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Water Rates Rise as City takes First Baby Steps Toward EPA Compliance

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EVANSVILLE, Ind. – The Evansville Water & Sewer Utility (EWSU) Board has taken action to comply with the federal consent decree and is requesting City Council’s approval of sewer rate increases for 2014, 2015 and 2016 to help fund much-needed, mandatory upgrades to Evansville’s sewer system. Today, the Utility Board approved the sewer rate ordinance, which will now go to City Council for a reading on Aug. 26 and a vote on Sept. 23.

Rate increases would affect all EWSU customers – residential, commercial and industrial – although specific impacts vary by meter size and class of user. If approved, an average residential customer using 4,000 gallons per month can expect increases of 32 percent in 2014, 8 percent in 2015 and 18 percent in 2016.
Why a rate increase is needed now

EWSU and the City of Evansville must proceed with operational improvements specified in the consent decree and implement a 28-year, $540 million program – known as Renew Evansville – to address combined sewer overflows and other issues stemming from an aging sewer system. The City submitted the Integrated Overflow Control Plan to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on May 31, 2013, and is awaiting the agency’s feedback and/or approval. Evansville faces fines and penalties for each day it does not meet the terms of the consent decree, the legally binding agreement with EPA, the U.S. Department of Justice and Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

How rate increases impact residential customers

Based on an average monthly residential usage of 4,000 gallons of water per month, a customer inside the City can expect their bill to increase from $27.12 in 2013 to $35.83 in 2014, $38.74 in 2015 and $45.72 in 2016. Similarly, outside city rates will increase from $36.60 in 2013 to $48.37, $52.24 and $61.66, respectively.
Financing needed for mandated improvements

Revenue generated from rate increases will finance improvements mandated by state and federal regulators. Through 2016, $120 million is needed to fund projects that include:
• $61.5 million for Renew Evansville, the long-term control plan to significantly upgrade Evansville’s sewer system and reduce combined sewer overflows and water pollution in our waterways. This will be the City’s largest capital improvement project to-date.
• $52.2 million for increased inspection, maintenance, repairs and “end of life” capital projects.
• $6.6 million for the final phase of the Cass Avenue sewer separation project to eliminate southeast side flooding.
“Historically, Evansville has underinvested in our sewer system, and through government-mandated inspections, we are seeing significant deficiencies in our sewer system daily,” said Allen Mounts, director of EWSU. “The Utility needs additional resources, including capital funding and manpower, to address the growing number of work orders to repair our sewer lines and comply with state and federal demands. We realize any increase in utility rates will impact our customers, but we feel these rates have been thoughtfully constructed. And, they are still lower than many of our neighboring communities.”

Mounts added, “Without a rate increase there would be insufficient capital money, and the City would begin missing deadlines on the mandated long-term control projects, which could result in major fines and other consequences.”

EWSU serves approximately 60,000 customers and operates and maintains more than 800 miles of combined and separated sanitary sewer pipes that collect and transport millions of gallons of wastewater each day. More information about the Utility and Renew Evansville is available at www.ewsu.com and www.RenewEvansville.com.

Cities keep squandering money on hotels and meeting facilities

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$37.5 Million on fire
$37.5 Million on fire

By Steven Malanga

For two decades, American cities have used public dollars to build convention center space—far more than demand warranted. The result has been a gigantic nationwide surplus of empty meeting facilities, struggling convention centers, and vacant hotel rooms (see “The Convention Center Shell Game,” Spring 2004). Given the glut, you’d think that cities would stop. Instead, many are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to expand convention centers and open yet more dazzling hotels, arguing that whatever convention business remains will flow to the places with the fanciest amenities. If this dubious rationale proves wrong and the facilities fail—it’s telling that the private sector won’t build them on its own—taxpayers will wind up on the hook, as usual.

The convention business has been waning for years. Back in 2007, before the current economic slowdown, a report from Destination Marketing Association International was already calling it a “buyer’s market.” It has only worsened since. In 2010, conventions and meetings drew just 86 million attendees, down from 126 million ten years earlier. Meantime, available convention space has steadily increased to 70 million square feet, up from 40 million 20 years ago.

