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readers’ views This is what the council was thinking Editor, What a shame that instead of investigating the facts you pronounce judgment based on what sounds like talking points issued by the administration. You questioned the City Council’s commitment to transparency. The council appropriated $25,000 for television programming in our 2011 budget. This is more than enough to broadcast all meetings of the Carmel city government and that is the transparency we are concerned with maintaining. We have thousands of hours of production video on hand that may be used to promote the city. Regarding money for the Web site, if we need to
City Council has the facts
spend $60,000 per year to update our site with content, I made a bad career choice. What was the council thinking, you ask; we were thinking these are tough times and sacrifices need to be made. We avoided cutting any essential public service sector money and honored the city’s contractual obligations with our public safety employees. Also, some research would have yielded that we did cut benefits in health care subsidies and automatic wage increases. Now I know you guys were only reacting to what you were told and now you know how Council feels quite often. Rick Sharp, Carmel City Council
Worrell left out key facts Editor, It’s disingenuous for Jeff Worrell to accuse Rick Sharp of being hypocritical while trying to mislead readers by not including the facts that he is on the Carmel Redevelopment Commission, that the Council wants to remove him because of alleged conflicts of interest, and that John Accetturo publicly stated when he resigned that he could not abide the way the CRC functions. It may have taken Rick Sharp a while longer to
come to the same conclusion, but he did publicly explain why he resigned and why he has proposed changes to avoid conflicts in oversight. By the way, there are no commission minutes posted on the Web site since Aug. 31. At that time they discussed whether to award a contract or a partial contract for work for which they had received bids but which might not be what they needed. Fine way to run a business. Richard O. Albright, 46033
Editor, What were they thinking? You know, that’s not a bad question. But in order to answer that with a semblance of accuracy, why didn’t you ask any of the 6 Councilors who voted for budget reductions instead of starting with the Mayor’s response to our actions? The unanimously voted reductions must tell you something this was not political, which is the standard response when things don’t go your way. This was the job that a fiscal body is elected to perform. A Mayor creates and submits a budget. Once sent to the Council, the Mayor may not make any changes or reductions. By State statute it is now our job to make cuts. We may not add anything, we may only reduce. So it’s not “politics”, it’s not “micro managing”, it’s our state, mandated job. So what were we thinking? We were thinking that the Mayor’s budget for 2011 was larger than last year when is should have been
smaller. We were thinking that our income for 2011 is down - COIT by 19 percent with reductions in assessed valuations for both residential and commercial property. We were thinking that increasing spending our using our Rainy Day Fund and pension funds to sustain that spending is not prudent. We were thinking that since taxes are paid in arrears, next year’s income reflects this year’s economy and it would be wise to reduce spending and hold onto our savings because we will facing the same choices next year. Finally, we were thinking that when reductions are made, they should not be made in essential services like public safety but in the extras that creep into spending during the good times. Isn’t that what you want us to be thinking? Our representative government is a system of checks and balances and by unanimous vote, this Council has done its job. Luci Snyder, Carmel City Council
Wanna write us a letter? You can do it a couple ways. The easiest is to e-mail it to info@currentincarmel. com. The old-fashioned way is to snail mail it to Current in Carmel, 1 South Range Line Road, Carmel, IN 46032. Keep letters to 200 words max (we may make exceptions), and be sure to include your home zip code and a daytime number for verification. We reserve the right to edit all submissions.
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November 2, 2010 | 5