Plans for a series of monthly sessions sponsored by Fishers City Council leadership “in no way is being done in reaction to anyone.” That’s the comment from Council President Rich Block when asked his view of a recent statement by Logan Day, a Fishers mayoral candidate in the GOP May 7th primary election.
Tuesday morning, Fishers announced a series of monthly meetings named “Council Connect” with the first session scheduled for February 25th. The news release announcing the meetings said Council Connect will “allow residents an opportunity to ask questions or voice concerns directly to council leadership.”
Later that same day, Logan Day sent a statement to LarryInFishers saying the timing of the Council Connect meetings looks “suspicious” to him since Day has been pushing city transparency in his campaign. Day described the Council Connect idea as “platform plagiarism.”
Council President Block told LarryInFishers the Council Connect idea came from the new council Vice President, Eric Moeller. The council president and vice president have been discussing this Council Connect idea for the past 30-40 days, Block says.
Block also says he is unaware of any position Logan Day has taken on the transparency issue.
“I have never seen anything from Logan Day about the transparency, therefore it’s pretty hard for me to say that this is being done because of that when I wasn’t even aware of it,” Block told LarryInFishers.
Block defended the council’s record on transparency, citing regular meetings with residents and representatives of local Homeowners Associations. He cited Moeller, David George and Brad DeReamer as council members regularly holding such meetings. Block said he and other at large council members, along with people from the city staff, regularly attend these meetings.
Some of these meetings are not well-attended, and Block hopes the Council Connect session will bring residents to participate. But he quotes what Eric Moeller says about transparency – “…it’s a two-way street.”
“I’ve not heard this complaint from people until, literally, in the last week or two, that there’s a transparency issue,” Block says. “To me, it’s also incumbent on members of the public to be informed, read, and if they have questions can attend council meetings or other (meetings).”
Good for them responding. Unsolicited advice: people give up on meeting with their reps because they soon figure out the reps listen to and follow what donors want and not what simple taxpayers want.
Do you know any of the city council representatives personally? If you did, you would not be posting this kind of comment.
I live in Carmel, so no. I review their campaign finance reports and read. I also know that one of them called one of my buddies to say lay off Fadness on his campaign finance report, even though I found an error. When it comes to little issues I am sure they are fine and listen (the beauty of subsidiarity/federalism/home rule); when it comes to multimillion dollar projects, the campaign donors win. And I don’t equate the limited number of people that vote in R primary with a rousing mandate of support from the general taxpaying populace.