Broad Ripple Parking Garage - Farce Extraordinaire

Its like we all went through the Looking Glass with Alice the day the City opted for the Keystone Group's proposal to build a garage on the corner of N. College Avenue and Westfield Boulevard in Broad Ripple.

I reported previously (see "Broad Ripple Parking Garage - Somebody Forgot To Which End of the Horse You Attach the Cart") about the fact that after the deal was inked down, Keystone Group, now going by 6280, LLC, for this project, filed for a number of variances.  Turns out the project as proposed and as accepted by the City, will not fit on the property without A) a variance for zero foot setback from the right of way (35 foot setback on College and 40 foot setback on Westfield required) and B) a variance to shrink the size of each parking space.  At what point does the Ballard administration admit that this project is too large for this site?

Well, as absurd as things were up to the point of filing for the variances, an alert reader gave us a heads up that things were actually even more absurd than we thought.  The folks at 6280, LLC, have also filed to extend into the City's right of way - meaning, they cannot fit in the space they actually own and must spill over and under the sidewalk.  The technical request is to 'vacate' the right of way from 17 feet up in the air to 62 feet up in the air on the three sides of the building, and to 'vacate' the right of way from 1 foot below ground to 8 feet below ground all the way around the building.

The 'ribbon of light' facade, it turns out, can't fit on the building if the entire building is actually required to fit on the lot.  Rather, the property is so inappropriate for the project, that the ribbon must be allowed to hang over the sidewalk and the alley if it is to be a part of the plan at all.  The developer says that the underground vacation is required for structural support, but that makes no sense.

How much more information does the Administration require as proof that this project is not on the right site?  The garage costs twice as much as comparable projects (even those cited by the developer in their own proposal), it is proposed for a location rejected in a 2007 study of Broad Ripple's parking needs, the building can't fit on the property without being granted a variance, and even then, the building is too small to fit 350 regulation size parking spaces in it without further variance, AND EVEN THEN the facade will not fit on the building without hanging over the sidewalk.

When does it become apparent that the project does not fit on the property?  It is all too absurd, even for government work.

I fully expect another round of variance requests should the pending matters be granted.  The 'ribbon of light' is proposed to serve as an advertising beacon.  That, of course, is not allowed by our ordinances. 

The Board of Zoning Appeals is scheduled to consider the filed variance requests on December 13 and the Plat Committee of the Metropolitan Development Commission is scheduled to consider the vacation of air and subterranean rights of way on December 14.  Maybe these bodies will bring sensible resolution to this farce by denying the petitions presented to them.

Fundamental Fridays

Please bear with me before you start groaning with derision.

It seems to me that there are fundamental aspects to good government and good governance.  Open, transparent, accessible government - for instance.  Working in the best interest of the community, not special interests - for instance.  Good stewardship, leadership, vision - for instance.

It also seems to me that there are folks who serve in our local government who demonstrate a fundamental aspect of good government on a daily basis, and others who do so from time to time.

Dare I say it so clearly but -- not all is wrong with our local governance.

So, in order to promote it when I see it, I am instituting a new feature to Had Enough Indy ?  It will be an award worth the paper it is written on.  I'll call it the Fundamental Friday Award - or "Fundy" for short.

The inaugural Fundy (drum roll, please) goes to Councillors Angela Mansfield, Ben Hunter, and Ryan Vaughn, and Mayor Greg Ballard.  The reason is - compromise when compromise will bring about benefits to the community.  In years gone by we might have called it statesmanship - putting the needs of the people before party politics or grandstanding opportunities.

The topic involved is, as you already know, the enlargement of Indy's smoking ban that will still fall short, but not far short, of a complete ban.  However, it will be as close as all sides can get if they hope to garner enough votes for passage and to win the Mayor's signature.

Mansfield and Hunter have been working together, across the political aisle, for years now, trying to move the smoking ban forward.  They were ready to reintroduce a previously defeated measure once the Democrats took control of the Council in January, but a measure unlikely to be signed by the Mayor.  Vaughn threw a Hail Mary pass in the last minutes of Republican control; likely to give Mayor Ballard something he could stomach and sign, saving him face.  Nonetheless, they all came together and are now lending their support to an slightly more aggressive Vaughn measure.

So, include the coming together to work for the benefit of the public, to the art of compromise when compromise will bring benefits to the community, as the reasons why the very first Fundy goes to Mansfield, Hunter, Vaughn, and Ballard.

Proposed New Council Districts Trisect Irvington

One of the legal goals for creating new districts,  for the Council or any other governmental unit, is to keep what are called "communities of interest" intact.  The proposed new Council Districts, to be introduced at the December 5 Council meeting, totally misses the mark where Irvington is concerned.

