Two Hamilton County school districts are moving in opposite directions, and a new IndyStar opinion piece, written by Sadia Khatri, argues the main reason is real estate — specifically, whether existing homes are turning over to young families.

The Hamilton Southeastern story. HSE has lost more than 1,500 students since 2020. That decline has real consequences: the district recently announced it will eliminate nearly 60 positions, including contracts for 18 teachers. Because Indiana funding follows the student, fewer students means less money.

Superintendent Matt Kegley points to several causes — families having fewer children and having them later, and some students transferring out for religious schools or smaller settings. But the trend he emphasizes most is housing. Fishers grew fastest in the mid-2000s, and many of those residents have since become empty-nesters who stayed put. Because they aren’t selling to younger families with school-age kids, the pipeline of new elementary students has thinned. The losses are steepest in the early grades.

How HSE is responding. Rather than wait for the housing market to shift, HSE launched an open-enrollment (non-resident transfer) program. Families outside the district can enroll their children but must provide their own transportation. Participation grew from 99 students last year to about 120 approved for 2026-27. Many of those transfers are in the lower grades, which Kegley called encouraging — families who join early are more likely to stay. The district has room for more and hopes awareness across Central Indiana keeps growing.

Why Westfield is booming. To the west, Westfield Washington Schools has grown 43% over the past decade. Its high school has gone from about 650 students in the 1990s to more than 3,000 today, and the district is restructuring — phasing out its intermediate school by moving fifth grade into elementary and sixth grade into middle school. Superintendent John Atha attributes the growth to demographics and, above all, new housing: unlike “built-out” Fishers and Carmel, Westfield still has homes ready for families to move into.

The housing throughline. Over the past decade Westfield issued more residential building permits than Carmel and Fishers combined, according to the Indiana Association of Realtors, and it has the most listings priced at or below $350,000 — the inventory that attracts young families. Fishers isn’t alone: Carmel Clay Schools has also lost more than 750 students since 2020, and Carmel is likewise largely built out.

The long view. Hamilton County is projected to add roughly 180,000 residents by 2050. Westfield is the current top draw for families with school-age children, but early signs of the same enrollment slowdown are already appearing in its numbers. As columnist Khatri  puts it, no suburb stays young forever.

You can read Sadia Khatri’s opinion piece at this link, but you will likely need an IndyStar online subscription to access the article.

When the Indianapolis City-County Council voted 14-10 Monday night to raise vehicle registration taxes across Marion County, it stepped into a fight that Fishers settled almost ten years ago — with a lot less drama.

The Indianapolis measure, Proposal 192, would impose a $240 wheel tax on buses, RVs, semitrailers, tractors, trailers and trucks, and a $100 excise surtax on passenger cars, trucks, motorcycles and other vehicles under 11,000 pounds. Today most Marion County drivers pay somewhere between $10 and $50 a year. The plan runs from 2027 through 2031 and is projected to raise about $855 million, money the council says it needs to unlock a $50 million annual state “match” for road and infrastructure work beginning in 2027.

Mayor Joe Hogsett opposes it and has 10 days to decide whether to veto. Overriding him would take 17 of the council’s 25 votes. The council’s Republican caucus, writing in the IndyStar days before the vote, said it supports more road money but questioned “the timing and hastiness” of what it called an $80 million tax increase. The politics are loud, the stakes are high, and the outcome is still uncertain.

Fishers has been down a version of this road already — just far more quietly.

Fishers acted first, in 2016

On the night of September 19, 2016, the Fishers City Council voted 7-0 to impose a $25-per-vehicle wheel tax to help pay for road maintenance. (Council members John Weingardt and Selina Stoller were absent.) Mayor Scott Fadness had proposed it earlier that month, and the tax took effect in 2018. It applies to both personal and commercial vehicles and was estimated to bring in roughly $2.16 million a year.

