IS IT TRUE that there are several beliefs and ambitions within several of the ruling class of Evansville that make very little cognitive sense when all current things are considered?…one of those beliefs that are not validated by fact is that Evansville has a thriving and vibrant downtown and that there is a growing base of the population in downtown Evansville?…this has been asserted for more than a decade. Still, it, unfortunately, is not true or has made little or no difference?…before 2010, there was an effort to provide incentives to get people to move downtown with some success insofar as converting vacated and abandoned retail space into residential units?…the old JC Penney and the old DeJongs were both converted to condominiums and look pretty good?…there were several other properties that converted upstairs space into living quarters?… let’s examine some hard data on how population growth in downtown Evansville has progressed?
IS IT TRUE that between the years of 2012 and 2022 the population of downtown tracts in the City of Evansville decreased by a staggering 15.6%?…during that same 10-year period the population of non-downtown tracts increased a smidgeon by 0.2%?…the income of the people who remained in the downtown tracts increased by 10.5% during that decade and the non-downtown tract dwellers only increased by 8.6%?…that according to the CPI inflation calculator on the website of the United States Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the cumulative inflation rate from 2012 to 2022 was 27.4% meaning that Evansville is not even keeping up with half of the cost of living inside or outside the downtown area?…this may reflect the obsession with fun and games instead of activities that are of substance that create wealth and pay living wages?…with a downtown that is shrinking in population in spite of an abundance of construction and conversions, does it really make sense to aspire to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on riverfront lifestyle projects?
IS IT TRUE that recent FBI data puts Evansville, Indiana at the 22nd most violent crime-ridden city in the United States of America, with a violent crime rate of 8.15 per thousand residents?…that means that there are 21 more violent cities in the nation and list was headed by Memphis, Tennessee but included the legacy pain pits of Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Baltimore, Kansas City and other large places that typically have terrible neighborhoods?…there were even 5 medium-sized cities that are more violent than Evansville is and our midwestern neighbors like Peoria, Dayton and Flint all are more violent?…this is not good company to keep if efforts to grow the population with higher earning people is the goal?
