Friday, November 13, 2009

Mayor Tom Henry's $45,000 Letter

Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry (D) has apparently concluded that nobody reads the newspaper or watches local news broadcasts any more. Instead of holding a press conference or relying on guest editorials in the newspaper to explain the City's ongoing dispute with Indiana Michigan Power over the value of the city's electrical utility power grid, which has been leased by the utility company since 1974, Mayor Henry decided to mail 100,300 letters to city utility customers at a cost of $45,000 according to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette's Benjamin Lanka. "But the $45,000 expenditure is a concern, said City Council President Tom Smith, R-1st, especially since the same information was recently published as a guest editorial in The Journal Gazette," Lanka writes. “If it was published in the newspaper, that should have been enough,” Lanka quotes Smith as saying. Lanka notes the city has already spent over $300,000 in legal fees in its ongoing disagreement with the utility company.

5 comments:

Paul K. Ogden said...

Why didn't he send them bulk mail. It would have easily qualified. I used to do them for political campaigns. They are a pain in the ass to assemble, but much cheaper.

indyernie said...

The Democrat Creed...Have a dollar spend a dollar ...have no dollars spend two anyway.

Gary R. Welsh said...

Because if most people are like me, Paul, they toss any mail that's sent in bulk without reading it.

Paul K. Ogden said...

AI, good point.

interestedparty said...

Good point, except one can't expect "most people" to be "like me". Especially in such an obscure detail. Most people are alike in very basic and important ways, but what one prefers to do with bulk mail wouldn't be one of them.

Maybe it was a timing issue. You can predict when first class mail is likely to be delivered, but the time frame for bulk mail is highly variable.