Lockerbie Residents Say No To Fire Station 7

A closely-guarded plan by the Ballard administration to relocate Fire Station #7 from its current location on Mass Ave to the Lockerbie North parcel at the corner of Michigan and College Streets, which is being redeveloped by the Whitsett Group for mixed use, met with strong opposition from the Lockerbie People's Club, the neighborhood association immediately impacted by the development plan. After a lengthy discussion at a neighborhood meeting tonight, members voted unanimously to urge the Indianapolis Fire Department Chief Brian Sanford, the Department of Metropolitan Development and the two area city councilors, Vop Osili and Joe Simpson, to oppose efforts to relocate the fire station to the Lockerbie North site.

During debate over passage of Proposal 15, which expands the downtown TIF district to include areas along Mass Ave and the Lockerbie North parcel, Deputy Mayor Deron Kintner publicly stated for the first time that a previously announced development plan by the Whitsett Group scheduled to break ground next year might hinge on the redevelopment of the firehouse parcel on Mass Ave without specificity. As part of the Ballard administration's plan to expand the downtown TIF district, it has been proposed that the fire station, the offices for the Indianapolis Fire Department headquarters and the neighboring credit union all be relocated to make room for redevelopment of the prime property located within the booming Mass Ave business district. The administration has narrowed proposals for redevelopment of the parcel to three competing plans, none of which it has publicly disclosed.

Joe Whitsett confirmed that after he had already drawn up plans to redevelop the vacant parcel for a mix of market rate apartments and retail/office space for which the neighborhood association had previously expressed support, the Ballard administration approached him about the possibility of using part of his Lockerbie North parcel as a new location for Fire Station #7. "The City has expressed interest in the northern portion of our site (by the church building) for the fire station," Whitsett said. "[W]e have not come to the neighborhood yet. However, that is only because the City had no way of pulling the trigger on any kind of deal with us until they knew they could finance it [with TIF funds]." Whitsett indicated that he still plans to move forward with retail and housing development on the south portion of the parcel and a four-story building along the western side of the lot behind the town houses previously developed along Park Avenue.

During tonight's meeting, neighborhood residents also learned that the Lockerbie North site is not the only site under consideration for the fire station. The administration will not disclose what other sites are under consideration. IFD Chief Brian Sanford will have to give his approval to a new fire station. Sanford could not make tonight's meeting due to a scheduling conflict but agreed to attend next month's meeting. Staff for the IHPC, who were unaware of the plan to possibly relocate the fire station to Lockerbie North, confirmed that no change in zoning would be required to locate a fire station at the site. It has also been confirmed that the City has decided to make College a two-way street from Mass Ave south to Market Street. The fire station site under consideration for the Lockerbie North parcel would front College Street just south of North Street adjacent to the church building currently being renovated for use as the new headquarters of the A2SO4 architectural firm, which was co-founded and co-owned by Councilor Vop Osili, the sponsor of Proposal 15. A close friend of Osili claims he knew nothing about the plan to relocate the fire station to Lockerbie North, which actually resides within Councilor Joe Simpson's district.

On a side note, does anyone have information on why IFD is having to pay firefighters over time to perform fire watch 24/7 at IMPD's east district office and homeland security center housed in the former Eastgate shopping mall because the building supposedly doesn't have an operating sprinkler system?

Property Tax Appeal Work Lucrative For Illinois Pols

Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan (D) and Chicago Alderman Ed Burke (D) have long enjoyed successful law practices in Cook County handling property tax appeals for mostly business clients. They typically handle the cases on a contingency basis, which allows them to pocket a percentage of the tax savings they win for their clients in successful appeals. The Sun-Times has previously complained about their practices and questioned whether their political jobs influenced decisions made by the Board of Review panels who hear their cases. Like everything in Illinois, the bad ways of Chicago permeate other areas of the state, particularly the suburban counties. The Sun-Times takes a look at the lucrative property tax appeal practice former DuPage County Board Chairman Bob Schillerstrom (R) has developed in a very short period of time at one of Ice Miller's Chicago area offices since he left his elected position two years ago. As county board chairman for 12 years, Schillerstrom got to appoint all three members of the county's board of review that hears property tax appeals in DuPage County. Not surprisingly, the Sun-Times finds that he has a very successful rate practicing before the board:

The three members of the DuPage County Board of Review — a government panel that handles property tax appeals from home and business owners — were appointed or reappointed by Robert Schillerstrom during his 12-year stint as DuPage County Board chairman.

Now a lawyer in private practice, Schillerstrom’s income depends on decisions made by those same people — raising conflict-of-interest questions on both sides of the equation, the Better Government Association found.

