New Haven News and Comments

Council Update for March 5th

Craig Dellinger — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 21:19:56 GMT

Waterworks Bonds of 2002 Refinancing

Last week's Council meeting was quick, but we got a lot accomplished. Probably the most significant was to approve an immediate ordinance amendment to refinance some existing New Haven Waterworks Bonds that were issued in 2002. This same topic was discussed several weeks ago and passed as Ordinance G-12-01 - but with the fluctuations in the bond market, the financing options changed and it was brought back to the table. Greg Guerrettaz from Financial Solutions Group is our financial advisor He stated that we could save approximately $300,000 in interest costs by refinancing. The length of the loan remains the same. We just pay less. Pretty much a no-brainer - some decisions on Council are easy.

Current Ordinances

We had the second readings of Ordinance G-12-03 and G-12-04 which empower our Code Enforcement Officer with tools to deal with Junk and Abandoned Vehicles. Changes were made in the ordinance to exempt legitimate business that may have non-operational vehicles because of the nature of their businesses. It was decided to exempt business with a salvage license.
Changes were also approved to amend Ordinance G-12-02. It's an ordinance designed to help deal with the enforcement of garbage, rubbish, ashes, and filth. The change allows owners that are notified of violations to have 5 days to remove the trash before the city will take action.

Indianapolis 500 Contest is ON again this year.

We were invited by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to participate in their Back Home Again in Indiana contest. It involves decorating our community and putting on events designed to promote the Indianapolis 500 Memorial Day Race.
Last year we placed among the top cities but didn't win the $25,000 first prize. This year, the prizes are $20,000 for first place and $2,500 for second and third place. We have already obtained corporate sponsorships from Lucas Oil and Do it Best Corp. to help us put this on. The celebration doesn't cost the city anything, but it builds a lot of community spirit.
We're having our first Community Planning Meeting on Tuesday night, March 6th. It will be at the Police Training Room in City Hall at 6:30 p.m. If you have any interest in helping this year, please come to the meeting. So far we have bunches of ideas but only a few volunteers to help pull it off. We'll also keep you posted on upcoming meetings at our "Back Home in New Haven, Indiana" page on Facebook. You can visit www.facebook.com/newhaven500 if you aren't already a "friend" there. We still have all the photos, videos and comments from last year's event. Hope to see you Tuesday night.

New Haven Council Update 2.14.2012

Craig Dellinger — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:42:56 GMT

Garbage, Rubbish, Ashes and Filth

Last night, the New Haven City Council passed the second reading of an ordinance regulating garbage, rubbish, ashes and filth. The ordinance will give our City Code Enforcement Officer some power to help keep our community clean and trash free. Items covered in this ordinance will include scrap copper, brass, iron, steel and other metals, tires, household appliances, furniture, rope, boxes, barrels, rags, batteries, glass, rubber debris, other construction debris, and all other articles customarily considered trash or junk and which are not housed inside a building.

After the Code Enforcement Officer cites a homeowner for trash, they'll have 5 days to clean up the yard, or the city will do it for them. At that point, the homeowner will be charged for the cleanup. If they fail to pay the bill, the amount will be added to their tax bill. The third reading of this ordinance will be at the next Council meeting on February 28th. If passed it will go into effect immediately.

Violation, Infiltration and Illegal Hookups

No, this isn't seedy, we're talking sump pumps, downspouts and drainage tiles here. New Haven purchases our water from Fort Wayne, then pays them to treat our sewage. A normal dry month costs us in the neighborhood of $75,000 for sewage treatment. When it rains or snows, our city takes a major hit. Not only do we still have some older sewage pipe that allows ground water to infiltrate, we have a lot of homeowners that have their sump pumps, drainage tiles and/or downspouts connected to our sanitary sewer system. This is illegal in New Haven and costs us an unbelievable amount of money. In dryer months, we send in the neighborhood of 25 million gallons of sewage to Fort Wayne for treatment. Last May, we sent almost 75 million gallons and in December, almost 90 million gallons. That meant our sewage bill to Fort Wayne went from $65,000 last January, to $161,000 in May, and $231,000 in December. Our citizens didn't produce any more sewage, That is just what is being produced by illegal hookups and infiltration from old sewer lines.

