Has Indy really gone downhill in the past 5 years ?? (Indianapolis: income, property taxes)

[grmasterb]

Originally Posted by WheresTheBeef

Go down East Main Street in Columbus. The Columbus portion is in the hood, you cross Alum Creek and you're into Bexley which is very nice. Two or three miles later you're back in Columbus (Eastmoor). That part of Eastmoor actually has some expensive homes, but you can immediatly tell the difference between Columbus and Bexley from better curb appeal, road conditions and even development standards. Cross James Rd. and you're back in the ghetto (50's homes that are deteriorating) and along with it comes big city problems like prostitution. A few miles further to the East you're in Whitehall, a working class suburb. Night and day from the Columbus ghetto that abuts it.

Modest income, working class suburbs in Columbus like Groveport, Reynoldsburg, Grove City and Whitehall do a much better job keeping up their areas because they are smaller communities and with small comes a more focused bureaucracy, and citizens with more input. In a big city? Press "1" for this, Press "2" that, please hold, you are caller 17.

I live in East Columbus in one of the nicer parts within the City limits. Development standards are lax -- they let people put up just about anything. Across the street in Reynoldsburg, they make Walmart use brick.

Then you have the upper income suburbs like Upper Arlington, Dublin, Bexley, New Albany, Worthington, etc. that are allowed to thrive and create something special because they also aren't lost in that same bureaucracy. I would also say the same holds true for the Cincinnati suburbs.

Too hard to explain here, but the bottom line is that bigness sucks. Smaller is almost always better. Unigov dumbs down the entire area. That's why Indy's growth is in surrounding counties.

So, how would you fix the problem?

[WheresTheBeef]

Originally Posted by grmasterb

So, how would you fix the problem?

Politics would make things tough to unwind, but that's what I would do. I would basically recreate the townships and give them autonomy. Keep certain things like water, trash, fire, courts and some county roads centralized. Localize the remaining roadways, zoning and police. I guarantee that with local autonomy you don't have as many ghettos as Lafayette Square and Washington Square sprouting up everywhere.

I also think Unigov is probably responsible for things like this:

(CBS News) Americas 11 poorest cities - Indianapolis

Indy is number 9 on this list.

I don't believe the list, by the way. I can think of a number of cities that are bigger hellholes, but I do think this is the result of money fleeing to surrounding counties. That wouldn't happen to such an extent if there were suburbs that provided a pretty high level of government services in Marion County.

If you live in a $500,000 home, you want your streets plowed ASAP, your streets paved and you want police to be there in 10 minutes or less. And with the kind of taxes you pay ($15,000 or more), you deserve no less.

[Toxic Toast]

Originally Posted by WheresTheBeef

Politics would make things tough to unwind, but that's what I would do. I would basically recreate the townships and give them autonomy. Keep certain things like water, trash, fire, courts and some county roads centralized. Localize the remaining roadways, zoning and police. I guarantee that with local autonomy you don't have as many ghettos as Lafayette Square and Washington Square sprouting up everywhere.

I also think Unigov is probably responsible for things like this:

(CBS News) Americas 11 poorest cities - Indianapolis

Indy is number 9 on this list.

I don't believe the list, by the way. I can think of a number of cities that are bigger hellholes, but I do think this is the result of money fleeing to surrounding counties. That wouldn't happen to such an extent if there were suburbs that provided a pretty high level of government services in Marion County.

If you live in a $500,000 home, you want your streets plowed ASAP, your streets paved and you want police to be there in 10 minutes or less. And with the kind of taxes you pay ($15,000 or more), you deserve no less.

Some of the issues in Indianapolis are issues that would have played out regardless of unigov. Inner city poverty, for example, is a thing everywhere. Unigov didn't create that problem. Lafayette Square is in the old city limits, the decline of that area did not happen because of Unigov. Washington Square is not a ghetto, so I'm not sure what your point is with that. You also said in a previous post "Big cities wait for snow to melt, but in the working class suburb across the street, snow is gone without skipping a beat" which is simply not true. Indy did a great job clearing the roads this winter. We had 8 inches of snow a couple of weeks ago, and the main roads were cleaned and salted within a couple hours of the snow stopping. My side street was cleared in a similar time frame. Indianapolis is a city with real problems, not unlike any other city. Blaming unigov is misplacing blame. I'm not opposed to giving some of the included towns more autonomy or outright letting them split from unigov. Cumberland should be allowed to control its own destiny for example. If Warren Park wants to split from Indianapolis a la Speedway, let them. It won't happen, but let them. Most of the outer townships were just unincorporated land adjacent to Indianapolis. They were already, for practical purposes, residents of Indianapolis.

