I attended the join meeting of The Allen County Commissioners and The City Council

It was actually fairly interesting. About 200 people were present.

John Stafford from IPFW gave a presentation on "The nuts and bolts" of HB1362 which allows consolidation.

Then the council members and commissioners that wanted to were allowed to make their comments. Those that spoke were surprisingly in favor of consolidation.

Talarico and Crawford may be the two most in favor of consolidation. In fact they are working on a resolution and plan on discussing it at City Council tomorrow...

Hines was the only person who basically spoke against consolidation.

Nelson Peters spoke in favor of exploring consolidation in a deliberate manner.

Pape basically agreed that we need to look at consolidation as long as it improves government. He was cautious and though that is will be very important to get the right people on the consolidation committee.

Schmidt was also in favor of it. He emphasized how important timing can be and he said this was the biggest crowd he had ever seen. He thinks it is time.

I left the meeting with the impression that the consolidation discussion will be occurring in the near future. It will be a long and painful process...