Tag Archives: Indianapolis

Unlimited and Unrestrained, or Politics as Usual

It’s bad enough when partisan warfare leads to gridlock and a refusal to operate in the public interest. It may be worse when one party has super-majorities that allow it to pursue political advantage despite the wishes of the opposition and effect on the general public. We have such super-majorities in the Indiana General Assembly, and among the many kinds of mischief being proposed, the one that may be most nakedly self-serving would eliminate the four at-large Indianapolis City County Counselors, and dramatically increase the power of the Indianapolis Mayor to act without Council approval–indeed, in defiance of the Council–in a variety of situations.

Senate Bill 0621 allows the Mayor to unilaterally reduce appropriations approved by the Council (now he must either sign or veto them as passed), essentially allowing him to ignore legislative actions. It eliminates the requirement that the Council approve the Mayor’s appointments of Departmental Directors. It “eliminates provisions that allow the city-county council to require the capital improvement board of managers to make payments in lieu of taxes.” It gives the Mayor effective control of the Development Commission. And it eliminates the At-Large City County Councilors.

Quite the power grab.

This is terrible public policy–whether you approve of the decisions made by the Council or not, in a government of checks and balances, it is inappropriate to strip the legislative branch of its authority and to create an “imperial” Mayoral office. We can debate the necessity of at-large positions, but the purpose of those positions was to elect at least four councilors whose allegiance would be to the voters of the entire county, to balance those whose votes would be geared to the interests of their own constituents.

The irony, of course, is that this naked attempt to reduce the influence of Marion County Democrats is likely to come bite these short-sighted Republicans in the you-know-where. Indianapolis is increasingly a “blue” city. Upcoming Mayors are more likely than not to be Democrats, and the ways in which those Mayors deploy the new powers being provided to that office are unlikely to be palatable to the folks who are promoting this power grab.

That’s the problem with trying to game the system: you can’t always foresee who will be playing the game.

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Dependency

The media is reporting on a huge gift from the Endowment to Indianapolis Parks. Again.

The gift acknowledges the importance of parks to our quality of life: for recreation, for contemplation, for the aesthetics of daily life. It also acknowledges our collective refusal to grow up and take responsibility for our own community.

Lilly has made other significant gifts intended to keep our city’s parks from falling into even greater disrepair. Back when I was in City Hall, the Endowment was accompanying those gifts with warnings to city officials that the largesse would not go on forever, that the gifts were intended to give the City some breathing room, some time during which we would have to come up with resources to sustain these important urban amenities.

We haven’t. Instead, we’ve bought into the “how dare you tax me” mentality–the spoiled child syndrome that demands goodies but is unwilling to get a job to earn the money to buy them. The Endowment, meanwhile, is like the rich, indulgent uncle who gives in and bails us out of the consequences of our irresponsibility.

One of these days, our rich uncle is going to say “enough,” and we are going to be on our own. The question is: will we be grown-up enough to pay for the services that make a city livable?

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Our Deteriorating Public Services

I’m officially pissed.

The rant I’m about to embark upon was triggered by the City’s recycling contractor, Republic, which–for the third straight time–picked up everyone’s recycling except ours. We’ve had plenty of reasons to be less than enamored of the recycling program, which charges extra for the service (thus incentivizing environmentally irresponsible behavior). My biggest gripe has been the refusal of Republic to come down the alley, as our regular garbage pick-up does. Since we live in the city–the “hood”–that means we have to schlep our container down one alley, then another, in order to get it to the street. Not only is this inconvenient for elderly folks (and we’re pretty elderly!), it means that the street looks cluttered and trashy for two or three days, while cans are taken out and then returned to garages.

It isn’t just recycling. Regular trash pickup has gotten hit-or-miss of late. Crime in our neighborhood has increased to a worrisome degree–initially, the increase was mostly petty thefts, or cars being broken into, but more recently, people have been mugged and homes invaded while the occupants were still there. Scary stuff that we haven’t previously experienced.

When apartments being built a couple of blocks from our house caught fire a couple of months ago, it took IFD what seemed like a long time to arrive. That may have been an incorrect impression, but several people in the neighborhood reported a discomfiting wait between their 911 calls and the first truck. In those minutes, the blaze became a huge conflagration (we could feel the heat on our front porch, which is a good two and a half blocks away, and the flames could be seen for miles).

Not far from where that fire raged is a city park that–despite repeated promises–continues to shows signs of neglect. It has a very nice pool, but the hours of operation have been sharply cut back since it first opened.

It’s hard to remember that during the Hudnut Administration, streets in the Mile Square were swept every day. Now, from the looks of it, they aren’t being swept at all.

Part of the problem is management. Construction and especially street repairs drag on for weeks more than necessary (and let’s not even talk about the Cultural Trail segments that kept parts of Mass Avenue and Virginia Avenue closed for months on end while little or no work got done). Accountability for garbage collection is a management issue. But the major culprit is lack of money. So we have too few police, too few lifeguards, too few managers generally.

It’s bad enough that we’ve starved local government; it’s worse that we’ve actually built that starvation diet into our state constitution. Indiana taxpayers have spoken, and what they’ve said is that they don’t care enough about the quality of public services to pay for those services.

