Blue Indy Claims It Sold 1,000 Memberships

Our local news media continues to offer obligatory press releases promoting the electric car sharing program former Mayor Greg Ballard illegally awarded to the French-owned company, Bollore. The IBJ says Blue Indy claims it has sold 1,000 memberships and provided more than 7,000 rides since it launched last September. A spokesman for the company claims the launch has been "stronger than we had hoped" and the company "could not be more delighted."

Who uses the cars? The company says residents who don't own cars, families who are scaling back to just one car, college students and professionals using the cars for commutes. Blue Indy now has 120 cars in its fleet that are illegally parked in public parking spaces former Mayor Ballard's administration stole and gave to the company for its exclusive, for-profit business. It plans to add 20 news stations around the city by the end of February, including two on the Butler University campus, an additional station at the University of Indianapolis station and four stations at the airport.

The company claims it is investing $41 million of its own money here in Indianapolis. The fleet of cars and charging stations were actually acquired by the company for use in Europe, but the company couldn't convince any countries outside of France to accept the cars so the billionaire French businessman found the most gullible mayor in the United States to take the warehoused products off his back. The cars have not been approved for use on American highways, and the power charging stations are not UL certified, but those facts are inconsequential to our local news media, just like they've been towards the multiple state and local laws Mayor Ballard broke to award the one-sided agreement to Blue Indy.

Indianapolis Firefighters Get Special Training For Hidden Dangers Posed By Blue Indy

Who would have thought? Emergency responders face hidden dangers in responding to automobile collisions involving those little environmentally-friendly Blue Indy cars. Fox 59 News reports on special training the company is providing to Indianapolis firefighters to help ensure they don't fry themselves while drying to free someone from one of the electric cars, including special rubber gloves costing $170 a pair:

. . . “Some important things we’re going to go over with you guys this morning is to how to safely de-energize the 450 volt battery so in case of an accident you can guys can do what you guys do,” said Blue Indy Maintenance Manager Ed Searcy as he addressed an IFD crew huddled around one of the electric cars at a charging station on North Meridian Street. “The reason we want the 12 volt battery disconnected…if there’s a way to cut it…cut it…is because if you start cutting the car and you haven’t disconnected the 12 volt battery there’s a good chance you’re going to start popping airbags.”

Searcy explained the firefighters would need to don a special set of $170 rubber gloves to disconnect the main power source, a 600 pound battery underneath the car, before diving under the hood in anticipation of treating injured passengers.

“It is a two-step process de-energizing the high voltage battery and then taking off the negative cable from the car. That way we make sure everything is de-energized,” said Searcy. “The battery has the technology where in an accident if the battery detects any short to ground, there are four sections in the battery monitoring this, if there is any short to ground, its going to kill the power to the high voltage battery. If the airbags are deployed, its going to kill the power to the high voltage battery.” . . . 

The danger of getting fried by one of the cars are the least of firefighters' concerns. Those power charging stations dotting the busiest streets in downtown and throughout the city are a far greater concern to their safety, as well as members of the public. It's too bad members of our local news media refuse to talk to experts who would tell them about the real public safety issues with Blue Indy instead of continuing to write press release after press release for a company built on stolen public assets.

UPDATE: An observant Advance Indiana reader tells us that emergency responder training was a requirement imposed by the National Highway Safety & Traffic Administration when it first granted Blue Indy permission to use their cars in Indianapolis for demonstration purposes only--since the cars have never been approved for use on American highways. The reader wonders why that training is only now occurring months after the cars were put into use.

Blue Indy Commandeering More Valuable Parking Spaces On Michigan Street

I came home today to find a letter in my mailbox from Blue Indy. The purpose of the letter was to provide notice to nearby neighbors in the historic district that Blue Indy planned to install yet another Blue Indy station with an enrollment kiosk on the right-of-way along Michigan Street where it intersects Mass Avenue in front of the inappropriate apartments known as Millikan On Mass that now surround Barton Tower.

There is currently angled-street parking at that location used primarily by the heavily-trafficked Athenanuem Building where the YMCA, Rathskeller and American Cabaret Theater are located. The notice said this Blue Indy station will replace one originally proposed to be installed on the west side of New Jersey Street near this same busy intersection. A hearing before IHPC has been scheduled for December 1 at 12:00 p.m.

This has gone way too far. Mayor Greg Ballard entered into a one-sided, corrupt, illegal agreement with this French-owned company that has permitted the theft of tens of millions of dollars worth of public assets. What in the hell is wrong with a City where there is no person with responsible legal authority who will step  forward to uphold the rule of law?

Mayor Ballard and other key members of his administration responsible for this and other corrupt contracts awarded to political insiders should have long ago been indicted for the multiple felonies they've committed. Other officials in other cities have gone to jail for less. Yet nothing happens while we watch our city being plundered by these thieves. Our City-County Council members sit and  twiddle their thumbs. Our local news media ignores the corruption and, instead, writes press releases about how the unwanted electric car sharing program makes us look like a world class city. Marion Co. Auditor Julie Voorhies is the only public official in Marion County who has taken legal action to block the use of public dollars for Blue Indy, a move she's gotten little, if any, support from other public officials for initiating.

Hey, Terry Curry and Josh Minkler. How about you start doing your jobs or resign? I've said it before, and I'll keep saying. Every damn corrupt politician in Chicago should relocate to Indianapolis where you can steal as much as your heart desires without any worries of being held to account for breaching the public's trust.

Marion County Auditor Sues To Block Illegal Blue Indy Deal

Marion Co. Auditor Julie Voorhies

At last, there is one elected official left in Indianapolis City-County government who still believes in the rule of law. Marion Co. Auditor Julie Voorhies filed a lawsuit against Blue Indy, LLC, the City of Indianapolis and Regions Bank to block payment of $6 million the Ballard administration illegally transferred into a trust account for Blue Indy's benefit in fulfillment of a contract, under which Mayor Greg Ballard's administration broke numerous state and local laws to enter into with the French-owned company. The case filed by Voorhies, a Democrat, has been assigned to Marion Superior Court P.J. Dietrick's court, a Republican judge who formerly sat as a member of Marion County Election Board prior to running for judge.

The Indianapolis Business Journal is reporting the case was filed in the Marion Circuit Court; however, the state's court system is showing the case filed in Civil Court No. 12 as 49D12-1510-PL-035457. According to the IBJ, the complaint seeks to halt payment of the $6 million being held in trust by Regions Bank for Blue Indy's benefit and any additional construction of power charging stations on city-owned property for use by Blue Indy's electric car sharing business, a 15-year monopoly business Mayor Ballard awarded to the company without undertaking any competitive bidding process or without council approval. The lawsuit seeks a declaratory judgment that the contract entered into with Blue Indy is illegal.

