Claude & Annie’s restaurant in Fishers is gearing up for its fourth fund-raising golf tournament to benefit St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.  Bill Smythe, owner of Claude & Annie’s in Fishers, has set a goal this time of $10,000 in donations.  Last year’s event brought in $8,600.

This year’s event is set of River Glen Country Club on Wednesday, September 23rd.

For more information, use this link.

Fall Creek Township Trustee Jeff Hern has announced his intention to be a candidate for the Hamilton County Council in the 2016 May primary election.  Hern plans to vie for an at-large seat on the council.

“My experience has prepared me to take this next step to county council,” said Hern. “I firmly believe in fiscally conservative government and would like to continue my efforts on a county-wide level to better serve our residents.”

Hern currently serves as the Fall Creek Township Trustee.  Fishers is contained within two Hamilton County Townships, Fall Creek and Delaware.

Keeping the township government debt-free and the lowering of Fall Creek Township’s share of local property taxes are two of the accomplishments Hern touts in the news release announcing his candidacy.

The primary election is nearly 9 months away, so Jeff Hern is getting out to an early start in his bid for a council seat.

Fishers area voters will likely be considering a school funding referendum in May of 2016.  In my latest Current in Fishers commentary, I take a look at how we got to this point.

You can access my commentary at this link.

Mayor Scott Fadness outlined a proposal for producing a Fishers Comprehensive Plan, something the municipality has never done.  City council members heard the mayor’s proposal at an August 3rd City Hall work session.

Fadness and city staffers outlined four main areas of the plan, including:

–Transportation

–Residential

–Land Use

–Parks & Open Space

The mayor said once the council members and others break down into committees to work on their section of the plan, another committee concentrating on specific small areas of the city will also be formed.  A steering committee, with the mayor and City Council President Pete Peterson among the membership, will oversee the smaller panels.

If all goes according to schedule, the Fishers City Comprehensive Plan will be ready for council approval by March of 2016.

“I think this is going to be a journey for all of us,” said Mayor Fadness.  “I think we’re going to learn a lot about our community and the direction we are going to take it.  I think it’s going to be an exciting project, but it’s not an overnight project.  It’s going to take some time.”

The mayor said there are plans to take City Council members on a bus ride to personally view several part of the city as part of the preparation to work on the Comprehensive Plan. That’s scheduled for August 31st.

After studying the costs and benefits of a special census, it appears Fishers city officials are moving toward paying for an updated local population count.  City Hall has still not provided the exact numbers, but it appears the figures provided by the Census Bureau on the cost of a census are low enough that Fishers would come out ahead financially under a cost/benefit analysis.

Many allocations of state money are related to the city’s population numbers.  The higher the census population, the more money comes into the city.

A federal census happens every ten years.  The 2010 census showed a Fishers population of 76,794.  Mayor Scott Fadness told the City Council Finance Committee on May 31st that he believes the city’s population is currently closer to 87,500.

The mayor’s office is expected to announce the numbers and more details related to the special census soon.

At a recent Hamilton Southeastern (HSE) School Board meeting, Dr. Mike Beresford, the school system’s Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources, gave board members some bad news.  He had just received resignation letters from two excellent science teachers.  They are both headed to nearby school systems offering a better compensation package.

As a community, Fishers is very proud of our local school system, and we have reason to be.  Time and time again, our educators have come through and provided students in the HSE School District a high quality educational experience.  There are many measurements of how a school system is performing, and HSE is always at or near the top in those listings.

But I am reminded of one of my favorite Will Rogers quotes – “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

Teachers in HSE Schools have had to accept very low wage increases in recent years due to the funding (or lack thereof) from the Indiana General Assembly.  When it looked like a serious budget crunch would require layoffs, teachers agreed to pay higher health insurance deductibles…in other words, pay much more for out-of-pocket health care expenses.  There were other budget adjustments, such as fees charged for student athletic participation and other extra curricular activities.  The school board also sold some land to avoid teacher layoffs.

The reduction in the value of their health benefits and the recent years of very low pay hikes are beginning to add up.  We continue to have a dedicated group of teachers in the HSE Schools, but how much longer will they tolerate low pay and reductions in benefits?

When you read news accounts of Indiana teacher shortages, HSE may not be hit as hard as some school systems, but we still feel it here.  If things don’t change, we could, over time, see a lowering in the quality of our teacher corps.

I know that pay and benefits are not the only reasons teachers are either leaving the profession altogether or college students are choosing not to be education majors.  Dave Bangert, a columnist for the Lafayette Journal & Courier, reported on a presentation given last May by Purdue’s College of Education Dean Maryann Santos de Barona.

The dean explained the following to the Purdue Board of Trustees in that May meeting, according to Bangert.  “Our profession is at a critical juncture,” she said. “The pervasive negativity about the teaching profession, and the misconception that education is broken, has resulted in increased pressures on practicing teachers.”

According to Santos de Barona, undergraduate enrollment at Purdue is down 33 percent since 2010.  Other college campuses are seeing varying degrees of reduction, but all are seeing far fewer students entering the teaching schools.

Just for full disclosure, I have some relatives in the teaching profession, but even before that, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for all teachers.  I had some key ones at the high school and university levels that gave me the encouragement needed to become a broadcaster and writer.

I believe here in Fishers, at HSE Schools, we have an administrative team working to support the teaching staff.  We have a group of teachers second to none.  Maintaining that excellence will be the challenge.

The HSE School Board is moving toward placing a referendum on the May election ballot next year, asking local taxpayers for money funding operations, which largely is utilized to pay teachers.  Once that campaign begins, I would urge you to pay attention to the issues.

As Will Rogers said, we can be on the right track, but if we just sit there, we will get run over.

When Launch Fishers was started a little over three years ago, the idea was to give startup businesses a boost by providing a place to run their businesses with other startups.  The goal was to allow the small businesses to grow, allowing the firms graduation to their own office space, hopefully in Fishers.

That paradigm could be in danger, at least in the short term, based on a story in the August 3-9 edition of the Indianapolis Business Journal (IBJ).  Reporter Lindsey Erdody writes that small business office space is at a premium in Fishers, at least for now.

Mayor Scott Fadness is quoted in the piece as saying this is a good problem to have, and that the city is trying its best to deal with the issue.

If you are an online subscriber of the IBJ, you can read the story now (it’s behind an online paywall now).  If you are a print subscriber you should have your print edition in the mail today or Monday.  If you are not a subscriber, you should be able to find the August 3-9 edition on the newsstands soon.