Jonathan Katz has gone to the trouble of demonstrating clearly how Irvington is divided from its heart into not one, not two, but three different Council districts.  Below is his highlighted map.

The yellow-shaded area is Irvington.  Pieced together are the proposed new districts 12, 18 and 19.

Irvington is an historic district that is coming back through the inspiring tug and pull of its dedicated, focused, residents.  I should say that it at the point of being successful and on the verge of being stably successful.  It doesn't need to be mishandled by the new Council map.  All efforts should be put forward by Ryan Vaughn, the steam roller behind getting these maps enacted, to correct this grievous error.

For some taste of Irvington here are a couple of interesting links:

The Irvington Buzz

The Irvington Community Council

The Irvington Development Organization

The community of Irvington deserves to be left intact within one Council district with one Councillor as dedicated as these residents are to Irvington.

Apology To Readers - Confusion Reigning On Genesis Of Re-Precincting

I must apologize to my readers for substantial error in my post yesterday.  I said that the Mayor did not have to correct errors in the precincts due to the State Legislature's creation of its new districts.  That is not entirely true.

I have been trying to track down the actual genesis of the problem, but, at this point all I can say is that the State Legislature, through HB 1601, did require the Mayor Ballard to review census data on all precincts sent to him by the State's Election Division, and either submit corrections to the precincts affected, or re-precinct entirely.  The bill anticipated little cost to the County, with the Legislative Services Agency stating "Explanation of Local Expenditures: County Executives- County executives should require only a minimal increase in administrative time to send the ED the information required by the bill", in its Fiscal Impact Analysis.

While I am not able to say if it was poorly drafted Legislative districts or Congressional districts (which did use census blocks instead of precincts in their legal descriptions) (see IC 2-1-12, IC 2-1-13, and IC 3-3-5, respectively) it is certain that some action regarding the evaluation and correction of precinct boundaries was legally required of Mayor Ballard.

Trouble With The Justification Story

I don't know how many people have been bamboozled by the story justifying the need for new precinct maps, but I was certainly one of them !

If you read through yesterday's blog entry, "New Precincts And Proposed New Council Districts", you will see that the justification for reprecincting was that the State Legislature had created their new House and Senate districts by totally ignoring the precinct boundaries.  Thus, new precincts had to be cobbled together to try to make the Legislative districts whole.

Well.....  That storyline turns out to be fabrication. 

The truth turns out to be that the House and Senate districts were defined by listing the precincts they include.  You can read it for yourself, but I'll summarize it here:

IC 2-1-12 - lists 2011 House districts by precinct.  Scroll down and you will find Marion County precincts included in districts 86-100.  I can find no precinct that has been included in more than one House district.

IC 2-1-13 - lists 2011 Senate districts by precinct.  Districts 28-36 contain Marion County precincts.  Once again, I can find no precinct that has been included in more than one Senate district.

So - there was no need to create new precincts at this time.  The impact I noted yesterday on creating split precincts from the redistricting of Township Board lines using the old precincts, still holds however.  Bottom line, these new precincts will increase the confusion and expense of the Primary and General Elections in 2012. 

If it were up to me, I'd revoke these precinct boundaries and honor the electorate with both the chance to weigh in on new Council districts and by telling them the truth.

[hat tip to fellow bloggers Paul Ogden and Gary Welsh for illuminating this corner for me]

New Precincts and Proposed New Council Districts

I've had a bundle of information provided to me about new precinct and Council district maps in the last 24 hours.  Short story - the political parties are girding for battle and the only ones who aren't getting their fair say appears to be the public and the taxpayers.

Lets start with the new precinct maps.  The Mayor of Indianapolis has the sole authority to draw precinct boundaries.  According to City-County Council President, Ryan Vaughn,  Mayor Greg Ballard requested that Vaughn get the precincts drawn up on behalf of the Mayor.  Vaughn, through a Council contract, hired Republican operative David Brooks, to redraw the precinct boundaries.  The Republican 'explanation' for the need for new precincts is that the State Legislature drew up their new House and Senate districts without regard for precinct boundaries, in some cases splitting those precincts.

Now when a precinct is split, that means that there must be multiple ballots in the split precinct on Election Day, to accommodate the different constituents of the different districts.  Split precincts are not fun on election day as there are invariably folks given the wrong ballot and frustrated voters and poll workers.  In addition, the need for multiple variations of the ballot for a precinct drives up the cost of conducting the election; the added expense being passed on to the taxpayers, of course.

So, at first blush, reprecincting would seem to be a good way to save the taxpayers money by covering the lack of intelligent redistricting by the State Legislature.