“Not only did the city fail to publicly bid the $6 million BlueIndy construction project, but the city also failed to obtain the necessary budget appropriations from the City-County Council and circumvented the approval of the Marion County auditor in issuing payment to BlueIndy,” according to a press release from the auditor’s office.

The Marion County Auditor should be praised by all Indianapolis taxpayers for having their backs. That's more than can be said for any other elected officials or the Democratic and Republican mayoral candidates, both of whom applauded the illegal deal and indicated they would enforce what is so clearly an illegal contract should either be elected mayor. All evidence points towards there being a corrupt motivation for breaking so many laws to enter into the agreement, making it all the more outrageous that Joe Hogsett, a former federal prosecutor, finds nothing wrong with so many laws being broken in order to steal tens of millions of dollars in public assets from Indianapolis taxpayers. So much for Hogsett's phony campaign meme about his plan to put a stop to "downtown insiders," whom he accuses in campaign ads of "cheating the system" and "stealing our tax dollars."

The Indianapolis media has completely fallen down on their job in reporting on this major public corruption scandal, which not only results in the theft of tens of millions of dollars in city assets, but which also poses a great risk to the public. Blue Indy is pawning off on Indianapolis residents an electric car sharing system that other countries in the European Union refused to allow to be operated in their countries. The billionaire owner of Blue Indy, Vincent Bollore', was only able to convince his home country of France to buy into the system. Bollore came to Indianapolis after he was first turned down by San Francisco officials.

The electric charging stations rolled out across the city are not UL-certified and potentially pose a risk of harm or death to people who use the electric cars charged by those power charging stations in the event of a malfunction. Even more concerning is the fact that the cars themselves have never been approved by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration for use on American highways. Bollore was allowed a waiver to import the cars for demonstration purposes only. News reports indicate that a number of the electric cars in use in Paris have caught fire and burned since they began operating. Bollore publicly blamed the burning cars on vandals. These facts have been completely ignored by other public officials and the media. Apparently the two candidates for mayor and the media are more interested in protecting the corrupt local business insiders who stand to make a lot of money off the one-sided deal with Blue Indy than the general public.

To view the text of the complaint, click this link here to view a copy made available by WTHR-TV.

Check out this free advertising the Ballard administration is giving Blue Indy using our tax dollars on our local public access TV station, WCTY.

Only 500 Signed Up For Blue Indy Electric Car Sharing Service During Its First 30 Days

Despite all the fanfare Mayor Greg Ballard gave to the highly controversial, illegal 15-year deal he entered into with Blue Indy to allow it to operate a monopoly electric car sharing business utilizing hundreds of the City's most valuable on-street, public parking spaces and media hoopla surrounding its launch last month, only about 500 people signed up for a membership during its month of operation. Those members took just 1,500 rides during that initial roll-out of the service, which included yet a second re-launch after interest in the car sharing service floundered so badly during its initial weeks of operation.

The French billionaire, Vince Bollore, who owns Blue Indy, says it will take at least 15,000 to 20,000 regular users of the service to just break even in Indianapolis. Despite the disappointing numbers, Blue Indy's general manager, Scott Prince, tells the IBJ the "early enthusiasm" for the program was "encouraging." “The enthusiasm for our new service has been fantastic, and many people have already commented on how BlueIndy helps them save money and time and enhances their mobility in the city,” Prince said in a written statement. That's a total lie, but what do you expect from a company that convinced the nation's most corrupt mayor to steal tens of millions of dollars of his city's public assets and just hand it over to the foreign-owned company for nothing in return?

Butler Collegian Gives Thumbs Down To Blue Indy

The Butler Collegian's Blakely Heaton records her first experience with Blue Indy. The electric car sharing service doesn't get her recommendation to fellow Butler students.

Blue Indy Triggers Neighborhood Parking Wars On Old North Side

Mayor Greg Ballard's decision to illegally appropriate hundreds of valuable public parking spaces all over the City of Indianapolis for Blue Indy's exclusive, for-profit use is now turning neighbor against neighbor. In the Old Northside neighborhood, Blue Indy has consumed dozens of what had been free, on-street public parking for area residents. That's forced some residents, most of whom are apartment dwellers, to find new public parking further away from where they live. Single family homeowners are taking matters into their own hands and issuing faux warning tickets to motorists parking in front of their homes threatening to have their cars towed.

The homeowners are citing a city ordinance prohibiting motorists from parking for more than 6 hours at a time in public parking spaces abutting a homeowner's residence without the consent of the impacted homeowner or tenant. "[H]omeowners proximate to Englewood Lofts have been waging a battle of bullying and 'faux police' parking tickets to intimidate and force residents away from the curbs in front of these homes and 'their' parking spaces," neighborhood activist Chas Navarra tells Advance Indiana.

Blue Indy Claims Electric Car Sharing Service Has Exceeded Expectations To Date

You have to go searching to find one of those Blue Indy cars being driven around town by anyone other than an employee ambassador of the electric car sharing service, but the company says the mostly-idle cars parked around downtown and elsewhere consuming the most valuable public parking spaces stolen from Indianapolis taxpayers has so far "exceeded expectations." At least that's what the folks at the French-based Bollore are telling Bloomberg.

. . . Its BlueIndy car share, backed by the same French company that runs Autolib', was launched on Sept. 2 with an initial fleet of 52 cars, which will expand to 500, with 200 recharging stations planned. BlueIndy's general manager, Scott Prince, says demand has "exceeded our expectations," with more than 500 people signing up in the first two weeks. BlueIndy users register on its website, then can opt for a one-time rental costing $8 for the first 8 minutes and 40¢ a minute after that, or a weekly, monthly, or annual membership offering per-minute costs as low as 20¢. 

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard has said he's "delighted to welcome BlueIndy as a clean, affordable transit option" for residents and visitors to Indiana's capital, which like many midsize U.S. cities doesn't have much mass transit. Ballard ponied up $6 million in city funds to top off the $41 million being spent on the program by Groupe Bolloré, the French manufacturer of the four-seat, battery-powered cars, which have a range of 150 miles between recharges.

