Wednesday, December 09, 2015

Carmel's General Fund Broke, Unable To Pay Bills

It turns out the Carmel City Council members who voters rejected in this past municipal election were right about the need to exercise fiscal restraint. In January, Mayor for Life Jim Brainard will have the rubber stamp council he asked voters to give him, but in the meantime he's trying to coax the council members he's been fighting for years to bail out the city's depleted general fund by more than $5 million to pay bills. Council members are irate that Brainard waited until the last minute while he was on a trip outside the country to ask them to approve end-of-year transfers from other funds to cover the shortfall in the general fund. As discussed by the Indianapolis Star:
. . . The mayor's financial adviser, Curt Coonrod, for his part, said council members have been correct to be concerned about revenues. But he said, regardless, the city needed their help now to pay its bills.
Sharp said Brainard can figure out another way.
"You're not going to call me a liar and then when it turns out I told the truth, I’m not going to fix it for you," Sharp said. "He’s just going to have to do it himself, and there are numerous ways to do it. It’s just that Mayor Brainard is used to bullying and that’s what he’s trying to do now.
"I’m not going to be an enabler. This is not a question about dollars and cents. It’s a question about ethics and policies."
The city needs that money to pay debt service due on bonds in December, according to documents filed with the city. Coonrod said the city also needs money to make payroll in December . . . 
So what does Brainard do now that the council voted down the fund transfer?. He phoned in to the clerk-treasurer a request that she transfer the funds and pay the bills anyway without the council's approval and obtain the retroactive approval of the fund transfers next year. "The council members voting against the ordinance could have offered an alternative, and they did not," he said in the statement. "They are outgoing council members (defeated in the election) and the city should not suffer because they could not make a responsible decision." Brainard's solution calls for transferring funds from the city's highway, capital projects, sewer and fire pension funds.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...


Another tinhorn emperor-mayor in the fashion of Indy's own habitual criminal Republican Mayor Greg Ballard.

Indianapolis does not require a City County Council and The Indianapolis CC Council should be abolished.

It appears Carmel too does not require a Council. Neither serves any useful stewardship of the public trust.

ABOLISH THEM BOTH. These Councils have no fetter on lawless mayors. Nor do they have the will nor the spine to be so in any way, shape, or fashion.

Anonymous said...


Again, John Acceturo proved to be 100% correct. A shame that Carmel voters were apparently too ignorant or just simply too disinterested to hear his message.

Anonymous said...

Carmel idiot voters were warned by EVERYONE about City debt. Wonder who pays the piper now? My guess would be PENSION FUNDS.

John Acceturo has been correct for a long, long time as were other City Council members and the Clerk Treasurer.

Rome is burning and Brainard is playing his fiddle inside the Paladium with Coonrod.

Anonymous said...


Next will come a Matt Tully puff-piece supporting and lavishing praise on Jim Brainard's "stewardship" of taxpayer's money.

We remember Matt and Valerie Tully- they fled the deteriorating Marion County for the greener pastures of their newish residency in Carmel. Good for them. More Hamilton County transplants to pay Brainard's (and the Carmel Council's) folly.

Anonymous said...

No surprises here! Will Carmel become Indiana's Detroit?

Anonymous said...

Carmel voters deserve to be fleeced by Brainard. They (the voters)chose by their own volition to ignore those speaking the truth.

Anonymous said...

You nailed it, Anon:10:00!

LamLawIndy said...

Gary, does a Clerk-Treasurer have the authority to -- knowing that the council dod not pass the ordinance -- tranafer the funds?

Flogger said...

Perhaps Mayor Brainhard and Curt Coonrod could use one of those GoFund me sites, or Sugardaddy.com to help out.

Eric Morris said...

This is the greatest Christmas present ever. I will have to compliment Rick on his quote next time I see him at the Monon. I will pray that my fellow parishioner Brainard makes it into the confessional. Maybe he will have a good priest at the federal penitentiary as well, since the state will not investigate him. It is a Year of Mercy in our faith; he should shower some mercy on the taxpayers and resign. Instead, he will probably come after my Home Place.

Sir Hailstone said...

Next up, Westfield!

Anonymous said...

I am a Carmel resident and I am neither stupid nor supportive of the Brainard clan. Everyone I voted for lost, and I am still in disbelief that they could be beaten legitimately. In fact, I outright doubt that the election was legitimate. I was disgusted how the Fire and other city departments strongly supported Brainard. So it seems appropriate that their pension funds should be raided to pay for his financial funny business. Brainard is a shill, a climate change scammer and Agenda 21 stooge, selling out what used to be a great community to flakey phoney agendas of high powered evil, greedy people.

Anonymous said...

Fishers too - it will all be one big Croneyapolis.

John Accetturo said...

I told Carmel residents of the situation but a significant majority of them didn't listen. A majority of Carmel residents don't even vote or even register to vote. The City's finances are in a mess and 4 more years of Brainard makes default inevitable. His bobble head City Council that takes office 1 January will vote for anything and everything he wants. At the end he will blame them the City Council for default.

How can a lawyer(Jim Brainard) have the gall to ask the Clerk Treasurer to commit a crime by issuing payments when there is no money in the right bank account. He should prosecuted for conspiracy, but Indiana does nothing with these people. At least in Illinois once exposed puts politicians in the bank.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone wonder why Carmel comments for the most part are anonymous? Fear of retribution... like the IRS? Our mayor is way too powerful. I have never voted for him. Not a fiddle.. a French horn in the "Play-de-dumb".

Anonymous said...

So cotton-candy-land, Carmel, got shnookered. Proof positive that the people who left Marion was the brain trust.

A few years back our community had to fight, what eventually became, Carmel on one of those roundabouts. I had received one of those bully emails from Brainless and laughed then. Oh, Brainless got his roundabout but not where he wanted it. We made them spend more money to move it, a substation, and purchase some property. I smile about it every day

Anonymous said...


To Anon 5:33 and to John Accetturo: my parents moved us to Carmel in the mid 1970's; my siblings and their children live in Carmel. We long ago saw through the nefarious, duplicitous Jim Brainard. We are just amazed that Carmelites, the allegedly better educated and allegedly more civic minded people, could continue to elect a fraud like Brainard. My Realtor friend just adores what he's "done for Carmel". Really... we say he's done damage "to Carmel".

We've voted for Mr. Accetturo and heeded him at his first warnings about the City of Carmel finances. We too doubt the recent election- or any election here for quite awhile, was fair. The fact that Brainard uses fire fighters, his police force, his City workers, etc,. as his vote getting bootjacks is sickening (maybe I am too dramatic on that but if you live here you know in your DNA Brainard is a crook). We've been here since Pickett and after him we learned the two faces of that awful Jane Reiman and now Brainard. Carmel has slowly been used and degraded in many ways. The new urbanist Brainard is a land thief who, like Indy's Nero-like Ballard, will do whatever he wants regardless of it being legal, ethical, or moral.

Anonymous said...

A much smaller community like Rocky Ripple managed to get the job done when their treasurer was caught misappropriating funds: http://www.wthr.com/story/9408933/town-treasurer-under-investigation