Boston exemplifies double-down madness. The city shelled out $230 million to renovate its convention center in the late 1980s. After the makeover produced virtually no economic bounce, Boston concluded that it needed a new $800 million center, projecting that it would help the city rent some 670,000 extra hotel rooms a year by 2009. The new center, which opened in 2004, fell far short of expectations: the actual number of room rentals that it generated in 2009 was slightly more than 300,000. Now Boston tourism officials are proposing to spend $2 billion to double the center’s size and add a convention hotel, to boot. The officials optimistically predict that the expanded facilities would inject $222 million annually into the local economy, including an extra 140,000 room rentals a year. Despite these bullish projections, officials claim that the hotel needs $200 million in subsidies.

Boston is far from alone. Hoping to help its limping convention center, Baltimore paid $300 million to build a city-owned convention hotel, which opened in 2008. The hotel lost $11 million last year and has barely been able to pay its employees or its debt service. Yet Baltimore is now considering a massive $900 million public-private expansion that would add a downtown arena, another convention hotel, and 400,000 feet of new convention space. The projected cost in public money: $400 million.

Convention-hotel mania has swept Texas, too. Dallas just opened a convention hotel financed with $388 million in Build America Bonds, and Arlington and nearby Irving are both proposing new hotels to boost tourism. These facilities will compete with alternatives in places like Austin, which opened a massive 800-room convention hotel in 2003 after a study predicted that it would generate more than 300,000 room rentals annually for the city. But Austin has yet to exceed 200,000 per year.

Perhaps recognizing this weak economic record, convention and tourism officials have been changing their sales pitch. Convention and meeting centers shouldn’t be judged, they now say, by how much business they bring to local hotels, restaurants, and local attractions. Instead, we should see them as helping to establish a tourism brand for their cities. The director of Boston’s convention center, for instance, boasts that it brings the city “tourism impacts”—purportedly an economic value beyond whatever dollars the convention industry manages to attract.
The main value of such nebulous concepts seems to be to obscure the failure of publicly sponsored facilities to live up to exaggerated projections. As far as city officials are concerned, that failure is nothing that hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars can’t fix.

Source: California Political Review

Mayor Winnecke Makes Pitch for 3 Hotels and 450 Rooms on Youtube

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Is It Time to Stop Building Convention Centers? from Atlantic Cities

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Atlantic Cities covered this problem last year, in an article titled: Is It Time to Stop Building Convention Centers?

The highlights:

“Over the last 20 years, convention space in the United States has increased by 50 percent; since 2005, 44 new convention spaces have been planned or constructed in this country alone. That boom hasn’t come cheap. In the last ten years, spending on convention centers has doubled to $2.4 billion annually, much of it from public coffers.”

“But there’s a problem with this building bonanza, and it’s a doozy: There aren’t really enough conventions to go around. The actual number of conventions hosted in the U.S. has fallen over the last decade. Attendance at the 200 largest conventions peaked at about 5 million in the mid-1990s and has fallen steadily since then.”

“”So many were saying, ‘all you have to do is get one percent of the national market and you’ll do just fine,'” he says. “Three hundred cities bought the same logic.””

It seems like investing in a convention hotel would result in losing more money faster.

And from a discussion on a Minneapolis scheme to subsidize a 1,000 room convention hotel:

The fact that the massive subsidy in the convention center hasn’t come close to paying for itself should be enough to say no to subsidies. If a hotel like this costs $125M in subsidies (41% of the total construction costs), one would assume it would bring in a heck of a lot in local economic impact, right? If bonded, that’s $7.16M per year over 30 years for the state/city. To recoup that investment in sales tax (just break even), that’s convention guests spending $92M per year on food, shows, etc (assuming the current Minneapolis/Hennepin/MN sales tax rate of 7.775%). If you assumed that hotel was full with 1,000 people every day of the year (and that other hotels in the area maintained their demand as well), they would need to spend $252 a day on food and other taxable items for the public to recoup their investment. Good luck.