BlueIndy will be an important test for Groupe Bolloré, which hopes to create a worldwide market for the lithium metal polymer batteries that power the cars. Bolloré spent more than €3 billion ($3.4 billion) to develop the technology, and Vincent Bolloré, the chairman and chief executive, has said he is keen to test its performance in Indiana's cold winters and hot summers. "Indiana shouldn't be more complicated than Paris," he told Bloomberg News this year . . . 

The story goes on to concede there has been local opposition to Mayor Ballard breaking numerous state and local laws before trying to illegally wire $6 million in city funds to the company as additional start-up capital, although the Bloomberg story doesn't describe it in those terms.

BlueIndy has gotten off to a bumpy start in this city of 850,000, host to America's most famous auto race. Local business owners have groused about recharging stands taking up parking space outside their establishments, while disgruntled taxpayers complain about the expenditure of public funds on a project run by a French company. Some city council members, angry that the mayor didn't seek their approval for the outlay, have even threatened to have BlueIndy cars towed off the streets. Autolib' has drawn little criticism in France.

Bollore tells Bloomberg the local opposition will "die down" once people see the benefits of the "silent, zero exhaust" cars on the streets. There's no mention of the problems people are having in communicating via satellite hook-up to the support staff in Paris since the company won't spend any money hiring local employees to provide support services. When does the Indianapolis media plan to investigate the use of a nonprofit's employees to serve as ambassadors for the electric car sharing service? I'm pretty sure that's not kosher. But then again our local media has shown little interest in investigating the fact that officials would have been indicted in almost any other city in America for doing what Mayor Ballard and members of his administration did to foist this electric car sharing service on Indianapolis residents. Politicians don't break a bunch of laws just for the hell of it unless there's something in it for them.

Check out the Lindedin profile of Blue Indy's GM Scott Prince:

Vice President and General Manager

BlueIndy

2015 – Present (less than a year)Indianapolis, Indiana Area

Owner/CEO

Expansion Resources LLC

1998 – Present (17 years)Carmel, IN

Single member LLC to manage secondary affiliations below

General Manager / AVP Sales / VP Strategic Sales

Shoutlet

2013 – 2015 (2 years)

Shoutlet enables clients to manage and measure their social marketing efforts to enhance their brand, provide a personal level of customer care, gain market insights to ultimately drive increased revenue and customer conversions.

EVP, Chief Sales & Marketing Officer

Blue Pillar, Inc.

2011 – 2013 (2 years)Indianapolis, Indiana Area

Executive Director

EnerTech Capital (Co-Founder Clean Wave Ventures)

2006 – 2011 (5 years)

Auditor Attempts To Block Ballard From Illegally Wiring $6 Million To Blue Indy

WISH-TV is reporting that Mayor Greg Ballard's office illegally initiated a $6 million wire transfer from city accounts to a Regions Bank escrow account for the benefit of Blue Indy without first obtaining Marion Co. Auditor Julie Voorhies' authorization and without an appropriation made by the City-County Council for that purpose. Voohies sent a letter to Regions Bank advising it the administration had not followed Indiana law and requesting that it freeze the account.

The Ballard administration attempted to circumvent the clearly-established legal requirements by having the rubber-stamp Board of Public Works approve a $6 million payment from excess funds it says was already appropriated in this year's budget from several accounts, including the city's parking meter fund and not spent for other purposes within its budget. The council insists the Department of Public Works' current appropriation authority does not authorize such an expenditure.

WISH-TV's Bennett Haeberle has a hilarious conversation with two of my neighbors, Helen and Bobby Small, who had twice unsuccessfully attempted to test drive a Blue Indy car. Helen explained to Haeberle that Blue Indy has no local call center to support the service and when she tried to communicate at one of the electric car sharing service's kiosks via Internet satellite hook-up to Blue Indy support personnel in Paris, France to sign up for the service, the connection froze and prevented her from completing the transaction. I think I've only seen three of these cars in use in the downtown area since the service went live on September 2, and I'm unsure whether the cars were being driven by a Blue Indy employee.

Council Approves Resolution Calling For Towing Of Illegally Parked Blue Indy Cars

In a largely symbolic vote, the Indianapolis City-County Council voted 17-11 tonight to approve a resolution co-sponsored by Councilors Zach Adamson and Christine Scales calling for the appropriate authorities to tow Blue Indy cars that are illegally parked in a no-stop, no-parking zone on Washington Street. Mayor Greg Ballard, responding to tonight's vote, suggested towing the cars would be comparable to theft. No, theft is when you, Mr. Mayor, entered into a 15-year, one-sided agreement with Blue Indy in violation of multiple state and local laws granting the company the right to operate a monopoly electric car sharing business in Indianapolis under which you appropriated hundreds of the City's most valuable public parking spaces and public lands without any legal authority for Blue Indy's exclusive, for-profit business, along with $6 million in public tax dollars. If the rule of law still existed in this City, federal prosecutors would have long ago convened a grand jury and indicted you, members of your administration and your political cronies on multiples counts of wire fraud, honest services fraud, theft and bribery. To think you are talking to folks about running for governor next year when the only suitable place for you to sit your fat butt after you leave the Mayor's Office is a federal penitentiary.

Taxpayers Lose Regardless Of Who Becomes Indianapolis' Next Mayor

Joe Hogsett may be running TV commercial where he claims he's going to put a stop to the downtown insiders cheating the system and stealing our tax dollars as he touts his credentials as a former federal prosecutor, but it's all just a bunch of baloney. He's more beholden to their interests than his Republican opponent, who only moved to the city a few short years ago and knows nothing about city-county government other than he thinks everything Ballard has done during his two terms in office is all hunky-dory and wouldn't change a thing.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that both candidates are delivering the middle finger to Indianapolis residents who've been cheated and robbed to benefit a French company and the monopoly electric car sharing business which Mayor Ballard broke numerous state and local laws to award to the company. Of course, I already shared with you Hogsett's "I could care less how many laws were broken or how much taxpayers are being defrauded" attitude about the deal. Here's what Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum had to say to WTHR's Mary Milz about Blue Indy:

Brewer: "I think you're going to see BlueIndy take off. We've got some time before the numbers really start coming in, but it's exciting that a billion-dollar company wants to make that kind of investment in Indianapolis. There could have been some...it could have been handled better from, you know, a communications standpoint, you know, inside local city government, but at the end of the day, I think we all agree that initiatives like this make our city better." 

Hogsett: "How this contract was reached and who said what to whom and who got to check this or that, I'm not the mayor and I'm not on the council and I'm not really qualified to opine, but certainly, the BlueIndy's technology of making our environment cleaner and greener, along with the other initiatives Mayor Ballard has engaged in, 'Rails to Trails' included, I think he should be commended for."

