The City of Evansville will host the last in a series of three public road meetings Friday, March 1, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at Holy Rosary Catholic Church, 1301 S. Green River Road, to share information about 2013 road paving projects and to receive comments from local residents. Mayor Lloyd Winnecke will open the meeting with a brief introduction, and City Engineer Pat Keepes will present a PowerPoint presentation followed by a question and answer session. Residents who cannot attend the meeting may submit suggestions to the City Engineer’s office at 436-4990.

I would like to try and bring a little clarity to the Residential Rental License issue. I have no problem with someone disagreeing with what we are trying to do, but I do have a problem with the false information that is being spread. In the February 26 Is It True, we were compared to the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution when it said that we were forcing the landlords to partner with us. Then we are compared to the Front Door Pride Program and Tom Barnett. Lastly, there is some rambling about us accelerating the Detroitization of Evansville and saying that this program will turn Evansville into South Chicago, the Bronx, Gary, Detroit and the USSR. My administration has been very accessible to the CCO, one simple phone call for clarification would have prevented this. To be clear, IT ISN’T TRUE!

This ordinance is not being driven by “Big Brother” but by two street level police officers who have worked closely with Evansville’s Neighborhood Associations for the past several years. The reason Officers Corbin and Krogman wanted this ordinance was to be able to more quickly contact the manager and/or owner of a property. I have been asked how this ordinance will prevent crime – it won’t. It is one more tool that will help law enforcement, nothing more, nothing less. We attend the neighborhood association meetings and follow up on the issues they present to us, many of these involve rental properties and apartment complexes. The problem is many of these properties are owned by people who do not live in Indiana or register them under an LLC with no contact information. As a former Crime Prevention Officer myself, I know with certainty how hard it can be to track some of these owners down. It is important to note that Officers Corbin and Krogman have been meeting with property owners, apartment associations, neighborhood groups, attorneys and city councilors for the past year discussing this ordinance and the Crime Free Multi Housing Program. They gave a shortened version of their presentation to the entire City Council last November. They have also received signed letters of support from thirty-two of Evansville’s thirty-eight Neighborhood Associations. The Ordinance is asking for owners of rental properties to register with the city, which means to provide:

1. The full legal name, address, e-mail and work number of each owner
2. The full legal name address, email, work and cell phone number of each property agent/manager
3. The address of each Residential Rental Building
4. The number of Dwelling Units in each Residential Rental Building

The fee for the license will be ten dollars ($10) per owner, per year, regardless of how many Dwelling Units they have. The original ordinance stated the fee was going to be fifty dollars ($50) and we amended it, as this was never about income. So if an apartment complex has one-thousand units, they will write one check for ten dollars ($10).

The above is all this Ordinance requires, nothing more. The Crime Free Multi Housing Program is separate from this and will be 100% voluntary – not forced. Officers Corbin and Krogman already have over sixty property owners and/or managers signed up to attend their first class. The CFMHP will happen with or without this ordinance. Here is a link about the program if anyone would like to read further: http://www.crime-free-association.org/multi-housing.htm

In the future, please feel free to contact me personally if you have questions on anything we are doing.

Sincerely,

Billy Bolin
Chief of Police

Footnote: This letter to the Editor of the City County Observer is posted without editing, opinion or bias.

STATEHOUSE – State Representatives Ron Bacon (R-Chandler) and Mark Messmer (R-Jasper) will host a Third House session this Saturday, March 2.

Host: Pike County Farm Bureau and Pike County Chamber of Commerce

What: Third House meeting with Reps. Ron Bacon and Mark Messmer

When: Saturday, March 2, 9:00 a.m.

Where: Pike Central High School Auditorium; 1810 E. State Road 56 in Petersburg

Reps. Bacon and Messmer will discuss how the Legislature is progressing now that session is at the halfway point with bills changing houses of origin and will take questions from the audience. The public is encouraged to attend.

