THE MIKE SCHALK FILE

§01 — The Man

Michael G. "Mike" Schalk is President of the Roseland Town Council. Under Indiana law (IC 36-5-2-2), a town council is the town's legislative body and its president is the town executive. Roseland has no mayor. Schalk is the town government.

He won the seat at the ballot box: on November 7, 2023, he was elected to the council at-large with 47 votes, the top vote-getter in the race (Official St. Joseph County 2023 Municipal General Election results). Of the council that sits today, he is the one member who got there that way.

He took the presidency in January 2024. At the January 11, 2024 regular meeting, fellow council member Elizabeth McCombs stated she did not recall a vote ever being taken; Schalk then moved to ratify his own election as president. The motion passed 2–0 with McCombs abstaining, on the advice of Town Attorney Pete Agostino (Town of Roseland minutes, January 11, 2024). The town attorney’s own file is File No. 4. The same minutes record then-Chief Avery Minor reporting he had "talked to excise yesterday regarding Cheers," which was "on the prosecutor's desk" — the Cheers Pub dispute that runs through this file has a public-record origin two years before the recordings.

Before the council, Schalk worked for the town: Roseland's maintenance foreman (Roseland payroll records, 2016). On the May 2026 recording below, Schalk himself states he was fired from that department. No termination document has been produced.

On May 15, 2026, WSBT reported residents alleging town council corruption at the May 14 meeting. Schalk publicly denied the claims and denied owning Advanced Property Maintenance (APM); he acknowledged a friendship with APM's owner and past work for the company, and said he filed a conflict-of-interest disclosure. That denial is his documented public position. The APM contracts, invoices, and payments, and the disclosure itself, are the subject of pending records requests — and none of that paper has been produced.

§02 — Never an Officer

On October 29, 2026, a Report of Cause concerning Schalk was filed with the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy. The Academy answered in writing the same day, at 1:07 PM:

§03 — The Recording: What He Admits

On May 20, 2026, Schalk was recorded for about 45 minutes, talking council business in a conversation he never thought the public would hear. The full recording was published on October 9, 2026, and a complete transcript is in hand. The speaker is never named aloud on the tape; the identification rests on the content — the council business discussed, the named subordinates, and Schalk's own "old Mike" self-reference. Read what he admits, in his own words, with the timestamps.

He also admits his own history on the same tape. He says he was arrested "down in Crawfordsville" (00:06:00) — the county seat of Montgomery County. Recounting being taunted over a conviction, he answers that it was "before I got my record expunged" (00:08:38), and then repeats it: "it's expunged" (00:08:50); "I got my record expunged?" (00:09:11). What the public docket says about that claim is §10 of this file.

One passage this file does not use: at about 00:25:08 on the tape, Schalk recounts a dream involving a firearm. A man describing a dream is not making a threat, and the passage is excluded from every filing in this investigation. It is noted here so the record of what was left out is as clear as the record of what was put in.

§04 — What Was Done to Heather Velez

Heather Velez was the Roseland Police Department's clerk. Before the May 20 recording was ever made, the council had already taken her up behind closed doors: on the tape, Schalk references "that exec session that we had with Heather" (00:31:33). By the time he sat down on May 20, her removal was not a question. It was a production, and the tape is the rehearsal.

Her offense, on his own words, was loyalty in the wrong direction. She was the chief's "mouthpiece" — his voice inside the building (§03, 00:16:26). The ordinances give the council approval over every new hire, so with Velez gone and the council holding the gate, Chief Witham would be alone in his own department, unable to bring anyone in behind her. The outcome was announced before it happened: "oh, she's going to get fired… there's no coming back from this" (00:19:55). At the public meeting, the public would hear nothing, because "we don't have to discuss it because it was personnel matters" (00:20:18).

And then it happened, exactly as scripted. Velez was removed from her position after the recording was made — under the cover the tape had built for it: a personnel item, framed by the agenda language rehearsed that morning, never explained to the public it affected.

Her removal was also step one. With her gone, the plan for the chief was workload: "that's gonna put all the work on him, administrative, and I don't think he can handle it" (00:37:32). Stack the department's paper on the man at the top until the man at the top goes under it. That is the sequence the rest of this file follows, meeting by meeting, through the fall of 2026.

