About: John B. Kalb
- kalb@fortwaynepolitics.com
- Profile
- Born in Minnesota in 1935. Grew up in Lakewood, Ohio, western suburb of Cleveland. Family moved to Fort Wayne in 1949 as I started in high school. Grad of North Side, 1953, the General Electric Apprentice School as a toolmaker, BSEE from Purdue in 1961. Have lived in Fort Wayne since 1949 except years at West Lafayette at Purdue and two years in upper New York state with G.E. on engineering training program. Went into sales engineering in 1968 and sold for the R.L.Guimont Co., Inc.(machine tool components and inspection equipment) for 39 years, retiring in July of 2007. Active in my parrish, Emmanuel Lutheran on Jefferson Blvd., have sung in church choirs for over 65 years (tenor). Married Judith Holloway in 1969 - we have four children, Mike, Carrie, Mary, and Katrina; eight grandkids; our cat, Venus (who really believes she owns the place) and three grand-dogs. Big Purdue Baseball, Football and Basketball fan; hope to live to see Purdue men win a final four (maybe 2009!!!) Active in Engineering Societies - Fort Wayne Engineer's Club, American Society for Quality and Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers Educational Foundation International Scholarship Committee; the Northeast Indiana Engineer's Week Committee; Indiana Future City Competition Steering Committee.
Posts by John B. Kalb:
Final Attendance Numbers for TinCaps Home Games for 2009
9/16/09 @ 11:45 pm
Total “Announced” attendance for the 76 home games = 404,318
Net attendance that will count toward the 275,000 before Fort Wayne receives the $1.00 per Performance License Fee = 380,118
380,118 less 275,000 = 105,118 which results in $105, 118 from Hardball Capital toward the Stadium Maintenance Fund. Add to this $150,000 (one-half of the “Naming Rights” fee), and the result is $255,118 toward the contracted $230,000 for the maintenance fund. This leaves Fort Wayne with $25,118 to apply toward the contracted payment by Fort Wayne of all the utilities used at Parkview Field, which has been estimated to be over $50,000 per year. So, in addition to providing Hardball Capital with a prime stadium at no yearly cost to them, Fort Wayne also will have to come up this year with over $25,000 from other taxes to help Hardball make a nice profit on their only investment of just over $5 million.
Tonights 6,269 fans probably is a record for all of Minor League Baseball at a Championship Series Game! And the TinCaps won - only need one more victory to wrap up the first Minor League Championship for a Fort Wayne team -and this will be any one of the, if necessary, three games over the next three nights.
The TinCaps are finishing a “dream year” - A Fort Wayne furnished, absolutely fantastic new stadium, the Fort Wayne fan support that our town has been giving to professional teams for years, and a group of up-and-coming young future Major Leaguers who have played their hearts out - in both halves of the regular season and in the playoffs!
The ownership of the team, Hardball Capital, has to be pleased with how Fort Wayne has treated them. But, to date it has all been “one-way”, with millions of Fort Wayne dollars going to Atlanta, Georgia. Be aware that the Padres organization pays all the salaries for the players, the managers, and the umpires. Plus transportation expenses, equipment (balls, bats, et al) and lots of the other expenses. A modest average paid ticket of $7.00 times the 380,118 paid for the season has resulted in $2,660,826 of gross revenue for just this item (less the $105,118 that will be paid to Fort Wayne due to the Performance License Fee). Again, assuming a modest $10.00 per person “food & beverage” expenditure per paid attendee, would result in a gross income of $3,801,180 (all going to Hardball-none to the city). The revenue due to advertizing signage at Parkview Field, one-half of the $300,000 “naming rights” fee per year paid by Parkview Health, all the charges for the leasing of the suites, scoreboard advertising, broadcast rights and any advertising on radio and television, sales of souvenirs, plus “all other revenues from all Hardball Events”, goes only to Hardball Capital.
Yet, for some hard-to-understand reason, Hardball’s partner, Barry Real Estate, has not been able to complete the portion of the overall Harrison Square development that was a part of the agreement between Fort Wayne and their corporations. But, Fort Wayne still is paying for the stadium and the borrowing costs due to it’s construction - for 2009 this amounts to $3,344,748.
Will Fort Wayne see the same dropoff in attendance that the Wizards saw in their second year (1994) over the first (1993). 266,670 vs. 318,506. This dropoff, if it happens, would result in a 2010 attendance of 325,594 and this would require the city to budget a total of over $100,000 in 2010 to cover this short-fall.
It will be interesting to see where the city administration puts this in their suggested budget for 2010.
Filed Under City Council, Local Politics | 4 Comments
Have you heard the last shoe to fall?
