… or he thinks WE are.

The City of Indianapolis is not borrowing mony to sell our assets. Citizen’s Gas will upfront the money to purchase the assets from us and that will net us $450 million dollars. That is what we’ll use to improve our streest and sidewalks. That is a pile of paper obligations that they make the commitment to repay. And now that obligation to repay which was the City’s is now Citizen’s. It’s on the backs of the ratepayers. The ratepayers fund utilities. Well, not all ratepayers are taxpayers in the city of Indianapolis. About 85%. And what we’re doing is takng th cost of running the utility and capitalizing on the asset we have and taking $450 million from that asset to make improvements to our streets and sidewalks. Which, as you know, we have a deficit in excess of a billion dollars at the MOST any mayor has done in the last 15 years is $7 million prior to this Mayor who recently budgeted $29 million forthis problem. So we’re taking a substantial leap forward in addressing those broken promises of years’ past as ir relates to neighborhood organizations and community groups that all need and want these improvements

Ryan, you can’t be serious. We’re supposed to swallow that crap and believe it?

In your own words this $425 million is a pile of paper obligations, it consists of ‘up-fronted’ money from Citizen’s Gas, transferred from the City to Citizen’s Gas, put on the back of the ratepayer, and money is to be taken from the asset and funneled into street and sidewalk repair.

Really? You should listen to the videotape of yourself saying these things. It sounds complete crazy.

In your written introductory remarks, posted on FOX59.com, you said:

The Council should approve the sale of the water and waste water utilities to Citizen’s Energy Group.

Two of the largest problems restricting economic development and facing the citizens of Indianapolis are the projected 400% increases in utility cost and a 1.3 Billion dollar deferred maintenance/replacement of our streets and sidewalks. The Mayor’s visionary proposal is a holistic approach aimed at improving Indianapolis’s future as it relates to each of these issues. The proposed sale will empower a proven, efficient and responsible utility company to manage our utilities free from political influence but for the expressed benefit of the citizens of Indianapolis. Citizen’s is committed to realizing efficiencies that mitigate future rate increases by at least 25%.

Additionally, the 1.9 billion dollar sale of the utilities will realize approximately 445 million dollars for infrastructure improvements. This structure has multiple benefits. First, the city will eliminate the 900 million dollars of debt on an asset we purchased for 550 million just a few years back. Second, the city will be the only city in the country with a funded infrastructure improvement plan over the next 4-5 years. Third, we will have gone nearly half way to addressing years of ignored and underfunded improvements to our streets and sidewalks. Fourth, we will have the capacity to fund infrastructure improvements needed to attract and retain businesses seeking a stable, predictable and reliable place to do business. Last and certainly not least, years of broken promises to neighborhood associations, community groups and small business can finally be addressed with much needed and now funded improvements.

So, we already have a 400% rate hike looming, the transfer to Citizen’s will ‘realize’ $445 million (can’t you settle on one number and at least be consistent?) which is not magic money materialized out of thin air, it’s money the ratepayers must bay back ostensibly through still MORE rate hikes. But the City will realize $450 million. By ‘realize’ you mean what, exactly, ‘materialize out of thin air?’

And you have the audacity to imply a $900 million debt is ‘eliminated.’ No, Ryan, it is transferred to Citizen’s Gas, and thus to its ratepayers. It hasn’t been eliminated at all. It has been moved and renamed and you pretend it is gone. This is much like the debt on both Market Square Arena and the RCO Dome, whose debts were moved and renamed, but ultimately only shifted to new borrowing arrangements. That debt never went away, either.

And by this ‘funny money’ gambit, you fix up ‘broken promises.’ What promises, to whom, by whom and when?

And to top it off you drag out the tired old cliche about attracting and retaining businesses. Uh, Ryan, that’s what the Lucas Oil Stadium, Conseco Fieldhouse and tens of millions of dollars in tax abatements, TIFs and grant money to companies that move here, expand into larger facilities or hire more people is supposed to do. Now we can’t attract and retain them without fixing potholes and sidewalks?

Really?