Sometimes a person just has to stand up for what they believe is the right thing to do. In the case of the City Council meeting tomorrow to discuss requiring all landlords to register and pay a $50 per year partnering fee to the City I believe the City would be overstepping their authority to require this. It is bad enough to cause chaos in the business community by playing favorites in the hospitality, retail, and restaurant business as is being pushed with the hotel but this landlord thing is too much.

As a City Councilman, I am in strong support of less crime and safe neighborhoods but have yet to see a case where a local or even the federal government has ever made things better by meddling around in housing. Just here in Evansville the Front Door Pride program overspent and underperformed while the old safe house project found a way to spend $240,000 on apartments that could have been bought from a real estate broker for $20,000. It just doesn’t make sense to force the nonsense of government onto Evansville landlords.

City government has some jobs it has been hired by the voters to do. These are to provide fire and police protection, maintain the roads, parks, and sewers, and enforce existing codes. Evansville does enjoy excellent fire and police protection but the other areas are performing well below what is acceptable. What the heck can a government that can’t mow the grass and fill potholes add to the rental property owners?

An annual tax on each rental property of $50 will just be passed on to the already struggling renters. If the City knows so much and this program is so good they should just do it for free. Some parts of Evansville do have blight and crime. Forcing landlords to fork $50 over to the City will not change that one bit. I know because I myself am a landlord and have experience with both good and bad tenants. The City has not been very helpful to me as a landlord and $50 a year will not make that any better.

I have only been a member of the City Council for a little over a year. During that year I have seen too many things to make me shake my head in disbelief. This one takes the cake. My intention is to vote NO on this resolution and encourage my fellow members of the City Council to do the same. It is time we learned to do our job as custodians of the City of Evansville and let others alone to do their jobs.

Al Lindsey, City Councilman 6th Ward

LETTER TO THE EDITOR By: Brad Linzy

I would like to take this opportunity to come out in stark opposition to ORDINANCE NO.-G–2013–3-introduced by Stephanie Brinkerhoff-Riley, also known as An Ordinance Providing for Licensing of Residential Rental Buildings in the City of Evansville, Indiana.

The reasons for my opposition are simple and are based on an analysis of the causes of the behavior and circumstances the Ordinance seeks to curb, along with a critical examination of the stated purpose of the proposed Ordinance through the lens of economic principles.

According to the preamble for this Ordinance, the purpose is as follows: “…To increase the quality of life of residents by partnering the City with landlords and property managers to decrease the incidents of public safety violations and criminal activity in Residential Rental Buildings…” Let us unpack this sentence carefully so as not to be confused about what “problems” this Ordinance claims to solve. Firstly, I fail to see how placing an additional economic and bureaucratic hurdle in front of landlords will in any way achieve the stated aim of “increasing the quality of life of residents”. Indeed, how will charging a landlord a fee for licensure to exercise what should be his right – to join in a private contractual arrangement in a free market exchange – bring about the imagined scenario wherein he will suddenly wish to invest more capital into an Evansville property? It is more likely the case that such requirements will drive out capital rather than invite it in, and already his capital has diminished to the tune of $50 for the year.

Now some of my contemporaries might say, and indeed have said, that such licensure is necessary to stop the evil, so-called “slumlords” from taking advantage of the poor souls with whom they do business. Even if this did have the effect of lessening the presence of “slumlords”, which it very well could, that would not be an altogether good thing for several reasons.

The truth of the matter is the types of residences we are talking about here that get lumped into the “slum” category, are often the only kinds of housing the people who live in them can afford. The less than ideal conditions that often accompany such places are a direct result of the lack of investment capital the owner has put into them for things like central air, new paint, new windows, etc. If the owner had invested more money for repairs and better provisions, the rent would need to increase in a proportional manner to offset the capital investment, effectively pricing this segment of society out of the market.

The net effect of driving these so-called “slumlords” out of business would be that more low income people would be forced into larger, more easily segregated public housing complexes and the old properties of the slumlords will fall into such disrepair without any tenants that the City can then either condemn the buildings through code violations and tear them down, or they will be given the opportunity to buy them up for pennies on the dollar and gentrify the area. One reason police might tend to like, and back, such schemes is that this policy will tend to concentrate their problem areas into the large, easy to patrol public housing units.

