Swiftboating – Fishers Style

Swiftboating is a term invented by Karl Rove to tell half-truths, to lie to just to win an election. If you want to read about draft-dodger Karl and many of the other underhanded things he has done go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Rove.

In Fishers you don’t have elections, since it is a one party rule town, but we do have Swiftboating on the Geist Annexation. This became crystal clear on the night of the enactment of the Ordinances to Annex the three areas of Geist.

Councilmen Art Levine made the only real truthful statement that evening. He said “This is in the best interest, long-term, for the residents of Fishers.” Notice he said for Fishers and not for Geist. He is 100% correct it is a lose lose for Geist and a gain for Fishers. The net flow of tax money into Fishers is approximately $4.5 million more than what they would have to spend on the Geist area. So if you live in Fishers these guys are working for you, if you live in Geist they are working against you. Actually even if your live in Fishers they are working against you in the long run with a total lack of planning.

Now lets look at some of the other statements of the evening.

Fishers has kept taxes flat and low, yes that is correct, but they didn’t tell you about all the hidden taxes, such as the new Storm Water Tax. Or all the impact fees they charge for every new home build, it’s a tax on new home-owners, now it may be smart to do it this way for the current residence but it is a Ponzi Scheme, when new development runs out, they will have to shift all these impact fees into taxes. The only way Fishers can keep taxes down is by adding more and more land. More and more development. More and more annexations.

An expert from Wabash Scientific starting with telling us what a bunch of good guys and on the great work of Fishers, but keep saying I am not an accountant and this is my estimate. I also am not an accountant and I can say my estimate is the exact opposite of his. This same expert testified before the Senate Summer Study and not one of his items of support of statements made it to the final Bill. Further he never got to talk at the Senate Public Hearing on the Annexation Bill, but told the Chairwomen that most people in Geist are in favor of Annexation and that only a few people are waving their hands and yelling against annexation from the GUO Well so much for the creditability of this hire gun from Fishers. I wonder what he will say when 90% of the Geist people sign the remonstration documents. He needs to remove the word “Scientific” from his company’s name, as it is misleading and false.

Then we came to hired gun number two, who continued to talk about the New Towns of Geist. And how bad the documents and the fiscal plans were and no detail contracts for services. Well, I wonder if he read the law on forming a new town. After listening to him I have to wonder, since you can’t sign a contract until you are a town, how can you have a contract in your plan. It’s a chicken and egg, but he scrambled it all for one reason to generate fear. But I think the real fear is in the town council. They live in total fear of the new Towns and they know the plan is good and that is what is causing all these nasty comments. They known on of the best town budget planners in the State of Indiana put it together. They know the fire and police protection are sound but lets scare people with words from an “expert” that they are not. For example, they left out that the Castleton Fire Department, that would move to Geist has $2,000,000.00 plus in equipment and that the Lawrence Township Fire Department has agreed to house the new Fire Department until a house is built and that the use of the 86th street firehouse would continue. They also would agreed to back up and mutual aid. That the run times in the future will be less than the current Fishers run times. They left out that after seeing this plan they realized they had to add a fir station in the same location that had been proposed by the new towns. That the new town would actually have the use of three stations under this plan instead of the two from Fishers.

They are also back peddling on the use of parks. They are starting to realize the people of Geist live in a park. They are also using this in two different ways. Lets look first they say the plan for the new Towns is flawed because they don’t have a park or even room for a park, then in the next sentence they say under the Annexation we will build a park in the Geist area – this is what Swiftboating is about.

Fishers has no real debt, they have a high credit rating, yes Fishers has a high credit rating, YES Fishers has debt, they have bonds that will be coming due, they have stated in the annexation fiscal plans new debt of 10 million dollars, they have in the downtown development and have stated it is private with no town money, but we will be doing a 15 million TIF. That is where they will in the future forgive 15 million dollars in taxes to help out the private developer to throw all the people and businesses in that area out of their homes, etc. Have you recently noticed they have stopped talking about the expansion of the Town Hall? I am willing to make you a multi-million dollar bet once this Annexation is over it will be back. I wonder if they had to pull it for now because the yellow shirt people would have pointed out the excess waste of the Town Council.

Of course my favorite has to be SPORTS, and the use of Fishers Parks. In the past a few Fishers Council members have been saying all those Fishers people use all of our services for free. These have been shot down one after another. Now they have a new tactic, all people who live outside a town or city are subsidized to the tune of 75% by the nearby town. So if that is true, Fishers it time you paid Marion –Indy for the all the money they have investing in the city for all your citizens who work in the city. Now on to parks, according to them it costs between $500-1000 for every child who plays for each and every sport in the Fishers parks and Geist children take part. What they left out is that Fishers children play in SPORTS in the HSE School facilities which are also paid for by every home-owner in Geist and most of the volunteers in the SPORTS program live in Geist. Now at $500 that means a family of two children who play in one fall and one spring sport costs the town between $2000 and $4000 dollars which is more than taxes on the average home in Fishers. So give a break. What funny numbers are they using, oh they are putting all the costs of the entire costs of the parks from day one and then dividing it by the number children playing sports and using that number for each and every year. By using this accounting method, they are paying for the entire park system over and over every year. Swiftboating at its best.

Yes, Karl Rove would be at home on the Fishers Town Council