IS IT TRUE October 25, 2012

12

The Mole #??

IS IT TRUE October 25, 2012

IS IT TRUE the referendum for combining the governments of the City of Evansville and Vanderburgh County into a single entity are beginning to heat up?…a TV commercial that was aired by CORE the group opposing consolidation drew some pretty tough words from Laurel Meny who is the communications guru for YES?…one of the claims that has Meny upset is a claim that the plan of reorganization will “increase the number of appointed bureaucrats?”…Laurel does not mince words in her response to this claim as she calls it a blatant lie?…Meny stated regarding appointed bureaucrats that “The number of appointed officials following reorganization will not increase at all. Although some titles will change, such as changing the title of “Director of Communications” to “Public Information Officer,” the plan creates no new appointed positions. The number of appointees will remain the same”?…Meny was also critical of a claim that the reorganization plan will raise taxes?… Meny’s response to this claim was “The plan itself will not raise taxes at all. It actually will cut costs and make it easier to reduce taxes,?”

IS IT TRUE that the City County Observer invites letters to the editor on the subject of consolidation and encourage our readers to ferret out the facts as they are available in the consolidation plan?…the CORE group would catch less definitive grief from the YES group if they would use words like “may”, “could”, and “have been proven to in other locations” as opposed to stating things that elicit responses like “blatant lie”…we also welcome anyone from the CORE group who wishes to send us an article with direct quotes from the consolidation plan to back up the claims that the plan itself proposes tax increases or the numbers of political appointees now vs. later?…we support informed thought and encourage our readers and both campaigns to be accurate for the next 12 days?…one thing is for sure and that is some people will likely be better off with a YES vote and others with a NO vote while the benefits of the future are unknown in both cases?…it is difficult to project the future from a plan that for the most part dodged the responsibility of killing the sacred cows that keep per capita government spending in Evansville higher than peer cities?…if consolidation fails it will be traced straight back to a plan that showed no stomach for actually making the kinds of changes that really are possible?

IS IT TRUE that two checks totaling $1.64 Million were written in September of 2011 by the City of Evansville to cover construction costs incurred by the EVSC on the new North High School?…these checks were written on the Ford Center construction account and authorized by a blanket accounts payable voucher approval of the Evansville Redevelopment Commission?…this “honest mistake” as many in the chain of command are now calling it was just discovered and the $1.64 Million will soon be back in the hands of the City of Evansville as it should be?…this naturally happened during the last days of the Weinzapfel Administration at a time when the accounts of the City were not being reconciled monthly?…this is just the sort of thing that makes monthly reconciliation necessary and part of the laws of the State of Indiana?…that unfortunately it is not even surprising that the City of Evansville could misplace $1.64 Million and not even have the ability to know it?…we will also not be surprised if this is not the only such occurrence?…this is why AUDITS FOR PROJECTS LIKE THE FORD CENTER AND NHS need to be continuously updated?…it is just another day in Evansville when thing like this are discovered?…that City Controller Russ Lloyd Jr. has told the CCO that this is a BANK ERROR?

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12 COMMENTS

  1. If consolidation is passed, who determines the cost savings? The city can’t even reconcile their books now!

    Cost savings will most likely be minimal, as long as it excludes law enforcement and the fire department.

    VOTE NO!

    • If you exclude the two largest employee groups, do you really have a plan to vote on?

      NO!

      ___

  2. Meny’s response to this claim was “The plan itself will not raise taxes at all. It actually will cut costs and make it easier to reduce taxes,?”

    Clever wording there… The operative phrase being “The plan ITSELF”.

    More or less what she’s really saying there is “inanimate plans don’t raise taxes, people do”. I have to hand it to her, novel defense.

    Am I the only one who snorted at that a bit? 😀

    • She’s right! As are you! The plan itself does not raise taxes. The plan mandates that the Combined Government raise taxes, and provides the formula by which the Common Council will incorporate geographic areas into the Urban Services District WITH THE ACCOMPANYING CHANGES to the HIGHER TAXING RATES.

      Guns don’t kill people. The people pulling the trigger do.

  3. $1.64 MILLION getting “misplaced” through “honest mistakes”… This is the best possible advertisement for taking a libertarian approach to government. The solution is – never give the the irresponsible and criminal the money in the first place. Let them go on the road conning townsfolk out of their life savings selling snake oil like their kind had to do in the old days rather than elect them to government and give them a pile of money to divvy up.

