Henry Administration drops the ball, again

When Mayor Tom Henry first unveiled his grand plan to purchase a building for City Government his proposal estimated that the renovation costs would be 7.3 million dollars.  When City Council approved the purchase they were told renovation costs would be approximately 7.3 million dollars.

A couple of weeks ago the architects revised the renovations costs up to more than 11 million dollars.

Based on its performance to date I expect the Henry Administration to make large errors like this; however, I certainly hope that our City Council takes exception to this and provides some oversight on this matter. 

It is completely unreasonable that the renovation cost estimate has increased by over 50% before anything has even been done.

I sure hope there is a strong candidate to vote for in the upcoming Mayors race because I really do not want to have to vote for Mayor Henry.

Mike

The Harrison Square Project is a dismal failure to date

I opposed the Harrison Square Project along with a large majority of Fort Wayne residents.  After the project was approved I still posted about it; however, I posted a great deal less about it.

The Harrison Square Project is a complete failure by any definition. 

The supporters cling to the fact that at great tax payer expense a pretty new baseball stadium was built downtown.  I agree that the new baseball stadium is very nice and that it is a pleasant place to watch a baseball game.

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John Crawford forms exploratory Committee

The News-Sentinel has an interesting piece discussing the fact that John Crawford has formed an Exploratory Committee.  John Crawford (Republican) was an at-large City Councilman who was defeated in the last election. 

I have to admit that there is a lot to like about Mr. Crawford; however, I did not support him in his last re-election attempt for two main reasons.

First he supported and championed the smoking ban that was put into place in Fort Wayne.  I strongly believe in property rights and I detest the smoking ban in Fort Wayne.

Secondly he supported the failed Harrison Square Project.  The vast majority of those polled in Fort Wayne opposed the Harrison Square Project; however, it managed to pass City Council with a vote of 5 - 4.  One of those votes in favor was Councilman Crawford.

The entire article is well worth your time; however, I wish to discuss three of its points:

First is this gem; “Crawford would not have voted in favor of the $27 million Public Safety Academy had he known it would fail to support itself, requiring additional subsidies from City Council.”  A lot of private citizens (including yours truly) opposed this boondoggle and correctly predicted that it would not be able to support itself.  You can rest assured that if I were ever on City Council I would have opposed spending a huge amount of money whose basic strategy was “build it and they will come.”

Second is this tidbit “Crawford also was a late supporter of the city’s $125 million Harrison Square project, the success of which he said remains unclear.”  Councilman Crawford’s vote tipped the scales and allowed what will likely turn out to be the second largest waste of taxpayer dollars (The Grand Wayne Center is likely the largest waste) locally.  It is incomprehensible to me that anyone other than Greg Leatherman can possibly believe that the success of the Harrison Square Project remains unclear.  The Harrison Square Project is a dismal failute and the majority of this City predicted that it would be a dismal failure.

Third is this fact.  Mayor Henry has been a completely uninspiring and ineffective Mayor in my opinion.  That being said the only announced candidate on the Republican side is Paula Hughes.  If Mr. Crawford were to join the race I would likely support him over the other two likely candidates.

Mike Sylvester

It’s Not That Difficult - Just Say No

The city council passed a budget with a 1% increase for city employees after giving approval for some unionized public safety employees to receive raises of 1.5%. the administration brought the union contracts to the council table prior to the budget hearings and I think it’s quite obvious that their strategy was to pass the public safety increase before the budget in order to gain leverage towards getting the full 1.5% for all employees. That’s why you heard arguments like “if we treat non-union employees differently then they will be more likely to unionize.”

It didn’t look like their strategy fully worked but now key councilmembers are considering changing their minds:

The vote could signal a chance for all city employees to recoup the lost half-percentage point raise. Council President Tom Smith, R-1st, said he has begun to reconsider the raises, especially after supporting a $550,000 lifeline to the fledging Public Safety Academy.

“I think that’s something we’re going to have to take a look at,” he said regarding giving all employees a 1.5 percent raise in 2010.

Somebody stop the madness. Of course city employees want more money - who doesn’t? And the majority probably deserve it but the only way to give them more money is to take it from people in the private sector who already make less than their government counterparts and who are facing 11+% unemployment.
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The Galloping Gobbler

I just returned from running in the annual 4 mile Galloping Gobbler put on by councilman Mitch Harper. This is a great community event and I would encourage everyone who stays in town to join in next year and burn some calories before spending the afternoon devouring massive amounts of turkey with all the fixings.

Last year I sort of lumbered around with a goal of finishing without requiring medical attention. This year, although I have only been running shorter distances (< 800m), I had hoped to show significant improvement. While I’m not going to be a competitive threat anytime soon I did knock about 7 minutes after last year’s time (if I remember correctly). All in all, I was pretty happy with how I finished.

Most importantly it was good exercise and a lot of fun. I just wanted to say thank you to councilman Harper and all the sponsors for taking the time to organize this event every year.

