Home Blog Page 6444

COUNCILWOMAN BRINKERHOFF-RILEY OFFERS SOLUTIONS TO EVANSVILLE WATER METERS REPLACEMENT PROGRAM

52
All,
Reverend Brooks, thank you for your time yesterday.
I also spoke with Alice Withers at CAPE who stated they are willing to participate. I think relaxing the requirements would include waiving the requirement that they be current on the mortgage/water bill and raising the income eligibility to 150% of the area median gross income, adjusted for family size. I also think populating a list of approved contractors would greatly improve prices and insure that we are getting the best price for our dollars. A flat fee for where the pit just needs to be dug out and leaves/roots removed may also be helpful. Extending the time-frame for the work would also be necessary.
I spoke with Mike Duckworth Thursday and made these suggestions. He said he would call me yesterday, but I did not hear from him. I understand that Lloyd is meeting with Allen Mounts on Monday, and then hopefully Allen will be available Monday night to discuss a solution. There are potentially 1000s more of these issues as the City continues the project, and a better approach is certainly needed.
At least $1 million dollars needs to be set aside for an assistance program, or the residential meters should not be replaced where there are cited issues that the ratepayer is allegedly responsible to fix/replace. These are not situations where the current meter cannot be read or where the resident has a leak. Additionally, as I understand the contract with Johnson Controls, there is really no lost revenue to be gained on the residential side. I don’t think the ratepayers should be on the hook for millions of dollars in unneeded replacement work to garner a revenue guarantee from Johnson Controls on the commercial water use side.
I also don’t think the ratepayer or the City will see any savings related to the stated goal of eliminating the salaries and benefits of 6-8 meter readers with these new meters. The Water Department has grown in terms of the number of employees, even with eliminating these jobs, and given the millions that residents will pay for replacement parts in their meter pits, it’s just not worth forcing a completely remotely read system.
I noticed that the Water Department customer service personnel stopped referring customers to Hydromax on Friday afternoon. When I spoke to an assistant to Allen on Thursday, I was told that they were referring to people to Hydromax, because they gave a free estimate, and that Hydromax had so much work they were scheduling replacement work out in March of next year. I think it’s imperative that the company citing issues not also be receiving referrals on replacing pipes. They have had every incentive up until this point to find problems. I have residents who have had a plumber come out who cannot find a reason that the new water meter cannot be installed. However, they were told by the Water Department customer service staff that they would not receive another inspection. I’m not sure what these people are supposed to do at this point. I’ve suggested they submit a statement from the plumbing company that came out.
I have great concern that when faced with a large bill from a plumber, many residents will simply sign the waiver of liability that is offered as an alternative in the letter sent out by the Water Department. I think any waivers received from the 1000+ letters that were sent out over the last month should be disregarded. “Duress” is the word that comes to mind when I imagine the stress and panic experienced by residents struggling to survive who received a letter threatening to turn off their water. This is not Detroit. Water is a necessity for which threats to discontinue service should not be made lightly. These letters were terrifying on their face to many who received them, and the City should not take advantage of any waivers received as a result of its actions in this situation.
I appreciate your time and look forward to moving into a discussion of the solution.
Stephanie Brinkerhoff Riley
THIS LETTER WAS POSTED BY THE CITY COUNTY OBSERVER WITHOUT BIAS, OPINON OR EDITING.

Brigadier General to visit Harrison High School

0

Monday, Nov. 10

Brigadier General Ondra Berry, who is a Harrison High School and UE graduate and the first African-American Brigadier General in the Nevada Air National Guard, will make a stop Monday at Harrison High School to talk about his experiences and motivate students to follow their dreams. Brigadier General Berry will be at Harrison around 10 a.m. to speak with upper classman. The presentation will be recorded and shown to lower classmen later in the week.

VANDERBURGH COUNTY 2014 GENERAL ELECTIONS RESULTS BY WARDS AND PRECINCTS

5

Here is a link to the unofficial Vanderburgh County 2014 General Election totals by political Wards and Precincts.

2014 General Canvass

Open Forum Weekend November 8-9

70

Republicans Govern or Squander

6

Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle

Republicans may have won the Senate and kept the House, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is no inspiration, allowing President Obama to keep all of the leverage of shutting down government spending while the President wags the threatening finger of executive orders in McConnell’s face.

