An agreement among Schererville, Dyer and St. John for the Tri-Town Safety Village went up in smoke last week, with Schererville dousing any hope that the riff will be healed amicably.
The Town of Schererville, per a June 6 letter obtained by the Post-Tribune, informed the Dyer and St. John Safety Board members that it “will not agree to scheduling, much less conducting, any more meetings of the Board Members in the current structure and content of the existing Agreement.” As such, it “will solely begin the process to conduct and operate the Tri-Town Safety Village, Inc.,” the letter said.
The feud started to spark in December, when Schererville informed the Safety Village Board that it would assume authority due to Dyer’s and St. John’s “lack of participation” in the village’s operations, the letter said. The village, at 1350 Eagle Ridge Dr. in Schererville, is used to teach children and other groups the importance of fire safety.
Along with the lack of participation, Schererville said neither town paid what they were required to pay per the bylaws and interlocal agreement the three had regarding the village, the letter said.
“These financial items and lack of payment existed for a number of years and at times imperiled the operations of the entity under budgets established for same,” the letter said. “Otherwise, it was acknowledged that the Safety Village entity was well-run including fiscally sound business practices and was setting records of attendance in all activities. The business operations to that time were very satisfactory to Schererville.”
At the end of last year, the Dyer and St. John Board Members “demanded” that Safety Village Executive Director Bill Jarvis be replaced, the letter said and both Jarvis and Schererville Town Manager Jim Gorman confirmed to the Post-Tribune. Jarvis reluctantly agreed to retire with an end date of May 31, and then Schererville set forth a new set of bylaws that would “wipe the slate clean” of the Dyer and St. John’s previous financial obligations, Gorman said.
“We own the property,” Gorman said. “The other two towns didn’t have (their portion of the money) in 2010, so we went ahead and paid it, and then paid off the mortgage in 2021.”
The monetary obligations changed from year to year, Jarvis said; for 2024, the payment was $36,400 apiece, and Schererville did receive the two towns’ payments.
After Jarvis agreed to retire, the Safety Village Board sought applications for a new Executive Director and received around a dozen of them, Gorman said. Per the existing interlocal agreement and bylaws, all three towns needed to be involved in the interviewing and hiring process, the letter said and Gorman confirmed.
The St. John and Dyer Board members, however, conducted the interviews without notifying Schererville and chose someone in April, Gorman said. Their actions, according to the letter, would be allowed only if the three had approved the new bylaws.
“We’re being shut out of our own house, and we wanted all three towns to be involved,” Gorman said. “But (the three towns) never came to a consensus on the new bylaws.”
Bob Starkey, vice president of the Tri-Town Safety Village Executive Board and president of the Dyer Town Council, said board members decided to take a “more vested role” in the safety village after the 2023 elections in Dyer and St. John. Both towns have all-Republican councils, while Schererville’s council is majority Democrats, 3-2.
After looking at the bylaws and interlocal agreements, elected members from Dyer and St. John had concerns, Starkey, R-1, said.
Starkey called the bylaws and local agreement “a loose set of rules” because although it’s not a government organization, it comprises three government entities.
“It’s its own separate group,” he said. “I don’t even know if it would fit into a quasi-government category.”
Representatives from Dyer and St. John want to change the bylaws and local agreement to make it more fair, equitable and transparent for the three communities, Starkey said.
“My opinion was Schererville became a little cross when Dyer and St. John both raised their hands and said, ‘Hey, we’ve had a passive role in this for the last 10-15 years.’” he said. “We’ve had new elections. We have folks that want to be more involved in this.”
The three towns are required to pay for a third of the budget each year, which Starkey said Dyer hasn’t always contributed. Safety Village has previously asked for $30,000, and Dyer gave $15,000 and some of its “non-capital resources.”
For example, the town employs its police officers or firefighters for instruction at Safety Village.
“That was a fairly large contribution in our estimation,” Starkey said.
Ousting longtime director
Former Executive Director Bill Jarvis previously told board members that he planned to retire at the end of the 2026 school year, but after discussion with the executive board, the date changed to the end of the 2025 school year. Bill Manousopoulos, president of the Tri-Town Safety Village Executive Board and St. John town manager, said that Jarvis gave the board about two years’ notice of his retirement.
“The board just said, ‘No, you’re not going to give us your anticipation to retire two and a half years from now,’” Manousopoulos said. “We worked on it as a board, as a group of representatives from three towns, and said we would wait until the end of this school year and moved up the retirement date.”
Manousopoulos couldn’t remember if all three towns agreed on the retirement date for Jarvis, but he said at least a majority did. Jarvis, however, told the Post-Tribune he was “forced out.”
“I suggested to them I would stay for six months to train the new person, but the board said, ‘No, that’s not necessary,’” Jarvis, who held the executive director’s position for 15 years, said. “I was taking care of the plumbing and IT work as well as overseeing adult education, education for autistic children, people in assisted living; even NIPSCO conducted training there. A fire department in South Korea contacted me to learn what we were doing because they saw it online.
“We oversaw 3,900 students from 16 communities per year for the last 15 years. Why is (the Safety Village) all of a sudden broken?”
Jarvis said he worked free-of-charge for the first two years of his tenure, then received $1,000 for several years until recent years, when he was paid a salary of $36,000 per year.
Unpaid dues
Schererville representatives alleged St. John hadn’t yet paid dues, but Manousopoulos said the town’s 2025 dues were approved in March.
Starkey and Manousopoulos both said the executive board has had issues with Schererville representatives not attending board meetings. If Schererville representatives didn’t approve of what would happen at the meeting, they wouldn’t attend, Starkey said.
Safety Village bylaws say that in addition to a quorum, at least one member from each of the three communities must be present at the organization’s board meetings.
“It’s hard to come together on an agreement when … we can’t even have a meeting to discuss things,” he added.
Schererville Councilman Tom Schmitt, D-4, said that any action St. John and Dyer has taken is “off the old bylaws” and therefore in violation, especially since they’ve been trying to work with them since the end of last year.
“The tricks they pulled (with hiring the new executive director) weren’t acceptable. We should be teaching kids safety, not disagreeing.”
Jarvis put a finer point on the situation.
“We need to eliminate the political crap out of this,” he said. “Let’s teach the children and leave this other stuff alone. Why is this a problem?”
Gorman said because the Safety Village is closed to children until September, Schererville will have enough time to have its Parks & Recreation Department assume its duties.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