Obviously, this is high on the priority list to fix. If we can reduce the number of illegal hookups, we'll have money in the budget to replace and repair the older - leaking - sewer lines. This is also one of the causes of backups into people's basements and discharges into the river. When we have a major rain event, Fort Wayne can't handle all we're sending them and it backs up. We went through major expense and effort to separate our sanitary sewers from the storm sewers, but this is still a huge issue. If you have a basement and you're not sure the sump pump is connected properly, or if your downspouts don't discharge into your yard, please contact Dave Jones at the City Utilities Department. His email is djones@newhavenin.org or call 748-7050. They would be glad to come out and give you free advice on whether you're connected properly, and if not - what you can do to help. You wouldn't think one house could make a big difference, but Dave has convinced me that it can. This is voluntary for now and you won't be fined for illegal hookups. But they will ask you to correct the situation. We're also considering an ordinance that will require all changes of ownership in homes to have a sewer inspection before the new homeowners can move in. No water will be provided to the home until any problems are corrected. We'll be discussing this ordinance in the next month or so.

Transparency in Government

That's a hot topic lately. Citizens demand to know what their elected officials are spending their tax dollars on and generally what's going on. This is a good thing. Personally, I'd love for more people to attend the Council meetings, give us input, and get educated on what it takes to keep our community thriving. Justin Sheehan from Crown Jewel Productions gave us an interesting presentation on his ideas to get the public informed and involved as much as possible. His plan is to broadcast and archive all the City Council meetings. Depending on the plan we'd agree to, there could be other interactive features involved. The meetings could be viewed live on any computer, tablet or smart phone - or they could be viewed at a later date. He's also offering live chat for the community to give feedback and suggestions. I think this is a wonderful plan. We'll be discussing this in the next couple meetings to see if we can find enough room in the budget to fund this project. Once the Council meetings are broadcast, I'd love to see the Board of Works, Board of Zoning Appeals, Planning Commission and other meetings broadcast also. The meetings aren't usually too exciting, but it's important that people know what's going on. That's the reason I'm producing this blog. Between the New Haven Bulletin (www.newhavenbulletin.com), this blog, and hopefully a video presentation of city meetings soon, people will have no excuse to not be informed. Have a great week! Let me know what you think.

Craig

EACS - Nothing but the truth

Craig Dellinger — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 03:33:22 GMT

This week’s blog entry will focus mainly on the East Allen County School situation we find ourselves in - I wish it could be short and simple, but it’s a complicated issue. The East Allen County Schools (EACS) have a tough situation. They’re dealing with declining enrollment, less funding from the State, and an aging infrastructure. Their solution is to close some elementary schools and keep five high schools. This issue isn’t anything new. It’s been a fight for over twenty years. School Boards have proposed plans - mostly been rejected. Superintendents have been hired and fired. Unfortunately, we became one of the worst performing school districts in our area (and State). People and companies previously wanted to move to East Allen because they knew their children would have the highest quality education. Now our school system is a deterrent to both the real estate market and economic development in general. That’s both a tragedy and something we need to get fixed - quickly!

A group of citizens in New Haven organized about three years ago to study the situation and provide their input to the school administration. We put on forums, had private meetings with the administration, I even brought Dr. Tony Bennett (the State Superintendent of Public Instruction) to New Haven for a public forum. For the most part, both our suggestions and help offered by Dr. Bennett were ignored. When the School Board realized that their project would require a referendum (vote from the public) to pass, they broke the project into chunks so that they could proceed with the smaller projects (Woodlan and Heritage) without public opinion - and both of those will increase taxes. We begged them to keep the projects together so that the communities wouldn’t be split - to no avail. The only “say” we have is with a remonstrance process. There is one currently in process for the Woodlan project and another remonstrance will have to be done for the Heritage project (starting March 1st).

