X
X
https://www.facebook.com/GinaMBurgess/posts/10210896616756268
X
X
FORT WAYNE CITY COUNCIL MEETS TONIGHT—NOVEMBER 15th, 2016 @ 5:30 PM: City Council meets tonight in Room 30, which is located in the lower level of Citizens Square (200 E Berry St, Fort Wayne, IN 46802). Parking is available in the lot and metered parking is also available on nearby streets. All metered parking is free after 5 pm. Tonight is a Committee Meeting night, which was delayed as a result of last week’s election. This means that no time has been allocated on tonight’s agenda for public comments. Tonight’s agenda is short, sweet and contains only one (1) item---The Legacy Fund: https://www.cityoffortwayne.org/…/11_15_2016_Committee_Sess…
To watch the meeting live online: https://afw.viebit.com/
Firs there will be a presentation by Marc Levy, the CEO of The Questa Education Foundation, formerly known as the Fort Wayne Educational Foundation when it was a program of the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne, before it went into partnership with The Parkview Group and expanded into other counties in Northeast Indiana—essentially sucking money out of Allen County to be redistributed to areas outside of Allen County.[1] It is unclear what exactly the presentation will be about. One would think it would be about the status of the Legacy Fund (i.e. how much has actually been spent, before tonight—how much has been earmarked to be spent, how much currently remains at the PRESENT VALUE amount, how much has been invested, where and with whom it’s been invested, what’s the interest rate on that investment and is it simple or compounded, if compounded at what rate, what’s the anticipated return on investment going to be/FUTURE VALUE, and does that FUTURE VALUE take into consideration all past spending and past earmarked spending). But the likelihood of getting real hard facts about the Legacy Fund or the Legacy Fund Corpus is probably not going to happen.
Sadly, we are likely to see a well-choreographed show that starts off with something inspirational about how far Fort Wayne/Downtown has come under the leadership of the current Administration, how all the changes have been transformational and forward-moving and quality-of-life oriented (insert a few blah, blah, blahs). That will conclude the cheerleading portion of tonight’s event.
Then after the crowd---you the taxpaying viewing audience---is brought to an orgasmic height of inspiration and as dreams of aspirations drunkenly dance through your heads like sugarplums in a Nutcracker sequence, then a discussion will begin about spending $10 million or more on Phase I of the Riverfront Development.
Phase I of Riverfront Development….oh my goodness…I can barely contain my laughter at such silliness. It’s not riverfront development. It’s let’s take a piece of muddy river bank that isn’t currently being used by the city or really anyone else, shut down the few businesses that surround the property through eminent domain (which, btw, is still not settled), lay down some bricks, steel, concrete (remember---we have a shortage, so expect the expense of concrete to increase exponentially), asphalt and other recycled materials from the houses being torn down along State and in the Bloomingdale neighborhood; erect a building on the property; maybe throw in some sort of docking system for the fine folks over at the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne (who seems to have recently come into more money than they know what to do with); and voila—you have created another mighty fine and totally unnecessary park. A park whose rentals will compete with Headwaters, Parkview Field, Franke Park pavilions, etc. A park that will have to be mowed and maintained, whose pavilion will have to be painted annually and otherwise maintained. But it will sure look good sitting pretty on the riverbank.
Phase I is likely to be passed unanimously or if there are any objections, they will likely come from Jason Arp, Paul Ensley and maybe, juuuuust maybe Russ Jehl. But the majority will back this. Please keep in mind that Geoff Paddock, John Crawford, Glynn Hines, Tom Didier and most of the City Councilman who will be voting in favor of this project are funded by the very people who will be gaining the most financially from this project. Incidentally, most of the folks benefitting from these massive public projects are the same people who provide campaign funding and/or assistance to the Councilmen who will be voting for this nonsense. And these are also the same Councilmen who sit on the Legacy Joint Funding Committee.
The day after the Presidential Election, while everyone was distracted----The Legacy Joint Funding Committee approved a request of $10 million in Legacy funding to assist with the construction investment for the first phase of riverfront development, which essentially takes an unimproved riverbank, demolishes a few successful pre-existing businesses and voila, turns the area into a park space with a pavilion that can be rented out and may create a dock. [2]
Even though this is a done deal, it should be interesting to watch and hear the commentary in support of this runaway-spending proposal. Some of these guys are already looking forward to 2019 when the next Mayoral race is---and it they aren’t, then they really should be. It will be interesting to hear their sound-bite laden expressions of support for this project.
I wonder if they will be as bold as they were when they approved $20 million for an unnecessary, unsustainable law school that recently shut down because….(drum roll please)….it was unnecessary and unsustainable. One would hope that this Council would have learned a lesson or two by now---other than how to poach taxpayers to fund the whimsical hype created by massive out-of-control public spending programs that actually benefit relatively few people, but sure do look pretty.
