EVANSVILLE REDEVELOPMENT COMMISSION
NOTICE OF EXECUTIVE SESSION
The Evansville Redevelopment Commission will hold an Executive Session on Tuesday, July 24, 2012 at 2:00 p.m. in Room 318 of the Civic Center Complex, 1 NW Martin Luther King Jr, Blvd, Evansville, Indiana.
This Executive Session will be held pursuant to Indiana Code IC 5-14-1.5-6.1 (b) (2)(B) regarding pending litigation.
Local Businessman Alan Brill who has been a vocal proponent of using Roberts Stadium as an events center has launched a lawsuit to stop the demolition of the stadium. In the suit Brill accuses Mayor Winnecke of using deception to get the authority to move forward with the demolition. You can read the suit as filed on the link below.
INDIANAPOLIS — Penn State University was heavily sanctioned on Monday by the NCAA as the result of top university officials covering up child sex abuse allegations against a retired assistant coach.
NCAA officials announced that Penn State will be fined $60 million, be banned from football bowl games for four years, and lose 40 scholarships over four years. Penn State’s football victories from 1998 to 2011 will be stricken from the record book.
NCAA President Make Emmert said he had “never seen anything as egregious†as the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.
The $60 million fine is the amount the football team grosses in a year. The funds will go to organizations that assist the victims of sex abuse.
Penn State football players an incoming players will be allowed to transfer to other schools and be eligible immediately.
Emmert said the athletic program will be on a five-year probationary period and that the NCAA reserves to right to institute a formal investigation and issue sanctions against individuals.
By: Martha Crosly
There is a catastrophe of huge proportions in Evansville right now and good public policy is not being applied to intervene. Vetting is needed but is not being applied to solve this problem. The problem is uncaring and/or ignorant cat owners. My stance is that the cats definitely need to be fixed (and in some cases it probably wouldn’t hurt the owners either). Please let me explain.
There are two types of animal shelters in the area: Open Admission and “No-Killâ€. I put “No-Kill†in quotes because euthanasia still does occur in these shelters in various forms. Some, like the new “It Takes a Village†shelter, selectively take dogs out of Evansville Animal Control (EAC) and places them in foster homes and now in their new shelter. They then leave EAC to euthanize the animals that are viewed as not adoptable or for which ITAV has no room. ITAV will reach a point where they will need to stop taking in animals due to limited capacity and can only continue when openings are created through adoptions.
Warrick Humane Society also is a “No-Kill†shelter who does recognize the need for euthanizing and does address this issue at times. They control their numbers by very selectively taking in animals and stop when they reach capacity which in their case I believe is a pretty low number. They refer all others to either Vanderburgh Humane Society or Evansville Animal Control letting these organizations deal with that which they can’t or do not choose to.
In contrast to Warrick and ITAV, both non-profits, we find Vanderburgh Humane Society (also a non-profit) and Evansville Animal Care and Control. Both of these are Open Admission shelters, Evansville AC because by law it must be, and VHS because it chooses to be, in part to give people an option to AC and to give healthy, well-adjusted pets a chance for a new home. I will also add that VHS’s intake is not limited to Vanderburgh County residents only. They receive animals on a consistent basis from Posey, Gibson, Warrick, Spencer, Daviess, and Dubois Counties and from time to time other Indiana counties as well. They also take in animals from Kentucky counties and from some counties in Southern Illinois. Most of these counties have their own AC and/or humane organization.
Of all these organizations in the Evansville area, Evansville Animal Control is the only one who receives your tax dollars. All the others rely entirely on donations from the local public. They get nothing from the Humane Society of the United States for example. I also believe that it is still the policy that all owner surrenders to AC are euthanized immediately and only strays are required to be kept for 7 days to allow for claiming by the owner. This policy may be waived under certain circumstances however. (Please check with AC for their rules and regulations.)
What does all this have to do with cats and their irresponsible owners? I will use VHS as an example although AC has this problem as well. In this coming week VHS will take in their 1000th cat this year and this is in addition to the cats that were already in house at the start of the year.
Here are some statistics: 1) 36 of these animals were brought in by their owners to be euthanized, which shows up on VHS stat board. 2) 143 have gone to rescue organizations mainly in Chicago and VHS is very grateful. It is VHS dollars that transport these neutered and spayed cats to Chicago, usually in a marathon up and back in one day trip. 3) Here’s the sad stat – 431 cats were euthanized for various reasons including illness, behavioral problems or for lack of space to put them and lack of personnel to care for them.
