IS IT TRUE OCTOBER 14, 2015

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IS IT TRUE Mayor Winnecke newest TV ad stating that because of his leadership unemployment is at a record low in 5 years?  …over the last 3 1/2 Evansville have lost jobs but also pick up some?  …we like see to the official data that backs up the Mayors claim that unemployment is way down in Evansville?  …its obvious that the Mayor and his staff should spend some quality time and visit the really disadvantaged areas of the 4th, 2nd and 3rd Wards to talk with the common folk in a one on one or group setting to find out how many people are not only living in poverty but are chronically unemployed? …it’s time for not only the Mayor but every elected official of this community to join forces to take on the challenges of help correcting our chronically unemployment issues?  …we believe we have the talent and resources to make a measurable difference in improve our chronically unemployment rate?

 IS IT TRUE we do agree with his TV ad that pointed out under the Mayors watch his administration helped rid of several hundred blighted home?  …we commented the Mayor for doing so?  …we know he understands that we have 8 or 9  thousands more blighted homes waiting to be rehab or put on the demolition list?  …we understand that he inherited this unacceptable problem? …we urge the Mayor to take time to review all the suggestions and merits that DMD, George Lumley, Tom Langhorn of the Courier and Press and Brownfield Corp are bringing to the table on ways to attack our unacceptable ‘Blighted Homes ” problem throughout Evansville?  ...we firmly believe we have the desire, talent and the resources to “kick it up a notch” and do better in next several years attacking the “BLIGHTED” home problems?

IS IT TRUE that City Council spent more time debating the merits rejecting the idea of giving themselves a 1% raise rather than discussing giving non union city employees a 1% pay increase in 2016?  …if Council would had passed a 1% pay raise for Council for 2016 they would have save the taxpayers $1,800 in the 2016 budget?  …Missy Mosby, Dan McGinn , Connie Robinson,  Al Lindsey, Dr. Dan Adams and Jonathan Weaver voted to give all non union city employees a 1% pay increase for 2016?  …this vote cost the taxpayers of this community a a whooping $600,000 dollar plus in the 2016 budget?

IS IT TRUE if a business in the private sector were considering giving their employees $600,000 in raises or to table the raises so they can remind competitive in the market place what do think they would do? …the decision would be simple,  they would forgo employees raises in order to insure that everybody keeps their jobs?

IS IT TRUE we wonder how many times in the last 25 years did the City of Evansville had massive job layoffs?  …we wonder how many times have you seen massive job lay offs in the private sector during the last 25 years? …the main reason why people want to work for the City of Evansville is for job security?

IS IT TRUE we wonder if you know of any local small business or corporation that provides their full or part-time employees with the following Health Care Benefit package? …the City of Evansville provides our part time City Council members and full time  non-union city employees Health Care Benefits package that includes: Dental coverage thats has unlimited coverage,  pays one half of Dental bill and the taxpayers pay the other half? … Council and city employees receive one free pair of glasses each year?   …Council and city employees have unlimited access to the City funded “Health Clinic”  and all the Generic Drugs are free? … Council and city employees  have access to “Wellness and Dietitian” consultants at no costs? …Council and city employees receive major discounts from city approved “Physical Fitness”  workout facilities for a nominal fee? …Council and city employees received at no cost a $50,000 Group life insurance policy? …Council and city employees have access to Drug and Alcohol Rehab help at on site treatment at any Accredited Center located anywhere USA with unlimited coverage at very little cost to them?

IS IT TRUE that the above city funded  “Cadillac Family Health Care” plan only cost our part time and full time employees a whooping $68 a month? …we wonder if any local business owners provides their employees with a similar Health Care benefit package that the City of Evansville provides their employees?

IS IT TRUE that our current “Readers Poll” ask;  Do think Council should give city employees a 1% rise that would increase the 2016 City Budget by $600,000?

The City-County Observer is excited to announce that our annual CCO “OUTSTANDING COMMUNITY SERVICE AWARD” luncheon for 2015.will be held on October 26, 2015 at Tropicana-Evansville Walnut rooms A and B.? …this years winners of the “Outstanding Community Services Awards” are: Vanderburgh County Commissioner Joe Kifer, well respected local attorney Joe Harrison, Jr, Indiana State Auditor Suzanne Crouch and former Vanderburgh County Sheriff and 8th District Congressmen Brad Ellsworth, Dr. Dan Adams, Dr Steven Becker MD, Tracy Zeller-President of Tracy Zeller Jewelry Holly Dunn-National Motivation Speaker on Domestic Violence, Cheryl Musgrave who currently sits on the Vanderburgh County Board of Zoning Appeals and also is a Commissioner on the Evansville Redevelopment Commission and Betty Hermann?

