The two men running in the Republican primary for Greenwood mayor have different visions for the city’s future.
Incumbent Mayor Mark Myers is seeking his fourth term in office He’s being challenged by Joe Hubbard, a former member of the Center Grove school board who moved into city limits last year in a bid to oust Myers.
Myers, a former police officer and county coroner, has held the seat since 2012. He first ran for office against former mayor Charles Henderson after being pushed to by friends, including State Sen. Jack Sandlin, he said.
Hubbard is a U.S. Air Force veteran and small business owner. He owns rental properties, along with ATMs Indy and ATMs for Veterans, which are located across the county.
“When you go and so you pull out the $20 (from the ATM) and you pay that fee, a percentage of that fee I give back to the American Legions, VFWs and I do that on a monthly basis,” Hubbard said. “I write them checks back and then they see fit to do with the money that they want to.”
Giving back means a lot to Hubbard, who said he hates to see people struggle. Now that he’s in a better position to give back, he’s glad to play a role, he said.
With another term, Myers would continue pushing the city forward. The city has taken “great strides” to improve the community and quality of life, he said. During his time in office, the city has constructed amenities like Freedom Springs Aquatic Park and the Greenwood Fieldhouse. The city is also in a public-private partnership for The Madison, which is expected to be finished later this year.
Hubbard decided to run because he feels the current administration is not listening to residents and crime has increased.
“Everything succeeds and suffers based on leadership, and I feel that this current mayor has failed us in his leadership,” Hubbard said.
The main focus of their campaigns is on public safety. Myers says the city is safe, and that his administration has done more to increase public safety than past mayors. On the other hand, Hubbard says the city hasn’t done enough, and criticized the city for not setting aside more funding for public safety.
A part of the public safety funding issue is the food and beverage tax the city asked the state to pass in 2019. The tax was promoted as being able to allow for additional public safety personnel, however, when state lawmakers passed the bill establishing Greenwood’s tax, they said the tax could not be used for this purpose.
The Daily Journal interviewed both candidates in March to get their viewpoints on issues facing the city and their campaigns. Here’s what they said, edited for length, clarity and grammar:
» What are the most pressing issues facing the city?
Hubbard: Public safety is my No. 1 concern, and (the) second is, I think we need to really start focusing on our small businesses … We need to allow our small businesses the same opportunities that (Myers is) currently allowing these large corporate groups, these people that are currently donating to his campaign … We just need to ensure our local businesses have the same benefits that these corporate American companies are getting that are coming into Greenwood. As a small business owner, I feel like Greenwood was built on small businesses, so we needed to make sure we don’t lose track of that.
Myers: No. 1 is public safety, always has been … For a long time, prior to me being elected, the city continued to grow, but the amount of police officers did not grow at all. There were 53 police officers when I came into office, and there were about 50 when I left the police department in 1995. So for about 16 years … the police department did not grow with the community. We’ve been making up for that over the years, adding more every year and the same with the fire department. We had 33 full-time firefighters when I started, the rest were paid part-timers. Now we’re up to 68 full-timers and we still have some paid part-time. … (For) infrastructure, just keeping up with the growth and the aging infrastructure that we have. Some of the downtown sewer pipes are over 100 years old, and we’re working with Indiana American Water to replace water mains downtown because they’re old and undersized. All of the infrastructure throughout the city is very important, whether it’s the roads, the sewers, stormwater.
Public safety
» What do you think should be done to address public safety?
Hubbard: The city is at risk. … I used to say the crime is migrating here from Indianapolis, (now) I think that crime is here. … I talk to police officers on a daily basis and they’re all concerned, especially with the understaffing that we currently face in the city with police officers or firefighters. First thing we need to do is improve morale within the police and fire departments. Once morale has improved, I think that will help retain people. We need to reinstate the longevity (pay), which the mayor took away their bonuses about three years ago, so now that recruiting tool is gone. We need to be transparent with them because about three years ago, the mayor knew that public safety was an issue and we were understaffed; that’s why he implemented the food and beverage tax. … He had the police and fire all out advocating for it. He was gonna give them all that money for staffing, not for equipment or for anything else other than staffing, and to this day, he’s yet to give them any of that money. … He’s not held up to his end of the bargain with the food and beverage tax. … Now if (the state’s) said that’s got to go in a certain bucket, it can’t be used for public safety. Then … they could have taken that from the general fund or something to back his word up.
