Downtown Arena?

The city paid consultants $39,000 to study the feasibility of a downtown arena. I could have told them that it wasn't feasible for free. Maybe if I charged more, city officials might listen.

 A downtown arena was proposed in 2000. The proposal died a deserved, horrible death when officials admitted that the Coliseum would be demolished if the Komets moved downtown. Regular readers of this blog already know my stance on local government subsidizing the entertainment industry. But broader public support is going to depend on several key questions.

1. Will the Komets move to the new arena?
2. If they do move, will Memorial Coliseum share the same fate as Memorial Field? My guess is that they will conduct a study to find alternate uses for the historic building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. And it will stay open for a few years and operate at a huge loss to the county, and then it will get bulldozed anyway. So if you are emotionally attached to the Coliseum, you should be very concerned about the city building a competing sports venue.
3. If the Komets won't be moving, what is the point? Is some other minor league team with an idiotic name moving in? Or are there going to be concerts in this arena, just like at the Grand Wayne Center, the Embassy Theater, and the Coliseum? Is this city so jam-packed with concerts that they need another place to hold them all?

WOAH: Collective Bargaining Controversy breaks out right before Primary Selection Process last night

In less than an hour the pandering will commence, the last minute debates will engage, somebody will piss in someone Else's Wheaties, and tomorrow we might find out whom picked who to run in November's Municipal Elections.

Meanwhile, you all got stuck footing the bill for what should be decided in a private Party Convention, rather than being discussed on the edge of our roadways and the bottom of our airwaves. The vetting of candidates for Elected Office really does belong in a Convention setting, where the members have control not the Puppets tied to someone else's strings, especially since only 13% of the electorate historically show up to vote today. Our Convention was last month and only cost $20 dollars for food and tip, membership fees were optional.

Best of luck to my friends whom are currently in contests as Republicans and Democrats both. Just to let you know Libertarian Party of Allen County, Indiana's Candidates will see whomever wins today in November.

Fort Wayne's Collective Bargaining Controversy

While this interview last night on WOWO's Pat Miller with Jeremy Bush, the head of the Fire Fighters Union, may be considered last minute politicking or electioneering; it also needs to be reviewed because it validates the arguments made by Vote Gina Burgess regarding active collusion by both current members of City Council and the Mayors office. Here is a separate link to Gina's previous commentary and exposure of the issues.

Union president's secret recording questions mayor's commitment to collective bargaining
By Corinne Rose - 21Alive | April 28, 2015

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (21Alive) -- A local union leader claims Mayor Tom Henry supported ending collective bargaining behind closed doors, while supporting the unions in public.

The president of the fort wayne firefighters union was supposed to share with us a recording he made last summer of a conversation about the mayor

Jeremy Bush taped that conversation with Republican 3rd District City Councilman Tom Didier without Didier's knowledge.

Didier tells 21Alive he had a meeting with Mayor Henry and Republican Councilman At-Large Marty Bender where the topic of collective bargaining came up.

Didier then told union president Bush that Mayor Henry asked him and Councilman Bender if they supported eliminating collective bargaining for six of the city's unions, why not eliminate it for all nine, including the police and fire departments?

However, Didier, Bender and Mayor Henry all say that comment is being taken out of context -- that the mayor was trying to lobby the republican councilmen to keep collective bargaining for the unions.

“What I was actually doing was expressing some frustration with the city council and I did say that ‘If you're going to take away six unions, why don't you take away all nine unions?’ And that's the statement that was taken out of context,” Mayor Henry says.

“The mayor was always very, very pro-union and tried to do the best he could to try and get us to sway our opinions of it but was not successful in that,” Bender says.

Mayor Henry has consistently supported collective bargaining, saying it gives city employees a voice.
He even used his first veto in office after city council approved eliminating collective bargaining for the unions not covering public safety.

Union president Bush stands by what Didier says on the recording, which he would not share with us by the time of our newscast, but says he would on Wednesday.

Bush also says that either Didier lied to him, or that Didier, Bender and Mayor Henry are all lying now.
If Bush has had this recording since last summer, why is he wanting to share it now?

With the municipal primary election in exactly one week, the timing does seem to be a bit suspect.

 I am sharing all of this specifically for the information and validation of the historical record.