Sunday, December 11, 2005

Letter In Sunday Star

My third published letter on the topic of Fishers' attempt to forcibly annex the Geist area north of 96th Street was featured in today's Indy Star. Link to letter.

I recommend that Geist area property owners should send in their own letters in order to turn up the heat on the Fishers Town Council. Don't worry about writing elegant prose- it's going to be edited anyway. Make your point in 100 words or so, and your letter will be printed. Use the tried and true formula of who, what, when, where, and why, and you'll do great.

3 comments:

Mike Kole said...

Fishers does supply some fire and emergency services. These are contracted via Fall Creek Township. As I understand it, some of these services are secondary, in that should a situation arise requiring additional rescue assistance, Fishers gets the call.

Water is provided by Indianapolis Water- they own the Geist Reservoir after all- or wells. Roads are provided by the County Highway Dept. Sanitary by Hamilton Southeastern Utilities, or septic systems. The County Sheriff provides police protection, although many communities contract for private security because they are gated communities. Storm sewers are managed by the County Surveyor's Office.

If the annexation passes, the water situation would be unchanged, as would the storm and sanitary sewers. The County Surveyor does not relinquish jurisdiction over County Regulated Drains because a petition was required to make them Regulated Drains, and they are not vacated from Regulated status without a subsequent petition. Municipalities are never in a hurry to change this situation, and I ahve never seen it happen in Hamilton County. The fire situation would change, and Fishers has indicated the desire to build another fire station to serve Geist. The police situation would change, but the gated status of some communities would be an issue. The roads would switch from County jurisdiction to Town.

LP Mike Sylvester said...

If you are annexed into The City of Fort Wayne your property taxes go up about 30%.

What would they go up in Geist?

Mike Kole said...

It has been reported that the property taxes would increase $600 per $100,000 in assessed value.

There are million dollar homes in Geist, so they look at hikes of $6,000 per year... for nothing in particular.