Only One Logical Choice for Carmel Mayor: Fred Glynn

I have written about Carmel on this blog many, many times, usually to criticize the big spending "Republican" Mayor for Life Jim Brainard.  Brainard has built a new Carmel during his six terms in office, but at the cost of racking up enormous debt.   A 2017 report by S&P Global indicates that Carmel's long-term debt grew by $300 million in just three years.  Brainard has put Carmel into enormous debt, much of it by having taxpayers subsidize private development.

Fred Glynn, a member of the Hamilton County Council, is challenging Brainard in Tuesday's Republican Primary.  I've met Glynn before.  He appears to be a traditional conservative, particularly

Fred Glynn

strong on fiscal matters. 

The campaign has featured allegations that the Brainard camp attempted to bribe Glynn with an offer of $140,000 to drop out.  Supposedly the bribe was made through Glynn's campaign manager Dan Hennessy when subsequently left the Glynn campaign to become an apparently very high paid consultant for the Brainard campaign.  A direct payment of cash for a candidate to drop out would be more direct than other incentives to leave a campaign than I've heard were dangled before challengers.  But knowing how the local GOP establishment works to force out competition, such a payment of money is plausible. 

Regardless of the bribery accusation, it is clear that Brainard has done wrong, repeatedly, when it comes to Carmel's finances. He's built a new city, but one constructed on enormous debt.   Brainard has never seen a private development project that he did not want to help fund with taxpayer money.  Look up the term "corporate welfare" in the dictionary and you will see Mayor Brainard's picture.

Here stolen from IndyRepublican is Fred Glynn's first 100 days agenda:

• Host the first-ever small business advisory committee summit to advise the mayor’s office on the needs the city’s small business owners.
• Implement a 180-day freeze on new downtown development to allow for a long-range traffic and population density study.
• Send a priority-based, truly balanced budget to the Carmel City Council.
• Sign an executive order to provide funding to hire additional police officers.
• Send a debt-reduction plan to the city council that implements a plan to reduce the city’s long-term debt by 20 percent by the end of my first term.
• Sign an executive order immediately halting future city government giveaways and subsidiaries to private development projects.
• Send the city council a resolution to freeze the pay of all city-wide elected officials for the next four years.
• Sign an executive order that strengthens sexual harassment policies for city workers and officials that includes harsher punishment for violators.
• Have neighborhood liaisons in every neighborhood in this city and meet quarterly. We will once again put focus on our communities instead of focusing all resources and effort on a few square blocks downtown.

Fred Glynn has the right ideas and is a solid choice to right Carmel's financial ship.  My only concern is that, as Mayor, he would face the unfair task of having to clean up the enormous financial mess Brainard would be leaving.  Brainard has cultivated his popularity in Carmel by unprecedented borrowing and spending.  Are Carmel city residents ready for a Mayor who tells them the truth about the debt and the need to cut back spending?  Tuesday we will find out.