Idiot Mayor Still Stuck On Stupid

I had to share with you a couple of clips from our esteemed Mayor's latest Night Out in Decatur Township. In this first clip, hear Ballard explain how we must raise local income taxes 20% to fund a multi-billion dollar metropolitan mass transit system. He says 81% of young people insist on having mass transit as a condition to living in our community; otherwise, they will choose to live somewhere else. He then shows a slide claiming that a rail line in Charlotte, North Carolina generated $1.5 billion in investment along the rail's route. That's a lot of potential property tax dollars that will be generated Ballard claimed, if we similarly build a billion dollar, 23-mile light rail line from Noblesville to downtown Indianapolis, which he never mentioned to his audience would have no benefit to the residents who live in Decatur Township. He also didn't tell his audience that all of the property tax revenues generated from those newly-developed areas along the rail line would be captured by a newly-created TIF district and reinvested in the metropolitan transit district that will continue to levy property taxes on all Marion County property taxpayers just like IndyGO, except it will be governed by an unelected regional transit board accountable to nobody other than the politicians who reward them with their appointments.

Ballard still hasn't explained to the public what he did with the revenues from the 2007 public safety tax increase that hiked local income taxes 65%, or about $90 million a year. We now have 200 fewer police officers than we had when he took office in 2008. And he wants us to believe that raising taxes and spending billions more on mass transit for areas with even less population density than currently served by IndyGo's bus system will get better results than we're currently getting from the poorly-run IndyGo system.

In the second clip, Mayor Ballard is asked why the City is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a lawsuit fighting the development of a privately-owned parking facility in Ameriplex, which would generate much-needed property tax revenues for cash-strapped local governmental units and schools in Decatur Township. Ballard's response is that the Airport Authority has a billion dollars in debt from building a new airport terminal and it might default on its bonds if, God forbid, private development occurs in the area surrounding the airport that might benefit the community at large and allow airport passengers to park at a facility that is cheaper than the excessive parking rates charged by the airport's parking lots. This guy is such a clown and an embarrassment.