Incredible how downright hostile Ballard is in light of his handouts to billionaire team owners and cricket dream spending. It is good to see the general public demanding answers about why the police are being screwed. From a Twitter interview IndyStar hosted:
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Cricket fields at new sports park
Question (from @kmosier86): Why can the city afford a cricket field but not pay for raises for police officers and firefighters?
Answer: Oh really? Are we there still? (He was referring to frequent criticism of the $6 million World Sports Park project.) It’s one-time infrastructure money that hopefully will produce revenue for the city, and the other is an ongoing expense that has to come from revenue for the city. It’s apples and oranges completely.
Tell me again, why is it wrong to put playing fields on a park? That’s what we’re doing, and out of one-time money.
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Police and firefirefighter raises
Q (from @ronpoe1): Why cut the police officers’ and firefighters’ contractual pay raises for 2014? Haven’t they earned that money, especially with all the issues the city has had?
A: There’s history to this. We gave them, just recently, 3-, 4- and 5-percent raises, back to back to back in the middle of the recession (in 2008-2010). We just gave them another 3-percent raise — a little bit delayed, but we gave them a 3-percent raise. We gave them a clothing allowance that they didn’t even ask for. New technology, new cars — I could go on and on and on. We’ve been very generous to them over the last few years. We continue to try to do more.
But there’s only a certain amount of money, and over 90 percent of the (operating) budget is now public safety and criminal justice.
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Trade trips abroad
Q (from @Steviewayneh ): This one has a spin to it: When are you going to stop traveling the world with your wife on trade missions and pay attention to problems here?
A: Oh, you mean the over half a billion dollars of RebuildIndy money that we’ve put into the city of Indianapolis? Or the murder rate being below 100 for the last three years? The crime rate being down again this year? I mean, all the building, all the economic development that’s been going on in the city — it’s been very strong.
This is a global economy. You’re going to live by it or you’re going to die by it — take your pick.