On November 2, 2026, Velez answered outreach for the first time. Her own statement has been asked for. It is not yet in hand, and when it arrives, it goes in this section, in her words.

§05 — The Pattern Through the Department

Read the fall of 2026 as one continuous operation and the pieces stop looking separate. The clerk goes first, because she is the chief's voice. The chief is isolated, loaded with the clerk's work, and worked toward the door — by forced resignation if he will go, by termination if he will not. A separate recording of Town Attorney Pete Agostino, apparently discussing exactly that end — forcing Chief Witham to resign, or firing him if he won't — was filed as Exhibit C to the October 21, 2026 criminal referral. His own file is here. The play was not improvised. It was run at every level of the department at once.

It reached the second-in-command too. The department's assistant chief was pressured until he resigned. That is stated here on the compiler's own documented account, given November 2, 2026, and it is printed at the strength the paper currently carries: the fact is asserted by the man who has been filing the records in this case; the date and the mechanism are not yet documented by any produced record, and no resignation letter or council minute accepting it has been produced. The settler is the Town's own personnel paper, and it has been demanded. When it lands, this paragraph gets its dates.

His name does not appear in this file. That is deliberate, and it does not change: this file names the office, the pressure, and the paper trail — not the man who was squeezed out of the second chair.

So the department Schalk inherited as council president has lost, in sequence: its clerk, removed on a script; its assistant chief, pressured out; and its chief, carried into a termination hearing on November 19, 2026, in front of the council Schalk presides over. What is left standing in the building is the council president — a man who, as §02 establishes, has never held any authority over any of them.

§06 — The Second Recording

There is a second recording, more than 40 minutes long, and this file keeps it separate from the first, because the record does.

It began circulating publicly on September 27, 2026 — the day after the September 26 encounter between Chief Witham and a delivery driver that opened the wider Roseland investigation. That timing is a documented fact with a documented consequence: because the recording surfaced after September 26, it cannot support any claim that the Witham household was "on high alert" because of it on September 26. The timing theory is dead, and this file does not revive it.

The recording was received on October 8, 2026, and the compiler personally listened to it and confirmed it is real. In it, Schalk again discusses manipulating agendas and removing public speaking to silence critics, including the Cheers owner; he repeats the Cheers passage in near-identical words; and he states that he consults the town attorney on everything. The recording's own date has not been established, and no transcript of it has been produced — so its contents are described here, not quoted. When its transcript is in hand, this section gets its quotes and its timestamps.

One formulation travels with this recording and is corrected here, on the record: the phrase "sticking guns down people's throats" is not a verified quote from it. It is a paraphrase, offered by the man who passed the recording along, describing what he took Schalk to be insinuating. It may be fair, and it may not be — until a transcript exists, it is a secondhand summary, graded as such, and this file does not print it in quotation marks. The only firearm passage located in the May 20 transcript is the dream recount excluded in §03. Precision about what a man did not quite say is what makes the rest of this file impossible to argue with.

§07 — The Meetings

September 30, 2024 — the clerk-treasurer goes in one night. In early September 2024, Roseland Clerk-Treasurer Shane Williams-Inez resigned, then tried to rescind the resignation. At a special meeting on September 30, 2024, the council accepted the resignation and installed Ann Rulli in the office the same night. Per the records review behind this file, Schalk led the push to oust Williams-Inez. The meeting's paper — minutes, tallies, notice and agenda, the resignation and the attempted rescission, Rulli's appointment and oath, any recording — was formally requested on October 10, 2026, after the town website's contact form failed twice. The Town acknowledged the requests generally on October 14. It has produced none of that paper.

October 21, 2026 — the session with no time on the door. An executive session was noticed for October 21, 2026 under personnel categories, on a notice posted at Town Hall. Here is the notice, photographed on the Town's own door:

The October 21, 2026 executive-session notice, posted at Roseland Town Hall. The "Time and Date of Meeting" line carries the date, handwritten — and no time. Still from the compiler's own October 21, 2026 video of the posted notices.

Read the line: "Time and Date of Meeting: Oct 21 2026." There is no time on it. Indiana's Open Door Law requires a meeting notice to state the date, time, and place (IC 5-14-1.5-5(a)). A closed session the public cannot know the hour of is a session the public cannot watch being opened or closed — which is the only part of an executive session the public is entitled to see.

