Tag Archives: Indianapolis

Disappointing News

There are so many real problems in today’s world that it seems extremely petty to complain about this, but I see that The Indianapolis Star is negotiating with the Simon Company to move into the space previously occupied by Nordstrom.

The City has worked long and hard to get a critical mass of retailing in the downtown core. An adequate retail presence is necessary if we are to continue the residential rebirth downtown: these uses are co-dependent. We need enough people who live downtown to support retail uses, and we need retail uses that are convenient in order to attract downtown residents.

We’ve already lost the site of the former Borders to a bank. Now we are losing the Nordstrom site– a prime retail location that many hoped would be filled by a Macy’s or similar shopping destination.

When I first worked downtown, I was a lawyer at what was then considered a large firm (52). There were perhaps two places to have lunch; there was nowhere to shop. When I first moved downtown, there was no grocery. (What is now Marsh and was O’Malia’s was then an old and decrepit Sears Roebuck, with blue metal siding.) City officials and not-for-profit organizations have worked hard over the ensuing years to revive the core of our city, to attract a broad mix of uses, and to make it a place people want to live in and visit.

It’s worrisome enough that the soaring crime rate is once again making people hesitant to attend downtown events. If we lose the things that attract people downtown, that’s a double whammy.

This is just one location–albeit an important one–and obviously, Simon can do what it wants with its own property.  But it’s disappointing–another lost opportunity at a time when Indianapolis lacks the political and civic leadership that over the years turned “Naptown” into a great place to live.

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Mayor Ballard’s Very Strange, Utterly Misplaced Priorities

Anyone who lives in Indianapolis and reads or listens to the news knows that Mayor Ballard recently vetoed a bipartisan measure passed by the City-County Council that would have increased the size of the police recruit class. He says we can’t afford it.

The news also confirms that Ballard is hell-bent on spending $6 million dollars to build a Cricket field.

A friend recently sent me the following clip from a news story, in which Ballard defended his priorities.

During an interview last week, Ballard grew impassioned when asked about the decision-making behind the nearly 50-acre sports complex and the shaky history of the United States of America Cricket Association. (It has new leadership after struggling to put on cricket tournaments in recent years.) He called local reaction to the plans “very upsetting.” “We have basketball courts, swimming pools, tennis courts, baseball fields — we have all these other sports — and these guys have nowhere to play rugby, hurling, lacrosse, Australian-rules football, cricket,” Ballard said. “Why are they not allowed to have their fields, too? … I think, as a mayor, that’s a good thing to be doing.”

Let’s deconstruct this. (I will try to do so without hurling.)

Because our parks have swimming pools and basketball courts, we have an obligation to offer cricket and lacrosse fields? Why not dodgeball (which actually has more fans than cricket, at least judging from Facebook likes)? How about people who compete in hammer-throw tournaments? Curling? Surely Ballard is not suggesting that this is some sort of equal protection issue–that taxpayers have an obligation to meet the sports needs of aficionados of even the least popular sports?

And I’m still debating the propriety of government providing golf courses…

If there is one thing on which virtually all Americans agree, it is that providing public safety is a government obligation. (That may be the only thing Americans all agree on.) Police may not be as exciting as cricket (actually, they are; I’ve seen cricket), but providing adequate police protection is–along with ensuring that we can flush–an absolutely basic government function.

So, as Ed Koch might have asked, how are we doing?

According to the Mayor’s own task force, the Indianapolis police force is short 685 uniformed officers. The national average is 2.5 officers per 1000 residents; the current IMPD ratio is 1.7 officers per 1000.

The murder rate in New York City is 3.4 per 100,000. The murder rate in Indianapolis is 17.5 per 100,000.

The City is shifting IMPD assignments in a desperate effort to put more cops on the street without actually adding personnel, but given our current staffing levels, that’s equivalent to rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. The Mayor’s own task force reported that there is no alternative to hiring more officers–redeploying may help at the margins, but there is no alternative to hiring more police.

Now, I’m not unsympathetic to the fiscal problems created by Mitch Daniels’ tax caps. (Caps that Ballard supported, unbelievable as that is.) Constitutionalizing those caps was brilliant politics, and terrible government. The caps starve units of local government of badly needed resources, requiring not only creative fiscal management (we are running out of public assets to sell off), but also those “hard decisions” that politicians talk about endlessly but rarely if ever actually make.

The Council’s proposal would have paid for the recruiting class only for the first year; the City would have to come up with the money to pay for the additional officers going forward. That would require hard trade-offs–at a minimum, fewer subsidies to local sports franchises, fewer cushy deals for developer friends of the Mayor. It might also require the Mayor to actually appear at the legislature–something he’s been loathe to do, especially if such appearances would interfere with one of his frequent “economic development” junkets–and petition our state-level rulers to get rid of the 40 plus “funds” that currently prevent Indianapolis from setting its own priorities.

The problem is, unless the citizens of Indianapolis feel safe, we can’t accomplish any of our other goals. We can’t revitalize neighborhoods. Economic development efforts will go nowhere. The bike lanes, the Monon Trail and the justifiably lauded Cultural Trail will empty. Downtown businesses will suffer. There will be a downward spiral that will make all other efforts immeasurably more difficult.

We have a real public safety crisis in Indianapolis right now–a public safety crisis that could undo the years of progress we have enjoyed.

And instead of focusing on that crisis and working with the legislature to address it, we have an utterly clueless Mayor who is spending what little political capital he has on a cricket field.

