Odd, no one has picked up this story. Last I heard the county commissioners and the mayor were still talking it over.

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Thanks to Kerry Hubartt for the ink and the headline.

HEAD:  Pledging Allegiance to Higher Law Disqualifies Me from Practicing Law in Indiana

The utter hypocrisy of America’s left never ceases to amaze me. It was this hypocrisy that drove me to file a federal civil rights claim against the government bureaucrats who ran me through one heck of a gauntlet during my bid to be licensed as an Indiana attorney.

On Groundhog Day my search for justice suffered yet another setback. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Judge Theresa Springmann’s decision that I had no federal case to bring. Not because I cannot make a claim under the First Amendment, but because any claim that I can make could be heard only by the Indiana Supreme Court — the very court that I allege to have conspired against me.

Article continued here

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Kumar Menon’s presentation to council was studious, refined and chocked with facts and figures and explanations of how the state controls much of water policy in Fort Wayne. He could lull owls to sleep. And, by the end of his lengthy slide show and presentation most council members had begun to ask how the effect of the rate increase might be “softened,” not whether it was inevitable or needed.

So, next week the matter will be rehashed and Mr. Menon, the dapper, erudite head of City Utilities, will be bring back his answer to their principle question – is there another way? “Oh, esteemed members of our glorious and beloved city council, fellow champions of the public good, health and welfare, after lengthy study, consultation with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, deliberations with our beloved mayor, the burning of much incense and incantations to the gods of sewers and cast iron pipe, the answer, in a word, is no! Any further questions?”

Perhaps he will find a way to lengthen the period over which the 40 percent increase is enacted (he politely said the state very seldom goes along with that option), perhaps he will win the ear of the mayor to use some Legacy money to soften the blow (fat chance given the stated goal of making a catalytic improvement to our community; this increase is for maintenance), or a magical source of grant money that will keep us all happy (not likely). All sources of funds, other than you pocket and mine, are doubtful.

Councilman Russ Jehl asked what so many cynics had observed, that only last year when seeking funding for a purification system, Mr. Menon and staff had all but assured council that no rate increase was in the works. Mr. Menon in response to Mr. Jehl’s challenge repeated what he had said earlier in the session, a bit of a split of the hair to be sure, that an evaluation of the needs of the water-garbage-recylcing utility was not complete when he came before council in April, so, technically, he could honestly say that no rate increase had been “in the works” and that he had not spoken with a forked tongue. Like too many other things the problem did not reveal itself until just after the election. Oh, the gods of timing.

The review was, however, planned and executed last year and might have merited passing mention during those UV-Cryto Spiridium hearings that drew millions of dollars away from other City Utility budget lines, including maintenance. “Oh, yes, council members, we have an review in process that will evaluate our balance sheet, our processes and procedures and help us determine whether an adjustment (increase) to water rates will be forced upon us…” He might have tossed that in. It would have raised valid questions which, after all, is what council is supposed to do.

The rate increase will be passed. Council all but said so last night. They will wring their hands and hope that the Mayor will toss a few Legacy dollars to soften the blow to rate payers, but don’t count on it. The water rate increase will take effect in 2013, so start saving pennies now.

Coupled with the confusion surrounding botched inspection of our new city hall’s ancient elevators, the subsequent delay in reporting that substantial miss and the wallet-busting price of the screw-up Mr. Menon’s parsed words last night offered no solace that the administration will keep its word to be more open and cooperative with council. Two swings, two misses. Three strikes, as the metaphor goes. Actions speak louder than words, as the saying goes.

Also, on the menu last night was also discussion of the road “diet” for Lake Avenue. Four lanes, inadequate lanes by most standards, unless you may live in Nigeria, will be reduced to three – two opposing travel lanes and a center turn lane. Lake had been problematic since penny-pincher (penny wise, pound foolish) Mayor Mike Burns save the taxpayer money that flowed directly to body shops and tire repair. Accident, accident, accident. The same diet was implemented on Rudisill and all but the guys driving the muffler-less, high-hubbed, muscle cars love it. Such a “diet” will benefit everyone traveling Lake. Oddly, John Shoaff did not ask why the same sort of diet was not appropriate for State Boulevard where the state-city planning cabal plans to widen, widen, widen to divert truck traffic from Coliseum past North Side, Hall’s East State, the Hospital and the Rib Room. “Listen to the whistle the rumble and the roar…”

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I found the following on another site called, Evil Unveiled.

