Superbowl 2012: My concerns

When I spoke out at the City-County Council meeting on February 1st, I briefly mentioned that I was concerned about how Indianapolis may look with the world's eye on it in 2012 due to the Superbowl.

Take a look at downtown Indianapolis. Not too far from the city-county building, there's an apparently abandoned building that looks like it was in the middle of construction or renovation. Right across the street from the Central library, there's a church that is just sitting there, locked and not in use. It's slowly turning from a parking lot with an ugly building by it to an eye sore. A similar church can be seen just off of Massachusetts Avenue, except this one is boarded up. And then of course, just a few blocks away from the Children's Museum, is the former site of Winona Hospital.

While the city's Indy Land Bank has taken possession of the site and cleaned it up and boarded the broken windows and unlocked doors, the fact remains that the city owned the site for over a year and allowed it to fall into an asbestos infected site, probably destroying the building's viability as a possible hospital for the neighborhood. While the city let it go to pot, squatters broke in and used it as their living space. It's only a matter of time before the city forgets about it again and this saga repeats itself.

One of my initial projects I wanted to start when this blog launched was a series on abandoned buildings. I was inspired, partially, by The Indianapolis Star's Star Watch column. This column publishes information about abandoned and neglected buildings, such as who owns it. However, the Star mislead readers on who owned the Winona Hospital site as I documented in this blog entry.

So this is one of my concerns. That when the world is watching us in 2012 hosting the Superbowl, some young journalist will walk a few blocks outside of the main activities and see the abandoned and neglected buildings that dot the areas around and just outside of downtown Indianapolis. I often hear about how to make this a "world class city", but before we get there, we have to take care of the basics first. Throughout the next few weeks, I'll be highlighting information on abandoned and neglected sites that I see in my daily travels. The challenge will be to get public records on who owns the properties, which may cause a delay in publishing these stories. It will also offer me additional insight as to how township government, which maintains property records, deals with public records requests.

Preview Post

I've got several stories somewhere between "think of something to write about" and "write the damn thing already." My professional obligations are winding down, and my academic work seems to be getting into a flow that is somewhat manageable, so more time for blogging. Here's a summary of what will be posted really, really soon:

• My interview with former Mayor of Indianapolis, Bill Hudnut, will be posted soon. The cassette tape is sitting on my desk and I just got to sit down and learn how to transfer the audio from the cassette to my computer. I'm still debating on to if I should just post the raw audio, or post the raw audio and write an article as well.
• On that note, Mayor Hudnut will be speaking to the Marion County Republican Party. You can read about his appearance, as well as how to attend, here.
• I've filed a public records request with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. The white signs that restrict parking due to an "EMERGENCY ORDER" site a specific code in the lower right hand corner. I'll be posting pictures, and type up my original letter and what I received from City Legal late last week. You can read the sample letter that I used to base mine on over here. And for additional "fun", you can read the relevant Indiana Code over here.
• I'm also trying to get down to the General Assembly to track legislation that I'm interested in, but I'm having the worst luck in getting down there in between my professional and academic obligations. It only happens at the beginning of the year, so I really want to start covering it as soon as possible. Senate Joint Resolution 7 (Marriage Amendment to the IN Constitution) passed in the Senate but is DOA in the House, and Senate Bill 192 (Domestic Partnerships and their rights) seems to be getting no traction in either legislative body.
• I've also been "re-tweeting" or linking to several articles worth reading about the NFL and/or Superbowl. So go check out my Twitter page
  

And in news from other blogs:

• The Indiana Law Blog reports that there is no Roll Call log on the votes for Senate Joint Resolution 7. The roll call is listed as Roll Call 67, but Roll Call 67 is not even in the log of all the Roll Calls.
• Advance Indiana, IPOPA, and Ogden On Politics are all reporting on the 26 (of 29) City-Council reps who took the Colts up on the offer of purchasing two tickets to the Superbowl at $800 per ticket. At the time of this posting, Christine Scales (R) and Ed Coleman (L) have come out as two of the three council reps who did NOT purchase the tickets. As I speculated over at iPOPA, I believe Doris Minton-McNeil is the third since she is inactive at the council due to recovering from an illness. Paul Ogden also brings up that most of the council reps are of a fairly modest background and even being able to afford $1,600 for the tickets, it'd be a challenge to afford the associated travel costs. He's speculating that they are being sold to brokers. I'd also speculate they might be buying them on behalf of friends or family who can afford them.
• The homicide rate jumped quite a bit in the last few days of January. Bart Lies has the number at 14. Let's pray for better (or in this case, slightly less worse) news in the future.
• Finally, Abdul Hakim-Shabazz over at Indiana Barrister and Pat Andrews at Had Enough Indy? have been doing bang-up coverage of Indianapolis Public Schools and Decatur Township Schools respectively.
  

Let's do this more often!

UPDATE: Advance Indiana and iPOPA are now reporting all three council members who turned down the Colts. They are Edward Coleman (L-At Large), Christine Scales (R-4th) and Angela Mansfield (D-2nd). Angela Mansfield also said that all council members who purchased tickets had to sign an agreement saying they wouldn't re-sell the tickets at more than face value. Ms. Mansfield also said that it was disrespectful to assume the worst of intentions of council members. But to that, I ask Ms. Mansfield to look around at her company, who all too often skirt around ethical issues about lobbying and conflicts of interest.

Ms. Mansfield is an honorable representative of the people. She was the lone Democrat who showed up at a committee meeting on the Capital Improvement Board bailout and voted against it, and did the same during the full council vote. Other council members would be wise to learn a few lessons from her.