By Amanda Ensinger
Staff Writer
At a recent Franklin Township board meeting, residents asked the status of a no-knock registry.
“I just wondered. I’m going to bring it up again; I’ve brought it up for the last four years. Where are we on the no-knock registry?” asked Robbyne Chaney, township resident. “I’m about to invite Jefferson Township to come and tell you guys how to do it.”
Residents have been asking for years for the township to establish a no-knock registry. Residents have complained that they are constantly having sales people come to their door and aggressively try to sell them items or services.
“Let me explore this a little more, but I think this is doable,” said Steve Mazer, township administrator. “I’ll probably have to have some discussions with the chief of police as well.”
Trustee John Fleshman said that he has always supported creating a no-knock registry, however in order to execute this registry, they have to have signage, including a strategic plan for entering and exiting signage and where it’s going to be.
“Meanwhile, we went from having Mark as administrator to Steve as the administrator, so, I don’t want to say it took the back burner, but there was a lot of things that needed to get done,” Fleshman said. “Now, I am still a supporter of having this and input that another township can give us, I’m welcome to it.”
The trustees agreed to create a committee to further examine setting up a no-knock registry.
In other news, Franklin Township Fiscal Officer Nick Dunn provided an update on minutes from previous trustees meetings. Township meeting minutes were months behind and hadn’t been updated since October of 2021. Instead, audio from the meetings had been posted online.
“On the minutes, we’ve been using a new transcriber service and our staff has been doing a great job getting them all transcribed for us,” Dunn said. “I know I’ve sent some of the meeting minutes off to the board for review. Because we have fallen behind, we were trying to find other ways to help catch us up because we’ve had a lot of work on the fiscal side.”
The software converts audio files of past meeting minutes into word documents. However, the trustees have voiced concerns about the software because wording is wrong in the documents.
Dunn has said this is the software the fiscal office will be using going forward and has said the fiscal office will no longer transcribe meeting minutes.