Schillerstrom left his elected post in 2010 after an unsuccessful Republican bid for governor. The next year he launched a property tax appeals practice for his Indianapolis-based law firm, Ice Miller LLP. The practice is based in Lisle and focuses, in part, on tax appeals before the DuPage Board of Review.

He’s had success, winning nearly all of his cases and getting tax breaks for his clients that in many instances exceeded the countywide average, a BGA analysis found.

There is no restriction preventing Schillerstrom from doing business through the Board of Review, according to the DuPage County state’s attorney’s office.

Schillerstrom, county board chairman from 1998 to 2010, said good lawyering, not politics, is behind his success. I do it the right way and I’m good at it,” he says.

Board of Review members, two of whom donated money to Schillerstrom’s campaign fund in past years, insist they aren’t showing favoritism.

“He can’t do us any favors — he’s gone,” said member Charles Van Slyke Jr.

“We’re making decisions based on evidence,” said another member, Carl Peterson. “It would be erroneous to think we give him special consideration.”

The third member, Anthony Bonavolonta, said if Schillerstrom were still the county board chairman, the Board of Review would not be hearing his cases. But now that Schillerstrom has left county government, “You can’t stop a guy from making a living.”

“I treat him like I treat everyone else,” he added.

Sure they do. Read a little further into the story and you learn that the part-time board of review members earn $40,000 a year. Not bad, eh? Tell me you're not going to look favorably on the man responsible for a obtaining part-time gig for you that pays that well. In Indiana, we generally don't pay people who get appointed to part-time positions serving on state and local boards and commissions; however, in Indiana it is unlikely that you will be appointed to a board or commission unless you are someone who the persons doing the appointing can count on to perform favors for them. People capable of exercising independent judgment are generally not valued in Indiana by the ruling political class for obvious reasons.

Is Lack Of Funding To Complete I-69 A Good Thing?

Last weekend, the Star reported that Major Moves funding will run about before the final legal of the I-69 extension to Evansville can be undertaken from Indianapolis to Bloomington. A Star editorial today agrees with Indianapolis southsiders who think that's a good thing. The highway is projected to be completed from Evansville to Bloomington by the end of 2014, but there is no foreseeable funding for the $1 billion the final leg of the highway will cost to build. Because state highway planners wanted to reroute the current path of Indiana 37, which is already 4-laned, hundreds of acres of additional land would be required that would have displaced dozens of homes and businesses and at least two churches. Perry Township on the City's southside was alone expected to lose $330 million in taxable property that would be required to construct a new interchange planned for the rerouting of the highway. My prediction is that a proposal will be put forward to toll the Evansville to Bloomington leg of the highway to pay for the final leg of I-69 to Indianapolis. At any rate, perhaps INDOT can finally finish the half-completed bypass around Terre Haute connecting I-70 to U.S. 41 that has deliberately been stalled by the Daniels administration for the past 8 years now that the alternative route from Indianapolis to Evansville has been successfully defeated.

Interim IMPD Chief Claims Crime Is Down

You have to listen to it to believe it. Interim IMPD Chief Rick Hite would have Indianapolis residents believe that crime in the city is going down after spiking up at the beginning of the year, which he credits to zone policing. Under zone policing, the department deploys large numbers of police officers to areas experiencing the most crime, while leaving vast areas of the city with few or no cops at all working a regular beat. Some councilors and community activists complain that the response time it takes to get police to respond to reports of crime in their neighborhoods is too long. Hite defended a letter of recommendation that he wrote to a judge on behalf of an ex-sex offender, Byron Alston, for an alleged probation violation, and which drew fire from critics because of an apparent violation of department rules. Hite claimed that he was simply offering support to the work of Alston's organization, the Ten Point Coalition, and not to Alston personally. On that attack of a senior citizen last week on the Monon Trail, Hite wants you to know that it's the Department of Homeland Security's responsibility and not IMPD's responsibility to maintain those surveillance cameras on the Monon Trail that were found not to be operating. Click here to listen to Amos Brown's interview with Hite.

Proposed Relocation Of Mass Ave Fire Station

 [UPDATED]: Well the dirty backroom deals of the Ballard administration and the pay-to-play developers and contractors are starting to rear their ugly head in the wake of the City-County Council's passage of Proposal 15, which expands the downtown TIF area to include some of the most valuable parcels of property in the downtown area. During the debate over the passage of Proposal 15, Deputy Mayor Deron Kintner was asked by Councilor Brian Mahern why he was including the Lockerbie Square parcel bounded by College and Michigan Streets in the expanded area since the Whitsett Group had already announced plans to build mixed use market rate apartments and commercial/retail, which would include significant off-street parking. Kintner told Mahern that the Whitsett Group had sought assistance from the city for its planned developed, and that its plans were tied to the redevelopment of the fire house parcel in the 500 block of Mass Ave.  The Ballard administration has been hell bent on tearing down the current building that houses Fire Station 7 and the fire department's headquarters, along with the neighboring credit union, and giving it to a private developer, along with tens of millions of dollars in public subsidies to redevelop the parcel. Where the Ballard administration planned to move the fire house has been a mystery up until now. Word on the street is that the administration has cut a deal with Whitsett to put the new fire house smack dab in the middle of the residential Lockerbie neighborhood.