Fadness framed it at the time as a “unique opportunity” rather than a burden. His case was straightforward math: a typical road needs to be repaved every 15 to 20 years, and Fishers wasn’t keeping pace. In 2013, the city spent about $1 million on paving when it could have used $2.7 million. In 2016, it budgeted $1.95 million but needed $3.8 million. The wheel tax was meant to help close that gap, augmenting — not replacing — money the city already received from state and local sources. Fadness told the council that even if state road funding grew in the future, he believed the tax would still be needed.

Even reluctant council members came around. “I’m not usually in favor of any kind of tax increase, but this is what I consider to be vital to the safety of our community,” council member Todd Zimmerman said that night.

It’s worth remembering how new that authority was. For years, only Indiana counties could levy a wheel tax, and Hamilton County never adopted one. A 2016 state road-funding law opened the door for cities with populations over 10,000 to impose their own. Fishers was among the earliest to walk through it, alongside Valparaiso, Portage, Crown Point, Munster and LaPorte. The tax generated headlines locally mostly because the council, on the same evening, also gave itself a 58 percent pay raise — from $12,000 to $19,000 a year, its first increase since the early 1990s.

Why the wheel tax matters more now than in 2016

What looked in 2016 like a forward-leaning local choice has since become something closer to a statewide requirement — and that’s the thread connecting Fishers then to Indianapolis now.

In 2025, the General Assembly passed House Enrolled Act 1461, a sweeping transportation-funding law. Its most consequential provision for local governments ties eligibility for the state’s popular Community Crossings matching-grant program to whether a community has adopted both a wheel tax and a vehicle excise surtax. In plain terms: no local wheel tax, no access to one of the most dependable pots of road money the state offers.

The pressure didn’t stop there. SEA 1-2025, the property-tax overhaul passed the same session, capped key local revenue sources, forcing cities and counties to look harder for their own money. State leaders made the message explicit. House Speaker Todd Huston, a Republican from Fishers, warned local officials in December 2024 that they needed to help themselves before asking the Statehouse for more, saying local leaders “have to take some tough votes, too.” With an estimated $2.4 billion road-funding shortfall statewide, lawmakers argued they’d given communities the tools to raise revenue locally.

The result has been a wave of reluctant votes across Indiana over the past year. As of late 2025, 56 counties and 15 municipalities had wheel taxes on the books, with more cities and towns — from Plymouth to Evansville to Goshen — grudgingly adopting them to stay eligible for state dollars. Many councils made their frustration clear, pointing fingers at the Statehouse even as they voted yes.

Indianapolis is the biggest domino. The same funding framework that is pushing small towns to act is what stands to send Marion County a $50 million annual state match — if it raises the local revenue to qualify. That’s the machinery behind Proposal 192, and the reason the vote carried such weight Monday night.

The Fishers contrast

Seen against that backdrop, Fishers’ 2016 decision looks less like an outlier and more like a head start. The city adopted a modest, flat $25 wheel tax on its own terms, years before the state effectively linked such taxes to grant eligibility — and did it with a unanimous, low-drama council vote rather than a veto standoff.

That timing has practical consequences. Because Fishers already levies a wheel tax, it is positioned to meet the HEA 1461 eligibility test that many Indiana communities scrambled to satisfy in 2025. Indianapolis, by contrast, is only now confronting that choice, and it’s doing so with far larger dollar figures, a divided council and a mayor threatening a veto.

For Fishers residents, the wheel tax has been a quiet fixture for years — $25 a vehicle, folded into registration, funding the repaving schedule Fadness argued the city couldn’t otherwise afford. It’s the kind of decision that draws attention only when a neighbor like Indianapolis wrestles with the same question and finds it a good deal harder to answer.

Whether Indianapolis follows through now rests with Mayor Hogsett’s veto pen — and, quite possibly, with whether the council can muster 17 votes to override him.

Fishers-area drivers heading to or from the Indianapolis area overnight this week should be aware of planned lane and ramp restrictions on I-465 and I-69 in northeast Indianapolis.

The Indiana Department of Transportation says crews are scheduled to install pavement markings and complete bridge work on I-465.

From Monday, July 6, through Friday, July 10, eastbound I-465 will be reduced to one lane overnight from Keystone Avenue to Binford Boulevard. Those lane closures are scheduled from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. each night.