I believe I've related this story before but it bares repeating. After Hogsett served as campaign manager for Evan Bayh's first gubernatorial campaign, Bayh rewarded him by appointing him Secretary of State. There was a big securities fraud case involving Ski World, the infamous failed ski resort in Brown County that was supported by a bunch of political types and which had been represented by Ed Lewis, a politically-connected attorney with close ties to the Bayh family. Lewis had allegedly facilitated the payment of a bribe to win a liquor license for Ski World, in addition to signing off on a prospectus filled with glaring misrepresentations. The securities division under Bayh had shelved the complaint against Ski World and when the defrauded investor's attorney met with Hogsett soon after he took office and asked him what he planned to do with the case, according to former Indianapolis Star political reporter Dick Cady, Hogsett supposedly replied, "We're not going to do a goddamn thing."

Hogsett will not put a stop to the corrupt manner in which Indianapolis' municipal government business is conducted regardless of what he says while he's out campaigning. He had a chance as federal prosecutor to do something about it, and he was more interested in leveraging the power of the office to forge a deal with the downtown power brokers to push Ballard out of office and allow himself to become Indianapolis' next mayor. That's the only rational explanation one can attribute to the massive public corruption evidence presented to the federal prosecutor's office during his tenure that got swept under the rug the same way it's been done for decades under the political hacks who occupied that office in the past. Look at his campaign contributors and try to tell me he's not already beholden to the same corrupt masters who've been pulling Ballard's strings since the day he took office. It's very depressing for Indianapolis voters, who have virtually no choice in candidates for mayor or council in this year's municipal election. If you choose not to participate in this year's election, I won't fault you. It won't make a damn bit of difference in how this city is governed.

At a neighborhood meeting last night, both Council Zach Adamson, the incumbent Democrtic council member for my district, and his Republican opponent, Sally Spiers, expressed their disappointment and opposition to the manner in which the Ballard administration carried out the Blue Indy deal. Adamson told our neighborhood meeting that he had spoken to Marion Co. Prosecutor Terry Curry about the possibility of a criminal investigation. To his disappointment, Curry claims there is no criminal matter to investigate. Curry obviously wouldn't know public corruption if it jumped up and bit him in the ass. Who would have thought we would be getting a prosecutor as useless as Carl Brizzi was when it came to prosecuting public corruption? Remember how Curry promised to open up a hotline for whistle blowers to aid in prosecuting public corruption when he was running for prosecutor? Why is that people who report public corruption to his hotline become the targets of retaliatory acts while nothing is done to prosecute the public corruption they report?

Electric Car Website Not Too Keen On Blue Indy

A website devoted to promoting electric cars has quite an unflattering review of Blue Indy based on the experience of a would-be employee of the taxpayer-financed, for-profit car sharing service. Gas 2's Jo Borras tells about Indianapolis resident Jeremy Hall's experience with Blue Indy after he applied for a job with the start-up business, which he mistakenly thought would be an exciting opportunity. Hall, along with other persons seeking full-time employment with Blue Indy, went through a two-day training program. That's when things "started to get weird" according to Hall.

“When I walked into the office,” wrote Jeremy. “I was hit with the smell of new carpet and construction. ‘No big deal,’ I said to myself. But, as I went in further, I was shocked. A bay of computers sat on folding tables, white boards with tons of frantic scribbles (were) leaning against the wall, and the guy who was to train us for the event [seemed like] someone who could barely get your order right at McD’s.”  

A startup cutting corners and pushing up against construction deadlines while bringing on people who are barely qualified as stopgaps isn’t news, but Jeremy insisted that there was more to it.  

“It wasn’t long before I was asking tough questions that they ‘couldn’t answer’,” he explains. Adding that it was important that he “not be afraid to tell the customer ‘I don’t know’, and direct them to the website. Remember, they don’t even have an app yet.”  

Those “tough” questions included basic, logistical hurdles that formed the core of Blue Indy’s business process. Questions like, “If no cars are being used other than yours where do you park when you’re done?” (all of the spaces are used 100% of the time, unless a car is in transit) “How do you keep the cars clean?” and “What happens [if a customer’s] battery goes dead?”

Hall said his excitement further began to evaporate when his trainer told him to expect people to yell at you on the phone, the importance of keeping your anger in check and to avoid interacting with members of the public who don't support Blue Indy. Things turned worse when Hall got to test drive one of the cars. “Initially, I was stoked,” he says. “But I was severely disappointed. The seats were super soft but uncomfortable," Hall continued. "The seating position itself was very flat, like a sports car, but the A pillar made it very hard to see and the rearview mirror was worthless. Add in the that a safety feature (a sound warning device) was inoperable … and it took a good bit of work to get the navigation system and other important items such as the AC to fire up."

As it turned out, Hall's full-time job offer never materialized. He got a phone call later that night after his training telling him Blue Indy got an offer from a nonprofit organization to provide "volunteer" staff to the fledgling company. Gee, I wonder which of the nonprofit companies sharing office spaces with for-profit companies like Blue Indy and Vision Fleet in the Chase Tower is providing "volunteer" workers for the company?  Hall also has a warning about the insurance coverage you receive when driving the cars. Blue Indy only carries minimal personal liability property damage coverage to protect against the claims of others in which you are involved in an accident while driving one of their cars. Without your own separate auto insurance policy, you're likely to be disappointed when you find out what's not covered in the event of an accident.

You should check out the 36-page membership contract before using the service, which provides all sorts of reasons why you could be subject to additional charges or a loss of the service. It limits coverage to $50,000 per accident for bodily injury ($25,000 per person) and $10,000 for property damage and similar coverage for accidents involving uninsured/underinsured motorists. The membership terms make the member responsible for any damage to or theft of the car while in your control. The member is responsible for the payment of deductibles not covered by insurance. Failure to pay the deductibles results in the revocation of your membership. There's also an arbitration clause covering claims unless you opt out within 30 days or unless your claim can be adjudicated in a small claims court.

Interestingly, the membership contract says the service is subject to the 17% auto rental excise tax, although it expressly states it believes the car sharing service is different from other rental vehicle businesses and "even though We believe they should not apply to car sharing operations." Membership fees are subject to the state's 7% sales tax. Watch for attempts to be made during next year's legislation session to exempt electric car sharing services from the auto rental excise tax. Blue Indy's contract with the City states it is not subject to taxes and fees otherwise imposed on businesses of its sort, and that the City is required to reimburse the company to the extent it is required to pay those taxes or fees.

