Evansville, IN – ECHO Housing & Community Development has been selected as one of only five grantees statewide to receive a $1 million award through the Mobile Crisis Accelerator Program (MCAP) to expand the E3 Initiative, a locally founded cross-sector crisis response model.
The E3 Initiative—Educate, Encourage, Enforce— was originally developed in partnership with the Evansville Police Department and Southwestern Behavioral Healthcare and has since grown to include a network of community partners such as the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office, Aurora, Brentwood Springs, United Caring Services, Evansville Rescue Mission, and many others. Together, these partners are building a more responsive, coordinated, and effective system for individuals experiencing crisis.
• Educate – equipping community members, service providers, and first responders with knowledge and tools to prevent and de-escalate crises.
• Encourage – fostering collaboration, building trust, and offering supportive pathways to recovery and stability.
• Enforce – ensuring safety and accountability while connecting individuals to appropriate treatment, housing, and long-term support.
This new investment will allow ECHO and its partners to expand the E3 model into a 24/7 Mobile Crisis Response network. Teams of trained peer specialists and crisis responders will be available at any time of day or night to respond to calls from 988, 911, and community partners, providing on- site de-escalation, assessment, and direct connections to housing, treatment, and supportive services.
“Many people in crisis are not only facing mental health challenges but also homelessness, substance use, or other barriers that cannot be solved in a single moment,” said Savannah Whicker, CEO of ECHO Housing & Community Development. “This investment allows us to build on what our community has already started through E3—meeting people where they are, in the moment of crisis, and walking alongside them to ensure long-term success.”What This Means for Vanderburgh County
• A locally founded successful model is now expanding with state investment.
• 24/7 mobile crisis response paired with housing navigation and long-term wraparound supports.
• Stronger coordination among E3 partners to ensure safety, stability, and recovery.
• Direct assistance navigating services such as shelter, housing, mental health care, and substance use treatment.
• Potential for expansion to additional counties as the model grows.
Vanderburgh County, including Evansville, faces one of the highest per-capita rates of homelessness in Indiana alongside significant unmet behavioral health needs. The E3 Initiative’s expansion to 24/7 coverage represents a major step forward in addressing these intersecting crises through a collaborative, community-driven approach.
ECHO joins four other grantees — serving Lake, Porter, St. Joseph, and Allen counties — in the statewide MCAP cohort, coordinated by Black Onyx Management.
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EVANSVILLE, Ind. – University of Evansville junior forward Taylor Johnson (Evansville, Ind./Reitz) became the first Missouri Valley Conference Women’s Soccer Player of the Week of the 2025 season on Tuesday morning, recognizing her three-point performance in last Thursday’s season-opening win over SEMO. The nod marks the first time in her career that she been named the conference’s player of the week and the first time a Purple Ace has been named MVC Player of the Week since Emily Ormson on August 30, 2022.
Johnson served as the offensive catalyst in Evansville’s first season-opening win since 2018, tallying an assist in the 52nd minute before scoring the game-winning goal in the 84th minute. The 4-3 win also marked the first time UE had scored four goals in a match since 2014.
A Preseason All-MVC selection ahead of the 2025 campaign, Johnson received All-MVC Third Team honors a season ago by scoring three goals to tie for the team lead. The Evansville native was the only Ace to score twice in a game last season, posting a brace against Valparaiso.
Evansville is back in action on Thursday with a road trip to take on Lindenwood. Kickoff is set for 6 PM.
EVANSVILLE, Ind. – Highlighted by a match-up at one of the preseason national favorites, the University of Evansville men’s basketball team has announced its non-conference schedule for the 2025-26 season.
“We are excited about the opportunities ahead in our 2025-26 non-conference schedule.
We’ll travel to face two in-state Power Four opponents, both led by high-character coaches who run their programs in a first-class manner,” Purple Aces head men’s basketball coach David Ragland said. “At home, we welcome five opponents, including our tough in-state rival Ball State, as well as strong programs like Middle Tennessee and UT Arlington—teams that helped prepare us last season for the challenges of conference play. Wem are also looking forward to competing against a well-coached regional opponent in Western Kentucky.”
“A highlight of our non-conference schedule is a trip to the Virgin Islands, where we’ll take on historically successful programs in a premier multi-team event. This experience will provide valuable preparation and team bonding,” Ragland added. “Overall, this schedule presents us with the kind of competitive opportunities that will prepare us to succeed in our talented and well-coached conference.”
UE welcomes Henderson State for an exhibition game on October 25. The Reddies are led by former UE assistant men’s basketball coach Jimmy Elgas. He enters his 11th season at the helm of the program and led them to a 17-13 mark last season.
