Indianapolis

Reprinted from Indy Tax Dollars blog, written by long-time Indianapolis business leader Fred McCarthy.

INDIANAPOLIS, IN -- The headline in this morning's paper (9/15/08) reads, "MSA site will remain empty for a while." We're talking about "...prime real estate three blocks from Monument Circle."

We're talking about a site that has been off the property tax rolls for 34 years. We're also talking about a site that has been a ground level parking lot for 7 years while bureaucratic "planners" and economic "developers" have been unable to come up with the "right" use of the land. It goes on and on!

Nominations are currently being
accepted for the Charles L. Whistler Award - the most prestigious honor given by the Indianapolis Mayor's Office.

This year, the award will again will recognize one or two individuals who have brought together the Indianapolis public and private sectors for civic improvement. The deadline for nominations is Monday, Sept. 15.

A lawyer and community leader in the grand tradition, Whistler gave his time and extraordinary abilities to the Indianapolis community without asking for power or position in return. At the time of his death in 1981, he was a senior partner at Baker & Daniels and chairman of both the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee's Urban Growth and Revitalization Task Force and the White River State Park Citizen's Advisory Committee.

Andrea Neal is a middle school teacher and adjunct scholar with the Indiana Policy Review Foundation. Contact her at aneal@inpolicy.org.

INDIANAPOLIS, IN -- If you want to know what's happening to tax dollars in Marion County, you may have to file a lawsuit. That's what citizens have had to do in the case of the sale of Pan Am Plaza, a prime piece of Downtown real estate for which taxpayers should have received $6 million.

The operative word is "should." For reasons that are not very clear -- but should be exposed over the course of the litigation -- the powers that be decided that the Indiana Sports Corp. need not honor a 1985 agreement that required it to maintain an 88,000-square-foot plaza as public space or else pay the city $3 million plus inflation for it.