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No Lessons Learned from Litebox

Remember the embarrassing Litebox episode? The City and State were offering incentives to “entrepreneurs” who turned out to be little more than con men. The President had a string of liens and unpaid bills, and people knowledgable about the industry said the business plan displayed a lack of understanding of the manufacturing process.

At the time the Lightbox fiasco was uncovered, critics noted that a cursory Google search would have uncovered the problems.

Fast forward to Cricket.

Mayor Ballard is obviously enamored with the idea that Indianapolis will be a Cricket venue–so enamored, in fact, that he prefers to fund Cricket fields rather than the additional police the city so desperately needs. He has ignored bipartisan concerns of the City-County Council, and is moving forward, with an announcement that Indianapolis will host the next three national Cricket Championships.

So what does a cursory Google search tell us about the USA Cricket Association and support for cricket generally? Well, the USACA has no scheduled domestic tournaments for 2013 and has not held a 50-over national championship since 2010. Despite Ballard’s rosy predictions of large turnouts,

“Poor spectator turnout for domestic events has been a routine problem for tournaments staged in Lauderhill, Florida at the $70 million Central Broward Regional Park. After opening in 2008, USACA held their Men’s 50-over National Championship at the 5000 seat stadium in Florida in 2009 and 2010, during which not more than a few dozen people attended. Roughly the same amount of spectators turned out this March for the 2013 ICC Americas Division One Twenty20 tournament, which USA won 8-0 to clinch a spot at the 2013 ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier. None of the matches were broadcast on TV or radio.

“Not one of those events puts anybody in the stands,” said Lauderhill Mayor Richard J Kaplan in an interview with ESPNcricinfo in April. “It doesn’t sell one ticket. I don’t need a multi-million dollar stadium with 5000 permanent seats to sit there with nobody using it.”

Other information readily available through a Google search includes lawsuits against the USACA by California and other regional members, and sanctions from the International body.

Now, maybe all of these problems have been resolved. Maybe they haven’t. I’d feel a whole lot better if I thought anyone in the Administration had taken the time to investigate.

Or even just Google.

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Will He or Won’t He?

I believe today is the last day Governor Pence can veto the “Imperial Mayor” bill.  (If he fails to either sign or veto it, it becomes law without his signature.)

Leaving aside the numerous problems with the bill itself (the provisions eliminating the At-Large Councilors have gotten most of the attention, but they are the least of it–as I’ve written previously, the provisions shifting powers to the Mayor are an invitation to serious corruption), the political calculus is interesting.

Pence has taken a lot of criticism for his less-than-vigorous performance in office thus far. In a number of situations, he’s done a pretty credible imitation of a potted plant. A veto of a bill sponsored and passed by his own party, accompanied by a defense of home rule and/or good-government principles, would begin to change the perception of indecision and floundering, and would look principled.

A veto would also take a potent issue off the table before the next Mayoral race. Indianapolis residents of both parties have expressed outrage over the legislature’s “we know better than you what’s good for you” attitude. The General Assembly’s refusal to let us decide for ourselves whether we want transit was bad enough, but most Indianapolis people I know–Republican or Democrat–see the Imperial Mayor bill as a giant “fuck you.” Paul Ogden has written what is probably the best analysis of why the bill is bad politically for the GOP. Indianapolis is getting bluer by the year, but resentment over this bill is likely to accelerate that process.

So a veto would make the Governor look statesmanlike, and would actually do his party a favor.

The question is: does he understand that? We’ll see today.

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“Good Enough”

Morton Marcus once identified the major barrier to progress in our state as the widespread belief that mediocre is “good enough.”  He was right. It may be that our persistent disinclination to aim high is linked to a contempt for “elitism,” or it may be that we’ve decided that we aren’t willing to expend the effort needed to escape second-rate status.

Whatever the reason, the results of our lack of civic ambition can be seen everywhere: our neglected parks, our under-resourced public schools, the pathetic bus system that passes for our version of public transportation.

What I remember most about my tenure in the Hudnut Administration, back in the late 1970s, is the effort to change that attitude. Mayor Hudnut was determined to make Indianapolis “no mean City”–and that meant paying attention to the built environment’s design and maintenance, among other things. Back then, streets in the Mile Square were swept daily, and the “Clean City Committee” encouraged attention to other aspects of civic tidiness. The improvements to Monument Circle were made during Hudnut’s tenure, as were numerous other brick-and-mortar projects intended to strengthen the city’s core and improve the physical environment we share.

Design matters, and during the Hudnut Administration there was recognition of that fact. Today, the creation of urban amenities depends almost entirely on the generosity of philanthropists. The Cultural Trail is a good example.

It has been over thirty years since the improvements to Monument Circle, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that those improvements are a bit tired. It is time for some refurbishing–some attention to a public space that has been recognized as one of the best such amenities in the country. So the recent announcement by the Ballard Administration that such a refurbishing would be undertaken was welcome–until the details emerged.

The City intends to hire engineers to oversee the project. Not architects.

A decision to hand over the redesign of one of the most important civic spaces in Indianapolis to people whose focus and training are on traffic flow and structural integrity is more than disappointing. It is yet another signal that Indianapolis has reverted to the “good enough” mindset that characterizes so much of Indiana.

Apparently, the Ballard Administration thinks Monument Circle is just a traffic roundabout that periodically needs repaving.

That’s good enough, right?

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