boas, the City Treasurer, and Jerry Hackney, who watches and reports for District 2 to help Storey answer questions in case clarification was needed. The current State Representative of District #69, Jim Lucas, was also present. Drew Storey started the meeting by saying, “Expect some questions to be answered with ‘I don’t know?’ .”

The attendance was higher than the typical City Council Meeting. Drew Storey started the meeting by saying it was not illegal for Mayor Matt Nicholson to cancel the official meeting. Due to Nicholson’s notifying the council members that no one had brought up business to discuss for the agenda, canceling was legal. However, Storey said it was a surprise that Nicholson made that choice. The day the mayor announced the canceled meeting, Drew posted on his Facebook page that it was illegal and that Nicholson hadn’t notified the local newspaper, The Tribune.

Storey explained that he cares for the community. When people start talking to him about specific issues that he couldn’t help with, they needed to ask someone else or call the Mayor’s Assistant, Jane Hays, to direct them to the person they wanted. He had also given out QR codes to a form for complaints or questions that would be sent to him, and he would put them on a spreadsheet and send that out to the other Council Members. He also said this occasionally throughout the meeting if he couldn’t answer a question.

Around 30 minutes in, Drew asked people if they had any questions or concerns about the meeting, and a citizen asked if there was an ordinance or law about elected officials’ conduct. Drew then asked Police Chief Greg O’Brien to answer the man’s question, and he said there was no answer.

The man said, “Okay, I just wanted to make sure I didn’t overlook anything when I checked, and I was wondering if there is any room to add accountability like our own.”

He then described what he was talking about, such as those Elected Officials getting into fights, putting the people around them in danger, and riding on electronic scooters in heavily populated areas.

He said, “I’m a big believer in holding myself accountable and looking up there (referring to the Council Table) I believe they should look at themselves and say, ‘This is it, I’m going to hold myself accountable.’ And they do all these things and other things in motorized vehicles and are not held accountable for it.”

The electronic scooter comment referred to an incident at Oktoberfest when Drew Storey and Dan Robinson rode electronic scooters through the crowded streets of Oktoberfest. 

Someone asked Storey if there was some way to add an ordinance or support a law to enforce elected officials’ conduct, and another man yelled to him, “You know the solution is to vote them out of office.”

He then said, “That is a good solution too, but if there were a way of codifying it and holding them accountable then and there, an example would be if it were the same for us, we could say ‘oh, we don’t have a law on it, and we’ll let the judges decide on a case-by- case basis,’ but we have laws to hold people accountable to hold them then and there.”

A woman later asked Drew about the “illegal immigration” issue in Jackson County. She said she and her husband moved from a community in California but had to relocate due to immigrants coming in and changing the community.

“It was a nice community, a good nice community for retirement. However, the immigrants moved in, and the culture and community changed. So we moved here and hoped we could stay, but now we ask ourselves, ‘ Can we?’ ”

She then asked if the council or city could count how many immigrants were legal or illegal from the Seymour Census. Drew tried using Carmel, Indiana’s own Census for immigrants and tried saying they had a big surge, but he was called out by Drew Markel, who ran for County Council District 1 and told him, “Drew, you know better than to use Carmel. You know the Census doesn’t count if someone is an immigrant. That is a terrible example, Drew!”

Later, Jim Lucas stood up and told his part on the topic. He explained how he did his math by using the number and rise of ELA students to calculate how many parents or family members are most likely living with them due to their “culture,” and he assumed his math is “Math, not racism and I am tired of hearing people saying that.” He was given a round of applause for saying this. 

Darrin Boas said, “The state only allows the city’s budget to grow 4% for 2025; now, don’t expect 22 new police officers tomorrow, 22 new EMTs, 22 new Firefighters, etc…”

A woman shared concerns about the unlicensed drivers’ issue and how her nephew has to pay more on his insurance because the driver had no license or insurance: “If it were anyone else who was driving the car that struck and killed that young man (Brad Castner), whose family is sitting right here, we would’ve had charges pressed on us now, and we are hurting and grieving from it.”

As the meeting neared closing, Drew finished his statements and told people to use his QR codes. Before he stopped, a man stood up and said, “I just wanted to say there are the people who are suffering: Grandmother, Sister, Aunt, and still no answers.” People then thanked them for coming, and Drew said, ” Sorry for your loss.” With that, the meeting ended.