Star Columnist Tries And Fails Badly To Sell Me On Blue Indy

The Indianapolis Star recently brought on board a new columnist to take the place of Erika Smith. Suzette Hackney finds her way to Indianapolis from Detroit by way of Cleveland just like Smith, and her commentary is just as head-scratching as Smith's proved to be during her short tenure at The Star. Hackney discredited herself in an earlier column on the issue of Blue Indy when she chastised folks who have problems with the fact that our mayor illegally awarded the French company with a 15-year monopoly on the right to offer electric car sharing services in Indianapolis, along with public assets reaching well into the tens of millions of dollars to subsidize its operations.

Today she pens a column ostensibly for the purpose of selling Indianapolis residents on the value of the service after she took one of the cars for a spin on its inaugural day this week. After reading about her experience, there's little she had to convey about her experience that would entice anyone to want to run out and rent one. She begins by telling us about how convenient and easy it was for her to sign up for the service online at home, which she says took her about twenty minutes. But when she attempted to reserve a car to rent at a charging station nearest to her home, she learned she couldn't do it. That's when she learned after waiting around a few hours and trying again later that she could only enroll to use the service by driving to one of two locations downtown where there are kiosks.

So Hackney has to get in her car, drive downtown, find a parking space near one of the two kiosks and find out why she couldn't reserve a car from home. When she entered the kiosk to enroll, she was directed by an ambassador for Blue Indy, who helped her connect via a video Internet connection to another ambassador in Paris, France to assist her in enrolling for the service. The ambassador required her to repeat the entire process she spent twenty minutes at home earlier in the day doing while stood in a kiosk in the sweltering heat. Finally, she says Jorge (the ambassador) helped her secure the membership card she required to rent a Blue Indy car.

As she proceeded to run several errands with a Blue Indy car, she watched as the meter clicked ticking away at 40 cents per minute. Because the cars are electric and make no noise, she said a feature that's supposed to cause the car to chirp so pedestrians and bicyclists know your car is approaching them was not functioning. When she attempted to listen to the car's radio, there was a ticking noise that sounded louder than the music, another glitch that was yet to be worked out in the car.

Surprisingly, Hackney was pleased with the service. Not even the shock of a $72 bill after only three hours of use seemed to bother her. "Overall, the BlueIndy experience is just what I expected it to be — a convenient, green and relatively inexpensive way to make short trips around town," she wrote. "I had the car for nearly three hours, and it cost me $72." Ouch! "Most folks wouldn’t or shouldn’t keep the car that long — it’s not meant to be a long-term rental option," she added. "New transportation technology has arrived in Indy, and even on the first day was mostly at its finest," she concluded. Where in the hell does Gannett find these people?

The Star Suddenly Discovers Neighborhood Opposition To Blue Indy

After months of cheer leading for the illegal monopoly Mayor Greg Ballard unilaterally gave to Bollore's Blue Indy electric car sharing program through the theft of public assets, The Star's John Tuohy finally acknowledges in a story tonight that there is legitimate neighborhood opposition to Blue Indy that's not driven by the partisan politics he's assigned to the criticism to date from members of the Indianapolis City-County Council.

“They just showed up one day tearing up my front yard and put these chargers in,” McCarthy said. “I feel like these cars, parked there all day, are going to devalue my property. I put a lot of money into this house.”

Despite the protests of McCarthy and other residents, businesses and City-County Council members, Ballard and BlueIndy will roll out the controversial electric car rental service during a ribbon-cutting ceremony Downtown on Wednesday . . .

The program has been 16 months in the making and dogged by criticism, much of it from council members who contend the city is illegally ceding right of way to the private company and inappropriately subsidizing the operation with $6 million in city funds.

But most of the recent complaints have bubbled from the neighborhoods as work crews — without warning — began digging trenches on prime parking spots to make room for electric cables, chargers and kiosks. Each of the stations has five spots reserved for the compact, four-seat plug-ins.

Chas Navarra, a 60-year-old health care worker, was alarmed when a station went up near his home in the Old Northside neighborhood at 13th and Alabama streets.

“I live in a historic neighborhood, and I’ve got a rental car business in front of my house,” he said. “What’s the difference between having this and Hertz or Avis parked out there? How is this going to be good for my (property) valuation?”

Navarra has organized a petition drive on Facebook called “Stop BlueIndy NOW” with 32 likes, and he has contacted council members Joe Simpson, Zach Adamson and Christine Scales, all critics of the way the city has implemented the program.

Navarra said he was never told the chargers would be built on his block and was shocked by the size of the operation.

“When it smacks you on the forehead like that, it’s really something,” he said. “Do we even know if these chargers are safe or if children should be playing around them?”

Several Democratic council members held a press conference this morning to express their opposition to the deal. Talk is cheap. Mayor Ballard accused the council members of just making stuff up when they suggested spending on program like Blue Indy has resulted in fewer dollars being spent on public safety despite the 10% income tax increase that took effect for that very purpose in January, the umpteenth time Ballard has raised taxes and fees during his two terms as mayor. It's hard to believe this phony got elected originally on a anti-tax message.  

Joe Hogsett Won't Do A Damn Thing About Blue Indy

Radio talk show host Amos Brown interviewed Democratic mayoral candidate Joe Hogsett yesterday afternoon, and he did an excellent job setting up a question for Hogsett at the top of the interview concerning the corrupt manner in which the Ballard administration went about establishing the Blue Indy electric car sharing monopoly business for the French company Bollore. Remember, Hogsett is the candidate running TV ads saying he's going to put an end to the downtown insiders cheating the system and stealing our tax dollars. What Brown's listeners heard from Hogsett was nothing short of a complete let down.

Hogsett completely side-stepped the question of what he would do about Blue Indy, saying that was something the council had "already engaged in" without success I would add. What followed showed in no uncertain terms Hogsett has no intention of doing a damn thing about the illegal Blue Indy deal. "I really want to be the kind of mayor for our city who looks to the future and looks forward," Hogsett said. "When we focus on the past and mistakes that have been made or omissions that have been incurred . . . we're really holding ourselves out from reaching out to those in the most critical needs in neighborhoods that have been overlooked over time," he added. That was after Hogsett prefaced his comments with praise for Ballard's focus on green energy initiatives.