If Ted Cruz stays the course of conservative leadership and McConnell is replaced as Senate Leader, the Republican Party has the chance to achieve great success in pushing through policies that will actually create an environment in which businesses can grow and individuals can succeed.

If Republicans fail to achieve improvements in just two years, Democrats can certainly propagandize the electorate towards a reversal of this success.

“Hope and change” is a successful campaign theme only when there seems to be no hope and any change at all feels like forward momentum. We Americans learned all too well that campaign themes don’t guarantee positive results. Too many Americans still vote on the uneducated impulse of such themes.

Some good news is that Republicans in charge means tighter control over an IRS that has been illegally turned into a partisan weapon.

There might be more scrutiny of the Federal Reserve’s activity.

“If the Republicans take control of the Senate and thus have control of both the House and the Senate—two words for the Federal Reserve: Watch out,” said Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, “Leading the GOP wish list in dealing with the Fed would be legislation to open the central bank to more scrutiny of its interest-rate decisions, using congressional audits of monetary-policy matters that Fed officials strongly oppose. Many Republican lawmakers also want to require the Fed to use a mathematical rule to guide interest-rate decisions or shift its focus more directly to inflation rather than inflation together with unemployment.”

Republicans may actually be able to defy billionaire Tom Steyer who bought President Obama’s anti- XL Pipeline stance despite pleas from Obama’s union constituencies who just didn’t have as much money as Steyer.

Ted Cruz has promised to repeal and replace Obamacare with a plan that restores affordable major medical health insurance to the millions of Americans who now suffer from extraordinary premium increases as much as 300 percent.

Cruz wrote in USA Today that he will “pursue all means possible to repeal Obamacare. There is a reason Obamacare has miserable 37 percent approval ratings: it has caused millions to lose their jobs, be forced into part-time work, lose their health insurance, lose their doctors, and pay skyrocketing premiums. It simply isn’t working. We should pass repeal legislation (forcing an Obama veto), and then pass bill after bill to mitigate the harms of Obamacare. Prevent people from having their healthcare plans cancelled, prohibit insurance company bailouts, eliminate the provisions forcing people into part-time work, and repeal the individual mandate.”

Now is the time for Republicans to replace the failed Obamacare with a substantial improvement or be doomed in 2016.

Will Republicans do something as simple as passing legislation that strips American citizens who join ISIL of their U.S. passports so they cannot return home and wage jihad against innocent men and women? Democrats refuse and Republicans can hardly afford to fail.

A couple of agenda items Republicans will fail to achieve include instituting a flat tax and passing a balanced budget amendment.

What they need to do is pass legislation reducing the corporate tax rate to be competitive with other countries so as to reduce inversion, in which U.S. companies incorporate in foreign countries to reduce their tax burden.

Inversions include maneuvers such as Burger King buying Tim Hortons, the Canadian coffee-and-doughnut chain, in which Burger King’s operations would stay in Miami and the taxable corporate headquarters of the new company would be in Canada thus avoiding U.S. corporate taxes. Lowering the U.S. corporate tax rate would de-incentivize this legal behavior.

Now that Republicans have won the Senate and the House, they need to earn their keep just as the Democrats failed to earn theirs.

——-

© Copyright 2014 Rick Jensen, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Vanderburgh County Recent Booking Report

0

SPONSORED BY DEFENSE ATTORNEY IVAN ARNAEZ.
DON’T GO TO COURT ALONE. CALL IVAN ARNAEZ @ 812-424-6671.

http://www.vanderburghsheriff.com/recent-booking-records.aspx

EPD Activity Report November 8, 2014

0

SPONSORED BY DEFENSE ATTORNEY IVAN ARNAEZ.
DON’T GO TO COURT ALONE. CALL IVAN ARNAEZ @ 812-424-6671.

EPD Activity Report

SOMEBODY BETTER DO IT! By Gavel Gamut

0

Gavel Gamut

By Jim Redwine

(Week of 10 November 2014)

SOMEBODY BETTER DO IT!

If you have been engaged in the happenings of Unanimous for Murder, Chapter 10 will appear next week. For now, my thoughts are on last Tuesday’s election; perhaps yours are too?