Here are some facts:
1) VHS has the capacity for about 52 adult cats and 104 kittens. This includes animals in foster care and is an approximation that varies on the size of the animal and the size of the enclosure. AC can care for a much lower number.
2) Many shelters take in only dogs not cats and some are able to take in only a limited number of cats.
3) Frequently both dogs and cats come in intact, meaning that they did not benefit from being spayed or neutered. Because of this, multiple animals are brought in together i.e. a mother cat and 6 kittens, with kittens often being too small to survive on their own and cannot be placed up for adoption right away. They either take up space that could be used for adoptable animals, are lucky enough to go into foster care (and there is a shortage of foster homes), are squeezed into the last corner of cat isolation, or they unfortunately must be euthanized.
4) It is not unusual for animals to be surrendered to AC or VHS in an unhealthy condition. A couple of days ago, four dogs were surrendered to VHS over the course of the day. Two of the 4 were suffering from heart worm, a horrible death sentence and one that is preventable. To cure heart worm requires a long time and considerable expense. (This reflects back to the uncaring and/or ignorant owners above.) The same issue occurs with cats.
5) The shocking situation with cats now is that with the moderate weather their reproduction, which has always been out of control, has now far exceeded that point. What AC and VHS are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg compared to what is out there.
6) I will highlight this very important fact: THIS CAT PROBLEM MUST BE SOLVED AND IT CAN ONLY BE SOLVED BY CITIZENS ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY TO BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION. This is very difficult as many know because some folks only wish to pass problems for all public good on to others. And this is a public health and welfare issue. It must however be addressed in a humane manner.
Here are some suggestions:
1) EVERYONE MUST SPAY OR NEUTER THEIR PET, CAT OR DOG. It is healthier and safer for the animal and will reduce tax dollars spent on AC. This includes that cute kitty that wandered up on your porch last winter and you began to feed who now has kittens under your laundry basket. You have been caring for her for months. She is your cat now and you need to get her as well as her kittens fixed. Kittens can be fixed at a very young age. At the VHS Low Cost Spay and Neuter Clinic the kitten must weigh at least 2 pounds.
2) Some of you may be familiar with a program called TNR, Trap, Neuter, and Return. This is a program for feral cats. These cats are trapped, fixed, and returned to their familiar environment to live out their days and not reproduce. This allows for natural attrition of the cat colony. But this program needs to be a city-wide effort. Non-profit feral cat organizations can be established to pay for the spay or neuter of these cats.
3) GOOD PUBLIC POLICY MUST BE APPLIED. Modify the city and county animal ordinances and empower Animal Control to enforce them diligently. This may require patterning our laws and practices after cities where this has been done with a great degree of success. Vanderburgh Humane Society is able to take cats to rescue to Chicago because that city has and utilizes a progressive spay/neuter law. This should be a no-brainer for our city and county. And before people start screaming about costs to do this, think of the costs that will be saved in the future by cleaning up this mess now in the correct manner for both dogs and cats. I will add it will cost a lot less than some of the other failed ventures that have been attempted lately in this area.
4) Most importantly DO NOT ACQUIRE A PET THAT YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO CARE FOR. This is pretty basic. A cat or dog is a commitment for the entirety of their life. Period. Amen. No excuses. Too many people do not keep their promises in life. It is a big problem in government, private enterprise, and in personal lives. These animals are the innocents who suffer the most and have the most to lose when you break your promise to them. Be an adult. Don’t make promises you cannot keep.
The Board of School Trustees of the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation will meet in
executive session at 4:00 p.m. on Monday, July 23, 2012, in the John H. Schroeder Conference Center in
the Superintendent’s office in the Technology and Innovation Center, 951 Walnut, Evansville, IN 47713.
The session will be conducted according to Senate Enrolled Act 313, Section 1, I.C. 5-14-1.5-6.1, as
amended. The purpose of the meeting is for discussion of collective bargaining, (2)(A); initiation of
litigation or litigation that is either pending or has been threatened specifically in writing, (2)(B);
purchase or lease of property, (2)(D); and job performance evaluation of individual employees, (9).
The regular meeting of the EVSC Board of School Trustees will follow the executive session at
5:30 p.m. in the EVSC Boardroom, 951 Walnut Street, Evansville, Indiana.
