The Fishers GOP Club hosted a joint appearance by both candidates for Fishers mayor, incumbent Scott Fadness and challenger Logan Day, on March 14th. I posted a story on that meeting at this link.
I was very pressed for time when writing that story, so I did not include details of the question and answer session. I have had many requests to expand on the previous story.
Here is an attempt to report on the questions and answers from that joint appearance. I did my best to reflect the answers given by the candidates.
Q. Will free enterprise and free markets provide a solution to those who believe we have an affordable housing problem in Fishers?
Fadness: Work force and the ability to deliver to the employers here in Fishers are important issues . This is a balance we have to strike, a continued conversation with the stakeholders, involving the residential builders and the residents. Start talking about work force housing and you will see people engaged and coming to City Council meetings. Affordable housing needs to be thoughtfully integrated into the local community. I want to build affordable housing but I want to be proud of it 10-20-30 years from now. 1995-2006, Fishers allowed housing to come in that is not sustainable for the long-term.
Day: Cannot discredit anything the mayor said. It is important to understand the stigma that is often-times associated with affordable housing, how that plays into the holistic community we want to try to build. In talking with business owners being displaced, cannot afford the rent going elsewhere, and need workers, there is a gap. Let’s draw the community in quickly, start having the conversation about how affordable housing can work for us. Business owners have this need for workers. Conversations that need be happening are not going on now. We have an active base of citizens ready to have that conversation.
Q: What can be done to help with transportation for disabled citizens? Hamilton County Express is not very convenient , you need to call them days in advance.
Day: I have worked in the medical transport industry, transporting non-ambulatory people. Had a conversation with JANUS, which runs he Hamilton County Express, and the big problem is an influx in times, for example, everyone has an appointment at 10am. Could contractors be used during those peak times?
Fadness: Fishers has demonstrated time and time again we can be a leader and we can innovate. John Wechsler (founder of Launch Fishers) and I have talked about challenges of mobility. We wrote a letter to Uber, saying the city wants to be part of a pilot program, to deal with mobility, which is being disrupted with new technologies.
Q: Are you willing to debate each other?
Fadness: If there is a forum provided we’ll evaluate that.
Day: Absolutely
Q: Fishers receives less from the County Option Income Tax (COIT) then, let’s say, Carmel. What will the mayoral candidates do to make that a little more fair?
Fadness: I’ve lost some Carmel friends along the way on this. This conversation has been going on for a few years. State Representative Todd Huston came close to helping pass a bill last year to rectify the situation. In 2019, Carmel will receive about $19 million more in COIT than the City of Fishers even though we are very close in population. That $19 million would fund all of our Fire Department and all the Police Department. A measure has just passed the Indiana House, prospects are good for Senate passage, to deal with this issue.
Day: Just today was reading about Representative Huston’s legislation, so I don’t have much to add on that. This is a systemic problem, not just Carmel, which comparing Fishers to other nearby communities. As mayor I will continue to go down to the Statehouse a couple of times a month, talking with various representatives and senators, and will continue to do that as this bill moves forward. If Representative Huston’s efforts are not successful in this session, I would continue to put pressure on solving this issues, which puts a financial drain on our community.
Q: We are meeting in an area developed using Tax Increment Financing (TIF), please explain TIFs…as an aside, we have a AAA bond rating and a low tax rate.
Fadness: TIF is a tool and you should be judicious about using it. If Lawrence was the Fishers of the 1990s, everybody wanted to live in Lawrence, then Lawrence filled-up quickly with residential homes and a large commercial tax base….then the next interstate upgrade made Fishers the place to be, with good schools and lots of cheap, available land. Fishers now has 7% of its land left to develop with residential development. Fishers will not grow year-in and year-out like in the past. Pendleton, McCordsville, and Fortville should buckle-up, those communities are next. Fishers needs to be a sustainable community for the long-term. At times, tools are used to ensure something occurs that would not naturally occur. It’s my opinion this urban area of Fishers would not exist unless the city was willing to invest in infrastructure and parking garages. Also, TIFs do not rob local schools of most funding.
