Over the next 10 days the rhetoric and pressure is going to heat up over the part of Mayor Greg Ballard’s anti crime strategy that hasn’t excited Indianapolis.
I’m not talking about his plan to increase the local public safety income tax by 42.9 percent to cover adding more Indianapolis Metropolitan Police (IMPD) officers.
What Indy’s not excited over is Ballard’s plan to provide grants for 1,300 4-year-olds yearly from low-income households to attend quality Pre-K schools in Indianapolis.
City-County Council Democrats are flat against Ballard’s plan to pay for Pre-K by eliminating the local homestead property tax credit.
In an unprecedented move, Mayor Ballard is spending several thousand dollars in campaign re-election funds for radio ads to convince you to support his plan.
There’s nothing wrong with elected officials going over the heads of media and politicians to directly ask residents to support their legislative proposals.
Former Gov. Mitch Daniels did that with his Aiming Higher education plans. Other politicians have done the same.
But instead of creating a separate political action committee like Daniels did, Ballard’s using an unusual tactic of spending cash designed for his expected re-election now, not next September.
Ballard’s campaign guru Jennifer Hallowell told the Indianapolis Star the ads were a “decent sized” radio buy.
Hmm. The four radio stations Hallowell’s out of state media folks chose indicates Ballard’s plan is in deep trouble with white Republicans, independents and Democrats.
The ads are running on WIBC-FM (93.1) where over half the audience are Republicans, and another third independents; WFMS-FM (95.5) where listeners are evenly divided between Democrats, independents and Republicans; and WZPL-FM (99.5) where 40 percent of listeners are independents, another 25 percent Republicans.
Mayor Ballard’s plan would mostly benefit African-American children and families; Ballard’s radio strategy treats Black listeners and our community as an afterthought.
Ballard’s ads are running on just one of Indy’s Black stations – WTLC-FM (106.7). Ads on the white stations run during key morning, midday and afternoon timeslots. But only middays on WTLC.
African-Americans comprise 25 percent of Indianapolis’ voters. But Mayor Ballard has no strategy of “selling” his Pre-K plan to African-American voters and councilors when his ad strategy is just a “token” ad buy.
By the end of Ballard and Hallowell’s radio blitz, white Indy voters will have heard 120 to 150 ads; while Black voters will hear just 10.
Meanwhile what passes these days for the Indianapolis establishment, Eli Lilly, the United Way and the Indianapolis Star’s increasingly out-of-touch top editors and pundits continue to try and ram the mayor’s Pre-K program down our community’s throat.
Understand, our African-American community does support Pre-K; but they instinctively have serious concerns.
Blacks wonder why all the focus on higher cost Level 3 and 4 quality preschools like Day Nursery, while no mention of Indy’s Head Start Pre-K schools which are also United Way certified Level 3 and 4?
Last week the mouthpiece of the city’s establishment, Star columnist Matthew Tully, blasted Democratic politicians and “influential Democratic pundits” (I think he means me) for not supporting Ballard’s plan.
Tully then played the “Black card” saying does it take President Barack Obama to come and endorse Ballard’s plan so Democrats would support it?
Obviously, Tully doesn’t read Black newspapers because if he did he would’ve read four weeks ago that I support the Mayor’s Pre-K plan, but not his scheme to pay for it.
In that same column, I condemned the mayor’s failure of devoting resources for programs to keep teens and young adults away from crime now. A subject Tully has conveniently ignored in his many columns on crime and education.
Last Friday I took an unscientific unofficial poll on WTLC-AM (1310) “Afternoons with Amos” program. Pre-K wasn’t the major issue. Jobs, crime and education overall were.
It’s the jobs issue that Ballard, Tully and the establishment continue to overlook.
Late next week, Indianapolis gets its annual Census American Community Survey report card on the true economic health of our city; including our African-American community.
I worry the data will show the continued economic chasm that exists in this city, especially between the white and Black communities. Income inequality is the fulcrum around which all of Indianapolis’ problems revolve. Until we deal with jobs and income inequality, all other issues like Pre-K are nothing but diversionary sideshows!
What I’m Hearing in the Streets
Finally, Indy got it right in terms of figuring out how to create African-American-focused art for the city’s Cultural Trail.
Four years after the “slave statue” fiasco where famed African-American artist Fred Wilson, wanted to commemorate Black history and culture in Indianapolis with a mockup of the slave image that sits on the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on the Circle and recreate it on the trail; a community-based process worked.
A committee that included community activists and art experts picked a design called “Talking Wall” by Chicago artist Bernard Williams to grace the trail.
Williams’ work will be displayed on the Cultural Trail at Michigan and Blackford, on IUPUI’s campus.
The controversy over the statue focused on the larger issue of what happens when whites tried to dictate and stage manage something for Black folks without consulting Black folks.
The lesson is when our community is involved, consulted and engaged, the process can work and achieve great results.
Just as I was finishing this column came word of the untimely death of former Butler University President Dr. Bobby Fong.
Fong presided over a great rennaisance in academics and prestige at Butler while making sure the university exemplified diversity at all levels.
One of the few Asian-Americans to head a university, Fong was a caring, committed educator. My deepest sympathies to his family.
See ‘ya next week!
You can email comments to Amos Brown at acbrown@aol.com.