Now, I know that I am not being very optimistic here. I openly admit and own this. Its hard to be positive continued out-of-control spending when local taxes are increasing as local services are decreasing, infrastructure is being neglected, and the budgets/spending of other municipal-corporation entities are not factored into one another. We have spending by the City of Fort Wayne on all this Downtown/Riverfront development originaly designed to attract jobs and then the focus got shifted to creating a vibrant quality of life----cause creating tourism attractions always contributes to the quality of life for the pre-existing residential population. The cost for all of these projects, as estimated by Greater Fort Wayne is over $600 million, but the likelihood that many of these grandiose projects have been underbid and/or will go over budget is very likely. So in reality, we are probably looking at $1 billion in expenditures here. We have spending by Fort Wayne City Utilities on a pesky sewer tunnel project that is mandated by the federal government---and that project has been severely underbid, just like Indy's was, and just like Indy's is going to cost closer to 1/2 a billion dollars. We have "Repair FWCS" spending going on that is focused more on rehabilitating and giving away properties than on rehabilitating and creating improved learning environments for students stuck within this failing school system. FWCS ultimately is wanting $500 million (another 1/2 billion dollars).
So that's an estimated $2 billion to be spend over the next 10 years as we are paying off who knows how many millions to billions from the past 30 years since we keep rebonding many projects. We have a City Council that isn't brave enough to do the one responsible thing the City is desperately in need of and looooong overdue----AUDITS. No, they are too busy working on a government efficiency study to see how best to merge City departments with County departments.
And speaking of the County---we have massive projects going on over there. Remember the Coliseum Renovation and Expansion project for which the "temporary" now permanent food & beverage tax was suppose to pay for. We're still paying for that project because those monies have been split between paying down County debt and creating more City debt, compliments of Tom Henry and Nelson Peters and the creation of the Capital Improvement Board by way of State Representative Phil GiaQuinta, the brother of Mark GiaQuinta, President of the failing FWCS Board. (See how all this connectivity and runaway spending just keeps circling like water being flushed down the toilet.)
Then there was the Maplecrest Road extension that was supposed to result in economic development on that roadway between Fort Wayne and New Haven. That project was started 8 years ago, completed 4 years ago, and yet there's been no increase in the number of new business that have relocated to either Fort Wayne or New Haven or the County as a direct result of that road---even though that was the justification used for this muti-million dollar road construction project.
And speaking of road construction, there is certainly a lot of questionable County road repair work going on out in the County, especially roadways leading from the backside of the Adams Center Landfill, as managed by Waste Management, heading to Pleasant Center Road where the old Pleasant Center school was renovated and then shut down by FWCS Board (aka Mark GiaQuinta) due to diminished attendance, given to the Fort Wayne Airport Authority before being sold to a private company owned by Bruce Dye and now home to Constellation CNG. (Hhmmm....where have we seen this before? Franklin Park School. Nebraska Elementary School. ??) I know the skies the limit, Constellation CNG, but really----using County funds /taxpayer dollars to pay for road construction so that roads can be dug up and CNG pipes laid to transfer compressed methane gases from the landfill (which was annexed by the City with the help of Mark GiaQuinta) to Constellation CNG (formerly Pleasant Center Elementary School) to the GM Plant?? And to the Country road department---really, using a roundabout in the middle of multiple corn fields out in the county?? There's no way to justify that one.
Now folks, I'm sharing all of this here because there's a push by City leaders (Tom Henry) and County leaders (Nelson Peters) to consolidate local government. But they aren't looking to consolidate local government for the right reasons---creating efficiency, reducing redundancy and saving taxpayer dollars. They are looking to consolidate local government to increase the speed of spending and funneling public monies to private entities through construction projects. City Council is clueless as to what is happening in the County. County Council is clueless as to what is happening in the City. Both entities are wheelin' and dealin' in an out-of-control spending spree on projects that are simply not sustainable.
But watch or attend tonight's City Council meeting---I highly doubt that a single member of City Council will address any of this. Fort Wayne does not exist in a bubble, but City Council acts as if it does. So does County Council, the Board of Publc Works (Fort Wayne City Utilities), and FWCS School Board (FWCS/Repair FW).
How many more economic development projects must taxpayers continue to subsidize that are being set up for failure? Indiana Tech Law School?? Maplecrest Road extenstion project? How many millions of taxpayer dollars would have been saved had the respective Councils stepped back, emotionally-disengaged and looked at real, hard, financial data. But they haven't.
Sadly, City Council isn't likely to reverse this trend. Not even in light of the failure and closure of the heavily taxpayer-subsidized Indiana Tech's Law School. My lack of being positive in these matters stems from a frustration that is akind to being a passenger on the Titanic, seeing the iceberg, knowing we are going to hit the iceberg, knowing that there is going to be a lot of pain and suffering endured by everyone once we hit that iceberg, but not being in a position to do anything about it. Its very, very frustrating.
________
SOURCES:
[1] Go to IN SOS and look up. IN SOS does not provide a unique link for this particular organization. It should also be noted that Questa has not provided the public with its latest form 990 filings for 2015 or 2016. Finally, it should also be noted that Questa has been paid over $100,000 this year without any approval from Fort Wayne City Council despite that being a violation of Fort Wayne City Codes.
[2] http://www.cityoffortwayne.org/…/3138-legacy-joint-funding-…
________
SOURCES:
[1] Go to IN SOS and look up. IN SOS does not provide a unique link for this particular organization. It should also be noted that Questa has not provided the public with its latest form 990 filings for 2015 or 2016. Finally, it should also be noted that Questa has been paid over $100,000 this year without any approval from Fort Wayne City Council despite that being a violation of Fort Wayne City Codes.
[2] http://www.cityoffortwayne.org/…/3138-legacy-joint-funding-…
X
No comments:
Post a Comment