Latest news with #Minier
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Yahoo
State budget cuts prompt closure of Indiana Sheriffs' Youth Ranch
The Indiana Sheriffs' Youth Ranch in Clay County is closing, the result of state budget cuts, according to Scott Minier, youth ranch executive director. "State budget cuts have abruptly and prematurely ended a long-term training and leasing agreement between the Indiana Department of Homeland Security and the Indiana Sheriffs' Youth Ranch (ISYR)," Minier stated in a news release. Indiana Sheriff's Youth Ranch closing The Indiana Sheriffs' Youth Ranch in Clay County is closing, the result of state budget cuts, according to Scott Minier, youth ranch executive director. ISYR will permanently close as a result. The academy has worked with future law enforcement officers, at-risk kids, young witnesses and victims of crime. 'Since 2019, IDHS had for $48,000 annually shared our 62-acre private training retreat's lodge, classroom building, animal kennels, pole barns, lakes and rolling, wooded acreage for search and rescue, K-9, drone and hazardous materials training," Minier said. State agencies have also used the Youth Ranch property for water dive and rescue exercises, stop-the-bleed planning, hosting international and out-of-state guests as well as celebrating holidays, according to the news release. IDHS' lease was to continue through 2029 with renewals signed in two-year options to coincide with the state's biennial budget cycles. State figures show no increases in rent have been paid over the first six years of the expected 10-year period. In 2018, the state of Indiana occupied the ISYR property at no charge. Minier said the $48,000 gap in funding is too much for dedicated volunteers to raise and donors to contribute, given other construction and operating expenses. 'With the help of some visionary sheriffs, generous donors and dedicated volunteers, our Youth Ranch trudged through its bureaucratic start-up years, we survived state-mandated COVID-19 business closures cancelling our special events and face-to-face fundraisers, we demolished unsafe facilities, remodeled existing structures, built two new year-round youth cabins and began construction on two others — despite the nation's supply chain issues and runaway inflation,' Minier said. The most important accomplishment was engaging more than 2,000 K-college Hoosier students each year in day visits, overnights, weeklong leadership academies and special off-season events like the increasingly popular Sheriffs' Easter Egg Hunts, Sheriffs' Pumpkin Painting Parties and Sheriffs' Breakfasts With Santa, he said. Those events provided law enforcement with opportunities to bond with at-risk kids "like never before," Minier stated. An appraisal is being conducted, so the 62-acre Youth Ranch property can be offered at auction May 31, along with equipment, furniture and accessories. If a reserve bid based on the appraisal is not met, the property and improvements will be listed on the public real estate market with Greg Clingan Auction & Real Estate of Covington, Ind. Any proceeds from the sale will proportionally refund major naming-rights donors after an ISYR mortgage, other debt and expenses are satisfied. ISYR's training retreat is located one mile north of I-70 between Indianapolis and Terre Haute along State Road 59. Its 62-acre rolling, wooded property offers three semi-private managed lakes, a five-bedroom stone and timber home with 4.5 bathrooms and a new gourmet kitchen, two new year-round cabins, two pole barns and a training center with full kitchen and two half-baths. An auction will be conducted by Clingan on May 31, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 5325 N. State Road 59, Brazil. Equipment, furniture and accessories will be offered in addition to the property and buildings – including like-new Polaris ATVs, fishing kayaks, two zero-turn mowers, Stihl and DeWalt power tools, commercial kitchen equipment, office furniture, computer screens and printers, picnic tables, gas grills, bunkbeds, bedroom suits and household items. Go to for details.