Jackie Sparling

Jackie Sparling is a bitter sex offender activist who believes the government owes sexual offenders something for imprisoning them.

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Residents can speak with a City Utilities representative one-to-one  at:

Georgetown Library                             Tuesday, February 7, 2012      11:00 AM – 2:00 PM

6600 E. State Boulevard

City Utilities representatives will make presentations and answer questions at the following meetings:

Neighborhood Presidents’ Meeting      Monday, February 6, 2012      6:30 PM

Citizens Square – Omni Room

Southeast Area Partnership                  Wednesday, February 8, 2012 6:30 PM

Calvary 3^rd Presbyterian Church

Corner of S. Anthony and Capitol

Northeast Area Partnership                  Thursday, February 9, 2012    6:30 PM

Good Shepherd United Methodist Church

4700 Vance Avenue

Northwest Area Partnership                 Thursday, February 16, 2012  6:30 PM

Northridge Baptist Church

1300 E. Cook Road

Just added:

Southwest Area Partnership                 Wednesday, March 21, 2012   7:00 PM

Fort Wayne Sport Club

3102 Ardmore Avenue

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December 21, 2011. Beth Malloy gets her walking papers. Her explanation; “She said she had both personal and professional reasons to leave.” Professional reasons? One can only imagine. I suspect a tiff with the administration. Glad she left nonetheless.

January 28, 2012. Andi Udris is shown the door from The Alliance. He was an outspoken individual, and successful at his job. Udris also openly supported the  “right- to- work” legislation, something Henry opposed. He leaves under a cloud of suspicion. Kevin Leininger stated just the other day:

But surely an agency that spends so much of the public’s money and claims to represent its interests can muster a better explanation for what happened than the terse two-sentence news released issued Friday stating that Udris had resigned to “pursue other interests” – the oldest euphemism in the book for a separation that is not entirely voluntary.

February 2, 2012. King Henry kills the city-county homeland security agreement. No reason, he just did it. On Thursday, Henry sent a letter to the county commissioners stating the agreement is over  in 60 days. That’s it, no explanation. According to one county commissioner, the was no advance warning, and no complaints from the city.

Henry writes: ”While the past six years have been a valuable experiment, with the challenges of budgetary constraints, the city must work to find more effective service solutions for its residents”

Effective solutions? More lockstep democrats, one could suppose.

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Last year, Sen. Dick Lugar was the tea party’s top target — a 35-year veteran who lives in Washington, strays from conservative orthodoxy and even criticized the right-wing movement in the wake of the 2010 elections.

But last week, Lugar was the tea party’s dining companion.

For more than two hours at a restaurant in Carmel, Ind., Lugar sat face to face with the head of one of Indiana’s largest tea party chapters, speaking at length about campaign politics, the senator’s voting record and some of his comments that have irked the movement. Lugar listened patiently and said he’d do more outreach, as he ate his eggs Benedict and peppermint ice cream.

“I was surprised,” said 62-year-old Chuck Ford, president of the Tea Party of Hamilton County. “I don’t usually dine with senators and congressmen.”

At least not in public he doesn’t. The fact is, the Hamilton County TEA Party leader supports  Senator Lugar. Ford recently ousted his vice president, who had expressed a dislike for reelecting Lugar. In an interview with AWB, the ousted VP stated, “Lugar gives Ford tingles up his leg.”

Late last year, when Hoosiers for a Conservative Senate, (HFCS) held their convention to declare support for Richard Mourdock, the Hamilton County TEA Party, (HTP) decided to hold a competing event.  Lugar did not attend the event but his spokesman and campaign coordinator David Wilke attended as Lugar’s representative. While Ford has denied to me his group is supported by the Republican party, the Hamilton County Young  Republicans donated $500 to the event. The Young Republicans generally march in lockstep with the state party. (read:support Lugar)

Ford’s group could not attend the HFCS convention due to their 501c3 status, however, they were invited to attend the rally afterwards, which was represented by the majority of Indiana TEA Parties. The time of the rally would not have impeded on their event, but they chose to not stand in solidarity and were no-shows.