9/2/09 @ 10:41 pm
I guess that the time to say, “I told you so” is rapidly approaching. Todays revelation on the front page of the News-Sentinel, that the walkway between the old Indiana Hotel and the unneccessary new downtown hotel will not be open to the public (which is paying $1.3 million for it!) is the latest. Good ole Greg Leatherman can, with a straight face, say that this is in the contract and can’t be changed.
What else is he hiding from his own Redevelopment Commission and the tax paying public? Why in the heck did the city pay for a walkway that will only be used by the hotel? You have been told why already - THE HOTEL IS NOT NEEDED AND WILL NEVER BE SUCCESSFUL - that’s why no entity wanted to finance it’s construction! And why was the bidding on the construction contracts done to enable contractors to see the prior bids by their competitors BEFORE their final bid! Can you say possible “KICKBACKS” ? That’s one way to get the net cost to the builder down. Is this what happened here? We will never know unless someone comes forward who has been a party to any deception that may have been involved.
I recall that the guy from the Indianapolis general contractor was quoted by Bill Brown as saying in a telephone call from our mayors office that he probably should not have written that ”the electrical went to the builder’s ‘favored’ electrical contractor”. Can anyone guess why that entity possibly was favored? I understand that they bid only once, whereas at least one of their competitors bid the job two or three timesbefore the ‘favored’ responded. Yes I realize this was not a “public” bid but the public sure is paying most of the cost with, it seems, very little benefit.
Filed Under Featured, Uncategorized | 19 Comments
Start Each Day With A Positive Outlook!
8/11/09 @ 11:53 am
1. Open a new file on your computer
2. Name it “Barack Obama”
3. Send it to the Recycle bin
4. Empty the Recyle Bin
5. Your PC will ask, “Do you really want to get rid of “Barack Obama” ?
6 Firmly click, “YES”
7. Don’t You Feel Better ?
That’s good. Now tomorrow, add a file named ” Nancy Pelosi” and follow the same instructions from 2) through 6)
And the next day add one named Tim Pape and do trhe same
Next day add Senator Evan Bayh and do the same
Next day add Pat Bauer and do likewise
Next day add Senator Olympia Snowe and do the same
And on the seventh day, you will really feel much more positive!
Filed Under Uncategorized | 70 Comments
Is Allen County Indiana the real All-America city?
8/7/09 @ 1:05 am
The persons from our area who went to Florida last June to “sell” Fort Wayne to the judges of the All- America City did not appear to be from our city, but were from our county.
First, the two young ladies who are students at Woodlan High School (which is not located in Fort Wayne) presented the “Engaging Our Youth” portion of the presentation. The program they talked about is a program of the Allen County Superior Court, started by Judge Charles Pratt some 10 years ago. The program began the first annual ”Allen County United Youth Summit” in March of 2007. So it appears that this heralded program was begun by and is run by the Allen County government - not the City of Fort Wayne.
The second part of the presentation was on the “Open Arms” programs helping immigrant refugees move to the USA, specifically to Allen County, Indiana and then helping them get settled in our area. The organizations that have been working with these people can be linked to the area by their names: Fort Wayne Community Schools, East Allen County Schools, Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement, Fort Wayne/ Allen County Department of Health, Matthew 25, United Way of Allen County, African Immigrant Social and Economic Development Agency, Crime Victim Care of Allen County, and the Refugee Resource Center. None of these groups can be traced to Fort Wayne City Government for it’s establishment (except maybe FWCS) or it’s ongoing support. But yet, our present elected officials sure are proud to point out how they are responsible for the sucesses.
The last area is the “trailblazing”. From what has been shared by the delegates, Oprah Winfrey, who is not a citizen of Fort Wayne probably contributed the “starter” for this part of the presentation. The Aboite area of our county has not been the most encouraging group of Fort Wayne citizens due to their being recently annexed into the city. The Aboite New Trails, Inc. was founded prior to this annexing and the Northwest Allen Trails, Inc. unit lies mainly ourside the city limits to our northeast. The New Haven/Adams Township Parks and Recreation who have been involved also are not located in Fort Wayne. The City of Fort Wayne did match contributions on a dollar for dollar match, which amounted to around $620,000 of the $1,200,000 being spent on the Toepath Trail portion of the planned trails (which I believe is almost all within the city limits).
The All-America City 2009 Committee Members included 16 out of 31 who work for the city of Fort Wayne. The steering committee of 7 persons was represented by 6 of them working for the City of Fort Wayne. The sponsors included Fort Wayne International Airport (another Allen County governmental entity), and believe-it-or-not, Hoosier Park Racing-Casino in Anderson, Indiana some 85 miles from Fort Wayne(maybe our mayor’s “Someday to Own a Casino in Fort Wayne” group?) The 30 delegates who went to Tampa to make the presentation was also overloaded with City of Fort Wayne workers (and our mayor and his wife made the trip also).