Kintner claimed that the Whitsett Group required the city's financial assistance for the redevelopment of the North Lockerbie parcel, which contradicted the previous public statements of the developer when it sought neighborhood buy-in for his project. After acquiring the parcel, developer Joe Whitsett presented renderings prepared by the architectural firm, A3, which is owned by Dave Gibson. [Note: The post previously identified in error a firm co-founded and co-owned by Councilor Vop Osili, who sponsored Proposal 15 as the architect on the North Locerkbie project. My sincere apologies to Mr. Whitsett for the error].  A2SO4 did work on the Millikan mixed use project proposed by Flaherty Collins adjacent to Barton Towers, which is also included in the expanded TIF area. A2SO4 also designed Trail Side, a mixed use project initiated by the Riley Area Development Corporation. Proposal 15, as introduced, included Trail Side in the expanded TIF area and was only removed by Osili after objections were made to including a project that had already been completed. A2SO4 is also redeveloping an old church at the corner of North and College adjacent to the North Lockerbie Parcel as its new headquarters, property that has been included in the expanded TIF area by Osili's Proposal 15. Osili claims he sold his interest in A2SO4, but he still listed his financial and employee relationship with the firm on the financial disclosure form he filed in February of this year after he introduced Proposal 15.

Whitsett's original plan called for income-qualified apartments mixed with street-level retail/commercial space. When he was unable to obtain tax credits for income-qualified apartments, Whitsett announced that he would be moving forward with market rate apartments since there still seems to be strong demand for apartments downtown despite the depressed economy. He erected a sign along Michigan with a rendering of the proposed project, which indicates construction work will begin in 2013. Whitsett indicated that he preferred anchoring the retail space with a grocery store or a drug store. He hoped to fill in the additional space with restaurants, small retail stores and office space. An impediment to retail development is the fact that the parcel is bounded by two, one-way streets; however, the City had agreed to make College a two-way street from Mass Avenue southward at least as far as New York Street to encourage street level retail development on the parcel when a prior developer, Hearthview, launched redevelopment of the parcel several years ago before it faltered financially. Lockerbie residents reacted very favorably to Whitsett's original development plans for the parcel, but a fire station is an entirely different use than anyone had contemplated for this parcel.

The Lockerbie People's Club will conduct its monthly meeting this Tuesday, October 9 at 7:30 p.m. in the Max Kade room at the Athenaeum. I would highly encourage residents of Lockerbie to attend this meeting and voice your opinions on relocating the firehouse to your neighborhood, which will be treated to blaring sirens 24 hours a day, and which may serve as a deterrent to attracting more desirable businesses as part of the development. Nobody from the City or the developer has approached residents of the neighborhood about this potential location for the fire station, even though it was matter-of-factly discussed in private discussions with councilors during the debate over passage of Proposal 15. Councilor Osili has certainly not sought any input from his constituents. He seems more interested in using his position on the council to financially feather his own nest and that of his developer and contractor friends rather than representing the interests of his constituents. Fire Station 7 is one of the busiest fire stations in the city. It currently houses Engine #7, Ladder #7, Rescue Squad #7, Tactical Rescue #7, a trailer that carries two rescue boats, Car #1107 (safety officer's vehicle) and Car #1201 (shift commander's vehicle).

UPDATE: In addition to the clarification as to the architect being used by the Whitsett Group, Mr. Whitsett also wanted to make it clear that he has not supported Mayor Greg Ballard's campaign committee. He describes himself as a life-long Democrat who supported Ballard's opponent in the last year's campaign, Melina Kennedy. "While I have a high regard for our current Mayor, no financial or other contributions have been made to the Mayor’s campaigns by myself, any of our companies, or any of the owners," Whitsett stated in an e-mail. "To state that we are involved in a 'pay to play' situation is flat-out wrong." Whitsett previously worked as a partner at Ice Miller and later worked for Pedcor Investments before founding the Whitsett Group in 2007.

Legislators Want To Take Second Look At Corrupt Leucadia Deal They Can't Undo

Now that the deal is done, some Indiana lawmakers who ignored the obvious when the legislature was considering a coal gasification deal that was simply put forward by Gov. Mitch Daniels to enrich his political cronies want to take a closer look at an agreement they signed off which could force Indiana natural gas utility consumers to pay more than a billion dollars in higher utility prices. The Star's Tony Cook explains how lawmakers can talk about the corrupt deal, but that's pretty much all they can do at this point.

