No one chose to speak at a public hearing as the Hamilton Southeastern (HSE) School Board moved toward enacting the 2018 budget.  The spending plan totals $236.5 million, a 2.31% increase over the previous year.  Chief Financial Officer Mike Reuter told the board there will be a small increase in the tax rate next year.  He estimates a home valued at $100,000 would see a $6 property tax increase next year on the school rate, while a home valued at $250,000 would see a $22 increase in the property tax bill.  Reuter added that property tax caps could impact some homeowners differently, particularly if that home is capped under state law.

In other school board news from the Wednesday evening meeting:

–The board approved refinancing a bond issue to take advantage of lower interest rates, saving the school corporation money.

–The board plans to ask citizens for suggestions on how to name the new elementary school soon to be under construction.

–School administrators plan to ask for suggestions on future school calendars, impacting the start of school date as well as the timing and duration of school breaks during the year.

–6 HSE school administrators will be heading to China this week in an effort to establish sister school arrangements.

–The firm of Miles Herndon has been hired by the board to conduct a branding study for the school corporation and updated the board on their progress.  A final recommendation will be submitted soon.

–A classroom discussion at Hoosier Road Elementary School turned into a gigantic project.  A tractor-trailer was filled with supplies and other critical items after a massive donation drive.  Teachers Bridget Westerfield (first grade), Leslie Fisher (third grade) and Wendi Washburn (fourth grade) along with Assistant Principal Kassy Morales traveled to Houston to meet the truck and help with giving out the donated items.  A group of students and staff representing Hoosier Road Elementary briefed the board on their project.

The Hamilton Southeastern School Board has accepted  a $2.1 million grant from the Lilly Endowment as part of the foundation’s Comprehensive Counseling Initiative for Indiana K-12 Students.   The funding will go to expanding students’ learning opportunities outside of the four walls of the classroom. Schools officials say they want to enhance college and career readiness for all students with various learning opportunities, an initiative Hamilton Southeastern Schools is already working on.

Grant money will also go outside the schools to improve counseling practices and access within the Fishers and surrounding communities.

HSE School Superintendent Allen Bourff told school board members the grant writing team of school administrators continued to re-write the grant application several times  right up to the filing deadline.

Lilly Endowment officials were asked by Dr. Bourff why HSE was selected for this grant.

“They said this is an out of the box submission,” Bourff said.  “It’s not like any of the other grants that we received and it was one of the best written, high quality grants that we received.  They said it was an easy approval.”

“The response from school corporations and charter schools far exceeded the Endowment’s expectations,” said Sara B. Cobb, the Endowment’s vice president for education. “We believe that this response indicates a growing awareness that enhanced and expanded counseling programs are urgently needed to address the academic, college, career and social and emotional counseling needs of Indiana’s K-12 students. We were most pleased to see how the schools engaged a wide variety of community stakeholders in assessing their students’ counseling needs and developing strategies to address them.”

Accelerate Indiana Municipalities (Aim) has designated Fishers as a 2017 Green Community of the Year, the third consecutive designation for the city.  The awards ceremony will take place during the annual luncheon, Wednesday, October 11th, 2017 at the Aim Ideas Summit in Evansville.

“It’s important that Fishers as a community is growing in smart, sustainable ways,” Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness said in a city news release. “This designation, especially with it being our third consecutive year, is a true testament to our team’s constant focus on making intentional decisions today that lead to a well-designed community far into the future.”

Cities are required to document their activities over a year to qualify for this honor.

The fifth annual Halloween season Boo Bash is set for this year, but will move it’s location slightly south this time.  There will also be changes in the costume contest.

It’s scheduled for Friday, October 27 from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Safe trick or treating, games, activities and live music will all be a part of the celebration.  A Sensory Friendly Hour will be offered before the event from 5 – 6 p.m. to provide a sensory friendly environment for children with special needs.

The Boo Bash will be held at the Central Green area of the Municipal Complex, in front of City Hall.