I realize that as a citizen of Fort Wayne, I am also a citizen of Allen County. But, citizens and organizations in Allen County are not all in the city limits. So who was honored with the award? It sure wasn’t Allen County - but shouldn’t it have been?
Filed Under Uncategorized | 4 Comments
Rally Around Free Heath Care Choices
7/8/09 @ 5:14 pm
Tomorrow, Thursday July 9th at 12 Noon a rally will be held on the Allen County Courthouse Square (The Green). David McIntosh who was an Indiana Congressman, will be the highlight speaker. The first 150 people will get free Coney Island hot dogs, chips and drinks!
The sponsors of this event are AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY and PATIENTS UNITED NOW.
Support real health care reform! Attend this event!
Filed Under National Politics | Leave a Comment
Parkview Field to break even?
7/6/09 @ 12:32 am
Ben Lanka in a column on the front page of the Sunday JG covered how the city ”hopes” that it wil “break-even” in revenue it collects from events after it pays expenses. His analysis fails to cover all the facts as listed below:
Attendance for a First Year at a new stadium has generally exceeded that for all succeeding years. For example, 1993, the first year for the Wizards at the destroyed Memorial Stadium was 318,506 paid fans in 68 home games or 4,684 per game average. The total for the Wizard’s after the first year ran from a high of 278,631 in 2005 to a low of 201,395 in 1999. With 253,564 in 2006, 253,564 in 2006, 237,966 in 2007 and 256,693 last year at Memorial, these are the figures we can predict for future years.
The Tin Caps, for the first 41 games (through This Sunday) have had 199,656 attend of which over 15,794 have been free uncounted tickets, resulting in a net to date of 183,862 (4,484 per game average) toward the 275,000 after which the city gets the agreed $1.00 per attendee for the season. This means that for the remaining 29 regular season games plus a possible 4 playoff games to finish the season, the Tin Caps need another 171,138 paid fans for the City of Fort Wayne just to break even on the $230,000 that it is required to put into the Stadium Maintenance Fund this year. That means that they need to average 5186 paid fans at EVERY one of these 33 games! (This Sunday’s game had an attendance of 4,525 or 661 short of that average!). So, it does not look like they will make it - it may even be difficult to reach the 318, 506 record year(1993) total.
In addition, remember that by the Stadium License Agreement with Hardball, the city has to pay ALL utilities for the stadium - elecricity, gas, water and sewer. A good guess of the amount for a year is about $50,000. So for the city to break even, we will need another 50,000 paid fans in the 33 games remaining or another 1,515 fans per game. That gets us up to a required average of 6,701 paid fans per game, a number which has only been reached at 5 games out of the 41 played this season. Anyone want to guess how much will have to come out of the city’s tax revenues this year? It looks like over $75,000 will be required - AND THIS IS NOT IN ANY PART OF THE CITY 2009 BUDGET!
The city gets NO cut on any of the Hardball event concessions profit - it ALL goes to Hardball!
The city gets none of the yearly lease revenue from the 16 suites - ALL goes to Hardball! Hardball’s first year income from this lease will more than pay the cost of Hardball’s “contribution” of $600,00 toward the cost of the extra 4 suites that were added to the stadium at Hardball’s request. So, in advance, in one year, Hardball gets the $600,000 back - so it is NO COST TO THEM AT ALL!!!
If Hardball/Barry ReaL Estate ever gets to actually build The Harrison, they get to sell (or use) the almost $5 million Indiana State Income Tax Credits - so, again, Hardball/Barry claim to have made a $5 million investment in Parkview Field, when they net out to NO INVESTMENT AT ALL!!!
That means that Hardball/Barry have zilch - nada- zero-nothing invested in the stadium, yet they get ALL PROFITS from it’s operation. So Fort Wayne has invested over $50 million in a new stadium/ parking garage and Hardball Capital who has invested a net of nothing, GETS EVERY CENT OF PROFIT from the city investment.
Can you say, “Boy has Fort Wayne been smart on this deal!” -NO !!!!!
Filed Under Uncategorized | 11 Comments
Woodlan Junior-Senior High Moves to Fort Wayne?
6/17/09 @ 3:12 pm
Tonights News-Sentinel has an article about Fort Wayne being a finalist in the All-America City competition this week in Florida. One paragraph states that Sheena Tracy and Cheyenne Hale will be presenting Fort Wayne’s “engagement of youth” activities by talking about a program, “Thinking Errors” which the article says is at Woodlan Junior-Senior High School. When I last looked, this high school is in the East Allen County School system and is not located in Fort Wayne.
I guess that our schools in Fort Wayne, including FWCS plus our non-public schools, are not involved in any youth engagement activities. ( This is one of the three areas that a city has to be active in to qualify for the award).