What was behind the door that day is reported, and graded as reported: in a written statement given the same day, Julie Witham stated that a resignation demand was made to Chief Witham at that session and refused, that the town was "going through with termination," and that the chief was on medical leave and, per her, cleared for duty.

The pencil. On the evening of October 21, the compiler published a video of the posted notices — "They saw the video. Then somebody grabbed a pencil." The formal reports filed that same day document what the video caught: after it posted, the posted notice was altered in pencil. Those reports are a complaint to the Indiana Public Access Counselor covering the defective notice and the alteration, and notice-alteration reports to the Indiana State Police and the St. Joseph County Prosecutor, all filed October 21, 2026. The Public Access Counselor's opinion is pending; none had issued as of November 3, 2026.

October 22, 2026 — the meeting that was over before it began. A special meeting was called for 5:30 PM the next day. Here is its call, signed by Schalk, posted beside the executive-session notice:

The call of the October 22, 2026 special meeting, signed by Michael Schalk, Town Council President: Thursday, October 22, 2026 at 5:30 PM — "The meeting will be held to building permits." Still from the compiler's own October 21, 2026 video of the posted notices.

The call states one item of business: building permits. Any personnel action that night would have had to arrive by agenda amendment — the precise motion the town attorney scripted on the May 20 recording. In the event, the council took no action on firing Chief Witham, called no police to remove anyone, and answered no questions. The compiler arrived one minute late and found the council already leaving — "running for their cars," as his October 22 video post put it. The meeting was, in practical terms, over almost before it began. This file prints the observation, not a stopwatch: no exact duration is documented, and none is claimed.

§08 — Town Hall, October 29, 2026

On the morning of October 29, 2026, the 13-page Report of Cause on Officer Shawn Apps was hand-delivered to Schalk at the Roseland Town Hall counter, at 9:40 AM — the officer’s own file is File No. 1. Before a second filing — the Report of Cause on Schalk himself — could be presented, Schalk gave an order. His exact words:

Schalk at the Town Hall counter on October 29, 2026, holding the hand-delivered Report of Cause. Still from the delivery video, the compiler's own recording.

Understand precisely what that order was, and what it was not. No physical contact occurred. Nobody laid a hand on anybody; nobody was dragged, pushed, or touched. The order was complied with, on camera, and every remaining filing went in on paper the same day. This file states that plainly because the truth of it is stronger than any exaggeration: a man does not have to touch you to remove you from a public building. He only has to give the order standing in the authority of the building — with a gun on his hip.

Schalk carried a gun on his hip at that counter. An order to stop recording and leave, delivered by an armed official, carries its threat inside it: comply, or find out what the authority behind the gun does next. That is removal under threat of force, and it needs no hand laid on anyone to be exactly that. The gun fact itself is stated on two feet, and this file keeps them separate. First: the compiler's own firsthand observation in that room — he is certain Schalk had the gun on him that day. Second: senior Roseland officers have confirmed the carry, and one of them has given his word on the record that he will testify Schalk carries a .38 on his hip. His name lives in the official filings, where it belongs — not on a public page. And in fairness to the whole record: the delivery video itself does not show a firearm in any frame. What it shows is the delivery, and what it carries on audio is the order. Both are in this file as they are.

The carry, standing alone, is in all likelihood lawful — Indiana law bars local units from regulating firearms in a building like Town Hall (IC 35-47-11.1-2); Town Hall contains no courtroom; and permitless carry has been Indiana law since July 1, 2022. The gun is not the charge, and this file has never made it the charge.

The charge is the order. A citizen standing at a public counter, in the middle of filing public records, was ordered to stop recording and leave a public building by a man the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy confirms has never held any law-enforcement authority in his life. The criminal complaint filed the same day asks the St. Joseph County Prosecutor to evaluate that conduct — including the impersonation and official-misconduct theories set out in the complaint (IC 35-44.1-2-6; IC 35-44.1-1-1). No agency has adopted that theory as a finding, and no charging decision has been made by anyone. Also filed that day: a preservation demand covering the Town Hall surveillance video of that morning (9:25–9:55 AM), the buzzer and access logs, and every communication about the removal — a demand that doubles as a public records request, and that the Town has not answered with the video.

