First, allow me to wish all of you reading this a very happy new year. Let us hope for the best year ever coming up in 2018.
January 2018 marks another milestone for this news blog. It was January, 2012, when I wrote my first story for LarryInFishers.com. It was about a Fishers Town Council meeting.
The Council President was Scott Faultless. David George was sworn-in as a council member for another term at that meeting. Other council members at that time included John Weingardt, Stuart Easley, Mike Colby, Renee Cox and Pete Peterson.
Scott Faultless chose not to run for another term in the next election, citing family reasons. Stuart Easley lost a city council re-election bid to Brad DeReamer. Renee Cox gave up her council seat to run for mayor and lost in the Republican primary to Scott Fadness. Mike Colby lost his city council election to Selina Stoller. David George, John Weingardt and Pete Peterson are currently members of the Fishers City Council.
Looking at that story from 6 years ago, it is fascinating to see what happened. The council approved plans for a medical technology corridor. Residents of Barrington Estate made their case to the council for a more “pleasant” buffer zone between the development and their homes. As you can see today, the plan for the medical corridor became very successful as you look to the east of Exit 210.
An apartment complex was proposed to be built near the Geist Christian Church, at 126th Street and Promise Road. That development never got off the ground, but single family homes are now being developed in that area.
Cumberland Road Park was underwater once again. Yes, it floods sometimes even in the month of January.
The council was introduced to a new city employee at that meeting, Jeff Hill. He is still with the city and heads-up the city engineering department.
Much has happened in Fishers since I covered that first town council meeting. Later that year, local voters approved a referendum creating a city form of government. Scott Fadness was elected the first Mayor of Fishers.
The new mayor has been energetic about moving forward on his priorities. They include an ongoing initiative to improve the state of mental health in the city. He has been aggressive in promoting economic development and bringing jobs to Fishers.
There is so much more I could mention about what has happened in the past six years, but that story would be so long few of you could get to the end of it in one reading. Let’s just say I never knew the ride I was about to take in covering Fishers news when I began that journey in early 2012.
As I have written here before, I had very modest goals when starting this project. I just wanted to cover the local meetings because other media was not reporting news from Fishers on a regular basis. I’ve known all the editors of Current in Fishers since Dan Domisc and I respect the job that weekly publication does. But it is a weekly that has a limited amount of space for news and relies heavily on feature stories. There is nothing wrong with that, but Current in Fishers goes to the printer late in the week and is generally received in the mail by most people the following Tuesday. I thought there was a need for more regular, timely coverage of Fishers news.
The Indianapolis Business Journal (IBJ) has a North of 96th reporter, but Lindsay Erdody covers all the northern suburbs with a special eye on the business angle. The Indianapolis Star has sometimes taken in interest in Fishers and at other times largely ignored the city. Lately, John Tuohy was assigned by the Star to cover Fishers and Emma Kate Fittes has the northern suburb education beat. Ms. Fittes has been in attendance at Hamilton Southeastern School Board meetings lately. Local television news operations occasionally cover local news, but it is hit or miss with most of them.
It is encouraging to see the IBJ and IndyStar take more interest in covering Fishers news. One of my goals in starting LarryInFishers.com was to get more local commercial news operations interested in covering Fishers, or perhaps someone would make an effort to start a commercial daily news operation in Fishers. Since the IBJ and IndyStar have pay walls and require subscriptions for more than a few accesses per month to their Web sites. it is still my job to provide the best news coverage one old retired guy, a journalist once in his working life, can provide on a volunteer basis.
In 2017, I realized county government was having an impact on Fishers, but as one person trying to cover news, I could not cover the Hamilton County government. That’s one reason I entered into a partnership with the Hamilton County Reporter newspaper. You will find news items from the Reporter on this blog. In exchange, the Reporter runs news items from LarryInFishers.com. When Publisher Jeff Jellison asked how we could work together, our news partnership resulted and, in my view, has worked well for both of us.
As a former radio guy who worked as a news reporter and talk show host, I watched the growth of a new communication platform – podcasts. Looking at it from my point of view, podcasts are just radio shows accessed on the Internet. There are few opportunities for local people to sit down and talk about what they are doing in the community at some length. A podcast allows for just that. In February, I will have completed two years of producing local podcasts. I also do some some reviews of arts events , some local, some not. I also started a new weekly podcast featuring film reviews and a local guest. My partner Adam Aasen helped make that podcast possible. If you like film and haven’t listened, give it a try at this link.
Looking into the new year, there will be plenty of news to cover just based on what we know now. The Yard culinary development near IKEA will begin construction and more announcements of restaurants planning to locate there will happen. Hamilton Southeastern Schools will continue construction on the new Southeastern Elementary School. And of course, there are always unexpected developments in the news.
Once again, thanks to all of you for reading this blog and listening to my podcasts. Your kind words make all the work I put into these project well worth it.
I am looking forward to 2018 in Fishers. I hope you are as well. I will do my best to let you know what’s going on.