To those who garnered the most votes, congratulations and thank you for serving. However, the following comments mainly concern those who dreamed of serving but will not have the opportunity.

I do not wish to plagiarize, however, after William Shakespeare, all who write in the English language are plagiarists. Therefore, with a respectful nod to Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If”, and to Teddy Roosevelt’s essay, “The Glory Belongs to the Man in the Arena”, I offer the following without further apology.

Our sense of schadenfreude as aided by media cynics aside, we should come to praise those who wish to serve whether or not they win. And, if they do not win, we should still thank them for giving their time, resources and hopes for a better place for all of us.

Contrary to popular opinion, almost everybody who takes the difficult step of putting their friends, family and themselves through a political campaign does it for the best reason of all, they just want to serve.

Few public service jobs pay as well as similar private sector jobs and job security is in the hands of a frequently fickle electorate. Worst of all, even our most celebrated leaders have their lives dissected for any item of gossip that can be dredged up. Of course, those pundits, critics and coffee shop experts would never have the courage to put others first and run for public office.

So I say, and maybe you do too, thanks to those who run and are willing to run our governments at every level from bottom to top.

Judges uphold denial of motion to suppress on rehearing

0

Jennifer Nelson for www.theindianalawyer.com

The Indiana Court of Appeals, after clarifying a point in their original opinion, still did not believe that a police detective tried to mislead a judge in order to obtain a search warrant. The judges upheld their original decision that affirmed the denial of a man’s motion to suppress evidence collected at his home following drug deals.

Victor Keeylen sold drugs to police officers through controlled buys. Those officers received authorization from the court to place GPS tracking devices on his vehicles. Police continued to track his car after authority to do so expired. They applied for a warrant to search Keeylen’s residence but left out the fact police had used GPS tracking devices.

The COA in August held that the warrantless installation of the GPS devices was improper but upheld the denial to suppress evidence of heroin, cash, paraphernalia and a shotgun. Keeylen had argued that the warrant for the search of his home was predicated on a probable cause affidavit that contained omissions that misled the court.

In the original opinion, Judge Paul Mathias wrote that the detective submitted the probable cause affidavit to the very same trial court and trial judge who had been authorizing the GPS searches for more than a year. The judges believed it was unlikely the detective, Ryan Graber, thought that the omission of his information would mislead the judge.

In this petition for rehearing, Keelyen maintains that the judicial officer who issued the search warrant did not issue all of the orders authorizing GPS tracking. But the commissioner who issued the warrant did issue the final order authorizing the GPS tracking, the judges pointed out Thursday in Victor Keeylen v. State of Indiana, 49A05-1308-CR-419. In addition, the last four authorization orders were issued by the very same court.

“The point we made in our original opinion remains valid: it is unlikely that Detective Graber was attempting to mislead the judicial officer issuing the search warrant by omitting information regarding the GPS tracking because the same judicial officer who issued the search warrant had previously authorized the GPS tracking and was thus well aware of the GPS tracking,” Mathias wrote.

Armed Felon who Fled from Henderson Authorities Arrested by Sheriff’s Office

0
SPONSORED BY DEFENSE ATTORNEY IVAN ARNAEZ.
DON’T GO TO COURT ALONE. CALL IVAN ARNAEZ @ 812-424-6671.
A Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Deputy assigned to the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force arrested a felon who had earlier fled from Henderson authorities.  Mr. Ronald “Ronnie” Terrence Hardrick was being sought on felony warrants for burglary at the time of his arrest.

On Friday, October 31, 2014 Mr. Hardrick fled from Henderson County Sheriff’s deputies who tried to arrest him at the Henderson Downtown Motel.  Mr. Hardrick was armed with a handgun and made statements that he would not return to prison.

The Sheriff’s Office, assisted by a Henderson County detective, located Mr. Hardrick at the Super 8 Motel on E. Morgan Avenue.  Mr. Hardrick was taken into custody without incident in the parking lot of the motel.  Mr. Hardrick is currently lodged at the Vanderburgh County Jail awaiting extradition to Henderson, Kentucky.

Pictured above: Ronald “Ronnie” Terrence Hardrick, 51, of Henderson, KY

 

 

1...6,4436,4446,445...7,375Page 6,444 of 7,375