By Rusty Nixon Correspondent
PLYMOUTH — Chief Menominee will soon have a facelift thanks to local Boy Scout Tim Bessinger.
Bessinger of Plymouth’s Troop 257 came before the Marshall County Commissioners Monday to ask permission to proceed with his Eagle Scout project, which is a clean-up of the grounds around the statue commemorating the chief of the Potawatami Indians, the first such monument ever erected in honor of a native American.

Bessinger’s project will be to undertake a general clean-up of the area and add several trees on the site as well as flowers around the monument. Bessinger also plans on adding a plaque that will commemorate the “Trail of Death” that Menominee’s tribe was forced to endure on their trek to Kansas when they were removed from their land.
The Commissioners gave their approval for Bessinger’s plan.
In other business:
• Engineer Mike Strang will begin phase two of his inspection of bridges in the county. All bridges in the county are inspected every two years. Strang will begin in southwest Marshall County around the Culver area and work north.
He hopes to complete the project in six weeks and stated that he has not been made aware of any real problems with any bridges, only that “…some of the wooden structures are getting some age on them.”
• The Commissioners also approved change order number one on the South Michigan Street Bridge project in Plymouth. The change order is for the new water main the city has running through the structure and was necessary since the main was discovered to be under the river rather than part of the bridge.
The additional cost of the main is approximately $37,000, and thanks to the Commissioners intervention the cost will be shared 80/20 by the Indiana Department of Transpor-tation and the city of Plymouth.
• Commissioner Kevin Over-myer, heading up the committee overseeing the demolition of the old county jail building, asked for permission for the committee to seek further information from the firm RQAW about the project.
• The company along with DLZ and Brandenburg were the three companys that submitted project proposals for the project.
• Overmyer said that the committee wished to seek further information but hoped to come to the Commissioners with a suggestion in two weeks.
President of the Commissioners Tom Chamberlin informed the board that the Marshall County Emergency Management Advisory Board will be reformed to more closely comply with state statute on its membership. The statute states that the President of the Commissioners, the President of the County Council, the Mayor of Plymouth and representatives of the towns of Argos, Bourbon, Bremen, Culver and LaPaz and a representative of the Civil Air Patrol are to make up the board.
Overmyer then made the motion, that carried, that Chamberlin replace him on the board.