Myers: We had the mall incident, which was a horrible tragedy. We’re very thankful that young man was there to stop it, but when you look at the city as a whole, yes, it is a very safe city. We have had a couple of very unfortunate incidents lately, and we’re doing everything we can to try to curb that violence. But it’s really going to take public outreach as well, to help curb the violence. … (For example I’m) meeting with different groups around the city trying to explain to them … what we have to offer, how to better interact with the police. Some of the things we’re doing are putting (up) … FLOCK cameras around the city to help locate stolen vehicles, wanted persons, missing persons, and that’s allowing our police officers to be more proactive. … We’ve stepped up traffic enforcement, especially around the mall area and the County Line Road area, and it’s been very successful. … We are working to enhance the safety around the mall especially and make our presence more well known around that area. … We’re currently fully staffed with four men on every engine.
» Do you have a plan to increase public safety funding?
Hubbard: I don’t think we can afford not to do it, honestly. We’re gonna have to find a way to get that money and to make that work. There is I’m sure (there’s) some (way to) trim the fat within the city, but we’re not going to like, I’ve heard rumors of me wanting to shut down the transportation department, I’ve heard rumors of (me) shutting down parks and recreation department. … The money’s there and we just got to figure out how to use it and use it more efficiently. … That will be (one of) our top priorities, what we spend money (on), it’s going to be on public safety without having other departments fall short either.
Myers: It’s very difficult because we have the lowest property tax rate in the state for a city over 10,000 people. So without raising taxes, it’s very difficult to do that. The only way we can do that is by bringing more business into the community that are paying more taxes. Those are helping to raise the assessed value of the community, which means we’re getting more money in through that tax base even though the tax rate is flat. We’re still getting more money in that will allow us to add more manpower.
» What is your ideal number for police and firefighters?
Hubbard: The FBI did an average for the Midwest, and right now it’s (about) 1.6 police officers per 1,000. Based on our population that will put us at about 102 police officers, right now, we’re about 75. So we’re probably about 70% staffing right now, but they did recommend the city of Greenwood, based on the current residents that we have, it should be a 2.2 multiplier. We’re a little less a little over 50% right now. … We at least need to have five firemen per shift, and we need to have a fully staffed EMS crew at a minimum. So we’re about 30 firefighters short, about 60 police officers short.
Myers: The fire department is fully staffed until we add Station 95, that’ll add another dozen. Then if we’re able to add these rescue squads (putting personnel in a small truck or SUV for calls), that would be two more people for two firehouses, so you’ve got six, so there will be 12 people as well, so possibly a total of 24 more (for the) fire department. As far as the police department is concerned, there is no average number that we’re going to aim for. We’re just going to continue to add annually with as much as the budget will allow. We need to get up probably around the 100 mark. … If you talk to the National Association of Chiefs of Police and the Indiana Association of Chiefs of Police, that’s not a logical number because you’re comparing us to Chicago, L.A. and Dallas and all these huge cities, and most of them can’t even match the 2.2 per 1,000 that they say they need. Especially right now, talking just about law enforcement, it is really hard to get people to apply to be a policeman ever since the George Floyd incident … and the general public are afraid or they don’t want to risk becoming a police officer anymore. It’s a nationwide problem that we’re having. …. We’re hoping to hire 13 people within the next two months, and that’ll bring our staffing back up to being fully staffed where it should be at 77 (full-time officers).
» Do you think parks and quality of life are being prioritized over public safety?
Hubbard: Based off of staffing, (Myers has) definitely increased those departments more than he’s increased public safety. Those departments are important. Parks are important … but not more important than public safety. … He’s done a great job with some of the parks we have and I don’t want to see that change. They’re doing a good job of maintaining those areas.