By all impressions, this is not a TEA Party group. It’s merely a bunch of hacks parading to be a TEA Party group to make it appear as if Lugar has some TEA Party support. It should be noted that Mr. Ford at one time was a member of the Indiana State Teacher’s Association, (union), and negotiated union contracts on its behalf.

Back to Wilke for a moment. The 1940 Republican presidential nominee was Wendell Willkie, David’s grandfather.

From the blog, Welcome to my TEA Party.

Willkie was cozy with Democrats.  He joined with Eleanor Roosevelt to form Freedom House and was a delegate to two Democratic national conventions.

A Wilsonian Internationalist who promoted world government, Willkie wrote the book “One World.”  He supported Roosevelt’s controversial New Deal.

Late in his career, Willkie joined the New Liberal Party and attempted to push its agenda nationally.  Senator Lugar was a member of a liberal think tank, the Roosevelt Institute’s Campus Network.  And proving that he’s no statesman, he recently resigned under pressure from the Tea Party.<

So, while Ford states, “I don’t usually dine with senators and congressmen,”  according to another HTP member I spoke with, Mr. Ford has regular breakfast meetings with Lugar’s closest adviser, David Wilke.

Imagine that.

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The party-line concerning the elevators went something like this: we had them inspected, were told they were good for three or so more years, moved on to other things, were surprised when people got stuck between floors after move-in, found money that would not require council approval and here we are. Sorry, should have given you a heads up.

It was the inaugural Fifth Tuesday hearing and it was well worth the price of admission. I doubt, however, that anyone left the chambers last night satisfied with either questions or answers.

To set the scene, most months have four Tuesdays when the Common Council of the City of Fort Wayne does its work. Once quarterly a month has a fifth Tuesday and over time this “extra” Tuesday has been taken off by council. They have done that for no real reason such as a prevalence of sun spots on all fifth Tuesdays or a need to fly home to the meet with constituents, it is just boys’ night off. Council, in fact, operates on a three night rotation where a bill is introduced on the first Tuesday, debated or discussed the second Tuesday and then disposed of the third Tuesday. Given there are 52 weeks there is only one Tuesday that would cause confusion, not four, but things being things the fifth Tuesday has become time away from the rigors of talking.

Tom Smith, the new council president, decided last month to pick up the pace a bit and put the fifth Tuesday back in play and rename it 5TH TUESDAY. Council was redecorated to give the appearance of a Roman Forum and everyone wore gold-trimmed togas. It is now a special mark on the calendar, so soon there will be 5TH TUESDAY lore, memorabilia and letterhead to promote the night, perhaps reserved seating, perhaps a CD. Mr. Smith wants to give the night stature over the mundane business of buying salt and asphalt, so he sees it as a forum to discuss special topics. So it was last night. Last night’s proceedings were more along the lines of the Watergate Hearings than high discussion among solons.

Most folk know about the new city hall. Most know it was a heck of a fight to convince council to open the purse to buy the $7 million building. The price tag, with repairs and such, increased to around $19 million which led to more and more fights.

Then, after purchase and renovation, citizens started complaining the elevators were holding them captive. Seems a cellphone can get a signal in a fifty-year old elevator shaft. During one EMS run, woman on gurney, monitors beeping, the van waiting outside with lights ablaze, a lift became embarrassingly and dangerously stuck between floors for six to seven minutes. “Life and death,” bemoaned Councilman Marty Bender. It became painfully evident to the administration they had to fix the six building elevators, all of them, at a cost of $900,000. How to pay for the mess, became job one.

