The Next Four Years - by Cathy Burton

.....
click here to return to November index

The opinions expressed in these articles and features are those of their author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of McANA or the opinion of its Directors or Officers.

The Next Four Years
by Cathy Burton
[President of McANA]

With the recent local elections, a buzz is in the air anticipating the shifts in policy our City will witness in coming months and years as we operate with both a Democratic mayor and City County Council for the first time in three decades. While we can only speculate how events will be handled as they unfold, there is no doubt that there are some critical issues that will have to be addressed - the sooner the better.

There are many diverse opinions about what those issues may be and how they should be prioritized. But there are some that seem to keep surfacing around the tables where neighborhood volunteers gather. So, for what it is worth, this is a short list of some of those issues that I hear most frequently.

Mortgage Foreclosures – It is no matter of pride that Marion County has experienced a 500% increase in mortgage foreclosures in the last decade. This blight on our City spans demographic and geographic boundaries. It happens in older urban neighborhoods and new subdivisions. In a city that sees 3500 people without homes on any given night it is shameful that we cannot get control over this situation.

Property Taxes – It is not fair to lay the blame for skyrocketing property taxes solely at the feet of the Mayor or the City County Council. While I agree that the property tax system in our state needs to be overhauled, this latest crises spiraled out of actions taken at the state level. Be that as it may, our City elected officials need to put the full force of their offices behind lobbying the state legislature for property tax relief and also need to give priority to streamlining the functions of a municipality that provides citizen services through multiple taxing entities.

Economic Redevelopment – We all know how critical economic development is to a thriving, affordable community. But when we are out there lobbying for businesses, we cannot forget to make a concerted effort to maintain and revitalize our current businesses and reuse our empty and abandoned industrial and commercial sites.

Code Enforcement – The number one complaint I hear from neighborhoods is about code enforcement. The City has made some progress in restructuring and staffing code enforcement, but the process still seems cumbersome and slow to respond to residents’ complaints and often appears that violators continue their practices unchecked.

Tree Preservation – This one seems pretty simple and straightforward. In a growing City that seeks to promote itself as world class, we need to protect and rebuild our tree canopy and wooded areas to preserve our environment, control energy costs, and increase our property values and quality of life. We need a strong conservation and restoration ordinance to do this – not just a committee discussion.

Combined Sewer Overflows and Septic Tank Conversions – Indianapolis leaders have known for decades that our City’s antiquated combined sewer and stormwater system needed to be addressed to reverse serious health hazards and meet new EPA requirements. During the last ten years, the costs for resolving this matter have continued to escalate at an alarming rate. We need to get this taken care of before it breaks our city environmentally and financially.

Septic System Removal – Having a major metropolitan area where a large number of it residents are served by private septic systems poses some serious health and property value concerns. But connecting to sanitary sewers, and paying the monthly sewer bills, is a financial burden that most homeowners simply cannot afford. Councilor Beulah Coughenour (who unfortunately retires from the Council at the end of this year) has a good and viable solution to this conundrum through a pending Council ordinance if we can all just set aside personalities and politics and do what is right.

I-69 – The proposed construction of a “new” freeway smack dab through Perry Township is just a bad idea. Ample evidence of this (accumulated through INDOT’s own studies) has been provided to the Mayor and the City County Council. They just need to stand up and say NO!

Light Pollution – We can light our city for safety, identification, and beauty without making it visible from Mars. Let’s take advantage of the expertise we have on hand to craft an enforceable ordinance to address this in a sensible way. The bottom line is that excess lighting is a waste of money, energy, and environmental resources. Last I knew, we didn’t have a surplus of any of those things to cast into the sky.

Light Rail and Comprehensive Bus Service – We have a transportation problem in Marion County. Our roads are becoming the poster child for accidents waiting to happen, endless time lost in traffic jams, traffic smog and wasted fuel. If we want to play with the big boys, we need to find a way to get people around our City safely, economically, and on time. I don’t want to look in the dictionary some day and find Indianapolis listed under the definition of road rage.

Park Ground – We need to stop surrendering all the appropriate potential park ground to development and developers should be expected to contribute to our park land inventory the same way the are expected to contribute road rights of way.

Billboards – Our City officials need to take a long, hard look at what billboards do to our streetscapes and our efforts to present an attractive City in which to locate families and businesses by following the lead of other cities around the country and stop new billboard construction.

Jail Overcrowding – Again, this is a financial nightmare. But we have to fund the mandatory revisions to our jail because releasing unadjucicated offenders into the community is a recipe for unsafe neighborhoods and we surely don’t need to put any of our overstretched city budget toward paying fines for out of compliance incarceration practices.

Many of these issues have been around for a long time and were inherited by the current administration and Council and I do understand that not everything can happen at once. And I know there are lots of other issues out there. But we have spent long enough discovering and discussing the problems. No matter who is in charge, let’s look forward to the next four years as a time of action.

Cathy Burton l