The regular season officially opens on November 4th with a trip to Purdue. Posting a 24-12 mark a season ago, the Boilermakers advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. Purdue is ranked inside the top five of most preseason top 25 rankings that were released over the summer. This marks the first meeting between the programs since December of 2005 when the Aces won a 75-69 contest inside Roberts Stadium.
Home action begins with a 4-game homestand beginning on Nov. 7 with a game against Calumet College of St. Joseph. This is set to be the Education Day game with further details to follow. Two days later, UE plays host to Oakland City. On the 12th, Evansville welcomes Middle Tennessee State to the Ford Center. The Blue Raiders were 22-12 last season and were invited to the NIT where they battled Chattanooga before falling in triple overtime. On the 18th, the homestand wraps up against UT Arlington.
From Nov. 21-24, the Aces will be in the US Virgin Islands to play in the Paradise Jam. The opening contest of the tournament is a memorable one for Purple Aces fans – Oregon State. UE and OSU met in the 1989 NCAA Tournament where the Aces outlasted the Beavers in overtime by a final score of 94-90. This was Evansville’s first Division I NCAA Tournament victory. Last year, OSU was 20-13 and played in the College Basketball Crown.
Game two of the Paradise Jam will take place on either the 22nd or 23rd, depending on the result of the opener. UE will face either Iona or Akron in the contest. The Zips won 28 games last season on their way to the Mid-American Conference Tournament Championship. The Gaels are coming off a 17-win campaign. Evansville’s final game in the Virgin Islands will take place on the 24th.
Three games are on the docket in December beginning on the 3rd with a home game versus Ball State. On Dec. 6, the Aces travel to Western Kentucky for their first road game versus the Hilltoppers since 2009. Non-conference play wraps up on the 13th with a trip to Notre Dame. It marks just the second meeting between the Aces and Fighting Irish since 1992.
Season tickets for the 2025-26 season are on sale now. We offer great seats that fit with every families budget. For questions or more information on how we can help you and your family create long lasting memories with us at the Ford Center this season, please call Logan Belz at the UE Ticket office 812-488-2623.
FOOTNOTE: EPD DAILY ACTIVITY REPORT information was provided by the EPD and posted by the City-County-County Observer without opinion, bias, or editing.
Two decades ago, after a prolonged and heavy lift through the 2005 legislative session, former Gov. Mitch Daniels signed a monumental piece of legislation into law: establishing daylight saving time in the Hoosier State.
The vote was so contentious that former House Speaker Brian Bosma left the voting machine open for hours, whipping up the votes needed to advance the priority bill for Daniels.
“We just almost had a majority, and then people would switch,” Bosma, a Republican, told the Indiana Capital Chronicle. “We went up to caucus and I had to press on.”
Former Gov. Mitch Daniels talks to reporters on Tuesday, August 6, 2024. (Leslie Bonilla Muñiz/Indiana Capital Chronicle)
In the end, lawmakers advanced the measure through the house by a single vote — a decision that cost the voting lawmaker his seat in the body.
Hoosiers first sprung forward in 2006.
Prior to the law, Indiana had a hodgepodge mashup of time zones that varied from county to county. As with today’s dynamic, most Hoosier counties aligned themselves with Eastern Time, but a handful located in the southwestern and northwestern tips opted for Central Time.
Just over a dozen counties clustered near the state’s borders — including all of the counties following Central Time and at least five Eastern Time counties — voluntarily followed daylight saving time with the majority of the nation. But roughly 76 counties didn’t, which meant they switched from Eastern Time to Central Time and vice versa when other states sprung forward or fell back.
“There are 13 states with more than one, but Indiana had three (time zones),” said Daniels. “… as a practical matter, we were in the Eastern zone during the winter, and in the Central zone during the summer.”
Synchronizing all of the time zones to make it easier to do business with national counterparts was critical to Daniels’ first-term agenda, which sought to “make Indiana, once again, a competitive state.”
“Economically, we were at the bottom of people’s lists of places where you might bring jobs and do investment. We did dozens of things: taxes, regulation, litigation, building, infrastructure. Everything that might make Indiana a more attractive place and more prosperous place,” said Daniels. “And daylight savings was a small part of that.”
Because of the confusing time zone distinctions — which The West Wing mocked in a famous 2002 episode — deliveries were missed or rescheduled, conference calls were dropped and even airlines avoided locating hubs in Indiana, Daniels said.
“It’s an interconnected world, more so today than twenty years ago,” Daniels said. “… It used to be you’d have to look at the calendar before you look at your watch.”
Gettting it through the chamber
A 2005 story in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reported that 43 Republicans and eight Democrats pushed the proposal across the finish line. At noon, the vote stood at 49-48 but, 11 hours later, four Republicans changed their minds.