BTW, property taxes on a $500K house would be closer to 5K max, not 15K.

[bilgewater]

Thank you for an unusually thoughtful and balanced comment! I like it when people write in full paragraphs....

[bilgewater]

Originally Posted by Toxic Toast

Some of the issues in Indianapolis are issues that would have played out regardless of unigov. Inner city poverty, for example, is a thing everywhere. Unigov didn't create that problem. Lafayette Square is in the old city limits, the decline of that area did not happen because of Unigov. Washington Square is not a ghetto, so I'm not sure what your point is with that. You also said in a previous post "Big cities wait for snow to melt, but in the working class suburb across the street, snow is gone without skipping a beat" which is simply not true. Indy did a great job clearing the roads this winter. We had 8 inches of snow a couple of weeks ago, and the main roads were cleaned and salted within a couple hours of the snow stopping. My side street was cleared in a similar time frame. Indianapolis is a city with real problems, not unlike any other city. Blaming unigov is misplacing blame. I'm not opposed to giving some of the included towns more autonomy or outright letting them split from unigov. Cumberland should be allowed to control its own destiny for example. If Warren Park wants to split from Indianapolis a la Speedway, let them. It won't happen, but let them. Most of the outer townships were just unincorporated land adjacent to Indianapolis. They were already, for practical purposes, residents of Indianapolis.

BTW, property taxes on a $500K house would be closer to 5K max, not 15K.

Thank you for an unusually thoughtful and informative comment. I love it when folks write in full paragraphs. As for the snow removal, we live downtown and while our nearest main arteries (16th St, Central, Delaware) were plowed and salted well enough, our residential street (N New Jersey) took a long time to be plowed, if it was at all. The street behind our house (technically not an alley, I'm told) was never plowed, which would have been nice. Instead it turned into a skating rink.

Being new here, I've learned the most about unigov from the informative website urbanophile.com. The author aims to be centrist in his views rather than fully ideologically-loaded at all times.

[indy771]

Originally Posted by ShellNic

All I know is more people run red lights here in Indianapolis than any other city I've lived in or visited. Ever. At every light. Ever.

If red light cameras stop that then I'm all for it. There are red light cameras all over Dallas and I can't say that rear end crashes increased...no matter what you say, there aren't a lot of intersection accidents because of red light running...there just aren't. But no matter, what I think isn't going to change the traffic or the running of lights...I just have to be super careful when driving around here...people are CRAY CRAY!

You should give Detroit a visit lol

[ShellNic]

Originally Posted by indy771

You should give Detroit a visit lol

Well...I do want to visit but I will definitely be aware!

[W & C]

Originally Posted by bilgewater

Thank you for an unusually thoughtful and informative comment. I love it when folks write in full paragraphs. As for the snow removal, we live downtown and while our nearest main arteries (16th St, Central, Delaware) were plowed and salted well enough, our residential street (N New Jersey) took a long time to be plowed, if it was at all. The street behind our house (technically not an alley, I'm told) was never plowed, which would have been nice. Instead it turned into a skating rink.

Being new here, I've learned the most about unigov from the informative website urbanophile.com. The author aims to be centrist in his views rather than fully ideologically-loaded at all times.

Thanks for turning me on to urbanophile. Just found this gem on there...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVZkSYTIPhg

So cool

[WheresTheBeef]

Originally Posted by McdonaldIndy

Its very clear you haven't lived in Indy at all.
This post is so far off base its not even worth picking through.

I've been there enough to know what I see. Downtown is great, but in the rest of it I see a lot of big city substandard services. Not awful, but nowhere near what you get in a tony suburb.

[Toxic Toast]

Originally Posted by McdonaldIndy

Visiting a bunch of times won't tell you what a property tax bill is.
Nor will it tell you how well police response times are on average.
Or how high your water bills are.
Visiting a place and living there are 2 different worlds.

How about you tell us about your property taxes, water bill, and 911 wait times.