Life in Indy after Bart

Have you ever gone on a spending binge and then realized a month later that you are in debt up to your chinny-chin-chin. Well, that is where Bart has left us.

Mayor Hudnut had wonderful intentions 25 years ago when the Hoosier Dome was built and the downtown became a much nicer place as a result. However, for 12 years he neglected to pay attention to the financial obligations the city had made to organizations like the police and fire department pension funds. He also did not like raising taxes, so whenever the city lacked the revenue to pay for bills, he would just float another bond. His one unforgivable lie was that the stadium tax of 1% would be retired when the bonds on the Dome/Indiana Convention Center were paid off. The revenue from the tax would have paid off the debt by 1990, but he merely refinanced the debt and added more. We now owe $46 million on a Dome we are going to tear down next spring that we originally borrowed $35 million to build.

After Hudnut, Mayor Goldsmith came along and continued the same policies, but he did it with St. Elmo's Shrimp Cocktail Sauce on it. He ignored the same obligations, borrowed more cash, built Conseco Arena for $185 million and gave it to the Pacers for free. Oh, in the meantime he cut a deal with the Colts to keep them in Indy until 2013. The only problem was he gave our football horses all of the revenue for the Dome PLUS a $10-15 million annual sweetener. I think the city owed over $100 million to the police and firemen by the time he left office.

Enter Bart, the protege' of Evan Bayh. He took the art of giving away the city to a new level. He supported the arts, built trails, brought us hotels with fancy linens, and crammed a $725 million stadium and a $140 million library down our throats. He also did not pay-up to the police and firemen. We now owe them $400 million. Here is the best part. He thought that he was so popular, he thought he could stop borrowing our future and let the bad news hit while blaming it on the state. He followed that news with a 65% increase in the local income taxes. It was like watching the Thriller video all over again. Dead people(aka Hoosier voters) woke up. We had a race even if what's his name only had $51,000 and no support form the Republican Party.

The unbelievable happened. Greg Ballard, a retired Lt. Kernel, I mean Colonel won. Who cares why. He won. The voters, at least 52% of them, said enough was enough. What do I expect him to accomplish? Realistically, not that much. We owe the money. All I expect him to do is put the city on a fiscal diet. Hopefully, four years from now, our taxes will be less and what we currently have will still be maintained. If he creates an environment that the private sector finds attractive for building projects based on their merits rather than the tax abatements passed out by Bill, Steve, and Bart he will be a huge success.

It will be interesting to see if he can surprise us again.