Additional restrictions are scheduled Tuesday, July 7, beginning at 9 p.m. and lasting until 6 a.m. Wednesday.

During that period, drivers will not have access to northbound I-69 from northbound Binford Boulevard at 75th Street. The ramp from southbound I-69 to southbound Binford Boulevard will also be closed. In addition, one lane will be closed on the ramp from southbound I-69 to southbound I-465.

The work is just south of Fishers but could affect residents who use I-69, Binford Boulevard or I-465 for trips to and from downtown Indianapolis, especially late at night or early in the morning.

INDOT says the schedule could change if weather or other unforeseen circumstances interfere with the work.

The Fishers Health Department is reporting unsatisfactory E. coli test results at three local water locations following recent testing.

The locations are:

White River at the 116th Street Bridge
Fall Creek at Geist Park
Fall Creek at Canal Place

Health officials say elevated E. coli levels often occur after periods of heavy rainfall. Rain can wash sediment, agricultural runoff, urban runoff, wildlife waste, and other contaminants into creeks, rivers, ponds, and other open-water areas.

The Fishers Health Department and its water quality programs test 40 creek and open-water locations throughout the city. Nine area test results are published monthly during the spring, summer, and fall.

E. coli is a naturally occurring bacteria found in warm-blooded animals and is commonly used as an indicator of possible contamination from fecal matter. While E. coli itself does not always cause illness, its presence can signal that other harmful bacteria or viruses may be in the water.

Health officials say waterborne illnesses can include dysentery, Hepatitis A, and bacterial or viral gastroenteritis. Monitoring for E. coli is considered an important public health measure, particularly in areas where people may come into contact with creeks, rivers, or other open water.

The department also tracks water temperature and dissolved oxygen levels. Warmer water can allow bacteria to grow more quickly, especially when combined with sediment and runoff after rain events. Dissolved oxygen is important for fish and other aquatic life, with lower levels potentially harming organisms that live in or near the sediment.

Fishers officials note that the city’s watershed is affected by both urban and agricultural runoff.

Two games remain in the Fishers Freight’s season, spread across the schedule’s final three weeks, and the math is simple to state and hard to pull off: win, and keep winning.

At 7-7, the Freight sit fifth in a seven-team Eastern Conference where the top four advance. Green Bay (12-2) and Jacksonville (9-4) have already clinched. That leaves two playoff spots and four teams still chasing them — Tulsa (8-5), Orlando (8-6), Fishers (7-7) and long-shot Quad City (5-8).

Here’s the good news for Freight fans: Fishers control their own fate. They play at Quad City on July 11, sit out a bye during Week 19, then host Orlando on July 26 in what amounts to a play-in game. Beat both, and the Freight finish 9-7. Beat Orlando head-to-head, and the Pirates can climb no higher than a tie with them.

So the obvious question: does winning out guarantee a playoff berth? Almost — but not quite.

At 9-7, the only team that can finish with a better record is Tulsa, which has three games left (Jacksonville, then Quad City twice). Orlando, having just lost to Fishers in that scenario, could only tie the Freight at 9-7. Quad City, if it loses to Fishers on July 11, tops out at 8-8 and falls away. In the large majority of outcomes, 9-7 is comfortably good enough for third or fourth.

The lone escape hatch: a tiebreaker logjam. If Orlando beats San Antonio on July 11 to reach 9-7, and Tulsa wins at least two of its final three to pass the Freight, Fishers could be squeezed into a tiebreaker for the final seed despite winning out. It’s a narrow path — and one Fishers can’t fully control — but it’s why “win and you’re in” comes with an asterisk.

Everything else is worse. Split the two games and the Freight land at 8-8, needing significant help and likely on the outside. Lose to Quad City on July 11 and even a season-ending win over Orlando gets them only to 8-8 — probably not enough. Lose both and they’re done.

The cleanest path is also the most demanding: two wins. Step one is the trap game at Quad City, a team Fishers already beat 45-27 in the March opener. Step two is the home finale against the Pirates, who edged the Freight 60-57 back in May and will arrive with a playoff spot of their own on the line.