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2012/06/stop-building-convention-centers/2210/

Taxpayers should question convention hotel hype: Guest opinion

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By Paige Richardson

Tourism boosters in Baltimore had a can’t-miss idea. If taxpayers only poured huge subsidies — including hundreds of millions in bonds backed by hotel revenues — into building a convention center hotel, Baltimore would experience a boom in convention business that would generate jobs, revenue and economic prosperity for city residents.

But as the Baltimore Business Journal recently pointed out, “Baltimore built it, but they didn’t come.” Now their hotel is having trouble paying off its bonds and has lost $65.1 million since it opened in the summer of 2008.

In St. Louis, boosters had the same idea, spending millions in public money on the construction of a convention center hotel, which opened to much fanfare in 2003. Despite rosy projections by experts, it is now in foreclosure because hotel revenues were insufficient to pay its debt service. Again, it’s local taxpayers who are the big losers.

In Charlotte, N.C., taxpayers ponied up millions for the construction of a convention hotel there, but convention bookings quickly “receded to levels before the hotel opened,” according to an article in the Charlotte Observer. The list of midsize cities with failed and struggling convention center hotels — paid for with massive infusions of taxpayer dollars — goes on and on.

Now, starry-eyed tourism boosters in Portland want to repeat the same mistakes made by these other cities. And they want to spend your money to do it.

Metro is in the process of cutting a sweetheart deal to offer millions in public subsidies to get an international hotel chain to build a hotel next to our convention center.

Despite the fact that Metro is only now beginning, after months of stonewalling, to release any details about the terms of the agreement, our Legislature has gone ahead and diverted $10 million in lottery proceeds to back this cozy arrangement for a profitable out-of-state hotel chain and private developers.

Metro plans to issue $60 million or more in public bonds to pay for hotel construction, which with interest will add up to more than $100 million by the time they’re repaid. That’s outrageous enough, but the subsidies don’t stop there. Another $4 million in taxpayer funds is being given to the developers by Metro, as well as a $4 million loan from the city.

Don’t worry, says Metro. The bonds will be paid off with increased tax revenue from the new hotel. But newly released details about the deal between Metro and Hyatt still don’t provide clarity about who pays if the hotel comes up short — a very real possibility given the spotty track record of these sorts of ventures here and in comparable cities. So far, it seems public dollars will be on the hook. At a time when we are struggling to pay for basic public services, that’s a risk we can’t afford.

If the hotel makes money, the owners get to reap the profit; if it loses money, taxpayers foot the bill. Heads they win, tails we lose. Does that sound like a good deal to you?

Local officials currently considering this flawed hotel proposal need to think twice about whose interests they were elected to serve. Our legislators should have known better than to ignore basic principles of transparency and good governance by appropriating millions in public money before Metro made any effort to gather public input about the deal it has cooked up behind closed doors.

Now it’s the turn of local officials. They should put this bad idea to rest before local taxpayers are left holding the bag for the latest “trust us, this can’t miss” boondoggle.

Source: Coalition for Fair Budget Priorities

Facebook Art Ripoff by “Citizens of Evansville for a new Downtown Hotel” Removed

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Citizens Against

Last night as was pointed in this mornings IS IT TRUE a group supporting the public funding of a downtown convention hotel blatantly stole the artwork of an existing Facebook site called “Citizens of Evansville Against a Taxpayer Funded Hotel” and reconfigured it for their own agenda. After having this theft pointed out repeatedly in comment sections and being called out in the City County Observer the “Citizens of Evansville for a new downtown convention hotel” has changed their cover photo to an aerial view of the City of Evansville. The ripoff evidence is still on their page but it does indicate that it was changed by whomever the administrator is. You may view the pages by cutting and pasting the following links into your browser.

https://www.facebook.com/EvansvilleSaysNo

https://www.facebook.com/EvansvilleSaysYes

EPD Activity Report: August 19, 2013

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EPD PATCH 2012

EPD Activity Report: August 19, 2013

VANDERBURGH COUNTY FELONY CHARGES

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nick herman

Below is a list of felony cases that were filed by the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor’s Office on Monday, August 19, 2013.