Unfortunately, we get what we pay for.

One of the unintended consequences of a city with inadequate public services and a deteriorating quality of life is that the people who can, leave.  And they take their tax dollars with them, triggering a cycle of further decline.

We aren’t there yet, but the signs are ominous.

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Quality of Life

Take a break from the battle over chicken sandwiches (and no, people refusing to eat at a fast-food outlet are not attacking the company’s right to free speech–they are exercising their own. Only government can violate the First Amendment!) Read the morning Star if you must (it won’t take long–without reporters, there isn’t much news), but avoid the embarrassing letters to the editor. (Yesterday, two letter-writers insisted that separation of church and state isn’t in the Constitution because, you see, the actual words aren’t there…). Turn off the TV ads for candidates promising to deliver public services with fewer tax dollars.

Instead, read this. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if we all stopped squabbling, and judging each other and generally acting like spoiled children? What if we actually came together to grow the kind of city that Len Farber is describing?

Maybe if we improved our municipal quality of life, we wouldn’t be so cranky.

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Charlotte vs. Indy

My husband and I have been wanting to visit Charlotte for some time. During our annual trip to South Carolina, we always read the Charlotte Observer, which (unlike the Indianapolis Star) is still a real newspaper–perhaps not as excellent as it once was, but one of the few remaining examples of actual journalism. The Observer piqued our interest well before the DNC chose the city for its convention, and since Charlotte is about the same size as Indianapolis, we were curious to see how the two cities compare.

We are staying downtown, in a historic Hotel, the Dunhill. Very nice. There are a lot of hotels in the center city–including a pretty posh Four Seasons. There are also a lot of corporate headquarters, mostly but not exclusively bank headquarters. (Being a banking center right now is probably not an asset.) Lots of restaurants, too–although, like in Indy, most are chains.

What I have seen that I like/envy: the scale of the downtown is wonderful. It is dense. The  streets aren’t too wide. The sidewalks–paved with very attractive concrete brick pavers–are immaculate (the hotel concierge tells me they are swept daily–something we used to do when Hudnut was Mayor, but not since). There are lots of trees and plantings, and the streets are lined with benches that invite you to sit a while. There are kiosks where vendors sell flowers and produce. While few buildings are architectural gems–most are “corporate inoffensive”–some are very nice, and the scale and trees combine to make strolling downtown Charlotte a very pleasant experience.

The transit has me green with envy. There is a free trolley that circulates downtown every few minutes. There are real buses that appear to be frequent too. But the star is the train. We rode it to the end and back; it was clean and quick and the stations were well-designed and attractive. The train and bus systems are integrated, with bus service “feeding” the train in what appears to be a very efficient transportation system. My only quibble was the automated machine from which we bought our tickets–it wasn’t intuitive to people like us who hadn’t used it before, and in the bright sunlight, the screen with instructions was hard to read.

That ticket dispenser reminded me of the confusing parking meter system we have just installed in Indianapolis. Charlotte has a similar system, but it is much, much more user friendly–and it dispenses a receipt. A real, genuine paper receipt, unlike ours. Their version sits on streets lined not just with the benches I’ve mentioned, but lots of nicely-designed bike racks. In addition, like NYC, Charlotte is in the process of introducing a bike-sharing program; rows of sparkling new bikes were being set out at various busy intersections as we walked around. Most impressive of all–there were free “quickie” charging stations for electric and hybrid vehicles. (In fact, there were many signs that Charlotte is trying hard to be green.)

There is abundant downtown housing. I walked through a historic district a couple of blocks from our hotel, where lots of multi-family housing–both original and infill–was intermingled with the same sorts of charming old houses, virtually all restored, that we have in the Old Northside neighborhood. Once again, the scale of the neighborhood compensated for some fairly pedestrian architecture. There were “pocket parks” everywhere–delightful little oases that appear to be well-maintained. Downtown also has multiple high-rise apartment buildings, condo and rental. I would guess that even with Indianapolis’ surge lately, Charlotte has a considerably greater range of downtown housing choices. I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that Charlotte has one consolidated, county-wide school system and excellent public transit (including 8 Amtrak trains a day to destinations like New York and New Orleans).

In short, this is a place where people appear to care about their city.

All is not perfect in Charlotte, of course, and there are some gaps that ought to worry the city fathers and mothers.

There is virtually no retail in the center city. No shopping streets. There’s a library, a “Discovery Center,” several very nice museums (I can’t speak to the collections, since I didn’t go in–only so much you can do in a day.) But no street had shops to browse. I didn’t even see grocers–especially surprising given the amount of housing. (Turns out I missed a food market, but the absence of other shopping was confirmed in a conversation with our lunch waitress.)

There is also no obvious arts community. I asked the hotel concierge, and he admitted that Charlotte had nothing like Asheville’s vibrant arts community. He hastened to say that there is a lot of corporate support for “the arts”–but it was clear he was referring to museums, concerts and the like, not to the sort of robust arts scene we have in Indianapolis.

So there’s my snapshot, after one hot and muggy day. There’s a lot to like here, and some important missing elements.

I’d kill for their transit….

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