“The plan also encourages the city to develop downtown, rapidly and quickly, which can only mean more jobs and more revenue.

What is not to like about this plan?”

What does it do for the far-east side? What about the south side? Again, it sounds like just more taxes to benefit the elite few who makes tons of money off the make work entity known as the C.I.B.

Do the CIB members earn a stipend for their work, or are they unpaid political appointees?

How about a tax on the players. Numerous cities and Canada tax the players. It wouldn’t be a tremendous amount of money but it would bring in a million or so a year.

What’s not to like? It’s a CIB problem not a taxpayer problem. There’s more than enough revenue generated by the LOS to pay the bills. Except the CIB gave it (almost) all away.

‘Fixing’ that problem by further taxation doesn’t really fix the problem at all. We’ll do it all over again in a year or two.

Heck we could even hit up all the pros that come and play ball in Indiana. Here is a perfect example: Todd Jones a ex reliever for the Detroit Tigers wrote the followning for the Sporting News — “Taxes. Some state and local governments believe that if we earn money in their jurisdictions, we should pay taxes there, too. So we pay something in almost every city in which we play. Six games at Fenway Park a season means paying state tax in Massachusetts and city tax to Boston. Of course, we’re also taxed by the home cities in which we play as well as the places where we live in the offseason.”

Bankruptcy.

It is time for people like John Doe to realize that what is good for downtown is good for the entire city…..this me, me, me, attitude of some who cry about the far eastside……my question to John Doe is what are you doing for the far east side….Activity and revenue raised downtown helps all parts of city. I imagine many of his far eastside neighbors work downtown in jobs that would not exist if it were for the visitor and convention business.

The lowest common denominator of organized fools is to raise taxes for whatever reason so as to grow governments.

First, the annual deficit is $32 million, not $47 million. I don’t know why we have to concede picking up $15 million in operating expenses on Conseco when the Pacers get all the revenue off the building. The Pacers even say they didn’t ask us to pick up that amount. Then, hey, let’s not do it.

I agree with John Howard. The problem is not a lack of revenue. The problem is the CIB gave virtually all the revenue on the building.
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I don’t understand how this plan does not involve diverting revenue from state coffers to the CIB. Tax revenue isn’t somehow increased.
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In the end, the taxpayers are bailing out the CIB for their giveaways to the Colts and Pacers.
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When is anyone on the council going to propose looking at how the CIB got in this mess in the first place and ask for reform of that body?

While it does seem to make sense to use money generated in Marion County to pay Marion County bills – the same arguement could be made by every other county in the state. Why shouldn’t Lake county or Shelby county keep more of their sales tax revenue to pay for items they may want? If every county was allowed to do this, where would the state get revenue to fund state programs? This is especially true given the revenue shortfalls that the state is facing. Redirecting sales tax money from the state to the CIB would result in either an increase in state taxes or a decrease in services the state provides. Why should the rest of the state pay for our stupidity? While I would personally support it for the selfish reason of I don’t want to pay more taxes to fund sports/arts – I can’t pretend that I think it is fair to the rest of the state.

Again, let’s liquidate the CIB. They have done enough damage in 30 years and need to go. Anything other than this solution will require more taxes for hard-working Hoosiers.

The CIB is certainly a prime argument for ’smaller government is better government.’ They were created by an act of the General Assembly back in the 60’s and have spent our money like it was an endless supply ever since. Or should I say, ‘Like a drunken sailor?’

I really wish people would stop insulting drunken sailors. After all, drunken sailors typically stop when they run out of money – they don’t keep spending anyway.

Dobie has a point.

Dobie is the smartest one in the room.

As a constant member of the minority on this blog, I at least like new ideas. I don’t agree with every single one of Abdul’s points, but it’s good to see new ideas instead of finger pointing.

New ideas are good. Certainly the old one weren’t very popular.

I hope Jeff Espich can get the hundreds of millions of savings he is promising from refinancing/restructuring of CIB/city debt. Hopefully his solution will include a meaningful Simon Properties and Colts contribution.

We are still searching for a hero in all this.

I stand corrected, Dobie. And drunken sailors can be hauled off to the brig until they sober up.

1. Change the name.
2. Dissolve the current board of the CIB
2. Solicit IU, Purdue, UofI, Marian College, Martin University and Ivy Tech and create a new board consisting of Senior Year Marketing, Business, Pre-Law, Communications, Hospitality and Sports Management students and create a new Board that receives a budget and then has the ultimate experience of running a Board to manage a budget and the operations to do the business right. They will stay on task and on budget. It works. Look at our Community Foundations that solicit High Schools students and have small experiences like this to immerse young people in Boards, Budgets and common sense approach to the real world.
3. Have an advisor from each University rotate on an annual basis and use the experiment as college credit and community involvement.
4. One or more of the students might stay in Indiana and Indianapolis because of the experience and become tomorrows leaders and successful advocates of how government, education and community involvement can work

The argument will be these “kids” have no experience. The “experience” you have now has sunk the ship. Taxpayers pay for these Universities and facilities and should reap some of the rewards from the 1st class programs Indiana has in the public and private institutions.

These young adults are 21-23 years old and are about to become contributors to our communities. Give them one last real immersion with some guidance and oversight and I bet the fat cats and the wealthy good old boys will not stand a chance in taking advantage of any of the best and brightest sitting on the board.

1) Dobie for Mayor
2) Isn’t “downtown revenue generated from sales and income tax” the same revenue that would go to IPS? It’s a bright idea to take revenue away from a school system that graduates half the kids on a good day and just laid-off hundreds of teachers? If you’re saying that we’re rolling IPS into the surrounding townships as part of this- I’m with you 100%. Otherwise, what the heck is the lead Democratic councilperson doing diluting funding for a failing school system? She thinks this will pay for itself? When would that be? What next, President Obama is speaking at an NRA convention next week?