Freight fans should also scoreboard-watch Tulsa. Every Oilers loss — starting with their July 11 home date against Jacksonville — widens Fishers’ margin for error.

Two games. One realistic route. The Freight don’t need a miracle, a calculator or a lucky bounce elsewhere in the conference. They need to take care of business twice, starting in Moline. Win both, and they’ll almost certainly be playing in August for the first time in franchise history.

Recently, tens of thousands of us crowded downtown Fishers for our pre-Fourth of July event — the parade down the Nickel Plate District, the drone show (delayed by weather to July 31), the fireworks that closed out Spark Fishers and, this year, the nation’s Semiquincentennial. For one summer day, the city looked like the answer to a worry that has been building across the country for two decades: that Americans have stopped gathering.

The worry is not imaginary. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its 2025 American Time Use Survey last month, and the trend line is hard to miss. The average American now spends about 35 minutes a day socializing and communicating in person, down from 41 minutes in 2015 and roughly 45 minutes in 2003. On any given day in 2025, only 30 percent of us did any in-person socializing at all — down from 38 percent a decade earlier.

Young people have pulled back the furthest. Fifteen-to-24-year-olds who once spent close to an hour a day hanging out with others now spend a little over half that. Writer Derek Thompson has called it “the anti-social century,” and the health data explains why anyone in public life is paying attention. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory declared loneliness a public-health epidemic, estimating that about half of American adults report feeling lonely and that chronic isolation raises the risk of early death by roughly 29 percent — comparable, the report noted, to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Gallup found about one in five adults feeling lonely on a given day, and AARP reported last year that four in ten adults 45 and older now describe themselves as lonely, up from about a third in 2010.

Some causes are structural, not personal. A 2025 University of Colorado Boulder study documented the steady loss of “third places” — the libraries, coffee shops, museums and houses of worship where neighbors used to run into one another. Bigger homes, bigger TVs, food-delivery apps and phones that hold a whole social world have made staying in easier than ever. Teens now average close to five hours a day on social apps, Gallup reports.

But the full picture is more complicated than a straight line down — and that is where a week like last week matters. Recent time-use data showed Americans watching less television than at any point in a decade and, notably, spending less time alone than during the pandemic years. Adults have clawed back some of the in-person time they lost after 2020, even if teenagers have not. And we are still willing to show up for things we care about: Live Nation reported about 159 million people attended its events in 2025, up 5 percent, and a Deloitte survey found 61 percent of Americans had gone to a live event in the previous six months.

Fishers looks a lot like that second story. The Saturday Farmers Market, now in its 2026 season at the Nickel Plate Amphitheater, draws more than 80 vendors and ranks sixth in the state. Spark Fishers fills days each June. The Fourth of July still empties living rooms and fills streets.

The national data is a real warning: connection is not automatic anymore, and for our kids especially, it is slipping. But warnings are not verdicts. The 35-minute average describes ordinary days — and last week reminded us we still know how to make extraordinary ones. The question for our 251st year is whether Fishers can carry a little of the Spark Fishers and Fourth-of-July habits into the quiet Tuesdays in between.

On a day when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc stole the headlines with an emotional British Grand Prix win, the Fishers Cadillac Formula 1 team quietly delivered one of its more encouraging afternoons of a demanding rookie season, bringing both cars home and gaining track position at one of the sport’s most storied venues.

Sergio Perez crossed the line 15th and Valtteri Bottas 17th in a race that finished behind the safety car after a dramatic late sequence of events. It was not the points-scoring breakthrough the team is chasing, but for an outfit that spent the winter openly warning it would run at the back of the grid in year one, a clean race with forward progress counts as a step in the right direction.

Perez, the six-time grand prix winner, made the most of the afternoon. He started 20th and but picked his way up to 15th over the course of the race, benefiting from a chaotic finish but also from the steady, mistake-free running that has become Cadillac’s calling card in its debut campaign. Bottas, who out-qualified his teammate in 18th on Saturday, brought the sister car home 17th, keeping the team’s strong reliability record intact.

