Wednesday, October 12, 2016
To: Sue Ellspermann, President Ivy Tech
From: Gail Riecken, State Representative, D 77
Dear President Ellspermann,
Please consider this letter as an introduction to a conversation I hope we might have in the very near future.
Last week I read an article in the Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette that confirmed my worst fears. The article leads me to believe that the Ivy Tech facility in Evansville as part of the IU medical center is not being recommended by Ivy Tech for funding in the next state biennium budget. There are six projects statewide, five most likely to be funded; Evansville not being one of them.
If true, is there a possibility of reconsidering this position?
When the project was promoted to the legislature, there was an assurance made to me from Ivy Tech (and I assume to other legislators) that Ivy Tech was committed to the medical school project at the new campus.
Even when the legislature did not fund the Ivy Tech facility in the last budget, it had nothing to do with this project.
Ivy Tech needs to keep its commitment to Evansville.
If Ivy Tech is not brought into the collaborative concept of this new training opportunity at the medical center campus, it will be an opportunity missed for our young people.
In fact, 75% or more of the enrollment on the medical center campus was to be Ivy Tech students!
I could mention the millions of dollars going into this project now benefiting, as I am told, less than 200 students, but that is for a later day.
Today my purpose is asking Ivy Tech to stand by their commitment. Unless other legislators learned something different prior to the final vote in the legislature, that commitment should stand.
Yours truly,
Gail Riecken,
State Representative, District 77
Thanks to Gail for making an effort, but a letter from a lame duck Democratic State Representative will not have much impact. Where are the Republican State Reps and Senators? Where is the Mayor and our County officials? The taxpayers are committed to this, although there were better choices available that would have cost us little or nothing, but the people who manipulated us into this mess surely aren’t going to remind us of their role in all of this. Maybe there should be an investigation launched to see if there is any evidence of criminal wrongdoing here.
They Mayor and his cohorts already will have their piece of the pie in the contracts let to build the facility. Once the Mayor is out of office he could are less if the facility works or not. All this money for 200 students? And I thought that the Signature School Thing was a waste of taxpayers money when only a very few of the Evansville Kids get to go to school there. If the Mayor really cared he would be busting his gut trying to get funding for the school.
Heck the School should have been put out at USI where it’s always been before. These 200 students are not going to have much of an impact on the Downtown or the city’s funds. The best the city can hope for is a small increase in the number or parking tickets that they issue to the students. Another waste of tax payers money by this stupid Mayor.
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This action is Riecken at her best. It is to bad she soiled her blouse with the ketchup stain the size of Urbana.
Would like to retract the last part of my statement because I do appreciate what Gail is doing and do not want to distract that.
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