A BRAVE NEW WORLD
I took a few hours off this morning to recuperate from the Election. As I said before, the victory of Greg Ballard over incumbent Bart Peterson was no big shocker. Anyone who paid attention to the rather angry electorate saw this coming. However this is not about past election results, but the new world we enter into today.
The new Mayor and Council have a lot of challenges facing them. Some challenges will be relatively easy to tackle, such as taking back the Metropolitan Police department from Sheriff Frank Anderson. There are 17 Republican votes to 12 Democratic votes on the Council. The Sheriff opposes this, but I question his motives because if this was so important to Anderson, why didn’t he speak out about this during the campaign, when Ballard was running and made the campaign promise?
I think I can easily predict that Ballard will get control of IMPD, and lot a of “consultants” who were hired back following their retirements from the Sheriff’s department will lose their jobs. Ballard and his team are going to have some tougher challenges ahead, mainly the budget. To eliminate the public safety tax they will have to find $90 million for pensions, new police and programs. Luckily there are some measures Ballard can take to mitigate the tax increase. He can take some of Anderson’s “consultant” positions and turn those into officers on the street. In addition, he can go to the legislature and combine the city’s two police pensions and alleviate some of the financial burden on the taxpayers.
Also, incoming District 21 Councilor Ben Hunter has proposed putting the city Park police under IMPD, and merging with the airport authority police and making them a division of IMPD, and expand their authorized territory on the southwest side of town which would make IMPD’s beats smaller because the area is covered.
Ballard can also reach out to the business community and create a community foundation fund to pay for crime prevention programs. The same effort was done to try to get a Super Bowl for Indianapolis, surely keeping kids free from a life of crime is just as important. Also, if the city is going to give out tax abatements then perhaps the application fee could be doubled to create a community enhancement fund and not-for-profit groups could apply for competitive grants to help prevent crime.
Despite the regular pressures of running a city I think the biggest challenge Ballard, and the new Council’s biggest challenge, will be to not believe their own press. They were swept into office on a wave of voter discontent and they can just as easily be taken out in four years. To manage this city it will take level heads, hard work, clear vision and patience. These problems were not created overnight, but they need to be solved within the next four years.
