Sunday, June 13, 2010

Bel Aire Deal - Yup, Its About the Money

Indy Star reporter, Francesca Jarosz, did an excellent article about Bel Aire Park and the Indy Parks Department deal to rent it out to a soccer league for 8 weekends in the spring and another 8 in the fall, pushing neighborhood residents from their own neighborhood park. I just recently posted an entry about this same park (see "Dereliction of Duty - Indy Parks All About the "Green") The headline in the Star print version is "It's a nice park... if you get to use it", by the way.

I'm going to leave you to read the bulk of this compelling article, but I did want to bring forward one aspect - that of the money.
Last year, the department generated $16,645 from those leases, dollars that help support the department's shrinking budget. MC United FC's two contracts will net $1,560.

They aren't even generating the salary of the fellow in charge of 'partnerships' with these funds. But, equally clear, this soccer league contract represents a 10 % increase in revenue, and that explains the kowtowing the Parks personnel did to the league representatives at a recent meeting.

Don Colvin, Indy Parks Deputy Director, says its all to fulfill their mission, yet the Department is willing to violate its own Parks Plan in regard to neighborhood parks in order to get a tiny bit more money. I'm not buying it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Of course money plays a part in this. The world doesn't run on "sunshine and lollipops" ya know.

You know I bet the parks department (those greedy bastards) are charging other sports organizations in the county for use of their parks. How dare they! I bet they are in their offices everyday around lunch time taking all this money and paying for pizza with it or something.

Anonymous said...

You're right. Obviously we as tax payers should shoulder the full burden of the cost of these parks and they should probably just raise our taxes to cover the cost to do this. Good plan. Moron.

Anonymous said...

http://politicsandpucks.blogspot.com/2010/06/david-sanders-promise-on-lobbyists.html

Anonymous said...

If Rather and Jones are age 62 and they are planning to collect Social Security (they are saying they are), do they know that there is a limit as to how much they can make and collect the reduced Social Security benefit. When they turn age 70 they can make whatever amount and collect their full Social Security benefit. Decatur will have to pay social security on these retirees if they are going to be paid as consultants!!! Don't think you can beat the feds.