The City of Fishers has released its weekly up date on road construction in and around the city.  Once again, the list is long.

Below is the full listing, as provided by the City of Fishers.

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When the Fishers Arts Council sponsors monthly art exhibits at City Hall, there is normally a theme.  June is an exception

The exhibit is planned with an eclectic look, featuring artists in the city and surrounding area.  The artist reception will be part of the Spark!Fishers festivities on June 30th. The artists will be available throughout the day to talk about their work.

Besides the artist reception, there will be a Veterans Hall on the 30th as part of the gallery where veterans can rest, reminisce and share their memories with others. The hall will feature video presentations, along with veteran related paintings, pictures, scrapbooks and other memorabilia.

The free exhibit will run through June 29th and will be open to the public on weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and on Saturdays during the Fishers Farmers Market from 8 a.m. to noon.

Most of you  may now C-Span for its live coverage of the House, Senate and Congressional hearings.  But the organization also sponsors a competition among students producing documentaries.

Two Fishers High School student, Sophie Foley and Laurent Higgenbotham, submitted their short video about the First Amendment and won second place, which includes a $1,500 prize.

The C-Span bus made a stop in Fishers on Friday, the last day of school, and presented Sophie and Lauren their prize.

Their documentary video, “Students Ruin The First Amendment,” is available at this link.

The Fifty Club of Fishers invited public safety officers to the George Kehl Police Headquarters to talk about what the club is doing locally.

The Fifty Club’s main mission is to  support the families of City of Fishers police officers and firefighters in the event of duty-related disability or death.

Learn more about the Fifty Club, including making a donation, at this link.

The City of Fishers started a new system a few years ago, determining what support the city will provide to local nonprofit organizations.  In each year’s budget cycle, a three member City Council committee, made up of council members Brad DeReamer, Pete Peterson and Cecilia Coble, review requests for funding and decide how money budgeted for these nonprofits will be handed out.

The committee is now accepting applications from local nonprofit groups for funding in the 2020 city spending plan.

To review the application guidelines, use this link.

To access the actual application form, use this link.

The Fishers City Council is investigating City Clerk Jennifer Kehl in what the council describes as a “Title VII” probe.  Title VII is a part of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin and religion.  The council news release does not specify which part of Title VII is involved in this case.

The council statement says a third party will be contracted to conduct this investigation.

“As of this moment I have not been made aware of any specific allegations brought against me,” Ms. Kehl wrote in a Thursday afternoon e-mail message to LarryInFishers. “I  am confident I will be found innocent of the allegations as that is not who I am. I have not done anything wrong.”

Below is the full statement issued by the city council Thursday afternoon:

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On May 10, Fishers City Council was made aware of several Title VII allegations against City Clerk Jennifer Kehl by current and former employees.  The City Council takes every allegation of discrimination and harassment very seriously and immediately acted to provide workplace accommodations.

The City Council has hired a third-party firm to conduct an independent investigation into the allegations. Although the Office of the Clerk is separate and distinct from the City of Fishers, the City Council has investigatory powers over all officers, departments, and employees of the City.

The City Council respects the order of due process that all parties involve deserve. The City Council will not provide further comment until the investigation is complete. 

With heavy rains in the morning, but sunny skies at the ground-breaking ceremony, the location had to be adjusted a bit Thursday so it wouldn’t be a mud-breaking ceremony.  Flexware Innovations is set to start construction on its new headquarters.  The building will be a part of the Municipal Complex, near the Nickel Plate Amphitheater.

Flexware is planning the $3.5 million project , featuring a 35,000-square foot office building with 12,000 square feet of office space for Flexware and a build-to-suit area in the remaining space. The City of Fishers will construct a 100-space public parking lot which will be free and open to the public after 6 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends.

The IT firm says it will be creating 68 new jobs that the city describes as “high-wage.”

Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness and Flexware President Scott Whitlock made remarks at the ground-breaking.  The mayor said the Internet of Things (IoT) is something he learned recently, but he found Flexware has been working on IoT projects for 20 years.

Whitlock presented the city with a donation for the Nickel Plate Trail.

Scott Whitlock, President of Flexware Innovations, along with Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness and other officials break ground for the new Flexware building

Mayor Scott Fadness gave his annual State of the City address Wednesday and sat down with me for a podcast discussion Thursday.  We talked about a number of issues, including his concept of regionalism, and how that would be paid for.  The mayor also talked about challenges in building a 5G wireless network in Fishers neighborhoods and the summer road construction season.

Mike Reuter, long-time Chief Financial Officer for the Hamilton Southeastern (HSE) School Corporation, was awarded a Key to the City by Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness during the OneZone Chamber of Commerce luncheon Wednesday.  Reuter has announced he will be retiring at the end of calendar year 2019.

Mayor Fadness recounted what a resource Reuter was to him 13 years ago when Fadness was an intern at the Town of Fishers trying to figure out municipal budgets.  Reuter has been a trusted financial resource for a number of municipalities in the area, including Fishers.

Reuter told the assembled crowd of over 700 that there were about 4,000 students in HSE Schools when he started there, and now the student count is at nearly 22,000.  He called HSE schools “a great place to be.”

Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness sent out a Twitter message the day before delivering his State of the City address.  As he was putting the finishing touches on the speech, he wrote, “It looks to be a bit unconventional.”

Unconventional it was.  The mayor gave up a good deal of his allotted time to local school officials and his senior staff, to talk about what they are doing.  I don’t know many mayors that would give up most of his speaking time to others, but that’s what Scott Fadness did at the OneZone luncheon Wednesday.

The mayor was brief but to the point on what needs to be done in his second term – Indianapolis, as a metropolitan area, has problems, and those problems can be solved only if all local officials in the region are willing to be part of the solution.  Then the mayor reeled off a litany of data showing Indianapolis metro as behind a number of other regions.

For example, the Indy area ranks very low in public health, quality of life, higher education, health and environment, smoking and mental health.

Fadness called on local officials in the Indianapolis metropolitan area to “come together and work as a region to tackle these…issues, not because it’s simply the right thing to do, but because every other region out there that we are competing against is already doing it.”

When companies look to relocate, Fadness says they do not look at a state, they look to a metropolitan area, such as Indianapolis.  The mayor compared the Indy area to other regions and our area does not fare well in data such as poverty levels and level of wages.  Based on that data, other areas, such as Nashville and Austin (Texas), have made progress on those areas, while during that same period, the Indianapolis region has been falling behind.

Fadness argues that a state measure, championed by local State Representative Todd Huston, would have allowed regions to “marshal revenue streams” for improving an entire metro area.  That bill did not pass during this year’s legislative session, but the mayor vows there will be an effort to enact the proposal in next year’s session of the Indiana General Assembly.

The mayor gave an example of how a cooperative effort between Fishers Police and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department IMPD) in processing evidence resulted in a number of matches for IMPD to follow, just in 90 days.

The mayor envisions a region speaking with “one collective voice” beyond what one city in central Indiana could accomplish.

“I’m committed to seeing this happen in my next term in office,” said Fadness, “not only because I think it’s the right thing to do, but it’s because I believe it is directly tied to the long-term success of of the city that I live in, the city I love, Fishers.”

The event was held in Noblesville at the Embassy Suites in the Hamilton Town Center area, near Fishers, because there is no facility in Fishers that could meet the space requirements in order to handle the size of the crowd.  OneZone Chamber President Mo Merhoff said there were 710 people at the luncheon.

Noblesville Deputy Mayor Steve Cooke poked some fun in remarks made at the event, because Fishers State of the City address was being held in Noblesville.