The result came on a weekend that showcased both how far Cadillac has come and how far it still has to go. The team, which is constructing its permanent headquarters in Fishers, entered Formula 1 this season as the grid’s 11th team, pairing veteran drivers Perez and Bottas with customer Ferrari power. Team leadership, including racing boss Graeme Lowdon, tempered expectations from the outset, telling stakeholders that points would be a bonus rather than a target in 2026 as the organization builds toward the future.

That candor has been borne out by results. Cadillac has yet to score a championship point through the opening stretch of the season, and Silverstone extended that wait. The closest the team has come was in Monaco, where Perez ran inside the top 10 on the road before a penalty erased a hard-won point. Still, the operation has impressed with its dependability — Perez has reached the checkered flag in nearly every race he has started, a rarity for a brand-new team facing the steep learning curve of top-flight motorsport.

Sunday’s race itself was a spectacle. Leclerc claimed his first win in more than a year after championship leader Kimi Antonelli suffered a mechanical failure while closing in on the lead, and a late crash for Max Verstappen brought out the safety car that ultimately decided the finish. Mercedes’ George Russell took second and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton third in front of a roaring home crowd. Amid the drama, Cadillac’s two cars ran their own race near the tail of the field, gaining ground and gathering data.

For fans in Fishers watching a hometown-connected team compete on the world stage, the takeaway is one of patience and gradual momentum. The points haven’t come yet, and the team has been honest that they may be slow to arrive. But finishing races, climbing the order, and learning with every lap is exactly the foundation Cadillac said it would build in 2026 — and at Silverstone, that foundation looked a little more solid than it did a few months ago.

FYI, the fireworks over Geist could not be safely done Saturday night, so the display is now set for Sunday, July 5, 10pm

As the fireworks fade over Fishers this Fourth of July, the harder question lingers: what does the next chapter hold for a country that just turned 250? The polling offers a portrait of a nation that is worried but not resigned — a people wrestling with doubt while refusing to give up on the ideals that got us here.

A sober mood

The numbers are candid. In Pew Research Center surveys this spring, 59% of Americans said the country’s best years are behind us, while 40% believe they are still ahead. As 2026 began, 69% told Pew they were dissatisfied with the way things are going, against just 29% satisfied. Look further out and the gloom deepens: asked about the U.S. 50 years from now, 44% are pessimistic and only 28% optimistic. Majorities expect a country that is more politically divided (66%), less influential in the world (58%), and more dangerous (56%) by 2050.

Gallup adds another data point: American pride has slipped to a 25-year low, and fewer than half of Americans now believe everyone has a fair shot at the American Dream.

But not without hope

The full picture is more layered than the headlines suggest. In the same Pew research, Americans split almost evenly on the near term — 48% optimistic and 51% pessimistic about the country’s future overall. Most say they feel “hopeful” when they think ahead, and 54% describe themselves as “happy” about it. Compared with 2023, more adults now expect the economy to grow stronger and political divisions to ease in the decades to come.

The American Dream itself remains stubbornly alive. In the Milken Center–Gallup study of more than 6,300 adults, 69% still believe they can personally achieve it, and Americans across party lines agree the Dream is worth striving for. Republicans, Democrats and independents also broadly share the view that the Dream is “unfinished” — a rare patch of common ground in a divided age.

What the experts say

Scholars and commentators tend to resist writing America’s obituary. Many point to the country’s demonstrated resilience — its technological edge, economic depth, military strength and entrepreneurial streak — as durable reasons for optimism. Historians note that this is a nation that has survived a civil war, the upheavals of the 1960s, segregation, and the “malaise” of the 1970s, and emerged intact each time.

Writing in The Fulcrum, a nonpartisan civic-affairs publication, historian Joe Palaggi frames the moment in terms of that resilience. “The story of America is not the story of avoiding failure,” he writes. “It is the story of recovering from it.” The health of the republic, he argues, is measured not by the absence of disagreement but by “the ability of citizens to disagree while maintaining a shared commitment to the nation itself.” The real risk is losing confidence, because “a confident nation can confront its failures.” Ultimately, patriotism is less about believing the country is flawless than about whether “we care enough about it to leave it stronger than we found it.”