Now let’s look at the other stated goal in the preamble to this Ordinance: “to decrease the incidents of public safety violations and criminal activity”.

Proponents of this measure use the argument that partnership between police and landlords will teach the landlords how to how to evict unruly tenants by making contractual clauses of “one strike, you’re out” and weed out potential problem tenants during the application process. This they argue will make a participating complex or neighborhood safer. While there might be a measure of truth to that argument, one cannot forget that refusing to house a bad apple in one particular complex does not extinguish the problem. The bad apple will still need housing elsewhere in the City. This hardly reduces criminal activity. It merely moves its epicenter.

Under a scheme of gentrification such as this, the bad apples will coalesce largely within aforementioned public housing complexes, effectively turning them into concentrated gangland areas or prisons with no walls. The other effect that often goes completely unnoticed is the effect on children forced to grow up in these conditions. As victims of circumstances which are no fault of their own, they are forced to grow up in the new public housing slums government has created for them with a higher concentration of bad apples surrounding them than they ever would have experienced under the old “slumlord” paradigm. At least under the “slumlord” scheme, they had a reasonable chance at living in a single family home in a half decent neighborhood. Not so under this government enforced gentrification scheme disguised as “licensing”.

The final argument against such a scheme is that this is simply an abridgment of the freedoms of the people of the City of Evansville to choose for themselves which type of dwelling they prefer to live in – a public housing project, or a single family home some might consider a “slum”. In the final analysis, government is deciding what’s best for people and limiting their options. Whether this is done with the ultimate aim of gentrification in mind, or whether it is done out of a sincere desire to do what’s best for their constituents, the end result will be the same. Due to the additional hurdles imposed, private capital investment in housing will drop in this City, requiring even more government interventions in the local housing market in the future, and that thing which should be the bane of poor and working class people everywhere will rear its ugly head in the City of Evansville – gentrification.

FOOTNOTE: A hearing will be held on this measure on Wednesday, February 27th. I urge all City Council Members to strike this measure down and reaffirm to their constituents they do indeed carry their best interests at heart. I urge all citizens to call upon your elected officials to say “no” to gentrification in your communities and “yes” to your freedom to choose.

CITY COUNTY OBSERVER EDITOR WANTS TO STRESS WE HAVE POSTED THIS LETTER SENT TO THE US MR. LINZY WITHOUT OPINION, EDITING OR BIAS!

Zach Stuard
CCO Writer

Judge Brett Niemeier faced an incredible challenge in 2012 when it was time for him to defend his seat on the bench against attorney Barry Blackard. Blackard wanted to make sure that voters knew his name and would not forget it on Election Day. The months leading up to November were filled with radio ads, television ads, yard signs, and decals all bearing Blackard for Judge. Some of the ads were very negative in nature. By the time the dust had settled Blackard had outspent Niemeier`s campaign by $200,000 and over a 3:1 ratio. Niemeier took a different positive approach and built a grassroots campaign which focused on the work he had done and the community boards and family projects he had worked with. In the end, Niemeier, against seemingly insurmountable odds defended his seat and beat Blackard by twenty percentage points for another 6 year term. Niemeier has said that his victory was a credit to his volunteers, hard work, honesty and integrity; things money cannot buy.

Judge Niemeier, it would seem, has a calling to bring those same qualities to troubled youth of our community. Judge Niemeier over his next term in office would like to create a mentoring program for his offenders through collaborations with agencies like the YMCA, the Boys and Girls Club, and the Dream Center. The Judge would love to have every day hard working honest people mentor these students, teaching them respect and integrity while playing ball, lifting weights, swimming, and any other number of positive activities the children could gain interest in. “The way to influence a teenager is through relationships. Kids usually model their behaviors by looking at peers, older siblings, or parents. Though peers are the number one influence in a teenager`s life, we have to have quality adults willing to spend time with these kids to challenge them to grow in a more positive and productive manner.