With critics saying Indiana ratepayers would have to shoulder more than $1 billion in losses over eight years, a proposed coal-gas plant in Rockport is likely to undergo significant scrutiny during the upcoming legislative session.

Not everyone believes such dire financial projections will come to fruition. But for those who do, a troubling question remains: Can anything even be done to alter the Rockport deal? . . .

Even a state senator who helped author the enabling legislation in 2009 concedes it might be time to re-examine the deal.

"I think the numbers are speculative but worthy of discussion," said Sen. Brandt Hershman, R-Buck Creek. "If there is a need for enhanced or renewed review, there is nothing wrong with that."

Getting out of the deal could be difficult. Under the contract with Indiana Gasification, the state is permitted to walk away from the deal only under very specific conditions, such as default, bankruptcy, or missed deadlines. Indiana Gasification, on the other hand, is permitted to cancel the deal if it determines that construction of the plant is economically unfeasible for any reason, though the company would be banned from selling gas from the plant to anyone else . . .

Mark Lubbers, Indiana project director for Indiana Gasification and a former chief adviser to Daniels, said if the state pulled out of the contract, there would probably be damages involved, though he wasn't sure about the extent.

"I don't know, and if I did, I probably wouldn't advertise it," he said . . .

What is really disgusting about this discussion is the fact that lawmakers were fully aware that Indiana's natural gas consumers could very well wind up paying higher utility rates if the state entered into a long-term purchase agreement with Leucadia; they simply chose to ignore the inevitable when they signed off on this deal. The fact is that Leucadia officials were begging the state to force Indiana consumers to subsidize the construction of the plant because nobody in their right mind would loan the company the large amount of money it would take to construct a new plant, let alone the high production costs once the plant was constructed. There was always going to be a cheaper natural gas available on the open market. Hershman's notion that the IURC could re-examine the deal is laughable. This is the same corrupt utility commission that has screwed ratepayers time and time again. You don't get appointed to the IURC unless you're in the pocket of utility interests. Consumers have never had a voice on the IURC board. This deal boiled downed to Daniels' long-time political crony, Mark Lubbers, coming to him and saying that he deserved to be allowed to trade his insider government influence to become a multi-millionaire the same way Daniels did it. Mitch agreed, and now  Indiana's natural gas customers will pay dearly. These people could give a damn less how badly they screw over the people; it's all about feathering their own nests.

Coats Wealthiest Hoosier In Congress

The Washington Post takes a look at the wealth of members of Congress, which not surprisingly, is well above that of average Americans. During the same period that average Americans saw a decline in their net worth of about 39% from 2007-10, members of Congress saw their net worth grow by 5%. It should also be noted that members of Congress are not required to disclose the value of their homes, the salaries of their spouses, money kept in non-interest bearing accounts or their congressional retirement plan, which is far more generous than anything you will find in the private sector. Close to half of the members of Congress, or 253, are millionaires. Among Indiana's congressional delegation, the Post analysis found that Sen. Dan Coats is the wealthiest, while Rep. Marlin Stutzman is the least wealthy with a negative net worth. Here is their estimated wealth by order:

Sen. Dan Coats ($4.8 million)
Rep. Dan Burton ($1.8 million)
Rep. Larry Buschon ($1.3 million)
Rep. Pete Visclosky ($1.2 million)
Sen. Richard Lugar ($670,509)
Rep. Todd Rokita ($478,513)
Rep. Joe Donnelly ($174,005)
Rep. Mike Pence ($90,008)
Rep. Todd Young ($65,000)
Rep. Andre Carson (-$25,999)
Rep. Marlin Stutzman (-$84,496)

A Conversation With Bernie Marcus

This is one of the most effective pro-Romney Super PAC ads I've seen this election cycle. It's a personal message from Bernie Marcus, founder of Home Depot, appealing to the American Jewish community to support Romney.

Labor Department Says Unemployment Rate Fell In September

The Department of Labor released new job numbers showing a drop in the unemployment rate to 7.8% for September, which is magically the same rate it was when Barack Obama took office in January, 2009. The economy added 114,000 new jobs in September according to the report. The labor participation rate inched up 0.1% with more than 800,000 entering the work force but is still well below 70% and at the lowest levels in decades. The numbers don't mesh according to early analysts' take on them. The Labor Department has been consistently revising its numbers after their initial release during the Obama administration when nobody is paying much attention, and the numbers are always worse than what was initially reported. You can bet that these numbers were doctored to help rescue the President's re-election campaign. If you factor in the number of Americans who have dropped out of the workforce because they were unable to find a job, the actual unemployment is far above 10%.