IS IT TRUE Part 2 September 12, 2013 “Messing with Vetting and More Delusions” IS IT TRUE that City Councilman John Friend learned this morning in an email exchange with Brad Dewael of Crowe-Horwath the firm that the City Council voted to hire to do the Vetting of the downtown convention hotel deal that City Attorney Ted Ziemer has injected himself into the process of formulating the statement of work without advising the City Council that he has been doing so?…Ziemer’s meddling has not only delayed the start date of the Vetting but has also increased the probability that whatever statement of work and contract show up in the next couple of days will not be acceptable to Councilman Friend or City Council President Connie Robinson?…in response to learning that he statement of work has been developed without the input of the City Council, Friend fired off the following email to Crowe-Horwath as an advance warning that they may have made themselves a tool of the Winnecke Administration by conferring with the wrong customer? Brad, The council is the client, not Ted, and during our tele-conference it was made clear that, I, as the Finance Chair would be contact person. We passed the resolution on Monday, 8 to 1, to engaged your firm, not the administration. As a fellow CPA, I have developed a concern about a possible conflict and independence issue. It is simply, Crowe gives us what we think is the mission via the engagement letter, the council reviews and determines if adequate, we sign, and HCW provides the data or does not provide the data, if the latter, then you have a scope limitation, duly noted in your report. Creating the engagement letter around what Ted says and through HCW is NOT acceptable. The council will be pressured to vote on this and, as Chair, I will be forced to leave it in the committee. The public NEEDS TO KNOW THAT THE CITY ATTORNEY, and Crowe being the facilitator, will be delaying this debate. Please advise as to when our President will be receiving the engagement letter. John Friend IS IT TRUE that the City Administration has been calling for a quick vetting and a rapid vote on this incentive package?…in all likelihood the meddling of Mr. Ziemer has wasted at least a week making the September 23rd City Council meeting unlikely as a good time for a vote?…of course the City Council is not particularly wanting to raise water rates 68% and commit to a $37.5 Million giveaway at the same meeting?

IS IT TRUE with 1,462 students on 8 campuses the Indiana University Medical School is currently the second largest medical school in the United States?…if these students are evenly distributed across these 8 campuses including the one at USI that would mean each of the campuses would host just under 150 medical students?…given that the IU Medical School has only 1,100 students and the average campus size is under 150 students we find it to be astonishing that a local business leader is claiming that the Evansville campus will host 1,600 medical students?…that’s right, John D. Englebrecht of South Central Communications and a member of the Evansville Regional Business Committee has sent out a letter of support for the $37.5 Million hotel grant claiming that: “We can afford it and I believe it will be self sustaining. I also believe that it would go a long way in attracting the proposed IU Medical center to a downtown location. If the Med center were to go downtown that would mean 1,600 med students would be down here and would be the catalist we need to get our downtown revitalized.”

IS IT TRUE we thought that Mayor Winnecke was going to win the prize this year for the most exaggerated mis-statement in Evansville for claiming that the hotel itself will create 250 jobs when his own consultants estimate that number to be 41?…Mayor Winnecke has now been demoted into second position as Mr. Engelbrecht’s claim that the Evansville Campus will have more students that the total of all 8 IU Medical School Campuses now occupies 1st place in the mis-statement contest among the supporters of the big giveaway?

IS IT TRUE that yet another puppet of the regime of former Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel has paid price for doing his bidding and has relinquished his office?…this time it is long time union boss and Chairman of the Vanderburgh County Democrat Party Jack McNeely who has come to the realization that this party has been so shattered by the events of the election of 2011 that he cannot be a part of the healing process?…no one who was a part of the pinky shake pact to support neo-con Republican and Weinzapfel supporter Mayor Lloyd Winnecke will ever be able to heal the division in the Vanderburgh County Democrat Party?…whatever accountability that “the machine” that the pinky shake Democrats avoided by electing Winnecke as opposed to Rick Davis has come back to haunt them as the chickens come home to roost?…no picky shakers have been spared the scorn of the rest of the Democrats in town and they never will?…it is time for brand new leadership across the board in the Vanderburgh Democrat Party?

IS IT TRUE Mole #4 tells the CCO that there have been several bars in the preferred areas of town that have been GIVEN money by the City of Evansville to do minor improvements to their bars?…we find this to be as offensive as taking from one hotel to build another one and the bars in town that are not on the short list for the beautiful people and that have not gotten a government handout should be quite interested to get their hands on a list of the establishments that were favored by elected officials and handed a tip for their locations?

IS IT TRUE as the CCO published yesterday the hotels in both Evansville and Fort Wayne have been seeing their occupancy rates shrink in the last several years?…in spite of greasing a hotel developer with a generous hand out the occupancy rate and the average daily rate paid for a room in Fort Wayne are both lower than they are in Evansville?…even though Evansville is doing better than Fort Wayne we still are no anywhere near rates and occupancies that would ever be confused with a place in need of more hotel space?…at an occupancy of under 60% and a daily rate of under $85 it is no wonder that no entrepreneur is interested in putting their hard earned money into a downtown convention hotel?…that idiocy is reserved for the government of the City of Evansville?…it should really give people caution that Fort Wayne’s financial performance is worse than Evansville’s today even though they have a shiny new convention center and two hotels to support it?…we think this needs to be explained to the people of Evansville by a financially savvy individual with the society page cheer squad left at home?

IS IT TRUE that Vanderburgh County Council has identified $900,000 to cut from their 2014 budget?…they still need to cut $2 Million more to have a balanced budget?…in spite of this several members of the Vanderburgh County Commission are members of the hotel subsidy cheer squad and are serious about refinancing the Centre to join in the handout made necessary when the Weinzapfel administration prematurely demolished the Executive Inn?…borrowing money to give away for a fun and games project while cutting basic services can only be described by the word psychotic?…it is time for the puppets of the former mayor to be taken out of any position of financial authority?

IS IT TRUE in a study of typical subsidies to downtown convention hotels City Councilman John Friend has learned that the customary incentive is 25% of the project cost?…we then wonder how on earth the leadership of Evansville arrived at an agreement that calls for over 61% in subsidies when you include the cost of the parking garage?…Evansville may be desperate and struggling with a downtown of empty storefronts but we are not worse than places like Cleveland, St. Louis, and Detroit?…we wonder why our leaders are willing to ante up double what those places did to get a downtown convention hotel built?