Poverty is one of the leading factors as to why these teens struggle. It is difficult for some people to understand just how poverty can oppress people. A lot of these kids and their families lack the necessary means to obtain most jobs. Things like clothing, transportation and interviewing skills all are affected by poverty and hinder these people’s chances of getting jobs. We as a community have to provide opportunities to these children to give them a boost and better set them up for success to break the cycle of poverty. If kids fail at school or in their home life they usually continue to fail as adults. This hurts them, their families and our entire community.”

Judge Niemeier worked with children even before he started his professional career as a deputy prosecutor specializing in child abuse cases. When Niemeier turned eighteen he decided to become a Big Brother to help mentor and guide children. The decision for Judge Niemeier came after his father’s passing during Niemeier’s high school years. His participation in Big Brothers is one of the reasons why he wants to create a mentoring program for the Court. Another project that Judge Niemeier is currently working on is to resolve truancy issues burdening the Vanderburgh County School Corporation. Judge Niemeier has met with EVSC officials and Prosecutor Nick Hermann in an effort to get the court system involved in these issues by having the state to prosecute parents of elementary school aged students that have a high rate of truancy. Over the years Niemeier has learned that a child`s truancy problems start in their first year of school. There is evidence suggesting that truancy is a learned behavior. Judge Niemeier said, “If a child misses more than 25 days of kindergarten then they miss about the same amount of school days as a sophomore in high school. In other words, however many days a kid misses early in their education will be continued throughout their educational career.”

Niemeier wishes also to work with parents to help them realize it is indeed a habit and to help them better understand the importance of attendance in relation to success academically. Niemeier hopes, at the high school level, to focus on freshmen and find ways to help bridge the gap between middle school and high school, easing their transition. Judge Niemeier’s effort will offer services to family members, such as mentors, counseling services, and other wrap around services to assist these kids in receiving their high school degree. Judge Niemeier hopes to kick off the program by the start of next school year.

Judge Niemeier also works with the Alternative High School, AIS, located in what used to be Evansville’s North High School. Judge Niemeier recognizes that the standard method of education is not necessarily the best for every student. At AIS students come to attend school and ultimately receive their diplomas in a different atmosphere then that found in the other high schools in the area. Judge Niemeier meets once a week with students and their parents to make an effort to resolve issues the student may be having. It quickly became evident that these families need more than just someone to talk to so the Judge is hoping to team up with Southwestern Behavioral to locate a counselor at the school to facilitate the needs of these families. Some of the biggest challenges facing families are money and transportation. Of this Niemeier spoke, “If agencies had offices located at the school it would provide a direct line of assistance and would eradicate the need for transportation.”
Niemeier believes that AIS has gotten a bad rap and that most students that attend AIS are not troublemakers. Many of these students attend AIS simply because they are failing in the traditional school model. “We have found that there are many different reasons as to why some students struggle with the traditional school model. Some of these reasons include phobias and social problems. We want to provide smaller more intimate class sizes, sometimes no more than 10 students per class for these students to be able to overcome their adversity.”

As we know adversity can be one of the biggest builders of strength and it seems as though Judge Niemeier recognizes this. The Alternative High School provides a place for these students to graduate with a full high school diploma. Judge Niemeier is gracious to be a part of the Alternative High School program because he sees some of the same children in his courts. Though he has the ability to court order an offender to go to AIS, he rarely does. To Niemeier it is solely about what is in the best interest of the kids. The more he can impact these kids while they’re in school it means there is a less likely chance of the kid coming before him in court.