What this tells me is that the words Hogsett speaks in his TV ads about putting an end to the downtown insiders cheating the system and stealing our tax dollars is just talk. Of course he's not going to cut off the hand that feeds him. You only have to look at who is bankrolling his campaign to know that he's not about to stop the gravy train a few downtown insiders enjoy at the expense of the rest of the city. I also highly suspect that the law firm where Hogsett is a partner now has a connection to representing parties involved in Blue Indy. Their officers are just separated by a few floors in the Chase Tower. Like so many issues, Hogsett cannot speak his mind without running afoul of his law firm's representation of its clients. Blue Indy has no real incentive to work with the council at this point given Hogsett's hands-off position.

So when Hogsett becomes mayor in January, which I believe is a foregone conclusion, he's going to tell the members of what will likely be a Democratic-controlled council to lay off this issue. Will there be some tinkering? Perhaps. City-County Councilor Kip Tew (D) plans to introduce an ordinance that will require Blue Indy parking spaces exclusively reserved for the private company's electric cars to be accessible to the public so long as there is more than one open parking space at any of the hundreds of power charging sites that are being installed around the city. Blue Indy plans to have a fleet of 500 cars so it's highly-unlikely there will be very many open parking spaces at those charging stations, particularly in the high traffic areas like downtown and Broad Ripple where the cars, if they are utilized, are most likely to see their busiest trade. Additionally, it is Blue Indy's intention to allow non-Blue Indy electric car owners to purchase memberships to use their exclusive stations for charging stations. If non-electric cars are using up the spaces, then its profit-making scheme just got overturned. What's not clear is if Tew's plan would require the re-installation of electronic parking meters that have already been yanked out since the Blue Indy cars aren't required to feed those meters.

Tew's proposal is hardly a solution to a far greater problem created when our mayor broke numerous laws to steal the most valuable public parking spaces in the city and give them to a foreign-owned business for its exclusive for-profit use. The council has done very little other than provide lip service to the public to date. They insisted the mayor couldn't spend $6 million out of the parking meter fund and whatever other funds he chooses to tap to give to Blue Indy. The administration delivered the council the middle finger again this week when it had the Board of Public Works approve that expenditure and inform the council it required no further authorization from it to go forward with its plans. Since our federal and state prosecutors refuse to prosecute the public corruption occasioned by this deal, the public will just have to pucker up and move on like we're always told to do in what has become a Nazi-styled government.

UPDATE: The Indianapolis Star, which is a cheerleader of every crony capitalism deal our corrupt politicians can think up, has a story that reads more like a press release regarding the Blue Indy service that will be available at the airport.

The BlueIndy electric car-sharing service will have space for 20 electric vehicles at Indianapolis International Airport, four times as much as its standard stations.

The electric plug-ins will be on the fifth floor of the parking garage, across from the terminal. Traditional rental cars are parked on the first floor of the garage.

Airport officials said BlueIndy also will pay airport fees, just as Enterprise, Hertz and other rental companies do . . . 

Airport executive director Mario Rodriguez hailed the addition of BlueIndy as a convenient transportation choice for airport travelers.

“This exciting partnership with BlueIndy will allow us to provide a new transportation option to our customers, while doing so in a sustainable and economical way,” Rodriguez said in a prepared statement.

The reporter, John Tuohy can barely hide his excitement for Blue Indy and his contempt for those who criticize the illegal manner in which the deal was accomplished. The reporter wants you to know that you the cost of taking a Blue Indy car to the airport is only about $12 if you have an annual $120 membership compared to the $30 to $35 you will spend if you take a taxi. Of course, he's assuming a drive to downtown since The Star's primary focus is on the convenience of these cars for our out-of-town visitors, not the inconvenience and business harm they are causing Indianapolis business owners and residents.

The BlueIndy proposal has not moved forward without controversy. Earlier this month, the City-County Council backed off on an unusual threat to tow five BlueIndy demo vehicles from a Downtown site. The council also says the BlueIndy funding proposal was never properly vetted and allege it has been rolled out in violation of city procedures, a charge the mayor’s office denies.

You would think it's at least up for debate that Mayor Ballard broke multiple state and local laws, but Tuohy isn't about to give you that impression. Is there a reason this reporter refuses to talk to attorneys knowledgeable in the law to determine the facts? Does he think a long-time attorney like Fred Biesecker just makes up lies about what the law requires when he offers opinions on these matters? Apparently so.

I wonder if Visit Indy and the CIB have started fretting yet over a reduction in car rental taxes. Tuohy makes it sound like Blue Indy is playing on a level playing field with companies like Hertz. What he neglects to mention is that Blue Indy is exempt from paying the onerous 17% car rental tax. Perhaps the car rental companies should be filing a lawsuit against the City on the basis that the exemption for Blue Indy is unconstitutional. Why should Blue Indy rentals be exempt from the car rental tax and not other rental vehicles? Under the one-sided agreement Ballard signed with Blue Indy, city taxpayers will be required to reimburse the company if taxes its agreement with the city exempted it from paying are ever levied against it during the 15-year term of its contract with the city. How do you like that?

Board Of Public Works Approves $6 Million Theft Of City Assets For Blue Indy

BOARD CHAIRMAN WOULD NOT ALLOW PUBLIC TESTIMONY
The string of law-breaking to benefit the French-owned company Bollore and its Blue Indy electric car sharing business continues unabated. With virtually no public notice, the Board of Public Works controlled by useless stooges of Mayor Greg Ballard added as its last agenda item on today's board meeting approval of the use of $6 million from the parking meter fund for the private company's monopoly car sharing business. With very little debate and a refusal by Board Chairman Andy Lutz to allow for any public comment on the agenda item when it was called for a vote after I requested it, the board quickly approved the item and adjourned the meeting with only the council's appointee to the board voting no.

The City-County Council's CFO, Bart Brown, who did not learn of the planned vote until late yesterday, appeared to testify at the request of the council's appointee to the board and took issue with Chairman Andy Lutz' contention that no City-County Council approval is required for today's action. Brown insisted that the Department of Public Works' 2015 budget contains no authorization to spend public dollars from the parking meter fund or any other city fund this year, a contention Lutz flatly dismissed. As a result of today's action, the Department plans to unilaterally authorize the transfer of $6 million to an escrow fund at Regions Bank where it is expected to be spent to help pay for the 50 public charging station sites Blue Indy plans to complete work on around the city before year's end.

