County gets earful on Fairfield Trustee Taletha Coles, as she silently faces ouster vote
Questions about receipts, other actions leave trustee in precarious position. Plus, about ‘Eleven’ enrolling at Purdue. And the county health officer on new CDC guidelines for COVID precautions.
Thanks this morning to United Way of Greater Lafayette, sponsor of today’s Based in Lafayette edition, inviting you to their inaugural Run United 5K. Please join the United Way on Saturday, Aug. 27, at Subaru of Indiana Automotive for the run. Registration starts at 8 a.m., with the race to begin at 9 a.m. Listen to live music from The Jacks. Dog N’ Suds, Mary Lou Donuts and Kona Ice will also be on hand. This is a family friendly event and an outreach opportunity for United Way and many of its partner agencies. Kids and families can get pictures with Ace from the Lafayette Aviators, enjoy the bouncy house and take a ride on the Boilermaker Special. For more details or to sign up for the 5K, click on the links below.
For more than three years, Fairfield Township Board members had been fighting so much with Trustee Taletha Coles over her spending, lack of receipts and belligerence over how the budget is kept at her locked Wabash Avenue offices that when it came time to use a new state law to try to oust her, the conclusion seemed obvious.
That happened three weeks ago.
Monday morning was the first time Fairfield Township Board members had to make a case to another body that Coles is unfit for office – in this case Tippecanoe County commissioners, the second of four stops in a new, state-approved process expected to string out into October, at least.

For those following the feuds in Fairfield Township in the past year, not much presented was new. But county commissioners, looking for proof that Coles deserves to get the boot before her term is set to end in December, pressed during Monday’s hour-long hearing for details proving that the trustee had failed or refused to perform her duties – details that long ago had become familiar shorthand when Coles and her three-member board confronted each other in the past.
They heard a bunch.
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