Mayor Henry’s Letter Asks The Commissioners To Continue Maintaining Bridges
Posted by Jeff Pruitt - 7/10/08 @ 9:00 am - Filed Under Featured, Local Politics
You can read Mayor Henry’s full letter to the county commissioners here. An excerpt:
Per HEA 1001, citizens can determine what they are willing to pay with a referendum. I suggest you look to the taxpayers, not the elected officials, to determine the willingness to bond for the maintenance of the bridges. If the referendum passes, the effect will be outside the circuit breaker and will have taxpayer support.
All other counties in Indiana maintain their bridges. Shifting the maintenance from the County of Allen to the smaller municipalities would set a dangerous precedent.
As the executive of the City of Fort Wayne, the City asks the County of Allen to continue to maintain the bridges as it has since 1816.
Sincerely
Thomas C. Henry
Mayor
Look to the taxpayers? That’ll be the day. The mayor is right, the commissioners and the county council need to live up to their responsibility and maintain the county’s bridges. They already squandered $50 million on the Maplecrest project so they really have no excuses.
Do your job…
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16 Responses to “Mayor Henry’s Letter Asks The Commissioners To Continue Maintaining Bridges”
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I think the Mayor’s letter is brief, to the point, and completely on target.
Allen County should maintain bridges as is done by every other county in Indiana.
Mike Sylvester
Speaking of “shifting”. It appears the county of Allen is also trying to shift the cutting of weeds along county roads to the taxpayers. Oh wait! Aren’t we already paying for that????
As my friend Keith Cumtwa often says, “It takes an engineer to build a bridge. It takes politicians to let it fall inexcusably into disrepair, inevitably ending in tragedy.”
Jeff,
I think you have to be careful on the $55M for the Maplecrest Extension and suggesting it somehow could be used for maintaining the bridges. What may be legitimate critism is of the portion of the funding that is Allen County taxpayer funding used for the Maplecrest Extension. That funding certainly could have gone towards maintaining the bridges in the County, but I don’t think the amount is $55M.
What are the sources and amounts of the funding for the $55M project, and how much of it could legitimately go towards bridges if Commissioners and Council made it so?
Nelson Peters is very peeved by the response. If Peters had won election as Mayor what would had been his position?
Fred,
You’re right, the $50 Million remark was an exaggeration.
They certainly could’ve asked for the $11 million in federal funds to be reallocated. Also, the $25 million they are pledging from the major bridge fund obviously isn’t needed for major bridges so with a little basic financial planning they could’ve had that money available as well.
The rest I’m not so sure about…
So help me understand this. If Nelson Peters is evil, how come no one is running against him???
Good question Kristina, check out the JG editorial pages in the next couple days and you will get your answer. Jeff P - enjoyed today’s Cable Advisory Meeting on the city cable station.
Kristina,
I have absolutely no idea. It really is a black mark against the party’s new chairman Mike Bynum.
I don’t envy his position, as it must be an incredibly difficult task, but somebody should’ve run against Peters. I considered doing it myself but the commissioners have specific districts even though they are elected county wide…
It is totally wrong to have a Commissioner live in a district and have the whole county vote for their choice even though they don’t live in the same district as the candidate.
It is totally wrong that there are 3 Commissioners when there should only be one executive to carry out executive duties. Interesting that Marion County Commissioners are not full time Commissioners. In fact it appears that they are not elected but appointed based on whether they were elected as Auditor, Treasurer or Assessor. You would think with Uni-Gov in Marion County they would had eliminated County Commissioners in light of the Mayor being the top official in the county. But Indiana is Indiana.
It is totally wrong that the Commissioners are both an executive and legislative body. (That was probably Edwin Rousseau’s doing)
Rumpole
I do always say that. Do I know you?
Keith,
You’re free to post anonymously but having a conversation with yourself is a little odd…
Jeff, I am no Keith Cumtwa. I am merely an admirer of his wisdom.
Ok, well you’ve both commented using the same IP address on more than one ocassion…
Keith and I are employed at the same place. To the extent either of us posts while at work, I imagine it registers from the same IP.
[...] Henry responded to the county commissioners abdication of responsibility to maintain our bridges by suggesting the county put it to a referendum. Imagine that? A group of politicians actually trusting the citizenry to decide how to best spend [...]