Mario Butler Dealing in a Schedule IV Controlled Substance-Class C Felony

Alanna McNeal Operating a Vehicle While Intoxicated Endangering a Person with a

Passenger Less than 18 Years of Age-Class D Felony

Donald Robb Unlawful Possession of a Firearm by a Serious Violent Felon-

Class B Felony

Battery Resulting in Bodily Injury-Class A Misdemeanor

(Habitual Offender Enhancement)

Eric Toone Dealing in a Schedule III Controlled Substance-Class B Felony

Possession of Marijuana-Class A Misdemeanor

(Enhanced to D Felony Due to Prior Convictions)

Possession of Paraphernalia-Class A Misdemeanor

Fabian Bennett Felony Carrying a Handgun-Class C Felony

Possession of Marijuana-Class A Misdemeanor

(Habitual Offender Enhancement)

Ukuru Stell Unlawful Possession of a Firearm by a Serious Violent Felon-

Class B Felony

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.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AWARENESS CANDLELIGHT VIGIL

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nick hermanOn Tuesday, October 01 at 6:30 p.m. a Candlelight Vigil will be held to kick off Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The Vigil will be held at Four Freedoms Monument in Downtown Evansville to honor victims and survivors of domestic violence and to raise awareness of the growing problem in our community and in the State of Indiana.

The vigil is being organized by the Evansville-Vanderburgh Commission on

Domestic and Sexual Violence in collaboration with Albion Fellows Bacon Center, the YWCA, Holly’s House, Lampion Center and the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor’s Office Victim/Witness Assistance Program.

In the last year, several local women have died in alleged domestic violence incidents. In 2012, 64 people died in the state of Indiana due to domestic violence. As part of an alarming national trend, Albion Fellows Bacon Center and the YWCA, both local domestic violence agencies, report that domestic violence continues to increase locally. This increase significantly affects the safety of women in Evansville and the surrounding area.

This crime is a community issue. Community representatives will speak out at the candlelight vigil and encourage our community to step up and do their part to help end domestic violence as well as remind victims where to receive services and find assistance.

For further information on this event or services from any of the aforementioned organizations, please contact Kyle Phernetton, Director of Public Relations with the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor’s Office at 812.435.5688 or via e-mail at kphernetton@vanderburghgov.org.

Troopers Recognized at Ceremony

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Last week ten Indiana State Police officers were recognized in Indianapolis by Superintendent Douglas Carter for their resolute dedication and appointment to the department’s Underwater Search Rescue/Recovery Team (USRT). The scuba team members had recently completed their six month probationary period as divers and received their uniform pins from Superintendent Carter, designating them as USRT members.

Superintendent Carter addressed the new diver’s with heartfelt emotion and respect. The superintendent started his diving career with the state police in 1986 when he attended the state police Basic Underwater Dive School (BUDS). The superintendent recalled completing the school the hardest thing that he had ever done and respected the divers for their dedication to the program.

The state police BUDS program started in 1960 with 14 men that were sent to a six day scuba school. The program his since evolved into a 24 day school where more than 25 dives are completed combined with 40 hours of classroom work.

USRT Commander Sgt. Alan Lowrance commented that the divers leaving the BUDS program today are well equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to safely navigate the often dangerous waters of public safety diving. Public safety divers often dive in less than ideal conditions including zero visibility and entanglement hazards, commented Lowrance.

Today the state police have 35 divers on the USRT stationed around Indiana to respond to various types of water related incidents including evidence recovery, drowning, and swift water rescue.

New divers
Tpr. Caleb Clark – Peru
Tpr. Christopher Lockman – Seymour
Tpr. Richard Clay – Pendleton
Tpr. Eric Meyer – Wolcottville
Tpr. Andy Cochran – Warsaw
Tpr. Ryan Royer – Lafayette
Tpr. Adam Duffitt – Kokomo
Tpr. Zachary Smith – Henryville
Tpr. Matthew Lazoff – Hudson
Tpr. Skyler Whittington – Pendleton

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