New York Times
24-02-2025
- General
- New York Times
For a Mother and Son, Life Above a Brooklyn Library
Ian Avilez can't get enough of books. So much so that the first-grader is reading at a third-grade level. 'I used to read to him when he was a baby,' said his mother, Miguelina Minier. His kindergarten teacher asked about Ian's expansive vocabulary. 'Why does Ian know words that I didn't even teach him?' I'm like, 'We live on top of the library,'' Ms. Minier said. It's true. Ms. Minier and her son live in the Sunset Park Library and Apartments in Brooklyn, which opened in 2023 with the residential part built above the library. The first library on this spot opened in 1905, and it lasted until 1970, when it was torn down. A new one opened in 1972, although, in time, it needed a lot of love. Ms. Minier remembers it well. She's lived in the neighborhood for 20 years and she's been going to the library since she was a teenager. 'It was dark, very, very dark and it was small,' she said. 'Sometimes they didn't have the book that you were looking for.' When she developed an interest in criminal justice, she wanted to check out reference books about police academy exams. 'They didn't have them,' she recalled. By the time her son was born, the building needed repairs — to a broken air-conditioner and an outdated electrical system, to name just two. The Brooklyn Public Library couldn't afford the necessary work. So it partnered with the Fifth Avenue Committee, a nonprofit developer, to renovate the library and add 49 units of the affordable housing. To qualify to live in the building, Ms. Minier had to have an income between 30 and 80 percent of the area median income, which was $86,380 when she applied. The number of units includes eight apartments that benefit from a project-based Section 8 subsidy program and nine apartments set aside for families and individuals who formerly experienced homelessness. 'I didn't realize that it was going to be a building on top of the library,' Ms. Minier recalled. 'I thought they were just going to renew the library and that's it. But then, the building came and I was like, 'Oh, I got to apply for that.'' It wasn't Ms. Minier's first time trying her luck at a housing lottery. 'I've had more than 38 applications. But this one was meant to be.' She was selected out of 60,000 applicants. The apartment she and her son moved into has two bedrooms. It is the first time that the 6-year-old and the 34-year-old each have a room of their own. 'Imagine,' she said, '33 years living with somebody else, not having your own space. This place is a blessing.' Miguelina Minier, 34 Occupation: Relationship manager for a nonprofit bank On popularity: Because Ms. Minier has come to know so many people in the neighborhood through the work she does, it's rare that she can go out without being recognized. 'Every time I walk down the street I hear, 'Hi, Miguelina. Hi, hi, hi, hi — like the president,' she said, laughing. On leaving New York: Even though Ms. Minier hopes that she and Ian stay in the apartment for years to come, she does sometimes wonder what it would be like to live in a house. 'I want to have a yard where I can make barbecue,' she said. 'My son tells me that he wants to have a trampoline to jump and I want to give him that.' Ms. Minier, born in the Dominican Republic, came to the United States as a child and her living conditions have always been tight. 'I'm from a foreign country,' she said, 'and when you come here, you don't have your own space. Even though you're 13, 14, you're still sleeping with a cousin or somebody else. Ian, thank God, he's lucky. He has something that I never had before. He has his own space.' Ian, born in Sunset Park, had grown up in crowded apartments for the first few years of his life, so getting his own room was enough to make him excited about the move — and that was before he found out about the library downstairs. 'That came later on,' Ms. Minier said. 'When the library was about to open, we had the opportunity to have a tour in the library for the tenants. When he saw that, I explained to him, 'We are the first ones seeing the library because we live on top of it.' He was like, 'Oh, mommy. Oh my God, oh my God!'' If it were up to Ian, he and his mother would go to the library every day. 'I'm the one who's like, 'Not today, Ian, mommy's tired — let's go another day,'' Ms. Minier said. Still, they make it at least three times a week. Ms. Minier reads to Ian every now and again, but these days it's mostly him reading to her from favorites like the 'Pete the Cat' series and 'Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!' When her son is in school, Ms. Minier spends her own time in the library. She works from home and it's helpful to have access to the library work spaces. 'They have chargers,' she said, 'they have the Wi-Fi for you to connect, and they even have plugs for you to connect your device. To me, personally, the library means a lot. The staff are all very, very helpful. You ask them for any resource, anything, and they will help.' Ms. Minier works for a nonprofit bank that lends to entrepreneurial women, many who live in the neighborhood. 'The work that I do focuses on the people that we see sometimes on the train selling churros or selling chocolate or sometimes you see them in the street selling mangoes and stuff like that. We give out a small loan to help them get their business started.' The best part of the work is seeing a transformation in her neighbors. 'When they text me and say, 'Hey, Miguelina, look, now I have my own churros cart,' I get happy because it's something that they achieve, same as me, that they come from a different country and they achieved something.' It isn't just the Wi-Fi and books and quiet space that the library provides Ms. Minier and her son. It's also pride. On a recent field trip with his classmates to a nearby fire station, Ian had the chance to point out the library. 'He told all his friends, 'That's where I live. I live on top of the library.'' Upstairs, he told them, is where he has a room of his own with a shelf for every book he checks out.