Registration begins at 11:30 am, the event officially starts at 12 noon on October 26, 2015? Deadline for registration is October 20, 2015? The last five (5) events were sellouts. The program will begin at noon on October 26, 2015. Reservations for this event may be made by calling Mollie Darke Schreiber at 812-760-4233 of via email at mdarke07@yahoo.com.

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32 COMMENTS

  2. It’s obvious that our ass clown of a Mayor also hasn’t driven by the Work One building and noticed how crowded the parking lot is, on a daily basis. He likely never notices that many people working in entry level jobs at the fast food joints or convenience stores, should actually be in professional or skilled careers. He and the previous turd of a Mayor have done nothing to attract high end employers. But happy days are just over the horizon. We have a new burger joint opening in the Greyhound building.

    • Are you saying that Haier and SS&C aren’t offering high-paying careers? How about Envolve Engineering? Sigma Packaging & Mead Johnson have both announced expansions with more jobs. The jobs from Berry Plastics’ expansion are above-average paying. United Leasing, Seal Corp., Whayne Supply…I could keep going. There have been plenty of good-paying jobs brought into Evansville in the past three years.

      • Most of these businesses are using temps at $10.00/hr for a skilled job that should pay $25.00+ /hr. The workers have to bust their ass for the promise of a full time gig. Many times they’re chasing that carrot for a couple of years. On…no benefits either.

  3. I would still like to know why Russell Lloyd Jr. thought it important to produce comprehensive annual financial reports (CAFR) and publish them when he was mayor of Evansville (2000-2004), but has not thought it important for the city in his time as city controller from 2012 to the present? An explanation is in order.

  4. Why isn’t Candidate Riecken attacking Mayor Winnecke and City Council’s plan
    to raise local taxes by 25% after the election to solve budget issues?

    • It’s 0.25% ( one quarter of one per cent) that has been bantered around. Get your decimals in order, DB!

      • LKB,
        Perhaps I am mistaken. I read a prior CCO IIT that discussed this issue, and that IIT referenced the current rate as 1%, and w/ in increase to 1.25%, the increase is indeed a 25% increase in taxes.

        ELKAYBEE, why isn’t Candidate Riecken attacking Mayor Winnecke and City Council on this proposed increase?

  5. Kudos for the part of today’s IIT comparing government with private business. Spot on.

  6. We are hearing if Mayor Winnecke is reelected he shall be making a major change in a upper leadership positions of the EPD? I want to stress that the major change in the upper leadership position hasn’t nothing to do with Chief Bolin but his right hand man.

    • B D, That sound stupid. “If he is elected Mayor?” He is already Mayor – is he not? If he wants to make a change why base it on being re-elected? Is that like saying I know I am miss managing the city – but if you reelect me I will start doing a better job?

  7. The Winnecke campaign is taking a page from President Obama’s playbook on unemployment. The “”official” unemployment rate is down everywhere and is at 5 year lows darn near everywhere. Evansville is no exception. The data used to calculate unemployment continues to ignore the underemployed, those who have used up their benefits, and those who have just given up. The inconvenient reality is also that the percentage of people working is at a 40 year low. In the country there are nearly 100 Million capable adults who for one reason or another are not working. Winnecke is using facts creatively to misrepresent reality. It ain’t the first time and he ain’t the only politician dishing out the BS.

    • WAIT A MINUTE:
      …in fairness, people trying to score political points suddenly have found “the labor force participation rate” !
      Was this metric used to describe employment under both Bush Presidents and for Clinton’s Presidency?
      No. It was not. What was used was the “Unemployment Rate.”

      Truth? The “labor force participation rate” has been declining for decades now. Declining under Bush One, declining under Clinton, declining under Bush Two and declining under Obama.

      Why? Is this problem due to ANY of these Presidents: Bush One, Clinton, Bush Two and Obama?
      Nope. It is a demographic trend.
      From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
      “Every year after 2000 the rate has been declining: 66.8 percent in 2001. According to the BLS projections, the overall participation rate will continue its gradual decrease each decade and reach 60.4 percent in 2050. The nonparticipation due to schooling has been steadily increasing and has been another major contributor to the secular decline in the participation rate since 2000.”

      WHAT DOES THAT MEAN IS HAPPENING?
      1. A continued trend of older Americans choosing not to work. (Many of them in here at the CCO, everyday.)
      2. Baby Boomers retire early. It’s been going on for years. These retirees are counted as “not working, even though they are RETIRED.
      3. Young kids used to go to work after high school. Not anymore. They go to college. Defined as “not working”

      This decline is NOT DUE to “the Obama economy, or the Winnecke economy.”
      ALL future Presidents will have this happen “in their economy.”
      It has to do with the nature of the US employment demographic….UNLESS of course you are trying to influence how people vote, then suddenly YOU IGNORE THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE…and “I’ll be damned, look at this” find something called “the labor force participation rate!!”
      The Republicans use this against Obama to win votes.
      In Evansville, the DEMOCRATS (well, some of them) use this against Winnecke to try to win votes.
      Go figure.