Ryan, from here it sounds like you are completely off your rocker. If you do this deal we are SO screwed.

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Under the sheet?

The news tonight ran some footage from the NBA’s Summer League camp. I think that’s the new draftee Paul George. I wasn’t really following the interview because I was fixated on the apparent corpse lying front-and-center under a blue sheet.

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We did this for Paul Ogden after he asked for a better Photoshop job:

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Or is it there already there?

Toy soldiers run afoul of school’s weapons ban
By MICHELLE R. SMITH (AP)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Christan Morales said her son just wanted to honor American troops when he wore a hat to school decorated with an American flag and small plastic Army figures.

But the school banned the hat because it ran afoul of the district’s zero-tolerance weapons policy. Why? The toy soldiers were carrying tiny guns.

“His teacher called and said it wasn’t appropriate,” Morales said.

Morales’ 8-year-old son, David, had been assigned to make a hat for the day when his second-grade class would meet their pen pals from another school. She and her son came up with an idea to add patriotic decorations to a camouflage hat.

Earlier this week, after the hat was banned, the principal at the Tiogue School in Coventry told the family that the hat would be fine if David replaced the Army men holding weapons with ones that didn’t have any, according to Superintendent Kenneth R. Di Pietro.

Read the entire story from the Associated Press

UPDATE:
Student is recognized for his patriotic effort

(AP) EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – A Rhode Island boy whose school banned a hat he made because the toy soldiers on it carried tiny guns was awarded a medal on Friday for his patriotic efforts.

Lt. Gen. Reginald Centracchio, the retired head of the Rhode Island National Guard, gave 8-year-old David Morales a medal called a challenge coin during an appearance on WPRO-AM’s John DePetro show.

Centracchio said the second-grader should be thanked for recognizing veterans and soldiers.

“You did nothing wrong, and you did an outstanding job,” he said. “We can only hope that kids of your caliber will continue to defend this country.”

Centracchio also gave David a certificate that allows him to call himself a brigadier general.

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Oh Lord. what is wrong with the people in the City’s IT department? First they switch from a perfectly functional and easy-to-use online system for ‘Permit and Case Research’ to something called Accella Citizen Access.

This was about 10 giant steps backwards in accessibility, as finding information is now a protracted game of ‘hide and seek.’ Among other deficiencies, you must actually know which Code Enforcement division your property/case number may fall under (such as Health Dept, Permits, etc). Until you sort that out, they can only tell you that there was no case found. Mind you, all their case numbers are unique, regardless of what entity issued it. And you can’t search on an approximate address anymore.

And yesterday, they foisted another ‘gem’ of malfeasance upon us. They have replaced the simple, one-step Mayor’s Action Center form with an absolutely arcane and bewildering mess they’ve labelled ‘IndyRequest.’ What used to be a 30 second operation now takes several minutes. Assuming you can successfully get through the whole process.

This is an Adobe Flash based website. Flash, you may or may not know, is something that Apple detests and refuses to incorporate support for into their iPhone and iPad (which are only about the most sought after internet devices at this writing!) so anyone with these devices CANNOT access the new website.

Not only that, but what used to be a 2-3 click process is now a minimum of SIX steps. They tout their ‘improved’ way of specifying addresses, telling us you no longer need to know the exact address because they let you mark the location on their integrated map. And the map complains you haven’t zoomed in enough (you need to be at the ‘third tick’, whatever that may be) forcing you to abort and start all over. It conveniently tells you all your work up to that point will be lost. Gee, thanks.

Fine. Now they have a map that tells you ‘that address can’t be found’ instead of a MAC person doing that. You cannot mark something at an intersection. Their system doesn’t know the address of an intersection. Just brilliant.

You must traverse a sequence of 6 major steps, within which there are multiple other choices you need to make in order to find the correct place to file your complaint. Again, like with Accella, the user has to figure out what department they need to send a complaint to. Lotsa luck on that.

But this should ease the load on the Mayor’s Action Center, because people will become frustrated and give up without getting all the way through it.

And I could not find any choice that allowed me to submit a complaint about their horrible software. Sigh…

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