Judge Niemeier wouldn’t like to stop there, though. He believes that a strong effort in prevention, rather than intervention, would result in his court seeing less and less of the same offenders before it. “Intervention in high school is almost too late because these students become set in their ways at an early age. Poor parenting, and a lack of discipline and rules, can haunt a child for a lifetime. In a perfect world would we should start formal education by the age of three and require parenting classes for those parents who don`t have a clue how to successfully raise a child. In a perfect world I would like to have five to ten more Court officers to work with children as early as possible in an effort to provide assistance in order to prevent issues from developing later. My officers can only do so much trying to change a 16 year old. It is no secret that the first ten years of a child’s life are the optimal years for mental growth and the formation of habits. If we can reach them early we can prevent them from ever dropping out of school and from having to appear in the Juvenile Court.” All of Niemeier’s work with children has been beyond the call of duty. The most disappointing aspect to Niemeier of being a Judge is the parents he sees that simply won’t help themselves. The most disappointing thing to him about teens are the truants that once he gets them to attend school they still fail most of their classes because they have failed so much for so long their expectations are low and they have developed poor habits. It seems as though it is critical to reach out to our children at a young age and instill solid habits promoting good work ethic, confidence, and dedication.

Judge Niemeier has 27 employees that handle probate matters, guardianships, adoptions, and children in need of service cases, which absorb most of their time. He and his staff deal with abuse and neglect and typically see more neglect cases then they do abuse related cases. Most of the cases that he and his staff work on are the results of drug abuse. Nearly every meth lab that is shut down is in a house with children or is directly accessible to these children. The most rewarding aspect of Judge Niemeier’s career is seeing the kids and parents he’s helped and how they were able to turn around their lives. When people ask how he can continue to keep faith in his job while seeing all the failure, he responds by pointing out that he sees success along with that failure. “In my job if you do not believe in miracles, you soon will.”

Judge Niemeier, with the help of Gail Gerling-Pettinga, has also established the Juvenile Guidance Foundation. This program`s purpose is to meet emergency needs of some of the kids and families he sees. The program was started so they could supply services to the EVSC and due to lack of funding the program has now involved into an emergency fund for assisting families for things he cannot get funding from the county for. In one instance the program has purchased bus tickets for family members of children that were admitted to Riley Hospital. Anyone wishing to donate to this fund is encouraged to contact Gail Gerling-Pettinga at (812) 423-5251.

Judge Niemeier considers himself extremely blessed when it comes to family. He has two step-sons and two daughters all of whom are in their early 20’s. His youngest son is in boot camp to become an aviation handler in the Navy while his other son is currently a correctional officer in the jail. His youngest daughter is currently graduating USI and plans on teaching elementary school and his oldest daughter is on course to graduate from Miami University (Florida) School of Law. She plans on clerking for Federal Court Judge Richard Young. Judge Niemeier and his wife, Lora, have been happily married for eight years and live downtown within walking distance of the Civic Center.

Andrew Weinzapfel, social studies teacher at Bosse High School, was one of only 100 educators in the state of Indiana to be selected from a pool of 450 applicants to receive Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowships. Weinzapfel also is the only educator in Evansville selected to receive the fellowship.

Through the program, recipients are awarded a fellowship to pursue interests that allow for personal renewal, intellectual revitalization and a dose of fun. The purpose of the fellowships is to allow educators to reinvigorate their spirits and if interested, share their experiences with their students.

As a recipient, Weinzapfel will receive $10,000 to retrace his ancestors’ steps in Europe. He also plans to plant a small apple orchard on a family farm utilizing techniques used by German immigrants in the 1850s and tour family orchards in Washington State.

“Our state’s teachers, principals, guidance counselors, and school librarians give so much of themselves to their students,” said Sara B. Cobb, vice president for education at the Lilly Endowment. “In addition to the invaluable work they do during the school day, they work nights and weekends to plan lessons, give extra attention to individual students, direct extracurricular activities, and develop professionally.

“These individuals are precious resources, and Teacher Creativity Fellowships provide them with an important opportunity for renewal. Teachers get to become learners again as they explore their own curiosities and dreams, spend time in other parts of the world, pursue personal passions, and just ‘get away.’” she said. Including the 2013 class, 2,542 Indiana educators have received grants since the Teacher Creativity Fellowship Program began in 1987.

For a list of all recipients go to: http://www.lillyendowment.org/pdf/TCFP2013WinnersAnnouncement.pdf