Here is the information from the City of Fishers on this year’s all-new digital costume competition:

1. Submit your photo here (deadline is October 22nd at 11:59 p.m. to be eligible for voting).
2. Spread the word! Get your friends to “like” your photo in the Fishers Parks & Recreation Facebook Album- public voting for the top 5 best costumes starts on Monday, October 23rd and ends on Thursday, October 26th at 11:59 p.m.
3. The top 5 most “liked” photos will win an awesome prize and will be announce at Boo Bash!

It was November, 2015 when the announcement was made – IKEA is coming to Central Indiana and Fishers would be the location.  Ever since, city officials have been preparing and area residents have been waiting for this day.  On Wednesday morning, October 11th, the Fishers IKEA opened its doors to customers.

Some people had traveled far and camped out near the entrance to the store for up to two days hoping to garner some of the free gifts bestowed upon the first few customers.  The Swedish-based furniture retailer is very smart in its marketing concepts.  They actually encourage people to camp out two days before the store opening, hoping for lots of free publicity.  They got it.

It says something about a furniture store when you need a map to navigate the building, but, IKEA is not like most furniture stores.

The big question now is – will city officials be able to handle the traffic going to IKEA, then starting Friday at Top Golf, and eventually The Yard culinary development still being planned?  So far, Fishers has been able to handle situations like this.  Traffic engineers may be facing their largest challenge yet.

Myself, I am not in the market for any furniture, and would likely not be able to put it together if I did buy from IKEA – but I do plan on sampling some of their Swedish meat balls soon.

The Fishers Youth Assistance Program (FYAP) has added new members to its board of directors, and they gathered at Flamme Burger in downtown Fishers to receive a check.  Flamme Burger presented a donation of $517 to the nonprofit organization.

Flamme Burger plans to have more fundraisers to support the charity.

FYAP provides professional family-centered casework and referral services to students and families of the Hamilton Southeastern School District.

A local Fishers high-tech entrepreneur has been selected to be a part of Forbes Technology Council.  John McDonald, Chief Executive Officer of Clear Object, will serve on this panel consisting of technology executives, according to a post on the Inside Indiana Business Web site.

Clear Object was once known as Cloud One before the firm’s name change earlier this year.  The company’s main office is located in downtown Fishers, in the Switch Building.

For more on the story, use this link.

You can listen to a podcast recorded with John McDonald in February of this year at this link.

You may have read recently about “news deserts” cropping up in various parts of the nation.  A “news desert” is an area where an independent news source is lacking.  There is no local news content from a local newspaper or other reliable, daily source in these “news desert” areas.

Residents of Hamilton County, even though we are a wealthy, largely suburban area, have seen regular sources of local news diminish.  There are some weekly, monthly and bi-monthly publications, but a lot of their content uses feature stories and gives little or no space to important government and political news.

We have major news outlets, such as the Indianapolis Star and the Indianapolis Business Journal, paying some attention to news in places like Fishers, Carmel and Noblesville.  But you don’t see the regular, day-to-day news coverage one finds in a daily news source like a local newspaper.

Even with all that Hamilton County has going for it, we have been in some danger of becoming a kind of news desert, with independent, regular local news coverage harder to find.

That’s one reason I started LarryInFishers.com nearly six years ago.  Fishers news on a daily basis was hard to find.  When I floated the idea of ending LarryInFishers, you people reading the blog let me know, in no uncertain terms, you want me to continue, so here I am.

Earlier this year, I was approached by Jeff Jellison, publisher of the Hamilton County Reporter, about working out an arrangement to provide Fishers news content for his publication.  I checked it out at the time.

The Reporter has a weekly print edition mailed to its subscribers.  But Jeff Jellison also publishes a Wednesday through Sunday daily edition of the paper online.  It is in a PDF format so it looks just like a print newspaper, just online.  You can have it delivered to your e-mail Inbox free each day.

This is a business model that intrigued me.  Jeff and I met in early February, and worked out something called a news partnership.  That means you will see stories posted on my news blog in the Hamilton County Reporter, and you will see stories from The Reporter on LarryInFishers.com.