University of Southern Indiana men’s basketball players Brandon Hogg (Edwardsville, Illinois) and Ben Jones (Robinson, Illinois) were named to the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Honors Court for academic excellence during the 2011-12 season. The NABC Honors Court recognizes the talents and gifts these players possess off the court and the hard work exhibited in the classroom.
In order to be named to the NABC Honors Court, an athlete must meet a high standard of academic criteria. The student athlete must be a junior or senior academically and a varsity player; have a cumulative grade point average (GPA) of 3.2 or higher at the conclusion of the 2011-12 academic year; have matriculated at least one year at their current institution; and be a member of an NCAA Division I, II, III, or NAIA institution.
Hogg, a senior guard and a physical education major, earned honorable mention All-America honors from the Division II Bulletin after averaging a team-high and career-best 16.5 points per game. He also was named NABC first-team All-District and Daktronics second-team All-Region, while being selected for the first-team All-Great Lakes Valley Conference squad.
Jones, a junior guard and sport management major, averaged 3.1 points and 2.2 rebounds per contest off the bench during his first year at USI. Jones scored a season-high 11 points twice in 2011-12, while dishing out a season-best four assists against Berea College and grabbing season-high six rebounds versus Saint Joseph’s College.
IS IT TRUE July 23, 2012
IS IT TRUE that we have good news for two candidates in the upcoming November election?…that Democratic County Commissioner, Steve Melcher and Republican County Commissioner, Joe Kiefer are both unopposed in this upcoming November General election?…both Commissioners are known for fairness, honestly and hard work?…that Mr. Kiefer and Mr. Melcher both listen with objectivity when gathering information about local problems and concerns of their constituents? …that both gentlemen get along very well with each other and act as a buffer for Commissioner Marsha Abell when she shows an aggressive demeanor?…that both Commissioners Melcher and Kiefer approach issues in a conservative and non-partisan manner?…we look forward 4 more years of “good public policy” decisions made by Mr. Melcher and Mr. Kiefer?
IS IT TRUE that two sons of Evansville will be on the national stage during the month of August?…that local blues guitarist Boscoe France who plays at the Lamasco Bar and many other Tri-State locations has played his way into the final 6 in the Guitar Center Blues contest?…that the finals will be in Hollywood, CA at the Club Nokia on August 18th and that the City County Observer’s California based columnist Joe Wallace will be there to cheer Boscoe on and report back on the competition?…that Boscoe will be sharing the stage that night with Joe Bonomasu who is fresh off of a concert in Evansville?…that Boscoe is really from Madisonville, KY and is a graduate of Madisonville-North Hopkins High School but that Evansville has embraced his talent and claims him now that he is in the big time?
IS IT TRUE that John Nunn, a proud Harrison High School graduate and son of USI Professor Dr. Les Nunn and his wife will be wearing the colors for Team USA at the London Olympics?…that Nunn will be competing in the 50k (31 miles) race walking event that will be held on August 11th?…that we can all feel a sense of pride on Friday when John Nunn of Evansville, IN enters the Olympic Stadium representing our country in this world class event?…we also encourage other local media and especially the TV stations to cover the 50k race walk event so this native can be watched in his hometown?
IS IT TRUE that back before he became the Mayor of Evansville that Lloyd Winnecke was very instrumental in a team effort with the well liked and former Evansvillian Royce Sutton to establish a free dental clinic for local residents who need that service?…that last week that dental clinic made the news for being in tough shape financially?…that the CCO would like to encourage Mayor Winnecke to take a little time out of one of his days and put his marketing talent to the test to come up with a way to make this dental clinic solvent and sustainable?…that proper dental care can save lots of money by preventing trips to the emergency room when something goes wrong with ones dental health?…that this clinic is a very positive part of the legacy of Mayor Lloyd Winnecke?
IS IT TRUE that David Wessel published an extensive article about the budget of the United States of America last week and the CCO would like to share some of the bullet points?…the individual income tax revenues made up just under 50% of the revenue sources in 1960 and that the percentage today is still about the same?…that payroll taxes on the other hand have risen from being 15% of revenues in 1960 to nearly 40% now?…that spending on benefits and entitlements has risen from just over 20% of federal spending to over 50% today?…if every federal employee was fired tomorrow it would not even be enough to cover half of the federal deficit?…that the entire payroll expense for Uncle Sam is only $435 Billion per year including benefits?…the federal government borrowed 36% of every dollar spent in 2011 and little change is presently on the horizon?…that the source for all of this data is the White House Office of Management and Budget?
