The number of stupid things that comes out of Mayor Greg Ballard's mouth is unbelievable. Lucky for him, he has a disconnected local news media in this town which could care less how incompetent he is as long as he keeps the money flowing to the professional sports teams and he keeps the downtown mafia assuaged. On his blockheaded idea to borrow $150 million against future transportation dollars the state may or may not continue sharing with the city, Ballard says that "everyone knows it's in the best interest." "Shocking" is his reaction to a council committee voting down his plan last week. "The borrowing is just against future transportation dollars," he says. "It' s not against income or property tax dollars. He continues, "Then we can leverage almost $200 million more out of that, and then we can have another big impact on the City of Indianapolis . . . fix every priority one and two surface road in the City of Indianapolis. . . many more sidewalks--over $50 million in new sidewalks . . . finish the connectivity plan for the trails and all that." "The fact that they we do that is shocking," he concluded. By the way, didn't he previously claim that the over $400 million he spent from Rebuild Indy funds from the sale of the water and sewer utilities addressed all of those priority one and two surface roads when he was running for re-election in 2011?
On the City's bid for a new Super Bowl bid in 2018, Ballard said, "We have the money to carry this out." Yeah, we may not have money to fund public safety or other basic city services, but we have millions of dollars to throw away chasing another Super Bowl bid. Ballard says that he's talked to Herb Simon about the additional subsidies that he is seeking. Ballard says that Simon ran Banker's Life Fieldhouse on his own dime for ten years "out of the goodness of his heart" but now says, "Hey, I can't do this anymore." The Mayor reasons that the Colts don't have to pay any of the expenses to operate Lucas Oil Stadium so why should the Pacers. As far as he's concerned, it's just fine if both teams get to use these taxpayer-financed facilities for free and keep all of the revenues they generate from both game and non-game events. After all, the billionaire sports team owners deserve that money more than Indianapolis taxpayers.
Read the full interview with our mentally-challenged mayor at Indy Politics here. Incidentally, while he takes a swipe at the council for voting down his reckless tax, borrow and spend policies, he and his wife are leaving the country on his ninth overseas junket financed by his pay-to-play friends for whom he really works right in the middle of intense budget discussions that he claims are so important. Nothing like keeping his own selfish priorities in order. If we had a real reporters in this town, they would have demanded years ago full disclosure of how much those trips are costing and which city contractors are contributing money to Develop Indy to pay for them. Any source
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