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.
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
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 wages. Based on that data, other areas such as Nashville, Tenn., 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” to improve 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 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 Cook poked some fun in remarks made at the event because the Fishers State of the City address was being held in Noblesville.