However, consider this additional fact.  The Township Boards just finished redrawing their districts to conform to the 2000 census.  They had to finish their mapping by earlier this month as the Board seats are on the 2012 ballot.  State law bans redistricting during any year a district is up for election.  The Boards drew their new districts using the old precinct boundaries.  By introducing new precincts, the Mayor has guaranteed that there will be many split districts during next year's Primary and General Elections.  Some of the new precincts may be split by more than one Township Board district.

My examination of Indiana House and Senate districts leads me to a count of 15 House and 9 Senate districts that include any precincts in Marion County.  Compare that with the 9 Township Boards in our County, with 7 districts each, or 63 seats total.  The probability is high that there will be far more split precincts with the new map than had the old map been retained.  Expect a concomitant increase in expense for the two elections next year as a result.

Now on to the newly proposed Council district maps.  The Democratic caucus of the Council does bring up some legitimate criticisms of the way Vaughn has maneuvered the introduction of the maps to the Council for a vote.  Jon Easter posted the caucus' statement on his blog, Indy Democrat, just yesterday.  The Democrats point to the timing of the Mayor's approval of the new precinct maps, coming just two hours before the deadline for introduction of new proposals to the Council for 2011 - and - introduction by Vaughn of a Council Proposal to accept the new Council district maps drawn up under contract by Brooks, just minutes before the deadline.  This left the Democratic caucus with no opportunity to either draw their own proposed map with the new precinct boundaries, or to introduce said map to the Council for consideration.  That move by Vaughn was a clear partisan steamroller approach to party politics.

This is not to say that the Democrats can't draw their own maps when they take over in January. Obviously, Mayor Ballard will not sign such a map.  Also, it does not preclude a Court contest of any Republican map adopted in 2011, as State law seems to ban adoption of Council district maps any earlier than 2012.

I would remind all readers that ten years ago, the State Supreme Court came up with the districts we are now using and that they are nicely compact and in the best interest of Democracy.  The Democrat and Republican proposed maps introduced ten years ago suffered from as much gerrymandering as the ones to be introduced to the Council on December 5.

Meanwhile, there are 4 public meetings - one of which was held last night, with almost no notice.  From one attendee, I am told that the only basis of comment that will be considered by Brooks and the Republican caucus, is if there is a problem with the process.  They will not consider problems with the resultant map.

I spoke with Julia Vaughn (no relation to Ryan) of Common Cause about the mapping process.  Common Cause has, for a long time now, taken an interest in how district maps at all levels of government are drawn and has promoted a process that would embrace the least amount of gerrymandering at the lowest cost to taxpayers.  She has mentioned that there are programs that can be used, inexpensively, by any computer literate citizen to draw up their own proposal for compact districts that keep connected features of interest together.  Such a program, of course, would have to include the precinct boundaries in its code.  The speed with which Ryan Vaughn and Greg Ballard kicked through the new precincts followed by the introduction of a proposed Council map obviated any real participation by voters and taxpayers.

Julia Vaughn further suggests the following for a good public process to redistrict:

Best way would have been to appoint a diverse group of people - black, white, Latino, Republican. Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, northside, southside, eastside, westside, (you get the idea) of folks that would sponsor meetings in every township before any maps were drawn to get public input on what communities of interest exist (might be a racial group, neighborhood group, historic district etc) and what voters think the new districts should emphasize (competitive elections vs. a compact geographic area for example).  The map drawer should have weighed all of these considerations and then produced a map.  A second round of meetings should have followed to get or not get the public's buy-in on  what was proposed. 

This did not happen with the Republican map.  We mere citizens, who should be in the loop on such an important thing like Council districts, are left standing on the sidelines.  We can hope that the Democrats, who surely will proposed their own Council map in 2012, will follow an inclusive process like that suggested by Julia Vaughn.  Somebody in office needs to give a hoot about the public interest and the inclusion of the public in a fair and ample public process.

If you would like to attend one of the three remaining meetings on the new maps they are:

December 1st (Thursday) 6-8pm  ---  John Boner Center, 2236 East 10th Street

December 6th  (Tuesday) 6-8pm ---  Sterrett Center, 8950 Otis Avenue

December 8th (Thursday) 6-8pm ---  City County Building, Public Assembly Room

The Council Proposal containing the Republican Council district maps, will be introduced next Monday, December 5.  It likely will be assigned to the Rules Committee for a public hearing.  There are no currently scheduled meetings for that committee for the rest of the year, but one will surely be added to accommodate this issue.  Stay tuned for date and time.

Happy Thanksgiving !

The pies were made yesterday, and very shortly the mad rush to stuff the bird and get it into the oven will commence.

I want to take this moment to wish all of my readers a wonderful and happy Thanksgiving.  This is the best holiday of the year !  Hope your family is near and celebrating with you.