There has been a huge mis-information campaign ran by members of the school board and their supporters. They blame the New Haven City government and Chamber of Commerce for being against them and even say that if people sign the blue petition, Leo or Woodlan will be closed. That is a ridiculous statement and has never been proposed. To make things even more confusing, they’ve promised to go ahead with the Woodlan and Heritage projects no matter what the public wants. The remonstrances could end up just being a say whether we want our taxes increased or not. Also, there is NO organized effort by either the City of New Haven or the Chamber in this fight. There are people from the City Administration and the Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors in this fight, but we’re private citizens. We’re speaking for ourselves, our families, our community, and our businesses. We don’t have an absolute plan that we’re pushing - we just know a bad plan when we see it. There are so many things wrong with their plan, it would take pages to cover everything. What we want is a plan that provides the BEST education for our children, makes people want to move to our area again BECAUSE of our school system, and is ECONOMICALLY SUSTAINABLE. We feel that their current proposal doesn’t guarantee any of that.

I’m asking you to please sign the blue petition which is against the tax increase. Signing BLUE is NOT signing against better education - it’s just telling them they have a bad plan. We are all about providing a better education for our children. We just don't see where their plan will do anything but divide communities and maintain budget problems. The Woodlan remonstrance signatures have to be turned in on Tuesday, February 14th so we’re running out of time. You can sign the petition this Sunday from noon to three at the Kroger parking lot in New Haven, or anytime Monday at New Haven Print. If you can’t make those times and want to sign, please let me know and we’ll get a petition to you.

Whether the Woodlan remonstrance passes or not, the Heritage remonstrance will begin March 1st. Please help us send a message that we need to re-think the plan. It's obvious we need to do something - but it shouldn't be at the expense of our children's education and well being.

Welcome to my Blog v.2

Craig Dellinger — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 03:02:15 GMT

Hello Neighbors:

Hope you are having a great 2012 so far. I’d first like to thank everyone who helped put me in the position to serve you as New Haven’s Third District Councilman. I really appreciate the hard work our volunteers did, and I appreciate every single vote I received on election day. Regardless of whether you voted for me or not, I want to give you as much information on what’s going on in the City of New Haven as possible. AND, I’d appreciate feedback on the issues we’re dealing with. There is rarely an issue where there aren’t two sides involved. I want to make decisions that represent District 3’s residents and what’s best for New Haven. You can help by staying in the loop and providing comments.

The most effective way for me to do this is to maintain this internet blog. I’m planning on posting an article at least twice a month on issues brought in front of the City Council and any other news concerning us in New Haven. This will include information on proposed ordinances, new construction, events, good news and bad news. You can comment on the articles, or bring up issues of your own. The blog will be moderated and we won’t allow personal attacks, or nonsense. You can visit the blog at any time, or you can subscribe to the site. When you subscribe (free), you’ll receive an email with new posts as they come out. This is my second attempt at getting this blog going. Hopefully this time we'll have more people involved and get some interesting discussions going.

You can also email me personally at cdellinger@newhavenin.org or call my cell phone at (260) 460-7161 for questions or comments.

2012 is going to be an exciting year in New Haven. We have a lot of projects going on. Work will be starting on the Moeller Road sidewalk project this summer and the Maplecrest Extension will be finishing up also. Look for our participation in an Indianapolis 500 Community Celebration again this year. We had so many good comments and great participation last year, we’re planning on doing it again. As it was last year, this is a competition among Indiana Communities. The winning community receives $20,000 and the second and third will receive $2,500 each. We were so close to winning last year, we have to give it another shot. There will also be difficult issues to deal with. The City of Fort Wayne is promising water rate hikes that will impact us. As always,it’s the job of the Council to provide the most services and best quality of life possible with the lowest tax rates. It makes it difficult when we have to deal with cost increases that our outside our control.

Again, I'm looking forward to your participation. Help me make New Haven an even greater place to live, raise our families and do business.