If you need further evidence of the Ballard administration’s insensitivity toward African-Americans and our neighborhoods, the fiasco regarding Tarkington Park is the latest example.
Inner city Indianapolis parks have physically and spiritually crumbled during Mayor Greg Ballard’s reign, especially after his unceremonious firing of experienced parks head Joe Wynns in August 2008.
Ballard replaced the respected, experienced Wynns, who understood the role of parks in a diverse major city, with two of the three most incompetent and inept parks directors in my 40 years here — Stuart Lowry and John Williams. (The third, Steve Goldsmith’s parks czar Leon Younger, is currently being paid by Ballard to do a “Five-Year Strategic Plan” for Indy Parks).
Williams, egged on by and in cahoots with arrogant white northside neighborhood leaders, hatched a scheme to “transform” historic Tarkington Park, the square block bounded by 39th/40th/Illinois/Meridian streets.
Pushed by the racially undiverse leadership of the Butler-Tarkington Neighborhood Association (BTNA) and a mysterious umbrella group called Midtown Indy, Williams and Ballard vied to “transform” Tarkington, a neighborhood park since 1945, into a “regional” park that would draw people from the entire north side.
The cost was nearly $20 million.
It involves creating a new playground for kids (the existing park playground wasn’t “hip” enough) and building new restrooms, even though Williams demolished the historic shelter building at Tarkington four years ago.
The makeover would also create a water “spray area” for kids and adults.
The centerpiece of this $5 million first phase was to be a café. Why a square block neighborhood city park needs a “café” hasn’t been adequately explained, but the area’s arrogant white leaders were convinced it would single-handedly spur economic development.
For nearly a decade, a group of middle-aged Black men, volunteering their time, reaching into their pockets, coached football skills to young Black boys living in BTNA and surrounding neighborhoods. Several times a week, the youths and their coaches would practice on available space on the 39th and Illinois side of the park.
No one bothered them, until the city erected a construction fence just before Labor Day, signaling the start of the makeover. Indy Parks’ reaction to Black youth using their parks was to say they never knew the youths were ever there. But Indy Parks managers told a flat-out lie, as several current and past parks employees knew about the youth’s practices.
Indy Parks also demanded the group and any other youth group practicing in Indy Parks to register, and if it’s a supervised group, the adults had to submit background checks — an unbelievable utterance that angered our community.
Tarkington Park adjoins one of the city’s so-called crime hot spots, the 34th and Illinois area, where IMPD and the Department of Public Safety have been devoting social service resources to improve the area, not just arrest crime.
Over two days, listeners of WTLC-AM (1310)’s “Afternoons with Amos” slammed the Tarkington Park makeover, especially singling out later plans to build a dog park and blasting the café (which now won’t be built right now, though a concrete pad will be built to accommodate it later).
“Programs,” listeners demanded. “A building for youth activities,” listeners said is what Tarkington really needs.
It’s sad the Ballard administration thinks that in the majority-Black Tarkington Park neighborhood, dogs and coffee are more important than programs and space where Black youth can learn
What I’m Hearing in the Streets
Last week, the federal appeals court in Chicago upheld a local federal court ruling that says Marion County’s system of electing Superior Court judges is unconstitutional.
Unless the ruling is appealed and overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, the state legislature will have to change how Marion County judges are selected.
Despite the arguments of my friends at Common Cause and the ACLU of Indiana, judge candidates who weren’t endorsed by the party were periodically elected.
Most of the African-Americans who became Marion County judges did so by “breaking the slate” — winning in Democratic primaries without receiving the party’s endorsement.
Now to make judge selections “legal,” one option the Republican-controlled legislature could consider is “merit selection” of judges.
But this process is fraught with danger, because of the sway the Indianapolis Bar Association has over the procedure.
The Indianapolis Bar has traditionally rated African-American attorneys, even the most qualified, as being less worthy of being judges than their white counterparts.
Outstanding Black judges, like current federal Judge Tanya Walton Pratt and pioneering Black judges Taylor Baker, David Shaheed, Webster Brewer and Z. Mae Jimison, would’ve never become judges if there had been Bar Association-influenced merit selection.
How judges will be picked in this county is going to be a MAJOR issue for the Black community to grapple with in the next couple of years.
See ya next week!
You can email Amos Brown at acbrown@aol.com.