So, instead of “splaining” to council and asking them for an appropriation the administration went to the Redevelopment Commission and that’s when the real trouble started. To put it simply, asking the much more compliant, much friendlier commission, which has three mayoral appointees and only two councilmatic appointees, and which is staffed by the administration, looked like an end run, or sweeping the problem under the rug. Council has high profile and loves to grab headlines, the commission holds meetings in a closet and tries to keep the tone hushed. It seemed like “let’s see if we can get away with this one…” So, the commission voted the cash from their own pocket money, but somebody told the press and questions, innuendo, charges, counter-charges, more innuendo and base motives were raised or attributed to the action. The matter didn’t go away, it festered.

Last night council and the administration tried to get it all on the table.

Mr. Smith opened the questioning with a “did you know about this before the election” point blank question; that meaning, did you hide this from the community so as to protect the mayor? Controller Pat Roller chose not to answer the question, but instead went through a lengthy recitation of the purchase of the building, its funding and gardening in Indiana. Eyes glazed and rolled. Assault blunted. One has to guess that was the idea. Tactic One-A in political debate is not to answer the question posed, but to answer what you would have wished that question to have been. Something like, “Controller Roller, would you tell us why the administration should be fast-tracked toward canonization?” Of course!

Greg Leatherman, the director of the Redevelopment Commission, which found the petty cash, eventually came to the table to recite a bit of history about TIF money. TIF is Tax Incremental Financing, and within a TIF district property tax dollars are diverted from the general fund to use on intra-district economic development. It is money that would otherwise go to the general fund and pay for schools and libraries and buses, not to mention airports and sewers, but has been used to pay for ballparks and parking garages that are believed to increase the tax base. TIF. Mr. Leatherman cited a dozen examples of where TIF dollars had been used for purposes very similar to elevator repair. That line of discussion rather faded away. Yesterday was the formerly embattled Mr. Leatherman’s best day since his wedding. (See celebratory stories of the Harrison. His baby, in many ways.)

Finally, Mrs. Roller and architect Cory Miller, who handled much of the “due diligence,” noted that the State of Indiana inspected and passed the elevators and that experts had told the administration to budget for ongoing maintenance while setting aside cash for eventual major repairs within three to four years. Mr. Miller and Mrs. Roller said they accepted those findings and moved on to other problems. In hindsight, they said, yup, they should have sought additional inspections, yup, they should have realized that the building being fallow for years might have had an adverse effect, but that with so many other things on the plate during this “once in a century” move that a nut-by-greasy-bolt inspection was not done.

In the end, council agreed the elevators had to be repaired, that the source of funds was acceptable and accepted the oft repeated mea culpas and apologies offered by the controller. Heads will not roll.

The administration did, however, know that the elevators were in dire straights before the election. Hmmm. The administration also cast doubt on their recent pledge to be more open and cooperative with council. (Hard to regain lost trust.)

While securing funds from the Redevelopment Commission enjoyed precedent it blew up in the Henry Administration’s face. Mrs. Roller said the approach taken was a mistake. Perhaps it was a teachable moment. Perhaps.

So, Mr. Smith should be commended. He kept most of his herd on topic last night, the meeting was polite, but probing. It was a smart start to a new “tradition” and should serve as a warning to this executive: should the nascent “tradition” set down roots, this administration or any future administration that tries an end-run will attract double the attention and yield many more headlines than simply upfront “splainin’.”

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He’s also a fan of Star Molecules, on Facebook.

 

He lived in Wabash at one time, and operated a business called the Pine Farm Greenhouse. It appears he may have co-owned it with his father.

Court records. Not much, really.

7 seat belt violations, 3 speeding.
Lost house to foreclosure in 2006.

Divorced in 2006

Not sure what this was all about. Had another in 1990, same basic thing.

WABASH COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT
85D01-0507-CM-518
ST VS ERBFile date: 07/14/2005   Disposition Date: 08/10/2005
Minute Date:7/15/2005
Order Location:Book: 86 Page: 61Court examines probable cause affidavits and determines there is probable
cause. Court orders defendant to appear for initial hearing on
8-10-05 at 9:00 a.m. Service by mail. llMinute Date:8/10/2005
Order Location:Book: 86 Page: 307

State orally moves to dismiss. Granted.

Interesting case study for someone.

