The Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office was dispatched at approximately 11:09 AM to I164 near Covert Ave regarding a crash with injury. When deputies arrived they found an orange and black, 1984, Harley Davidson Motorcycle. The driver of the motorcycle was deceased at the scene. The passenger of the motorcycle was transported to St. Mary’s Medical Center for treatment of her injuries.

A witness to the crash stated to deputies that he heard a load metallic snapping sound come from the motorcycle just prior to an apparent tire blow out. The driver of the motorcycle attempted to keep control of the motorcycle, but was unable to prevent it from going down on its side. Both the driver and passenger were ejected from the motorcycle. The driver and passenger were not wearing helmets. Drugs and alcohol do not appear to be a factor at this time.

Identification of the driver and passenger will be released upon notification of the family.

The crash remains under investigation.

EPD Activity Report: August 23, 2013

Mega 70’s rock and roll act roared into Evansville last night for what was expected to be a vibrant and respectable crowd of fans in a new state of the art facility. What the members of Kansas faced when they took the stage was a cavernous but nearly empty stadium. Official attendance numbers are not available yet but a quick look at the seats would lead one to conclude that less than 1,000 people were willing to cough up the price of admission ($50 and up) to see this iconic band known for the platinum hits “Dust in the Wind” and “Carry on my Wayward Son”. The sparse attendance is a threat to future concerts because bands simply do not like to play before crowds that are smaller than they see at rehearsals.

Fleetwood Mac, another monster rock and roll band of the 70’s and 80’s passed on Evansville as a stop on their current tour. Mick Fleetwood, the legendary drummer recently spoke with CCO editor Joe Wallace at his restaurant Fleetwood’s in Lahaina, Maui about Fleetwood Mac’s upcoming tour. Fleetwood, 67 described how putting on a rock and roll act is very much like running a restaurant in the sense that “one has to perform worthy of an encore every night or lose your edge”. Fleetwood also spoke about touring and the little pains that come with aging and how such things make performing difficult. “That being the case, we only choose to perform in venues that guarantee a sellout crowd” continued Fleetwood.

Gibson County – Friday night, August 23, at approximately 10:00 p.m., Trooper Aaron Kaucher was patrolling US 41 near Fort Branch when Gibson County Dispatch received a 911 call regarding a possible impaired driver traveling southbound on US 41 in a red Ford F-15 pickup truck. Moments later, Trooper Kaucher spotted the vehicle traveling 62 in a 50 mph zone. The pickup truck was stopped on US 41 near Coal Mine Road and the driver was identified as Anthony Preske, 53, of Vincennes. Trooper Kaucher immediately detected an odor of an alcoholic beverage. An open 12 pack of beer was also located in the bed of the pickup. Preske was transporting his 9-year-old grandson and his 25-year-old son. Further investigation revealed Preske was impaired and was taken to the Gibson County Jail where he is currently being held on bond.

Arrested and Charges:
• Anthony Preske, 53, Vincennes, IN
1. Operating a Vehicle While Intoxicated (REFUSAL) with a Passenger under 18 years of age,
Class D Felony
2. Operating a Vehicle While Intoxicated with a Prior DWI Conviction, Class D Felony

 Below is a list of felony cases that were filed by the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday, August 22, 2013.

Thomas Bevinger             Theft-Class D Felony

Resisting Law Enforcement-Class A Misdemeanor

Richard Case                      Theft-Class D Felony

(Habitual Offender Enhancement)

Cedric Williams                Theft-Class D Felony

(Habitual Offender Enhancement)

Lucienne White               Maintaining a Common Nuisance-Class D Felony

Possession of Paraphernalia-Class A Misdemeanor

Assisting a Criminal –Class A Misdemeanor

For further information on the cases listed above, or any pending case, please contact Kyle Phernetton at 812.435.5688 or via e-mail at KPhernetton@vanderburghgov.org

Under Indiana law, all criminal defendants are considered to be innocent until proven guilty by a court of law.

For two decades, America’s convention center business has been declining, resulting in a nationwide surplus of empty meeting facilities, struggling convention halls and vacant hotel rooms. How have governments responded to this glut? By building more convention centers, of course, financed by debt backed by new taxes and fees on already struggling taxpayers.