Day: I’ve tried to unpack this concept of TIF by reading-up on in recently. The concern I have is the rate at which we are using it. Most of the TIF projects here have used bond financing. There are pay-as-you-go TIFs, which invlolve less leveraging against your bond rating and credit worthiness. I wonder whether the city should explore options like that. To developers, that may not sound like the best thing, because they would assume some of that risk up front. There is some uncertainty as to how this will play in the future. I get concerned when I look at the rate of which we implement and utilize TIF and compare our residents misunderstanding of it, knowing how their government is utilizing that tool. Having a AAA bond rating is like someone with a very high credit score saying, lets start using this credit card. Are we misusing or mishandling it, is that the most sustainable option for the future?
Q: Tell us something not now on the drawing board, not being talked about much, that you would you like to see come to fruition?
Day: I live on the east side of the city and there are some connectivity issues out there, and road infrastructure problems I would like to see handled within the next four years. Trying not to be the “train guy”…I have a different vision based on the local residents I speak with, about the value this corridor could have. I know we are moving forward with the trail, and there may be some portions we try to keep in place – this ties back into transportation. As our population increases, so will traffic. Many look to this corridor saying that will be the answer. Car pooling, buses (if we ever see that come into town) can be utilized better.
Fadness: I will be a bit unconventional in answering this question. My number one goal if re-elected would be to create regional framework for the Indy metro area. We can no longer live in our silos. There is a big city just to the south of us that we have very limited interaction with. We need to create a regional approach to trans-formative capital projects, including law enforcement & public safety. That will require tearing down a lot of those silos and will challenge a lot of people’s thinking about how we operate. This doesn’t mean we lose our identity as a community, but we can’t be as good as we possibly can be if the people around us are not doing well. Regionalism will be a big priority for me.
Q: If Fishers is successful in gaining more money through action by the Indiana General Assembly through the COIT, how would you use the extra funds?
Fadness: We have some fairly immediate public safety needs in the next 5-7 years. As we geographically fill-out, we need to cover our response times and call volumes are going to go up. We need to build another fire station and staff it. Indiana finance laws make it easy to build a fire station, but more difficult to provide money for the firefighters. Call volumes are increasing 3%-5% each year. That would allow handling those needs without additional revenue streams or taking money out of the pockets of Fishers residents.
Day: When I speak to city residents I hear that we need more investment with our public safety departments. Areas of the city less accessible are not seeing adequate response times. I interact with the deaf community…there are challenges they face in accessing the most basic services we take for granted.
Q: I moved back here after graduating from Purdue, the only reason I started my business here, at Launch Fishers, is because of what I see happening here. Some say the city is growing too fast. What do you say to someone like me..I’m concerned we might be taking our foot off the gas?
Day: Love the question. I am a Millennial. I can’t say I’m disappointed with the things that I see, it’s the underlying methods of getting there – I want to make sure we are building a solid foundation. If you feel like we’re pulling our foot off the gas right now, I think that’s an okay place to be. You don’t put the pedal to the metal on the highway all the way to your destination. The next four years will be a good opportunity to maintain the momentum we have and understand how this growth we have derived is going to be sustainable in the future. We don’t want to find ourselves in a situation where we put the pedal to the metal and find ourselves out of gas. It’s a matter of balance.
Fadness: I’m not much of a coaster. The world is changing at a rate that we all need to become accustomed to. The art of this is not that we will not change…..the art is changing in a strategic fashion while adhering to the things that make us uniquely Fishers. What makes us unique is not a particular building, not a particular place in Fishers, it’s our people. I’m impressed by how innovative our people are, how forward-thinking they are and how optimistic and hard-working they are. I don’t believe we need to slow down, I think we need to be strategic in our growth and decision making. As for debt, Standard & Poor’s is not a credit score. S&P evaluates you on a myriad of things, not just how much debt you’ve issued, but what policies do you have, what management practices do you have from a financial perspective. Less than 2% of all the communities in the country are AAA bond rated.