Fort Wayne Public Safety Academy
Posted by Mike Sylvester - 11/24/09 @ 10:00 pm - Filed Under Featured, Local Politics
I am sure everyone remembers the debate a couple of years ago about the Fort Wayne Public Safety Academy.
This is another local Government (Fort Wayne in this case) plan that has 100% failed by ANYONE’s definition of failure.
Believe it or not when the project was proposed there were people who argued that the facility would be so successful that not only would it be self sustaining; however, it would create jobs and revitalize the Southtown Mall area.
At the time I laughed and said that the project would likely fail and require massive taxpayer subsidies.
Well, I was right. The project is in such disarray that it has been reported that the City of Fort Wayne will put more than a half million dollars into the Academy this year and next year.
Obviously the Academy is no where near being self sufficient.
Worse yet the Academy plans on needing ANOTHER 1.25 million dollars from 2011 - 2015.
In other words from 2009 - 2015 the taxpayers of Fort Wayne will likely pour ANOTHER 2.35 million dollars into the Fort Wayne Public Safety Academy.
That is a far cry from the promises of self sufficiency that were made when the project began…
Another day in Fort Wayne, another boondoggle perpetuated.
Will this City ever stop funding projects that are doomed to complete failure?
Mike Sylvester
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4 Responses to “Fort Wayne Public Safety Academy”
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If the police and fire department can not use it to relocate.Then the city should try to sell/give it to a school.Then walk away.
The city could have saved millions by relocating the police to this underutilized building. But that’s not going to happen now that they wasted our money on their new overpriced downtown palace.
A sensible alternative would be to locate the Sheriff’s department there. But this would require city and county officials to work together, so that’s probably not going to happen either.
My question is, what would happen to the facility/board if City Council would stop approving additional funds for this place. Maybe they would have to tighten their belts a bit too.
I don’t believe for a second that those individuals actually believed that garbage. Usually someone who is going to benefit financially is asked to round up others to speak on the project’s behalf at some city hearing or community event.
These people usually spout off something about economic development but nearly 100% of the time they have no data to back up anything they are saying and they don’t know the first thing about what they are talking about.
They could have and should have considered moving the FWPD into that building but of course that wouldn’t have allowed them to provide a $7 million bailout to George Huber and help “redevelop” downtown in the process…