Politics at it's "best".
One of the dumbest things they ever did here was when they tore down Market
Square Arena. That was the LAST place Elvis performed. They could have sold
chunks of it under that label to all the Elvis fans world wide heck maybe
even galaxy wide, and probably have enough money to build the new stadium
with no tax money :-)
Chuck
-----Original Message-----
From: cpf0000-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:cpf0000-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Jeff Crosby
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2007 3:01 PM
To: 'Open discussion among iSeries Users'
Subject: Re: [CPF0000] Indianapolis - Ballard grabs upset win in mayoral
race
I live outside the city limits, so I was not voting, but:
Mayor: Tom Henry (D) elected mayor over Matt Kelty (R).
Kelty was under felony indictment (9 counts) over campaign finances. It's
convoluted, and, if I understand correctly, a technicality in
borrowing/lending money to his campaign. He could have gotten the exact
same end results financially without a problem if he'd done the paperwork
differently, again if I understand right. I've heard it explained 3 times
and I'm still not sure. The democrats really pushed on it and brought it to
light, but not until _after_ Kelty's name was officially on the ballot.
Under Indiana law, once a name is officially on the ballot, it cannot be
removed/replaced unless 1) the person dies, or 2) is convicted of a felony.
Therefore Kelty and the Republicans were screwed. Kelty's name had to stay
on _and_ there's no way he could have gotten a fair trial in a matter of
weeks to clear it up before the election _and_ if convicted after the
election, he'd lose the office. So who you gonna vote for? Those rascally
Democrats. I bet no one pays attention now how the indictments are handled,
the election is over. Might even be dropped. We've had a Democrat for
mayor the past 8 years, so no difference there.
City Council: 2 longterm council member went down to defeat. Republicans
have a 5-4 majority (was 6-3).
John Crawford by 100-150 votes, and Don Schmidt by a razor-thin 13 votes. I
expect a recount there. Crawford was a bigtime promoter of the smoking ban.
There is no smoking of any kind in any public building (govt or business)
within the city limits, nor within 20' of any entrance. Crawford even
talked up banning smoking in private residences and vehicles. OTOH, the
tents put up for the 3 Rivers Festival every summer were allowed to have
smoking (the city makes the money there). Bars and tavern owners were
pi$$ed. Not so much that there were restrictions, but the fact this is
still supposed to be a free country and each business should be able to
decide that on it's own. To top it off, about 6-8 years ago, restrictions
had been put in place in that restaurants needed separate smoking/nonsmoking
areas. No smoking anywhere where patrons could be under 21, effectively
limiting it to the bar side. And it had to be completely enclosed and
sealed off, with a separate, special ventilation system. Some restaurants
spent a _lot_ of money to do this setup, and now it's all kaput since
there's no smoking, period. County bars can still have smoking.
Both Crawford and Schmidt voted in favor of the Harrison Square project
downtown. The city spent millions buying up property, and will be building
a new baseball stadium downtown that will revitalize everything about
downtown. Hardball Capital, new owners of the Ft Wayne Wizards single A
minor league baseball team will be the beneficiary. Never mind that we have
a 10-year-old stadium on the north side with plenty of parking. Never mind
there's no parking downtown. Never mind the stadium will be unused 7 months
of the year. Never mind building a 3rd hotel downtown even though the 2
existing hotels can't seem to make a go of it. Oh, and _all_ of this will
be accomplished without raising taxes. And monkeys will fly out of my butt,
too. This was all a fait accompli before the public knew what was
happening.