“I’ve introduced and closed on this bill so many times I’m running out of things to say,” said Rep. Jerry Torr, R-Carmel. Torr authored the 2005 measure and retired last year. “It’s past time for daylight saving time. Let’s get this bill passed.”
Bosma said his caucus identified five Republicans it believed could vote for the measure “without political consequence,” believing that Indiana was “losing economic development opportunities, big ones, because of the anomaly.”
I think that for those who were restless about the speed and the dimension of the changes that we were able to make, daylight savings time became a symbol.
– Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels
“My clearest recollection is getting a call at about 10:30 (p.m.) from (Gov.) Mitch Daniels, while we were in caucus, and the governor saying, “Brian, just pull the plug on this,’” recalled Bosma. “And I said, ‘Governor, I’ve spent way too much capital on this not to complete the job.’”
Returning to the floor, the body still didn’t have the final votes needed, with the tally stuck at 50 votes. After some final debate, one vote flipped — and Bosma told the body’s parliamentarian to lock it in.
“And the 51st vote was the one person that I told, ‘Under no circumstances, are you to vote for this,’” Bosma said. “… Troy (Woodruff) was a Marine, and he saw a grenade and jumped on it despite instructions not to.”
Woodruff, a freshman lawmaker from southwestern Indiana, had a district split between counties observing daylight saving and those that didn’t. He said the final tally came after nearly a dozen rounds of voting, none of which were enough to either pass or kill the bill.
“More than anything, it was just … time to move on and move forward,” Woodruff told the Capital Chronicle. “I just thought, in my head, if this is one thing we can do for free that could help … we really need to do this.”
He went on to lose his seat, but Woodruff said he didn’t regret his actions — even if he still gets the occasional message about a decades-old vote.
“I still get emails to this day about daylight savings time,” he said.
After his term in office, Woodruff was later appointed chief of staff to the Indiana Department of Transportation in 2012, resigning two years later before launching his own business and serving as president of a Fishers-based architecture firm.
The conversation today
The tumultuous 2005 session left such scars that, decades later, some veteran lawmakers say they won’t touch the topic.
“When I got to the General Assembly in 2010, there was a discussion where they said, ‘You can bring up bills for this, that and the other.’ But they said, ‘Whatever you do … don’t bring up the time zones,’” recalled Sen. Sue Glick, R-LaGrange.
Still, there’s usually a bill filed each year on the topic — though they don’t advance. In 2025, three bills were filed to exempt Indiana from daylight saving time but none moved.
Sen. Sue Glick addresses the Senate Chamber on April 7, 2025. (Leslie Bonilla Muñiz/Indiana Capital Chronicle)
Glick, whose district borders Michigan, acknowledged the difficulty for families navigating boundaries where crossing means gaining or losing an hour. Living at the western edge of the Eastern Time zone has its own drawbacks, with later sunrises and sunsets.
“In the evening, it’s still daylight, and kids aren’t ready to go to bed,” Glick said. “… (or) your kids are standing out by the side of the road to catch the bus in the dark.”
On the federal level, the biannual grumblings about changing the clocks revive the ongoing debate: should states move to a permanent standard time or a permanent daylight saving time?
Moving to permanent daylight saving time would require federal permission — though both Arizona and Hawai’i use standard time year-round. In cases where the states made a change, like with Indiana, the U.S. Department of Transportation ultimately picks the time zone.
But, perhaps due to the pushback from 2005, Indiana is one of just two states who haven’t advanced legislation or resolutions supporting a permanent, year-round time, according to NBC News. Nineteen other states support permanent daylight savings time while the remaining 27 favor standard time.
The Indiana Chamber of Commerce, a big supporter of the time zone legislation 20 years ago, said they wouldn’t be a fan of moving Indiana to permanent daylight saving time — as proposed by the federal “Sunshine Protection Act.”
Hooiers have to fall back one hour on Nov. 2.
“From our perspective, moving to that permanent observance is a significant departure from the established system that Indiana businesses have used since 2006,” said President and CEO Vanessa Green Sinders. “…If there was consensus around eliminating the semiannual clock change, our preference would be standard time because it better aligns with winter daylight patterns and supports morning operational needs for all of our companies.”
Aligning all 92 counties with daylight saving time did bring a small, yet statistically significant job boost to the Hoosier state, but Daniels said it was also emblematic of a changing Indiana.
“I think that for those who were restless about the speed and the dimension of the changes that we were able to make, daylight savings time became a symbol,” Daniels said. “I can’t tell you how often people said, ‘Yeah, maybe (you’ll accomplish) the rest of all these plans, but you’ll never change that.’
“And I think when it did finally pass, it sent a message that we’d turned a corner here in Indiana and we intend to be a leader, not in the middle of the pack.”
