http://www.nuvo.net/archive/2005/03/02/indys_big_problems.htmlHow does Mayor Peterson deal with these problems? Well, for the bad air, dirty water, lack of roads and good schools, he hired a public relations firm for $100,000 to work on "our image."Is a new Colts stadium necessary?
Jack Miller
Indianapolis is a city with big problems. Besides dirty air and raw sewage in our waterways, IU reports that Indianapolis lags the nation in building roads, schools and other public infrastructure that improves quality of life and helps companies thrive and create jobs.
That may account for Indy losing over 20,000 jobs last year. There’s a $100 million public pension shortfall and the mayor is afraid the Colts will leave. How does Mayor Peterson deal with these problems? Well, for the bad air, dirty water, lack of roads and good schools, he hired a public relations firm for $100,000 to work on “our image.” Peterson is addressing the pension shortfall by charging $100 million to the city’s credit card.
But the crown jewel of this month’s Peterson Plan is how he plans to keep the Colts, expand the convention center and create jobs. Recently, the city paid $114,000 for a supportive study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) that showed this project would boost the flagging local economy enormously, create jobs and keep Indy a “major league” city. To fund the $800 million project, Peterson has presented a bold plan, which will be financed by $1.5 billion in slot machine revenues over the next 30 years.
Since practically no one in the City-County Building has bothered to ask whether this study is valid, two of the nation’s leading experts agreed to analyze it.
Kevin Delaney, professor at Temple University, and Rick Eckstein, professor at Villanova, have examined the deal and recently presented their findings to a packed auditorium at the University of Indianapolis. They described ways stadium proponents neutralize opponents: ignore genuine academic research; create fantasy documents and change the subject to community self-esteem. Eckstein noted that fantasy documents like the PwC report are suspect because they are commissioned by the team or the city, have “unclear methodologies” that “contradict neutral academic research” and “never suggest new stadiums are a bad public investment.”
Delaney and Eckstein then deciphered the unclear wording of the PwC report and concluded that much was left out, exaggerated and poorly researched.
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