‘Hate that we have to do this:’ Fairfield Twp. board takes first step to boot Trustee Coles

Fairfield Township Trustee Taletha Coles: 'It's wrong.' But the ball is rolling. Plus, key bill passes that could accelerate SkyWater semiconductor plant in WL. And Cherry Lane work ahead

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FAIRFIELD TOWNSHIP BOARD: ‘IT’S PRETTY CLEAR THAT SHE REALLY NEEDS TO GO’

Members of the Fairfield Township Board had been waiting years to formally tell Trustee Taletha Coles to get lost.

And, armed with a fresh Indiana law less than a month old, the three Democrats on the board did just that Wednesday evening, starting a process that likely still has months and at least three more steps to go to oust Coles, a fellow Democrat, from office.

Fairfield Township Trustee Taletha Coles, left, talks with Cheryl Watkins, her chief deputy, Wednesday after the Fairfield Township Board voted unanimously to start the process to remove her from office. (Photo: Dave Bangert)

“It’s like it’s been building to right now, right this moment,” Rocky Hession, a township board member, said Wednesday, after the vote that came in a Tippecanoe County Public Library meeting room. The site was one of about a half-dozen used in the past few years, because Coles hasn’t made the township office’s redecorated meeting room on Wabash Avenue readily available for board meetings.

“Still,” Hession said, “I really hate that we have to do this. It’s not like everyone is jumping up and down, joyful or anything. And yet, we have really a moral obligation and we have a legal obligation to do the best we can for the township. When we look at those obligations, it’s pretty clear that she really needs to go.”

Coles attended the public hearing, sitting with several township employees in the second row of library seats, but declined to speak on her own behalf on the advice of her attorney. Alexandra Hawkins, her Fishers-based lawyer, did not make the meeting because of a death in the family. But she sent a letter that board president Perry Schnarr read, essentially saying that the board’s actions misinterpreted the nuances of the new state law and that they’d never stand up in court.