After hearing Mayor Greg Ballard’s 3,938-word, seventh State of the City speech, I finally understand our mayor’s vision.
His vision mirrors that of a vain homeowner who’s invested gobs of cash into putting a new roof, siding and fancy brick veneer on his home’s outside.
There’s a tennis court, putting green and mini soccer/cricket field in the backyard.
Inside, there’s a lavish living room with the finest new furnishings and state of the art home entertainment center with a 108-inch HDTV.
The homeowner’s proud that national magazines have put pictures of his home’s outside, backyard and living room in their publications.
But, the family living inside has a different experience.
The house’s wiring and pipes are aged and rusting. The upstairs rooms desperately need new paint, wallpaper and decades old furniture needs replacing. The basement is drab, dingy, parts unfinished.
Because there are fewer cops in the homeowner’s neighborhood, vandals have stolen chunks of the fencing and copper from the HVAC unit.
And there are some huge potholes in the driveway.
The homeowner can’t afford to fix the rest of the house because his credit cards are maxed fixing up the outside and living room. He’s also earning less salary today than seven years ago.
That’s the “real vision” of Ballard’s State of the City speech. A speech meant to calm whites fearful of crime and a plea for maxing more of the city’s credit to fix up streets that’ll develop potholes after 18 months.
The centerpiece of the speech was an effort to “Live Indy.” An appeal to residents to remain in Indianapolis and to encourage others to move from the suburbs to enjoy what Indianapolis’ urban living has to offer.
Yet, Ballard’s speech gave out no concrete specifics on how to improve the many Indianapolis neighborhoods that are deteriorating before our myopic mayor’s eyes.
Stunningly, Ballard begged for more shiny downtown buildings, saying, “We need more signature structures that define our skyline.”
No we don’t!
One-fifth of all office space downtown is vacant. More shiny buildings will exacerbate that trend.
Ballard has NO strategy to revitalize existing Indy neighborhoods; revitalize vacant office and warehouse space throughout the city-county; and no plan to clean up the scandal plagued former Eastgate Mall.
No coherent plan to revitalize retail areas that’ve decayed like Washington Square, Devington, North Keystone, Shadeland, or 38th and Illinois.
The gist of the mayor’s speech was that we must spend money to make Indianapolis’ downtown even brighter and shinier with lots of new construction. We must showcase and highlight Indianapolis’ strengths, especially neighborhoods so more “young professionals” will move to our city.
According to Ballard, the tax base is shrinking, so we’ve got to import more upscale people. Fifty thousand or so. But as usual, Ballard and his acolytes didn’t do the research.
On average, 31,940 persons move to Indianapolis-Marion County yearly from the suburbs and the nation, according to the 2007-11 Census American Community Survey. But, 33,750 persons move away from the city-county each year. A net loss of some 1,810 persons yearly.
But, among household earning $50,000 or more, 14,144 move to our city yearly; with 18,676 moving out. A net loss of 4,532.
Most of those moving out live in Indy’s township neighborhoods; not inside IPS. Ballard’s challenge is improving those township neighborhoods where the population hemorrhage is greater; not just the inner city.
Mayor Ballard surprised me though by uttering a word he’d never said before in his past speeches – “poverty.”
Unfortunately, Ballard didn’t talk about the rising poverty in his city; or that Indianapolis has had the highest poverty growth of America’s top cities; or that Indy has had one of the largest increases in income inequality.
No, Mayor Ballard only uttered poverty in the context of education saying, “In Indy, a child’s potential will not be limited by their parents’ income or zip code.”
Well Mayor, what about the caretakers of those children? Where is Ballard’s plan to provide meaningful employment opportunities for them?
Where’s Ballard’s plan for meaningful police protection and community policing that makes those households feel safe and secure?
Where’s Ballard’s plan to make those children’s neighborhoods and zip codes the beneficiaries of meaningful investment to improve their neighborhoods – including providing significant numbers of jobs on those projects to people who live in those zip codes?
For the first time in three years, the mayor’s speech mentioned ex-offender re-entry. He then pivoted to this statement, “This current pattern of violence is robbing us of an entire generation of young men of color and it must stop.”
The mayor then tried to reassure the white community saying he’d been “meeting with leaders in our African-American community for months”; announced that “shortly” he’d announce a “plan to address the many root causes of this violence.”
In Ballard-speak, that means he and his small, secret group of Black leaders who don’t dare criticize him, are developing plans to engage our Black community.
But at the same time, the Mayor’s minions have tried to keep secret their efforts to partner with national initiatives to reduce Black violence.
The City was loathe to publicly acknowledge working with Citizens United, an initiative to help cities deal with Black young male violence.
Last week, the mayor’s office was equally secretive that Public Safety Director Troy Riggs attended the launch of President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper effort that’ll bring together resources for young Black boys and men.
If Mayor Ballard’s that secretive on Indy’s involvement in major national programs to curb Black violence, how open will he be in engaging our Black community in his still “secret” plan to curb violence?
See ‘ya next week.
You can email comments to Amos Brown at acbrown@aol.com.