§09 — The Receipt, and the Wall

Schalk would not sign a receipt at the counter. At 12:29 PM that same day, he confirmed the delivery in writing himself:

The wall did not go up in a day. On October 14, 2026, Schalk had forwarded the Clerk-Treasurer's letter stating the Town was reviewing and working on the records requests filed October 7 — an acknowledgment inside the deadline, at ten cents a page, with no production of any requested records. As of this file's update, that remains the Town's complete performance on the October requests: acknowledged, and not produced. The Town's written response to the October 29 filings is due November 12, 2026.

§10 — The 1985 Docket, and the Question It Leaves Open

In Montgomery Circuit Court in Crawfordsville, Indiana, there is a public docket. It reads:

The docket carries six entries in total; nothing appears on it after two statistical-correction entries in August 2005. The State's attorney of record was Joseph Robert Buser of Crawfordsville. No produced document shows a weapon in the case, and this file does not call it anything the docket does not: the charge on the face of the public record is robbery, Class B felony, and the judgment is guilty.

Is the man on that docket the president of the Roseland Town Council? The convergence is strong, and this file grades it exactly: strong, but not locked to a date of birth, because the public docket page carries none. Montgomery County is Crawfordsville — the same place where Schalk, in his own words on the May 20, 2026 recording, said he was arrested. The era fits. The offense fits. And on the same tape, he discusses a conviction of his own and answers a taunt about it with an expungement claim. The document that would lock the identity — the court's paper file, with its identifiers — has been requested from the Montgomery County Clerk and has not been produced.

Now hear the man himself, from that recording: arrested "down in Crawfordsville" (00:06:00); "that was before I got my record expunged" (00:08:38); "it's expunged" (00:08:50); "I got my record expunged?" (00:09:11). If the expungement is real, it is also the law's answer to almost everything above: an expunged conviction is treated under Indiana law as if it never occurred for most purposes. The question is whether it exists. Here is the evidence, both ways, in full.

Toward an expungement existing: Schalk's own repeated statements on tape. And the answer of the Montgomery County Clerk's office. Asked on October 29, 2026 for the CR1985-18 public file, the office replied on October 30, in one line:

Against it, or at least unresolved: the full public docket pull of October 29 shows no "Expunged" flag, no sealing or restricted-access marker, and the words expungement, sealing, sealed, and petition nowhere in it — the case sits publicly visible with the guilty finding intact, which is not what an expunged case normally looks like under the marking rule (IC 35-38-9-7(b)). And a statewide court search on October 31, 2026 found no expungement case under Schalk's name anywhere in Indiana, including Montgomery County — with this caveat, stated in the search itself: a sealed expungement case would not appear in that search by design.

Why one piece of paper decides everything: under Indiana law, a felony conviction disqualifies a person from holding elected office, with no time limit (IC 3-8-1-5(d)(3)). But an expunged conviction is excepted (IC 3-8-1-5(c)(2)(E)), and expungement expressly restores the right to hold public office (IC 35-38-9-10(c)). If the expungement is real, Schalk is fully eligible, and this file will print that in this section, at the top. If it is not, the President of the Roseland Town Council is holding a seat the law does not allow him to hold.

§11 — What the Agencies Did

Two absences belong on this page too, stated as absences. No filed lawsuit naming Schalk as a defendant has been found in this record — what exists are the complaint and the referrals above, which are filings by a citizen, not charges by the State. And the State Board of Accounts' January 2026 special investigation of Roseland is open and unpublished: no SBOA report or finding naming Schalk has been produced or located, and this file does not imply one exists.

§12 — On the Record Ahead

November 12, 2026, 6:00 PM — Roseland Town Council meeting. The Town's written response to the October 29 filings is due that day.

November 19, 2026 — Termination hearing for Chief Tim Witham, the chief marked for removal on the May 20 recording, in front of the council Schalk presides over.

Also outstanding: the Montgomery County Clerk's written answer on the expungement; the Election Board's production of Schalk's candidate file; the Public Access Counselor's opinion; the Town Hall surveillance video; and the Town's production on the October records requests, for which the Counselor's informal production benchmark runs in the first week of November. The Attorney General's office has said it will state how it will proceed with Case #11853666 in approximately 10 to 14 working days from November 3, 2026. The Election Division lane closed on November 3 on jurisdiction, not on the record (§11); it reopens only if Schalk files for a future election. This file stays open at this address. Every answer, and every non-answer that hardens into the record, lands here as a dated update.