      • “WAIT A MINUTE:
        …in fairness, people trying to score political points suddenly have found “the labor force participation rate” !
        Was this metric used to describe employment under both Bush Presidents and for Clinton’s Presidency?
        No. It was not. What was used was the “Unemployment Rate.””

        In all fairness, when you look at all three Presidencies, you saw the Bush and Clinton era had the unemployment rate and the labor Participation rate tracking each other. In the Obama administration you see the divergence. That is why you look at it and see that the Unemployment rate calculation has become a joke.

        If we are going to be fair.

        • Congratulations on recognizing that the official unemployment rate has been made to be much less significant by the divergence of the two curves. That is a subtle difference that most people can’t see and don’t understand.

          Part of that divergence is fueled by the higher level of benefits offered by the social safety net relative to working a low wage job and part is because lots of laid off boomers found a way to get onto disability. The other contributor to the divergence are the growing number of people who work for cash. People find a way to survive and many of our citizens who once were productive taxpayers are now non-taxpayers. Some are still productive and others are not.

      • Yep. Again, don’t pester republicans with facts. They might just call you a gruberite or something.

      • Bravo, Don. But: wait a minute. You didn’t mention government programs that make not participating in the labor force more enticing.

  8. What kind of incentives did the Mayor have to give the burger joint to move into the old Greyhound Bus Station? Pretty sure a business would rather be out near the Green River/Burkhardt area than downtown unless they got a really good deal.

    • I would bet that it was too much yet not enough. Unless there is a guaranteed, tax payer subsidized profit they will not last long. Like the Stadium it will have to be subsidized each and every year.

    • Dear Mike

      Ok, Please provide us with the correct information and we shall print a correction without editing. Maybe the 3 individuals that provided us with this information may have misspoken on some of the details of employees Healthcare Benefits packace paid by the taxpayers of this community.

      Also you seem to be very knowledgeable about employee benefits provided to our part time City Council members and non-union city employees would to so kind to tell us what you know about paid Holidays, approved paid Vacations per year, personal leave time, sick days policy benefits that all non-city employees receive each year.

      Thanks for reading the CCO and your valued input.
      Editor

    • It used to be that better benefits (health and life insurance, pension, vacation time, work hours, early retirement, etc.) were used as enticements to get people to work in the non-private sector (e.g., “government jobs” – police, firemen, school teachers, military, medical, elected officials, etc.) where salary or hourly rate jobs couldn’t compete on a pay rate scale with the private sector jobs. Now these non-private sector employees want the best of both worlds. They want the benefits that they’ve had for years AND the pay compensation of the private sector. It’s crazy what cops and firemen and school teachers and politicians are earning as income PLUS their benefit package. These people are starting out earning more, and continue to earn more, than highly trained Engineers and Architects and CPA’s and medicsl personnel. They want their cake and eat it too!

      • “It’s crazy what cops and firemen and school teachers and politicians are earning as income PLUS their benefit package. These people are starting out earning more, and continue to earn more, than highly trained Engineers and Architects and CPA’s and medicsl personnel.”

        An entry level firefighter on the EFD makes about $16/hour, give or take some change. I think that’s slightly less than a line worker at Toyota or Berry starts out at. I suspect that an engineer, architect, CPA or doctor would not be particularly impressed with a job offer at that wage, but maybe the professionals in those fields who you associate with are lower tier…

  10. “we urge the Mayor to take time to review all the suggestions and merits that DMD, George Lumley, Tom Langhorn of the Courier and Press and Brownfield Corp are bringing to the table on ways to attack our unacceptable ‘Blighted Homes ” problem throughout Evansville? …we firmly believe we have the desire, talent and the resources to “kick it up a notch””

    The key is the resources. The City has the resources, but diverts the funding to other interest. It is not a matter of “Who Owns That” or “land banking” is is simply funding the demolition to start with and funding the PAPER TIGER programs that are supposed to assist homeowners make needed repairs.

  11. $650,000 added to the 2016 Budget? –There is only one word defining the apparent abandonment by some members of the City Council of responsible action in the face of expectations of revenues, compounded with Winnecke’s unsustainable/preposterous borrowing habits. —The word?—– Pandering.

    • Crash: You hit that right on the “money” so to speak

      You could see the hamster-wheel furiously turning on the sellouts that voted to add over a half-million to a budget that is already bloated.

  12. I’ve been out of work since 2004 and drew out 3 years of unemployment + all my extensions, put my wife to work and I quit looking for a job as I’m waiting for EarthCare to get one of the good paying jobs!!! hells bells I didn’t go to school for 6 years for nothing plus I don’t think Mr. Winnecke would lie to us because Carol would never never marry someone who would lie-she is to pure

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