Former Harrison High School cross country runner John Nunn has once again earned a spot on the US Olympic team. Nunn, who represented the United States in the Athens Olympics in 2004 in the 20k (12.4 miles) race walking event qualified this year in the grueling 50k (31 miles) race walk by winning the US trials.
The 34 year old athlete is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Les Nunn. Les Nunn is a professor at the University of Southern Indiana. The 50k race walk will be held in London on August 11th. Nunn currently makes his home in Chula Vista, CA.
In response to the “you didn’t built that business” and the aftermath of revisionist interpretations based on nuance, Mark Steyn crafted a very straight to the point article. One of the best quotes was “the stimulus was large enough to build 1,567 Golden Gate bridges, yet for all of that money we do not have one new bridge”.
Excerpts from Orange County Register:
“If this is the best all the King’s horses and all the King’s men can do to put Humpty Dumpty’s silver-tongued oratory together again, they might as well cut to the chase and argue that accurately quoting President Obama is racist. The obvious interpretation sticks because it fits with the reality of the last three-and-a-half years – that America’s chief executive is a man entirely ignorant of business who presides over an administration profoundly hostile to it.
But, just for the record, I did “invest in roads and bridges,” and so did you. In fact, every dime in those roads and bridges comes from taxpayers, because government doesn’t have any money except for what it takes from the citizenry. And the more successful you are, the more you pay for those roads and bridges.
So here’s a breaking-news alert for President Nuance: We small-government guys are in favor of roads. Hard as it may be to credit, roads predated Big Government. Which came first, the chicken crossing the road or the Egg Regulatory Agency? That’s an easy one: Halfway through the first millennium B.C., the nomadic Yuezhi of Central Asia had well-traveled trading routes for getting nephrite jade from the Tarim Basin to their customers at the Chinese court, more than 2,500 miles away. On the other hand, the Yuezhi did not have a federal contraceptive mandate or a Bloombergian enforcement regime for carbonated beverages at concession stands at the rest area two days out of Khotan, so that probably explains why they’re not in the G7 today.
In Obama’s world, businessmen build nothing, whereas government are the hardest hard-hats on the planet. So, in his “You didn’t build that” speech, he invoked, yet again, the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. “When we invested in the Hoover Dam or the Golden Gate Bridge, or the Internet, sending a man to the moon – all those things benefited everybody. And so that’s the vision that I want to carry forward.”
He certainly carries it forward from one dam speech to another. He was doing his Hoover Dam shtick only last month, and I pointed out that there seemed to be a certain inconsistency between his enthusiasm for federal dam-building and the definitive administration pronouncement on the subject, by Deanna Archuleta, his Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior, in a speech to Democratic environmentalists in Nevada:
“You will never see another federal dam.”
Ever. So the president can carry forward his “vision,” but it apparently has no more real-world application than the visions he enjoyed as a member of his high school “choom gang” back in Hawaii. Incidentally, I was interested to learn from David Maraniss’ enlightening new biography that, during car-chooming sessions, young Barry insisted all the windows be rolled up so that no marijuana smoke would escape. If you can seriously envision President Obama opening a 21st century Hoover Dam, you need to lower the windows on your Chevy Volt.
The Golden Gate Bridge? As Reason’s Matt Welch pointed out, the Golden Gate cost at the time $35 million – or about $530 million today. So, for the cost of Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill alone, we could have had 1,567 Golden Gate Bridges. Where are they? Where are, say, the first dozen? If you laid 1,567 Golden Gate Bridges end to end, you’d have enough for one Golden Choom Bridge stretching from Obama’s Punahou High School in Honolulu over the Pacific all the way to his Occidental College in Los Angeles, so that his car-chooming chums can commute from one to the other without having to worry about TSA patdowns.
A stimulus bill equivalent to 1,567 Golden Gate bridges. A 2011 federal budget equivalent to 6,788 Golden Gate bridges. And yet we don’t have a single one.
Because that’s not what Big Government does: Money-no-object government spends more and more money for less and less objects. For all the American economy has to show for it, President Bob the Builder took just shy of a trillion dollars in stimulus, stuck it in his wheelbarrow, pushed it halfway across the Golden Gate Bridge, and tossed it into the Pacific.