As a Co-Editor of The Seymour Owl and a work-based learning intern with the City of Seymour, I would like to share my observations from the inside as well as outside. I am speaking as Landon Jones and not as The Seymour Owl News or its staff. I feel Drew Storey, Jim Lucas, Todd Rokita, and many Seymour Facebook page runners who attended used the death of Brad Castner, innocent kids who are in ELA, and innocent, hard-working immigrants for their image. Drew Storey said he would bring up and talk about the most current issues facing Seymour, but he didn’t. Instead, he asked others to ask while he kept talking about his new way of asking questions and how he was so shocked by Mayor Nicholson canceling the meeting. Yet, no one brought business to discuss and tried to say he did it without asking the council and then retracting it first thing into the meeting.

It is evident that Brad Castner’s death and the City of Seymour being served was the most talked-about topic, and everyone wanted an answer or guidance. However, only one or two people said a quick statement about it, and it was at the end when a man could speak and was only able to say that his family still hadn’t got an answer. They have misused their power to make themselves shine rather than work to fix it. I did not hear anyone bring up Seymour being served by Todd Rokita, who informed The Tribune first about the city being served before letting City Hall ever be told. 

Then, on the “Illegal immigration issue,” Seymour has, despite what our State Representative says, no way to count how many are immigrants, whether legal or illegal because it can not be based on ELA students. 

1. Schools can not disclose information on a student’s citizenship under federal law and FERPA unless, with a parent’s consent and a census, only records ethnicity, gender, and age.

2. DACA protects immigrant children and protects them as legal citizens, and that is if many ELA students are immigrants. So Jim Lucas’s math isn’t correct, and I would say to rethink his statement of, ” It’s math, not Racism” the next time he tries to speak on the topic.

3. In Plyler v. Doe, a 1982 landmark Supreme Court decision, states cannot deny access to public K-12 schools based on immigration status. Schools are not allowed to ask about citizenship status. They welcome them and educate them to the best of their ability.

It is an issue that needs to be fixed for unlicensed drivers. What has Representative Lucas done to help fix it besides complaining about it on his Facebook page? His posts have also been accused of being replete with untrustworthy news sites that are known for spreading misinformation and conspiracies. The Gateway Pundit and Zerohedge, two of the most commonly posted websites on his page, have been heavily criticized.

One solution is to start talking to his fellow elected officials and possibly providing more opportunities or locations for immigrants to gain their citizenship or residential visa faster. They can learn the rules and laws of America and Indiana, can understand what they need to do, where to do it, and how to do it.

Does Seymour have a lot of immigrants? Yes, but that’s not the problem; no one’s culture is being erased or replaced. What is needed is excellent and helpful education for American-born and immigrant citizens. Seymour needs a building or place to teach immigrants how to sign up for insurance of any kind, how to sign up for an SSN or driver’s license, and federal, state, and local laws so we can help them understand how important they have these.

Wait, we would’ve gotten a building like that with the Burkhart Opportunity Zone. That would’ve given us affordable houses for those with low income, recovery homes for those battling their addiction, and one single immigration welcome center for those who would’ve been international or just moving from another state.

If the immigrants came from other states and recently moved here and hadn’t applied for an Indiana license and/or didn’t have a license or insurance before, and just didn’t obey Indiana’s laws, what would be different? A situation like that is happening in Tennessee with people moving from California.

Now, an innocent man is dead, and his family is left to grieve while people use him for their image and to say that they care for their communities and state and to point the blame on those who want to live and get by and probably don’t know were to start their new life.

But, I ask you, the reader, to think next time, “What have they been doing to fix the issue?” Next time they complain or say they will or have been focusing on an issue that your town, city, county, state, or country has been having, research what they have done before you decide to show your support. 

Here are links to The Tribune stating that the meeting had been canceled, audio I recorded, Facebook live from that night, and WAVE3 News coverage on it in case I missed something:

https://www.wave3.com/2024/10/29/seymour-leaders-hear-resident-concerns-over-citys-undocumented-population/

https://www.facebook.com/100000671046219/videos/1398837161089092/

 https://tribtown.com/2024/10/24/city-council-meeting-cancelled/

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q8nROeMd_WDayNoL0mPtoJyTcRXCrkZ0/view?usp=drivesdk