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Burton represents Indiana’s 5th congressional district. There are several vying for the slot, including former congressman and Kendallville native David McIntosh, attorney Jack Lugar, (Senator Dick Lugar’s son),  Susan Brooks, a former U.S. attorney and Fort Wayne native, and former Marion County Coroner John McGoff, who came close to defeating Burton two years ago.

The 5th District presently includes Huntington County, which joins the 3rd District for the next 10 years beginning with the 2012 elections.

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Fort Wayne / South Bend’s Bishop Kevin Rhoades  — and all of the Bishops of the United States – find themselves in a culture war with the Obama administration in 2012.  Sometimes you run to the front, sometimes the front advances upon you. 

Find here a column in the local newspaper reflecting on the recent march for life in the Fort (see picture below) and the test that has now come to the Catholic Church in the United States. 

The column contains quotes from three US Bishops that would have been considered quite radical just a few months ago.  Read ‘em and muster for battle.

Kulturkampf has come to us, with Kathleen Sebelius and Barack Obama driving the tanks in the general’s ranks.  Definition here:  http://www.archangelinstitute.org/americas-political-class-intensifies-the-kulturkampf/

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My friend, Andi Udris, has resigned from the Alliance. I will miss him.

Andi Udris

To be clear, the abrupt resignation, which he did not signal to me when we breakfasted last week, looks more like walking the plank at the point of cutlass.

Perhaps the people who gave him the choice between jumping or being pushed had a good reason, perhaps, as was reported, it was a clash of personalities. I doubt anyone will bother to tell me. People in these positions use silencers.

Andi, to his credit, worked hard for this area and had big dreams for economic development. He clearly had begun to set down roots and bubbled of how much he liked Fort Wayne.

Somebody, apparently, didn’t care much for Andi, his ideas or his personality. You can see the members listed here on their website. They include the high and the mighty in Fort Wayne, as well as a couple who are moving on in life. They include people who are hired guns who will vanish in their own time from the local scene leaving very little, indeed, behind.

Udris grew up, as mentioned, in Cleveland, he was the son of a Democratic father and a Republican mother. His father immigrated after WWII from West Germany after fleeing his native Latvia. The Soviets had killed thousands in Riga just before the war and would kill thousand more, deport tens of thousands of Latvians to Siberia and would stifle Latvia for a generation. The elder Udris, who had fought the Soviets, fled with the retreating Germans and eventually found his way to Cleveland and a solid, well paying union job that promised a future and security. His union job delivered on that promise in a way the Soviets never did, nor ever would.

So, Andi would talk of hearing his father and mother argue politics at home. They both wanted him to get a nice, safe, middle class job as an engineer, but his first years among the geeks told him that he would rather be in the more fluid and political arena of economic development. To the chagrin of his “play-it-safe” parents, Andi transferred credits and graduated into the more political, more controversial world of quasi-government community development. After stints in other towns, after successes and failures, he brought to Fort Wayne and to his job plenty of experience, plenty of ideas and a sensitivity to the Republican side and the Democratic side of arguments, thanks to hearing his mother and father debate. Andi was not only willing to listen, but he also heard and understood what you might say. When we breakfasted he told me his concerns with the Right-to-Work bill, but explained why he supported it. I offered my concerns which he accepted. There was no rancor, no hyperbole, just an analysis and discussion. I might suggest that willingness to hear sat him apart from so many “leaders” who hear nothing and are just waiting for your lips to stop moving so they can pronounce their loftier thoughts.

What was equally interesting during our many conversations was the way Udris explained the problems confronting Fort Wayne’s economic development future. He had big ideas that would require significant change in local thinking and for some people and institutions to think of the community as well as their parochial turf. The big ideas complimented the standard, Economic Development 101 projects such as “shovel-ready” factory sites.

Perhaps it was his willingness to push, to confront the sedentary and to propose big ideas to little minds that got him in trouble and led to “spend more time with my family,” as they say.

It would, indeed, be a sad thing if Mr. Udris were to leave Fort Wayne for other digs. He contributes much to our area and is not afraid to rattle a few cages. In economic developmental sleeping dogs should not be let lie.

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