    I’m one of these radicals who believes money spent on education should actually GO toward education, not to lining the pockets of the unions who want to build another multi-million dollar facade on the public dime.

  4. “Tax rates for the Combined Government shall correspond to the tax rates with the Service Districts proposed in this Plan.” (Section 7.2)

    “The Urban Services District shall serve as a taxing district to fund services for fire protection, transportation services, street cleaning, street lighting, legal drains, and OTHER SERVICES AS MAY BE PROVIDED FOR THE GENERAL BENEFIT of all residents of the Urban Services District.” (Section 7.3.2.1)

    “When a geographic area in the General Services District requests and/or receives tax based services provided in the Urban Services District, that geographic area will be converted to the Urban Services District WITH THE ACCOMPANYING CHANGE TO THAT TAXING DISTRICT’S RATE.” (Section 7.4)

    “A review of the services provided OR TO BE PROVIDED in the Services District shall be conducted annually … and any necessary alterations in taxing district boundaries will be completed by the end of that calendar year.” (Section 7.4)

    One can plainly see the Plan sets the formula for incorporating geographic areas currently outside the city limits into Urban Services District WITH THE ACCOMPANYING TAX RATES.

    One also can plainly see that the Plan does not name all the “tax based services” that are endemic to the Urban Services District. So, does the countywide City Parks District collect taxes countywide and provide services of general benefit to all residents of Vanderburgh County? YES!

    How about the Library taxing district? Same deal? YES!

    How about when the City Highway Dept. and the County Hwy. Dept. are combined along with the City and County’s MS4 programs (Clean Water Act mandated units)? How about when the EPA requires street sweeping for all urbanized areas, which according to the Census Bureau now extend well out to USI on the west, and Boonville New Harmony Road on the north? Will the annual review necessitate the incorporation of those areas into the Urban Services District with the accompanying taxing rates? YES!

    Same questions regarding the METS bus services out the Lloyd and up U.S. 41 into the unicorporated areas. Will that “Urban Service” kick in the requirement to incorporate those areas into the higher taxing district? YES!

    There’s more, but that’s enough to show that the YES! claim of no higher taxes does not correspond with the NO! claim that the Plan will cause higher taxes.

    Logic dictates both claims cannot be right. Either the Plan will raise taxes or it won’t. Use your own common sense to determine which claim is correct.

    • from: citymayors.com

      [In Indianapolis, where downtown redevelopment took place, post-merger, imbalanced burdens and beneficiaries resulted from the tax service district structure, now adopted for Louisville. As Savitch and Vogel noted, researchers have found that Indianapolis taxing districts increased discrepancies so that one region’s tax base was exploited for the benefit of another region’s residents.

      The Indianapolis consolidation program locked major components of its property tax structure within a taxing service district system. As a result, with many key urban services financed at the special service district level, individual portions of the county supported some of the burdens of redevelopment when the benefits of the redeveloped downtown were countywide and even regional in nature. Hence, rather than reduce service disparities, this merger may increase them by legitimating differences in levels of service and taxation.]
      (more)

      __

  5. Property taxes are capped under the State Constitution. That is true with or without consolidation.

    • User fees are not, Assesed valuations are not capped, they’ll just say your property is worth more. Are you going to sell your home just to prove it is valued too high? There is 19 yrs. supply of commercial real estate on the market now, how many residential parcels are on the market that won’t sell? Apparently they are not marketed at a large enough discount.

    • Perhaps, but only at a percentage of assessed value which can be adjusted by various methods.

      Also, portions of the levies that make up “property taxes” are exempt from the cap (i.e. the School Corp’s portion).

      So called “user fees” for services are not and are primarily at the whim of the local governmental entities.

      And let’s not forget COIT either.

    • The Yes! folks are playing this for all it’s worth. However the same folks sat on the reorganization committee that drafted the Plan, and during the planning sessions, all this “tax cap” malarky was discussed. Fact is, the Planners knew what they were drafting, and that their Plan mandates incorporations of additional areas into the Urban Services District ALONG WITH THE CHANGES TO THAT DISTRICT’S TAXING RATE.

      Want to know what the increase in taxes will be? Just ask anyone who had their property annexed into the City in the recent annexations of Knight Township. Their taxes were “capped” but their current taxes are significantly higher for 2012 than they were in 2009. Just ask.

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