Not a single City-County Council member or other member of the public besides myself was present and ready to testify in opposition to the blatantly illegal, 15-year contract the Ballard administration entered into with Blue Indy, which grants the company a right to operate a monopoly business on City-owned property without paying a dime for the use of that publicly-owned property. The administration relied on the granting of dozens of encroachment licenses to allow the private company to seize hundreds of public parking spaces and right-of-ways for its exclusive business use in clear violation of the law. There was no public bidding process whatsoever, and the contract waives all fees and taxes that any other business operating within the City would have been required to pay. The administration's representative, David Rosenberg, said the City allowed IPL to handle the public bidding of all of the work on the installation of the charging stations and kiosks required for each site instead of publicly-bidding that work. Other companies interested in offering car sharing services were turned away by the Ballard administration, which refused to consider their proposals.

It is absolutely incredible how many civil and criminal laws the Ballard administration has been allowed to break to achieve the theft of tens of millions of dollars' worth of public assets. Mr. Rosenberg gave board members the impression the $6 million it approved today was the City's only investment. That's only true if you omit all of the forgiven fees and taxes, assign no value to the use of the City's public assets and ignore the loss of parking meter revenues the City will have to reimburse the private operator of those city assets to offset their revenue losses. That's to say nothing of the untold business losses that are and will continue to be occasioned by the displacement of the the City's most prime public parking spaces to accommodate the unwanted electric car charging stations and kiosks, which will primarily benefit out-of-town visitors to the City.

Ballard Plans Launch Of Blue Indy Complete With Police Escorts In Downtown Indy

Councilor Christine Scales (R) has taken to Facebook to protest a plan by Mayor Greg Ballard to force IMPD officers to provide a police escort service through the busy streets of downtown to launch the Blue Indy electric car sharing service on September 2. Councilor Scales is the most vocal critic of Mayor Greg Ballard's highly illegal contract with Bollore's Blue Indy under which the French-owned company was granted a monopoly to operate an electric car-sharing business utilizing hundreds of public parking spaces and right-of-ways Mayor Ballard stole from the City and gave to the company for its exclusive use. Scales writes on Facebook about the Mayor's plans for September 2:

The Mayor plans a full blown police escort to accompany BlueIndy cars in parade like fashion down a major downtown artery to mark the official opening on Sept. 2nd of the illegal and expensive BlueIndy car share program. The past violent 5 days of homicides demand the manpower of a limited IMPD officer workforce be used for more important purposes. Call the Mayor and City Councillors. Tell them to demand an immediate halt to the Blue Indy car share program. Contact Sheriff Layton and Chief Hite and demand that their officers enforce the law they were sworn to uphold by citing the illegally parked BI cars on E.Washington Street. Layton and Hite should have the courage to fight political pressure, not just criminals.

Council members have been throwing up their hands at what they say is their inability to stop Mayor Ballard from carrying out what amounts to a theft of tens of millions of dollars in public assets. A council resolution sponsored by Councilors Zach Adamson (D) and Scales was postponed while they said negotiations with Blue Indy took place to address concerns council members had with the contract, in particular, the lack of a formal franchise agreement the council's attorney maintains is a legal requirement for such an arrangement.

Incredibly, the local news media has been doing nothing but cheerleading the Mayor's Blue Indy initiative and ignoring the unequivocal evidence his administration broke numerous state and local laws to aware the monopoly business to Blue Indy. Ballard committed $6 million to the privately-owned company out of the parking meter fund to help pay for the new power charging stations that are being illegally installed in the City's most highly-trafficked areas without any prior notice to the affected business owners and residential neighborhoods that are being adversely impacted by the loss of public parking. Council members say their pleas to Marion Co. Prosecutor Terry Curry to open a criminal investigation of the Mayor's actions have fallen on deaf ears. Local law enforcement will not enforce existing no stopping, no parking zones designated by city ordinance where Blue Indy cars have been illegally parked for the past 18 months.

Those involved in the deal refuse to answer questions about local persons who may have a beneficial interest in Blue Indy. Mayor Ballard's two terms in office have been marked by shady deals that are clearly conceived as nothing more than schemes to line the pockets of his campaign contributors at the public's expense. Pay to play is the Ballard way.

Stop Blue Indy NOW!

Blue Indy charging station under construction at 13th & Alabama

An Old Northside Indianapolis neighborhood activist has taken to Facebook to express his displeasure of the harm being caused to neighborhoods throughout the city as workers continue the process of seizing hundreds of prime public parking spaces and right-of-ways to install charging stations and rental sites for Blue Indy's electric car sharing service. Chas Navarra set up Stop Blue Indy NOW just today and is urging Facebook followers to express their support for it as a show of neighborhood discontent with the manner in which Blue Indy's electric car sharing service has been forced upon area residents by Mayor Greg Ballard.

Mayor Ballard executed the illegal, 15-year contract with the French-owned company, Bollore, that awards a monopoly business to the company, along with a public investment totaling in the tens of millions of dollars with no likelihood of any return to Indianapolis taxpayers during the life of the contract. Incredibly, the City's agreement with Blue Indy exempts it from paying any taxes or fees that would ordinarily apply to any similar business operating in Indianapolis.

The Mayor's action came after an earlier plan he sent to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission requesting IPL be permitted to raise electric utility rates on its customers to pay to install the power charging stations was rejected. The IURC did, however, allow IPL to charge customers the cost of running power lines to the charging stations. Blue Indy's agreement with the City allows IPL to be repaid its share of the costs, while Indianapolis taxpayers are unlikely to recover the $6 million Mayor Ballard pulled from the parking meter fund to add to the $42 million Blue Indy claims it plans to spend, at least during the initial 15-year term since Blue Indy must first recover its net cumulative investment before it shares its first dollar with the City.

Navarra has spoken to residents of the Englewood Lofts apartments at 13th & Alabama who are extremely upset about Blue Indy taking up all of the on-street parking available along the north side of the apartments. Some residents in the income-qualified, affordable housing project plan not to renew their leases because of the loss of parking according to Navarra. Blue Indy has plans to take even more free public parking spaces in the Old Northside neighborhood for Blue Indy.

The Indianapolis City-County Council's attorney has told council members the Mayor broke multiple state and local laws by entering into the monopoly, electric car-sharing agreement with Blue Indy. Councilor Zach Adamson (D) promised action in the form of a resolution calling for the towing of the Blue Indy cars that have been illegally parked on Washington Street downtown in a no-stopping, no parking zone. Adamson postponed action on his resolution at last Monday's council meeting after he said Blue Indy officials spoke of a desire to discuss public concerns over the siting of Blue Indy stations and to consider entering into a franchise agreement with the City, which would essentially wash away the wrongs and legalize the illegal actions taken by Mayor Greg Ballard broke by entering into the agreement and appropriating public assets measuring into the tens of millions of dollars for the private company's monopoly business.