This allows my readers to get more county-wide news, and readers of The Reporter can see my news stories on Fishers.

LarryInFishers,com is a volunteer effort by me and has my name on it.  I was wary at first in making a deal with a commercial newspaper, but Jeff Jellison and I made a personal connection and I decided to give this partnership idea a 90 day test period.

If you read this blog you know we passed the 90-day test.  The Reporter and I have an excellent relationship and, in my view, have both become stronger operations because of our partnership.

The Reporter has a Web site you may access at this link.  Use the contact section to have the Reporter delivered to your Inbox six days a week.

The Hamilton County Reporter has bucked the trend in journalism lately.  The Reporter is growing, in print subscriptions, e-mail subscriptions and online traffic.  Why?  Because people are wanting better local news content and are getting it with The Reporter.

I am proud to be associated with Jeff Jellison and the Hamilton County Reporter.  If you haven’t tried it, do so.

If you are a fan of Hamilton County sports, you will not find a more complete sports section than the Reporter.  Sports Editor Richie Hall works hard to keep that section filled with local sports items.

Hamilton County is not a news desert because of people like Jeff Jellison and news operations like the Reporter.

You will soon see construction begin north of Fishers City Hall all the way to the Amphitheater.  The Board of Public Works and Safety has approved a contract with Ratio Architects to make major improvements in that area of the municipal complex.

The contract with Ratio Architects to design the project will pay the firm $615,000.  The cost of the entire upgrade will be $6 million.

The details of the contract with Ratio are available at this link.

This is turning out to be a week of firsts for Fishers.  I also had a first today….my first time at Portillo’s.

To be honest, when people started to get hyper-excited about the mere possibility Portillo’s might be coming to Fishers, I wondered what all the fuss was about.  It’s just a hot dog place, right?

I just took my wife Jane and daughter Mary to Portillo’s for dinner today (Monday).  The eatery had been open for a while and it’s Monday night so it won’t be that busy, right?  Wrong.

The place wasn’t packed, but it was very busy.  Watching all the workers take every order from beginning to end was quite a spectacle.  It is a well-oiled food delivery machine.

Jane and Mary tried a hot dog, I ordered Italian Beef.  Did I mention Mary & I tried a cake shake (hope my doctor isn’t reading this)?  All three of us agreed that we now understand what all the uproar was about leading up to this.  Portillo’s has its own way of doing things.

The whole concept of having pieces of cake embedded into a milk shake seemed odd to me at first.  Once I tried it, I got it.

Bottom line, Portillo’s is something special.  I now understand.

But, we have more coming this week.  The lines are forming at the Fishers IKEA, preparing for the Wednesday morning opening.  This is another long-anticipated event that is finally going to happen.  I knew from the beginning why this is a big deal.

I still don’t understand why so many people are willing to wait so long to be at or near the front of the opening day line.  I know there are attractive give-aways for those first few people entering IKEA Wednesday – but waiting in line two days?

I have every reason to believe the IKEA grand opening will be very grand…everything I have seen this company do so far has been first class.  IKEA knows what its doing.

Then, we have the final word on the opening of Top Golf…it will be this coming Friday.  In this case, I did not know why so many people were so excited by Top Golf coming here.

I presume that relates to the fact I am not a golfer.  Those into golf will now be able to play year-round.  Top Golf is a high-tech operation which I still do not fully understand.  What I do understand is that the serious golfer cannot wait to use Top Golf.

I have also been told by experts in the field that Top Golf will be as much a crowd generator as IKEA.  That says a lot.

Don’t forget that the homes in the old Spring Dale Estates are being demolished to make way for The Yard development of restaurants and entertainment venues.  We are still waiting for specifically what eating establishments plan to locate in that complex.

So, here is the upshot.  Portillo’s has recently opened, IKEA opens Wednesday and Top Golf opens Friday.  When has Fishers seen a week like this?