Instead of roads and bridges, Obama-sized government funds stasis and sclerosis: The Hoover Dam of regulatory obstruction, the Golden Gateway to dependency. Last month, 80,000 Americans signed on to new jobs, but 85,000 Americans signed on for Social Security disability checks. Most of these people are not “disabled” as that term is generally understood. Rather, it’s the U.S. economy that’s disabled, and thus Obama incentivizes dependency. What Big Government is doing to those 85,000 “disabled” is profoundly wicked. Let me quote a guy called Mark Steyn, from his last book:
“The evil of such a system is not the waste of money but the waste of people. Tony Blair’s ministry discovered it was politically helpful to reclassify a chunk of the unemployed as ‘disabled.’ A fit, able-bodied 40-year-old who has been on disability allowance for a decade understands somewhere at the back of his mind that he is living a lie, and that not just the government but his family and his friends are colluding in that lie.”
Millions of Americans have looked at the road ahead, and figured it goes nowhere. Best to pull off into the Social Security parking lot. Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. As the president would say, you didn’t build the express check-in to the Disability Office. Government built it, and, because they built it, you came. In Obama’s “visions,” he builds roads and bridges. In reality, the President of Dependistan has put nothing but roadblocks in the path to opportunity and growth.
That he can build. That’s all he can build.
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/obama-364707-build-golden.html
IS IT TRUE July 20, 2012
IS IT TRUE that the recent statement by President Obama regarding his hectoring of the entrepreneurs of the country that they “did not build their businesses†and that the real key to their success being government infrastructure was one of the most ill-informed and preposterous statements that most of us who have experience in the startup world have ever heard?…that the CCO would like to put this into another perspective that we hope will be understood?…that if the President was correct the following would also be true?…that NBA stars could attribute their success as professional basketball players to the courts and hoops that the government put in playgrounds across the country?…that practicing 12 hours a day when some of their other classmates chose other activities had little to do with it?…that buying a basketball had nothing to do with it either?…that being born with athletic talent also played second or third fiddle to the patch of blacktop that the government built?…the same goes for the entire United States Olympic team?…that the practice, dedication, 5 am runs and swims, and good old DNA had nothing to do with who made the team and will compete for gold medals?…it is the roads, street lights, and police cars bought by the government and not hard work, ambition, coaching, and equipment bought by family members that put that team in those uniforms that were made in China?
IS IT TRUE that the packets that were distributed to the Evansville City Council yesterday had in them a multiple page document that is seeking approval to move money around from one budget to another?…that there were about 5 pages of such money shuffling requests?…that buried on the bottom of a page in the middle of the document is a request to shift funds to pay for 2 of the raises recommended by the compensation committee last week?…that adoption of this money shifting does not guarantee any raises but only defines where the money will come from to pay for two of the raises?…next Monday night will be very interesting as the approach that Councilman John Friend spoke of to examine the salary schedules before authorizing raises makes all of the sense in the world?…it also has the potential to put to rest the issue of having uncompetitive compensation packages?…that uncompetitive compensation is a hallmark of places that can’t or choose not to compete?…if you do not believe that you should hold a baseball game between the Evansville Otters and the St. Louis Cardinals and see who wins?
IS IT TRUE that President Obama formed a group of elite business leaders into a group that is called “The White House Jobs Councilâ€?…this high powered group was put into place by the President the 26-member posse of CEO’s was re-organized in early 2011 to show Obama’s really serious commitment to job creation?…that the President has not found time in his schedule to call this group that includes GE CEO Jeff Immelt (the real outsourcing czar) together in over six months?…that had the President actually taken time out from his busy schedule that has included over 100 fund raisers and 10 golf outings that he may have known that the private sector was not “doing just fineâ€?…that if one wants to get a hit that the first things that one has to do is pick up the bat and walk to the plate?…then one has to take a few swings?…that in the case of the much publicized White House Jobs Council, the President of the United States has not even taken the time to go into the dugout?…that we guess this must be the dugout’s fault?
IS IT TRUE that between alley beatings over $20 in Evansville to a senseless act of violence in a Denver movie theatre that our country seems to be playing out some frustrations on the streets?…that anyone who would blame the streets, alleys, movie theatres, and light posts for such crimes is completely out of touch?…these were individual choices made by the perpetrators who should pay the consequences for their choices to commit these crimes?…the growing Covetous Class that really seems to believe that they are entitled to other people’s things or lives is not good for America, does not reflect the values that built this country, and need to be reigned in so as not to make up enough of a majority to vote in people that make their marauding malfeasance legal?