The Indianapolis news media, for its part, has essentially been on the sidelines cheering on the illegal Blue Indy project as more and more business owners and residents grow increasingly frustrated by the inattention to legal processes and the harm inflicted upon them after receiving absolutely no advance notice of the City's plans for taking valuable public parking spaces in their neighborhoods. Complaints to elected officials have generated little more than lip service and finger-pointing.

Councilor Adamson engaged in testy exchanges on Facebook today with concerned residents, including me. He claims the council is acting with the "very limited authority" it has to act, even though it could have elected to go to court to nullify the agreement as it did earlier this year with the Vision Fleet contract. "We hammer [the Mayor] plenty and anyone who thinks we don't is a nutbag," Adamson said in response to my criticism the council isn't doing enough. Really nice when your elected council member calls his constituents "nutbags" for complaining about the misuse of our public tax dollars. Adamson then deflected the blame. "You know we have a strong mayor system and the council only has so much support from the judicial branch that we can count on." So public assets are being stolen but there's nothing our elected officials can do to put a stop to it? So much for Democrat mayoral candidate Joe Hogsett's claim that he's going to stop the downtown insiders from stealing from us. It's too bad he never prosecuted any of the downtown insiders during all those years he served as our federal prosecutor when he was in a position to do something about it.

Adamson initially endorsed the Blue Indy project and appeared at a press event announcing the Mayor's launch of the electric car-sharing service almost two years ago. Adamson, who chairs the Public Works Committee which has oversight over the project, says he never supported the eventual plan rolled out this year; rather, he only supported the concept and believed it was going to be a small pilot program initially. He says he opposed the plan once he learned Mayor Ballard planned to make the public subsidize its cost.

Council Sells Out Public To Placate Blue Indy And . . . .

So a French-owned company comes into town, realizes what a corrupt fool we have for a mayor and gets him to enter into a 15-year agreement that permits the company to operate a monopoly, electric car sharing business on hundreds of prime public parking spaces at an expense of tens of millions of dollars to Indianapolis taxpayers. On top of the massive investment of our public tax dollars into Blue Indy's car sharing business, we learn our mayor also agreed to exempt the company from all fees and taxes that would otherwise apply to any other business that operates in this city, again in violation of the law.

After the Indianapolis City-County Council's attorney explained to the Public Works Committee how many laws were broken to award this monopoly business to Blue Indy, the council could only muster the fortitude to seek a resolution urging the towing of Blue Indy cars parked in public parking spaces in violation of city ordinances until such time the company enters into a franchise agreement the mayor and the company insists it had no obligation to do. At tonight's council meeting, the resolution's sponsor, Zach Adamson, asked and received permission of the council to postpone consideration of the resolution because the company reached out and offered to discuss entering into a franchise agreement. Disappointingly, the council voted 28-1 to postpone action. Only Councilor Monroe Gray (D) objected, insisting the council should make it clear that the company is getting the boot because laws were not followed.

I don't care what these council members say to the public about how upset they are about the process not being followed. It means nothing at the end of the day. These aren't just civil law violations we're talking about. Multiple criminal laws were broken by the mayor and key members of his administration to award this one-sided monopoly business to Blue Indy at a loss of tens of millions of dollars to Indianapolis taxpayers. We still don't have any idea who all owns a beneficial interest in this company, although we have a pretty good idea. If these council members gave a damn about the constituents they profess to represent, they would be marching over to the prosecutor's office and demanding a criminal investigation, in addition to going to court to nullify this illegal deal.

The council went to court months ago to nullify the illegal, $32 million, 7-year lease agreement the mayor and members of his administration entered into with Vision Fleet to lease electric and hybrid cars that have posed all kinds of problems for public safety employees who find them totally unsuited for the jobs they are asked to perform. Not a damn thing has happened since that lawsuit was filed. If the council was serious about its lawsuit, it would have gotten an emergency hearing on the matter. It's all a big game just to make the public think it's serious about these matters. What's really going on is that folks are just using these maneuverings to get their piece of the action. This is what happens when we get self-serving public officials running our government who could care less about what's in the public's interest. It's all about what I can get for myself, my family and my big campaign contributors. The hell with everyone else.

Ballard Claims Those Questioning Illegal Blue Indy Deal Are Damaging Indianapolis' Reputation--Look In The Mirror, Greg

Indianapolis' reputation is being damaged, alright, but not for the reason our extremely corrupt Mayor Greg Ballard claims it is being damaged. Ballard complained during an interview with WFYI today that the council's lawsuit against the illegal, electric car lease agreement with Vision Fleet and the questions council members and its attorney are now raising about the illegal monopoly business he awarded to Blue Indy for an electric car sharing service are having a lasting negative effect on the city.

"What is odd, is I seem to have the only set of Democrats in the entire country who are against clean transportation, which I find a little funny," Ballard said in an interview with WFYI.

Ballard says the council is sending a damaging signal to the business community. "The net effect of this is, if you’re a business and you want to come to Indianapolis, do you have to go through this mess? That’s the problem," he said.

Ballard argues the council was fully aware of the process in bringing Vision Fleet and Blue Indy’s owner Ballore to the city. He says they’re playing election year politics by crying foul over the programs so late in the process.

That is an outright lie, Greg. It's not just Democratic council members asking questions about your illegal contracts. Most of the Republican council members have abandoned their support of you on these matters. Furthermore, nobody but you, a handful of your senior staff members and the political insiders who are poised to make tens of millions of dollars at the expense of city taxpayers knew what the hell was behind either the Vision Fleet or Blue Indy contracts. Both were executed in the shadows, and both involved the flaunting of numerous state and city laws. You have actually stolen valuable city property worth tens of millions of dollars to benefit Blue Indy's car sharing service. You and members of your administration have committed multiple felonies for which you should be imprisoned if there was actually an honest prosecutor in this town who would get off his ass and do the job he took an oath to fulfill. There's no other city in American where you can walk out the door with tens of millions of public dollars and nobody will ask you any questions. The media in this town will actually aid and abet you in the public theft.

Let the world know that we have the most corrupt mayor in all of America. He operates on the down low and is on the take. He's currently circulating his resume' in search of a post-mayoral job. Anyone considering hiring this pathetic excuse for a man needs to do their due diligence. He is not a man of his word, and he's certainly not a man of honor or integrity. He's the dumbest man in the room who thinks he's the smartest man in the room. Our city will be paying for decades to come for the fleecing he has done for the benefit of his political cronies. The day his sorry ass leaves his office on the 25th floor of the City-County Building for the last time can't come soon enough for the people of this city.