On July 14, 2009 the Office of Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel issued another press release regarding the Homestead Tax Credit that is not available on the City of Evansville webpage where Mayoral press releases are archived.
In this particular press release Mayor Weinzapfel calls upon the Department of Local Government Finance to reinstate the Homestead Tax Credit to the full 8% level that just weeks before he had announced had been eliminated by inaction. The Mayor goes over the steps that have to be taken to reinstate this credit while reiterating his assertion that a bi-partisan of City and County officials made the decision to let the credit expire in 2008.
Just a day before the City of Evansville website includes a press release announcing a new downtown arena and a deal with Browning Investments to build a new downtown convention hotel.
The City County Observer would like to take this opportunity to respectfully request that all press releases that have been issued by the Mayor’s Office be included chronologically. This information when released is the property of the people of Evansville and should be part of the archives for the people to search at will. Failing to include ALL press releases whether intentional or by carelessness circumvents the purpose for keeping archival records. It is poor public policy to pick and choose the press releases from the Mayor’s Office for inclusion into the public archives. It is also poor stewardship of the archives of Evansville.
As a last act of transparency we call upon Mayor Weinzapfel to establish a complete publicly accessible archive of the press releases issued by his office while he has been in office. To do so would be a first step to establish that his administration has been as transparent and open as his press release of this morning claims he has been.
Link to press release asking for reinstatement:
http://media.courierpress.com/media/static/Restoration_of_2009_credit
The text of the press release announcing the arena and hotel is below:
CITY OF EVANSVILLE
ONE N.W. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. BLVD.
EVANSVILLE, INDIANA 47708
OFFICE OF THE MAYOR
JONATHAN WEINZAPFEL
July 13, 2009 Contact: Audra Levy
For Immediate Release (812) 436-4962
alevy@evansvillegis.com
Downtown Arena and New Hotel Announced
(EVANSVILLE, IN)- Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel is pleased to announce an economic development agreement in principal which will locate the new downtown arena on a portion of the Executive Inn property and a municipal parking lot at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr., Boulevard and Locust Street. Adjacent to the arena will be a new 250-room hotel developed by Browning Investments.
“A new arena and a new hotel will provide a tremendous boost to our entire City. Not only will these facilities speed up our revitalization efforts and attract new economic development, but they will create hundreds of new jobs for area residents,†said Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel. “We have found a great partner in Browning. We welcome their investment in Evansville and the future of our community.â€
Browning Investments has an agreement in principal with Mutual Hospitality, Inc., which has owned the Executive Inn since January. Browning will raze the portion of the Executive Inn property that occupies the site of the future arena including the 6th Street hotel tower, the pool area and the atrium. Demolition work will begin in mid-August 2009.
The boundaries of the arena area will be Main, Walnut and Sixth Streets and Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. The arena’s “front door†will be on Main Street, which will encourage further development of retail, dining, entertainment, and residential opportunities along the Main Street corridor. The arena, which is estimated to cost approximately $95 million to build, is scheduled to open in the fall of 2011.
“The orientation of the arena toward Main Street made possible by this configuration is even better than the recommended site at Fifth and Walnut streets. The arena will be a perfect complement to The Centre, greatly increasing our ability to host conventions and other large
Looks like someone owes Mr. Davis a public apology. Shouldn’t there be a immediate and full disclosure of ALL City press releases that aren’t made available to the taxpayers on the City’s web page?
Yeah…Davis’ campaign advisor for telling him to sound like a paranoid $%%h*ole…Come on folks!
Rick called this one right, something stinks in the city of Evansville and it’s names are Weinzapfel and Winneke. When it’s true they are trying to screw the citizens, there is no paranoia involved
The pattern appears to be that someone is selecting certain press releases that are not posted on the City of Evansville website. It could be the Mayor or it could be someone doing what they think will protect him. Leaving these two press releases out was not an accident.