So what does this say about Fort Wayne? Doesn’t our city government know that we do not have unigov in Allen County? There are youth engaging activities in our city- but they do not involve any governmental funtions and I guess therefore out mayor has no pride in them. That’s the “not-invented-here” syndrome in action!
Filed Under Local Politics | Leave a Comment
How are we doing on $235,000 funding of Stadium Maint.Fund
6/15/09 @ 1:39 pm
With 35 home games out of the scheduled 70 for the Tin Caps at Parkview Field for the 2009 season, an update of the attendance is in order to see if addition taxpayer money may be required to meet the city responsibility to the annual addition to the Stadium Maintenance Fund.
Note that attendee’s not to be included in the total are all free or reduced fee ticketed youths. Announced free tickets to date include 9500 school kids on the Wednesday games before the end of the school year. There are others, but the quantity has not been given - this includes tickets to media, visiting team officials, discounted tickets for fund-raisers, employees, game day performance personnel, and any ticket used by Major League or Minor League Baseball personnel.
April - 8 games total attendance = 35,846 Of this 4500 were free student attendees on 4/22/09.
So net April attendance was 31,346 for a 3,918 per game average.
May - 17 games total attendance = 78,570 Of this total 5000 were free student attendees on 5/6/09
So net May attendance was 73,570 for a 4,327 per game average.
And then, YTD total = 114,416 less the 9500 free ones = 104,916 for 25 games - for a 4,197 average
June up to 6/13/09 10 games total attendance = 48,579 - average for first 10 games in May = 4858/gm
And for the first 35 games in 2009 (one half of the 70 game home season) - total attendance = 162,995 less the 9,500 is a net of 153,495 or an average of 4386 per game
Assuming these averages will hold for the last 35 games, this will result in a total of 70 times 4,386 = 307,020 attendees for the season. This will result in Hardball paying, at $1.00 per attendee over 275,000, of $32,020 to the city. Per the Stadium License Agreement, all of this goes into the Stadium Maintenance Fund. With the one half of the “naming rights” payment of $300,000($150,000) for 2009 this fund will have a total of $182,020 in it. Per the Stadium License Agreement, the city will annually pay $325,000 into this fund. (In addition, the city has agreed to pay for all utilities for the stadium).
This means that the Tin Caps will have to have OVER 80,000 total fans attend the remaining 35 games for the $1.00 per attendee overage to just pay the $325,000 into the maintenance fund - or they will have to average 1,371 MORE per game in the second half than they did for the first!
THAT MEANS AN AVERAGE OF 6,757 for the last 35 games - just to break even! Only 4 games of the first 35 exceeded that average and I have not yet found out if the Girl Scouts last Friday night received discounted tickets so that total may be one less, since those tickets may not count.
And even more will be required to pay fror the natural gas, electricity, water and sewage costs at one attendee per dollar available.
Oh, and by the way, the Stadium License Agreement specifies that the only concession income that the city gets is 10 % of the profit at CITY SPONSORED EVENTS!
It’s a great ballpark, but the sales-job our city council got before approval, is very, very suspect!! As has been expressed by a few of our present council, most - if not all - of the net income from downtown baseball is going to Atlanta, Georgia!!!
Filed Under City Council, Local Politics | 5 Comments
The Courtyard by Marrott in Harrison Square
6/1/09 @ 3:47 pm
As promised previously:
Filed Under Uncategorized | 3 Comments
Who’s Paying?
5/22/09 @ 9:45 am
In this morning’s JG, Ben Lanka reports on the beginning of excavation for the planned new hotel in the Harrison Square area. Ben quoted Greg Leatherman, ” the developer’s financing for construction is not complete” in telling that the hotel project is not yet finalized.
So, where is the money to proceed coming from? It’s probably from the commitment of the sale of up to Six million dollars in CRED tax credits that the State of Indiana assigned to this project. So it continues - only public money has been spent on the whole Harrison Square project to date!!
Per the “Hotel Development Agreement”, Section 1.6 Contribution of the City, part E. reads, “Developer’s obligations hereunder are expressly subject to its ability to obtain an investor to monetize (purchase) such Six Million Dollar ($6,000,000) CRED tax credits on or before the commencement of construction of the hotel”
(Note) There is a limit on the amount of this tax credit for this project - it cannot exceed 25% of the hard costs of the hotel - which at latest info is to be $20 million.
So one-fourth of the cost of this part of the boondoggle is being paid using taxes paid by other entities in the state. And, remember ALL of the money paid to date on Parkview Field and the parking garage will be repaid only with tax dollars! WAY TO GO YOU BRIGHT PEOPLE -screwing all taxpayers in our state (but, especially us in Fort Wayne) Much more on this coming up (the screwing of our city’s contractors).
