Douglas Denton Monterey Town Council President

10/22/2026

New DOLLAR GENERAL is open on SR17 between Delong and Monterey 10020w 600N

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10/20/2026

Sportsman’s Update: We have been told that the minor asbestos issue will be starting soon by a secondary company. This will be removed then the structure cleanup will begin. We are hoping that the first process will happen maybe this week. We will update more as it comes in.

Doug.

10/19/2026

She has been reunited!

Roxie is missing from North Logan St in Winamac since Thursday night (10/15). She is 20 years old, deaf and can't see very well.
Please let us know if you have seen her!

10/16/2026

Greetings all. I want to talk about something I am 100% behind if elected.I know Sheriff Schramm wants to make the animal control officer a full-time thing again, along with a place to better house and deal with this issue.I am a animal lover.I pick no bones about it. Our four-legged friends need to be helped and those who are abusive to them need to be fined or prosecuted when needed. We all need to be good pet owners. I stand with the Sheriff 100% on this issue.

Doug

10/14/2026

We had a productive regular meeting last night. First off, we approved the 2027 regular budget and once again, we are balanced . We then got reports on both the waste water collection plant and the treatment plant. Both are running, well and we are almost done with the new pump refit, waiting for one last electrical board relay part. We will be purchasing a few new style controllers for the pits. The old-style ones, along with valves, we have been rebuilding in house at good savings. Next we will be removing the porta-jon from Kleckner Park along with the tote like normal at the end of this month. Next, we agreed to have Trick-Or-Treat on Saturday, October 31st, from 5:30 to 7:00.

Next up we discussed this year's leaf pickup. We look to starting in November, when most leaves will be coming down. We will do it 3 total times through town at different dates. After that is done, we are hoping to do one last round of storm drain cleaning this year in the ongoing process we have planned. Until then, please do not rake leaves into the streets. We will post what the pickup days will be close to the time.
I updated the board on the Sportsman's bar issue. I have been in contact with Commissioner Street, the building Inspector,IDEM and the contractor to do what we can to speed things up. We again reported on the private drive behind the trailer units in town. This is a private drive, not an alley, but both the town and NIPSCO have a utility right of way in it. Please respect the owner's wishes regarding its use.

Clerk Linda, who has been attending MUST meeting, said their goal is to present to the County council a tax rate of 2.60 after working through the numbers. Now this is only a suggestion and the county council will need to review it and adopt it if they see fit but first this goes to the state of Indiana. We were asked by a group to make improvements to painted lines on the basketball court so that pickleball could be played on it. We approved that and did approve paint and other materials to be charged at the local hardware here for supplies not to exceed $350.00. Our hope is this will bring folks into town and to make more use of the park. Finally, we approved for the town hall to be used again for voting on November 3rd. Minutes from the previous meeting were approved, and all bills were approved and paid.

Doug, Aaron, Josh.

Town Council.

10/14/2026

Halloween will be Saturday October 31st 5:30-7:00 pm E/T
Town Council

10/13/2026

Regular Meeting

10/13/2026

10/11/2026

So how do you go about fixing things? Well, about 10 years ago the county's budget was about 16 million dollars. Today it is north of 26 million. We have over 20 million leveraged bonds from the justice center to the courthouse, etc. Our tax rate is at about 2.85 % (total local), with the max you can do being 2.95%. In the next few years, House bill SB1 looks to move revenue from property into income tax based. The budget represents a 62% increase. We have had population decreases and almost little or no economic growth in industry outside the solar agenda. Now some will talk about how a tax abatement should not have been done when, in reality, that is how business works, as we also have many other tax abatements in place and have been. These are simple tools to keep business local. Different sources say the county is looking at a 3–4 million shortfall in revenue all while claiming there is no growth in poverty here. If we use real numbers from all sources, we see that about 50+percent of residents use some sort of public assistance here. My goal is to make every department tighten up the belt while looking for increases in revenue where we can find it in a legal way. It simply is not good enough to pass this forward time and time again. If we do not try to do these things, from walking back spending from where "every idea is a good one" to just bad management of money, this will only raise the problem. We must now buy need, embrace all the revenue streams we can. We all want to sit and reflect on the "good old days" as we remember them to be, but to live in the past is a place that does not exist except in our memories and, as they say, you can't go home to a degree. We must go forward with the vision of attacking these problems head on and not simply lament our troubles.
Those who embrace a singular approach embrace failure at the cost of every tax-paying resident.
I am running to move forward to face the challenge and to try to solve as many things as we can.
Some will say this is "Word Salad" or some other distracted attempt to hide their lack of an idea.
Ideas are words and from words come actions from actions bring results. I am running to try to help in a bigger way every person who lives here in town,the township and more.
I am posting this here because the message is that important to our community .
I ask for your vote, Doug.

10/05/2026

Sportsman’s Update. Well, this morning I took part in the walk-through again with the contractor, county building inspector and the IDEM agent doing his assessment. We are hopeful that the samples and report will be done this week and we can get things rolling. As you recall, we reported that there were complaints filed with IDEM(anonymously) as we were told that stopped any work last month.

We hope this site assessment will conclude quickly, and the project can be started. We have been working to be the bridge between everyone involved even though Karla, the building inspector, has done a good job.

I feel it is my duty to try to move along the process in a third party way.

We will keep you updated as we get more information.

Doug