Looking forward from here

For a community like Fishers — consistently ranked among the best places to live in the country — the same tension runs through both national and local life: real anxiety about institutions and direction, paired with an enduring belief that the work of the republic is unfinished rather than over.

Two and a half centuries in, that may be the most American posture of all — clear-eyed about the problems, unwilling to surrender the promise. The next 250 years will be written by the people who choose to keep building.

When the fireworks go up over Fishers this Fourth of July, they’ll mark something bigger than a long weekend. Saturday is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — the semiquincentennial, if you want to impress somebody at the cookout. It’s worth pausing on what those 56 men actually did when they put their names on that parchment, because it was a good deal braver than the picnic version we usually tell.

Signing was treason. Not treason as a figure of speech — treason as a capital crime under British law. The Treason Act of 1351, still on the books in 1776, defined “levying war” against the king as high treason, and the punishment was as gruesome as English law got: a traitor could be hanged, drawn, and quartered, his property seized by the Crown, his family left with nothing. These weren’t anonymous pamphleteers. They signed their real names, in a document they knew would cross the Atlantic and land on the king’s desk.

They understood the stakes. That famous closing line — “we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” — wasn’t flourish. It was a list of exactly what they stood to lose. Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put it more bluntly at the signing: “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Historians can’t confirm he said it, but the sentiment was accurate enough.

And some of them did pay. Richard Stockton of New Jersey was captured by British forces, imprisoned and reportedly mistreated, his estate looted; his health broke and he died in 1781. Others saw homes burned and fortunes ruined in the fighting. It’s fair to note, as historians do, that no signer was executed for signing — the Revolution succeeded, and Britain never got to hold its trials. But that outcome was far from certain in the summer of 1776. When those men dipped their pens, they were betting their necks on a war they had not yet won.

Two and a half centuries on, the country they gambled on is still here — and still arguing with itself about what it has become. A new Associated Press-NORC poll, part of a series marking the anniversary, offers a candid snapshot of how Americans feel at 250. The picture is more conflicted than celebratory.

Start with the American Dream — the idea that hard work gets you ahead. Only about a third of Americans say it still holds true today. Half say it once held true but no longer does, and 15% say it was never true to begin with. That tracks with recent Wall Street Journal/NORC surveys, so it isn’t a blip. Belief in the Dream is far from evenly held: 57% of Republicans say it still holds, versus 24% of independents and 17% of Democrats. Older adults keep more faith than younger ones — 46% of those 60 and up still believe, compared with just 22% of adults under 30.

Pride in the country’s institutions has also cooled over the past decade. Just 28% of Americans say they have a lot of pride in how U.S. democracy works, down from 42% back in 2017. Pride in the nation’s history slipped from 58% to 44%, and pride in the armed forces fell from 78% to 59%. Americans still take the most pride in the military and in the country’s scientific and technological achievements — but the trend line, across the board, points down.

Ask what holds us together and what pulls us apart, and the answers are almost mirror images. The most common thing people name as uniting Americans is freedom or liberty. The most common thing they name as dividing us is politics — “political interests or values.” In other words, the thing the signers risked everything for is still the thing we most agree on, even as the political arguments around it grow louder.

There are gentler notes, too. Nearly half of Americans, 47%, still see the American flag as more of a unifying symbol than a divisive one, though only about one in five fly it at home regularly. And roughly four in ten say the 250th anniversary makes them feel “proud,” with about a third “excited” — even as a quarter say they feel “conflicted” and another quarter “indifferent.”

Put those two portraits side by side — the men who signed under threat of the gallows, and a country now split on whether the promise held — and you get something more useful than a greeting card. The founders didn’t hand us a finished nation. They handed us a bet, and 250 years later the wager is still open. However you’re marking the Fourth here in Fishers, that seems worth a moment’s thought.