Back in 2007, before the recession began, a report from Destination Marketing Association International described America’s convention industry as a “buyer’s market” suffering excess capacity. It’s only gotten worse, attracting just 86 million attendees in 2010, compared to 126 million in 2000. Meanwhile, the amount of convention space angling for business has increased to 70 million square feet, up from 53 million in 2000 and 40 million two decades ago.

That’s largely because governments refuse to stop making convention centers bigger and hotels even more dazzling, arguing that whatever business remains will flow to the places with the fanciest amenities. To finance these risky projects—which the private sector won’t build by itself—cities float debt backed by new taxes and fees on already struggling taxpayers. As Charles Chieppo, a former board member of Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, lamented last year, “Logic rarely has a place in the convention business.”

Take Illinois, an industry leader,where officials have invested heavily to keep Chicago’s McCormick Place, long one of the three most-used centers in the nation, on top. They spent $1 billion in the early 1990s to build a 840,000-square foot expansion financed by fees on auto rentals, a hotel tax and a surcharge on restaurant meals in downtown Chicago. In 2007 they opened a new building, McCormick West, at a cost of an additional $900 million. The result? According to the Chicago Tribune, the center operates at 55% capacity.

Then there’s Boston, perhaps the quintessential example of a city that interprets failure in the convention business as a license to spend more on it. Massachusetts officials shelled out $230 million to renovate Hynes Convention Center in the late 1980s. When the makeover produced virtually no economic bounce, officials decided that the city needed a new, $800 million center financed by a hotel occupancy excise tax, a rental-car surcharge, and the sale of taxi medallions. Opened in 2004, that new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center was projected (by consultants hired by the state) to have Boston renting some 670,000 additional hotel rooms annually within five years. Instead, Beantown saw just 310,000 additional hotel room rentals in 2009.

Chicago political and labor leaders, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel (arms crossed), appear at the expanded McCormick Place convention center in October.

Now Massachusetts officials want to spend $2 billion to double the size of the Boston Convention Center and add a hotel. Of course, they predict that the expanded facilities would bring an additional $222 million into the local economy each year, including 140,000 hotel room rentals. Even with these bullish projections, officials claim that the hotel would need $200 million in public subsidies.

“The whole thing is a racket,” Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby recently observed. “Once again the politicos will expand their empire. Once again crony capitalism will enrich a handful of wired business operators. And once again Joe and Jane Taxpayer will pay through the nose. How many times must we see this movie before we finally shut it off?”

Many times, if officials in Baltimore have their way. Several years ago they built a $300 million city-owned hotel, (the Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel) to boost the fortunes of the city’s struggling convention center. Having opened in 2008, the hotel lost $11 million last year. Now the city is considering a public-private expansion plan that would add a downtown arena, an additional convention hotel, and 400,000 feet of new convention space at the cost of $400 million in public money.

The list goes on—everywhere from Columbus, Ohio, to Dallas, Austin, Phoenix and places in between. One problem is that optimistic projections about new facilities fail to account for how other cities are expanding, too. Why did Minneapolis struggle to hit projected targets after it enlarged its convention center in 2002? “Other cities expanded right along with us,” Minneapolis’s convention center director, Jeff Johnson, said this year.

The surest sign that taxpayers should be leery of such public investments is that officials have changed their sales pitch. Convention and meeting centers shouldn’t be judged, they now say, by how many hotel rooms, restaurants, and local attractions they help fill. That’s “narrow-minded thinking,” said James Rooney of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority this year. Instead, as Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has said, expanding a convention center can “demonstrate to the world that we have unlimited confidence in our city and what it can do, not only as a convention destination but as the center of the most important trends in hospitality, science, health and education.”

This new metric—a city’s amorphous brand value—is little more than a convenient way to ignore the failure of publicly sponsored facilities to live up to exaggerated projections. But as far as city officials are concerned, that failure is nothing that hundreds of millions more in taxpayer dollars can’t fix.

Source: STEVEN MALANGA