Happy Thanksgiving to all and I hope you get to enjoy it with family and/or friends…

City Budget Veto Absurdity Redux

Last year the administration claimed that they were considering using the line-item veto over the council’s decision to eliminate a PIO position. Councilman Mitch Harper reminded them that a veto can remove something from the budget but it can’t put something back in. Here was my take at the time:

I sincerely hope the city attorney was not suggesting that the mayor can veto something in order to increase a line item in the budget. The mayor might be able to strike the city council assistant position or some other act of retribution but the idea that he can veto a line that doesn’t exist is ridiculous.
[...]
here’s the thing, as any 2nd year political science student would know, you can’t veto something into a bill…The mayor will be presented with a budget and if he wants to eliminate certain line items then he should go for it but he cannot assert some sort of kingly right to insert money into the budget without council approval

Now, with two neighborhood advocates axed from the budget, they are making the same outrageous claims:
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City Budget Thoughts

The city budget was passed by council last not a 5-4 vote with councilmembers Didier, Harper, Pape, Shoaff and Bender voting for it and members Smith, Goldner, Hines and Brown against it. Quite an a strange pairing if you ask me.

There was ~$460k cut from the administration’s proposed budget. The bulk of this was reducing city employees’ raise from 1.5% to 1%. They also voted to eliminate two neighborhood area advocate positions as well as their own part-time research assistant.

In the end I don’t think this budget cut nearly enough considering the revenue reductions we’re going to see over the next 2 years. I think giving city employees a raise in this economic climate is an outrage but given the lack of support for serious cuts the 1% compromise was the best council could do.

The council’s plan seems to be to spend down a portion of the city’s $23 million in cash reserves once the revenue starts declining. I certainly applaud that but there’s still a chance there will be major structural deficits remaining that can only be addressed through cuts and/or a tax increase. Furthermore, I don’t believe this administration will ever be willing to spend down a significant amount of those cash reserves. City controller Pat Roller is too influential and it makes her job much easier to maintain them so I’ll believe it when I see it.

Remember the horrors that we were all going to experience by cutting so much from last year’s budget? Did anyone even notice? Now some of this is due to the diligence of city employees who are doing more with less. But let’s be honest too, some of this is built-in fluff that always makes up a portion of any budget. Seeing how they are spending our money at time when we all need it the most I think the prudent decision would be to continue making cuts until we hit our pain threshold.

Do we really need consultants for gambling and I&M studies and whatever else is getting paid that we don’t know about? Can the city live with less tree trimming and leaf pickup and audit department? Do we need to spend millions of dollars in interest and bond fees for every project that comes along? Does our mayor need to make more money than every other mayor in the state - are we really buying any value for that?

I guess you know you came to a good compromise when nobody is happy. City employees, the mayor, taxpayers - I doubt anyone is too thrilled with this budget…

Our Presumptuous Deputy Mayor

I found one exchange during last night’s budget meeting particularly entertaining. Councilman Mitch Harper offered up an amendment that would cut the mayor’s office wages by $60k. The deputy mayor immediately said that such a cut would mean the elimination of the city’s legislative liaison Ozzie Mitson. Harper rebutted by saying that he was not targeting any single individual.

I found the retort by Deputy Mayor Purcell to be rather presumptuous. I mean whose to say that the $60k cut wouldn’t be to eliminate his salary. After all, a city this size probably needs a legislative liaison more than we need a deputy mayor. Hell, we pay the mayor $120k+ (more than any other mayor in the state) - can’t he come to council and argue for his own budget? He has 2 PIO staff, numerous department heads, a legislative liaison and 4 neighborhood advocates - why in the world do we need yet another layer of management called “deputy mayor”?

My impressions of Fort Wayne City Council

I think that the City Council has proved to be a more effective body this year than in the previous few years.  I think that if we can get three more strong members of City Council and replace three of the weak  members of City Council in the next election our City Council can become an impressive body. 

I hope that those of you reading this post will post your feelings of our current members of City Council in the comments section. 

Here is my current opinions of our City Council:

I think we have three very strong members of City Council.  I think on vote after vote these City Council members show that they are fiscal conservatives and make rational decisions.

  1. Mitch Harper (Republican)
  2. Tom Smith (Republican)
  3. John Shoaff (Democrat)

I think we have three members of City Council that I like on a personal level; however, find myself disagreeing with a fair amount of the time. 

  1. Liz Brown (Republican)
  2. Tom Didier (Republican)
  3. Karen Goldner (Democrat)

We have three members of City Council I would like to see replaced.  I disagree with these members of City Council extremely frequently.

  1. Glynn Hines (Democrat)
  2. Tim Pape (Democrat)
  3. Marty Bender (Republican)

Interestingly enough I have at least one Democrat and one Republican in each category… 

I bet Jeff Pruitt’s list and my list are somewhat similar…

Mike Sylvester

Another Example of City Council Impotence

I found this tidbit regarding the city and county sharing the new Renaissance Square building interesting:

But Harper said the council should have waited to know the use of the buildings before approving the purchase.

“It is going to be very, very difficult for there to be a real exploration of all possibilities if the city is going ahead with financing today,” he said.

Brown said she supported the financing because she was confident the city administration would make it a priority to put the city police and county sheriff offices in one building.

“It will certainly be a travesty if it didn’t happen,” she said.

Councilwoman Brown isn’t just some citizen bystander in all this. She could actually use her power on council to force the city to put the police and sheriff offices in one building…

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