That said, these press releases were certainly not written to help Lloyd Winnecke. They were written and kept off of the website to help the Mayor and the Mayor alone. Winnecke’s run for the same office was not on Weinzapfel’s mind when these decisions were made. Weinzapfel is all about Weinzapfel and nothing else. He will hurt whoever he needs to get what he wants.
Of course this will be blamed on sloppy record keeping. Mayor will lay the blame on either Audra Levy, Katy Nimnicht, or some other poor soul who works for the City. He never takes credit for his messes.
Never the less “credit” for his Snegal administration, lies around King John’s neck like an albatross, and is the reason his name is not on the Ballot for Mayor, and that “credit” has marked him as damaged goods in the political marketplace for all time. Poetic justice for the Worst Mayor in Evansville History. The “Wolf in Sheep’s clothing” Reign is Over, Under, and DONE.
Gentlemen, I am seriously thinking that your hotel may never come to be……….
As long as the local and national economy are in the gutter there will be no new edifices of any sort here or anywhere else, unless The Messiah says so, and most of them will be statues of him!
Jack, what the hell ?
You promised the posters two weeks ago that an announcement would be made anointing Kunkel. Who is your source, and how quickly can you give him/her a pink slip ?
The Biscuit
I woke up thinking exactly that. What has it been since the city shook itself out of a stupor and hired them vettors? It has been about 3 months and no announcement. I think you may be onto them Jack. No one passes muster.
There will be a field of grass behind the Arena and that is something that we can name after Weinzapfel. I commit $100 from my collection plate toward the monument in the “Jonathan Weinzapfel PRESS RELEASE PARK”. It shall read, “Dedicated to Mayor Weinzapfel who with smiles and press releases could not get a hotelier to downtown Evansville”
Cheers Jack.
Weinzapfel’s Chickens Have Come Home to Roost
Reading something online is a CONVENIENCE. If you want a copy of it, go downtown and get a copy.
Our position is that either all or none of the press releases should be posted online. If there is to be a website that posts press releases then everything should be there. If there is no website we agree with you that people can all access it the same way. By the way, where in the Civic Center would one go to get a copy?
More importantly with respect to the website are people or companies from out of town who are doing research on Evansville. What message is sent to a prospective business that is doing basic research on a place to locate if the Mayor’s office appears to be selective about full disclosure of public documents. It is expected that the CVB or the Chamber will only post things that are favorable that they are advocates for. It is furthermore expected that if the City Departments or the Mayor are going to do press releases (and they should) that each and every press release is issued for public information. Suppression of public information through either sloppiness or selective posting is no way to run any government. All we are asking is that all press releases be treated equally.
Maybe it’s the terminology that has the mayor confused? a “Press Release” would to most folks be a statement given to the news/media outlets for publication, it should also be posted on the city’s web site because there is no real guarantee that any news/media outlet will have the space/time or inclination to print/post or publish the information for public consumption.
I will say that IMHO the press releases were never posted on the city’s web site, I’m sure most everyone knows that web sites are cache’d on a regular basis by Google and others, a search yesterday of several services that do cache web pages/sites showed that the press releases were never on the site during June of ’09 to January of ’10 while the cache data isn’t 100% accurate since the sites are not crawled everyday I would think that if they had been posted and removed that they would have shown up in that time frame on one of the cache versions of the web site. I even went back to January of ’08 and came forward to January of ’10 just to cover the entire time frame and turned up nothing related to the press releases.
Sites like http://web.archive.org/ go all the way back to 2005 with data.
JMHO
So what do you think blanger, is the Mayor palming some of the press releases that he doesn’t want out on the web in the future?
Maybe…or just making them up on the fly back dating them to suit the situation, if they are not published anywhere it’s easy to just make up anything you want at any time you want and say this is how it was….plausible deniability or CYA. 😉
Rev., palming 100%. Play only when needed to win or bluff. Kept Winnecke out of challenge game until Davis beat his proxy in primary. Then don’t play and save. You know how it goes.
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