Myers: Absolutely not. The funding is totally separate. Parks funding comes through park impact fees, and some of it does come out of the general fund. … I fought for six years to get a food and beverage tax specifically for public safety, and every year the statehouse killed that bill. The last year, one of the state representatives changed the language of the bill, and made it for parks and recreation instead of public safety for the food and beverage (tax) … and that passed through, so now that food and beverage money goes to the parks department. But then the parks department had excess money in their account, and that was able to go back into the general fund which then went to hiring more public safety.
Growth in the city
» What are your thoughts on the city’s growth? What should future growth look like?
Hubbard: You need to put a pause on a lot of things until public safety and infrastructure are where they need to be. We need to have our first responders where they need to be. Our roads need to be ready for these kinds of things because I’ve knocked on a lot of doors throughout this community, and a lot of people are saying they don’t feel like the apartment complexes and the warehouses are being built and the roads aren’t ready for them … We need to really prioritize the infrastructure. Any good city you go to, it all starts with a good foundation — that would be roads, public safety — and then we can start building up with responsible growth.
Myers: The growth has been organic. It’s not that I have gone out and tried to bring these companies in or the residential (projects). People want to come to Greenwood; they like the amenities, they like the community. They obviously feel safe or they wouldn’t be moving in. I do believe that growth is going to slow down. One, because of the economy, and two, because we’re running out of space to grow, especially when you’re looking at the distribution facilities that we have on the east side. If you’re talking about the industrial type of growth, I don’t really see room for more distribution in the city. I do see room for industrial growth or manufacturing. … We have medical growth that continues to come. … The businesses that are here; we want to make sure that we take care of them. They’re a top priority. I’ve been making it a point to go out and visit our local businesses to see what their needs are, see how things are going for them, see if there’s anything the city can do to help them to maintain because we don’t want to lose business. We need the business because the business taxes are triple that of the residential taxes, and so we need those businesses to make sure that they offset and help pay for all those city services that are needed.
» Do you welcome housing growth?
Hubbard: I think housing growth is good, I really do. We need to kind of slow down with the apartments. We need to (put the) focus back on single-family homes, starter homes, things like that.
Myers: We welcome it because there are practically zero vacancies in the city. Obviously, people want to move into the community, and the homes that are being built are nicer homes. More upscale communities are coming in and want to be here. (That’s) the same as the apartments that are coming in, those are upscale apartments. It’s been mentioned that we’re building “government-subsidized housing,” but that’s not true. We haven’t had any government-subsidized housing come in that I have approved. … As far as just in general, there’s still room on the south side of the city, both east and west for more residential to come in.
» How do you feel about additional development of warehouses, logistics and manufacturing facilities?
Hubbard: Everything has to be looked at as ‘Does the community want it? Is it in the best interest of the community?’ … The job of the mayor is to represent the community. If the community doesn’t want it, then we shouldn’t be doing it. I feel like this mayor doesn’t listen to us. He doesn’t communicate with us. There is definitely no open-door policy. Your job is to represent us and if the community doesn’t want it, we don’t need it, then why are we having these conversations?
Myers: There’s a difference between warehouse and distribution (facilities). Warehouses have very few employees and they have racks to store things on. Distribution has multiple employees and a lot of business personal property that we tax on. I don’t like warehousing, or warehouses per se because they don’t really pay that much to the city to be there. They pay for the building. They pay for what very little equipment they have inside and what few people they have. So if somebody comes to me and says, ‘Hey, I want to build a warehouse to store whatever.’ No, I don’t really go for those. … I went for distribution, but I think we’ve maxed out on distribution itself. … On the manufacturing side? Yes. Because manufacturing also (has) higher paying jobs.
» What can the city do to help infrastructure keep pace with growth?
Hubbard: You can’t build a 600-unit apartment complex on a two-lane road, that’s what we’re doing right now. You need to widen roads, you need to have turn lanes. You need to be prepared for those kinds of things before you bring in the buildings. Right now, if you go down to The Madison, they’re in the middle of building that building, well now they’re starting to widen the roads, and that should have been done before the development was done.
Myers: We currently have Main Street and Smith Valley Road under contract with different engineering firms to redesign those roads to make them four lanes to help alleviate the traffic. With I-69 coming in, that’s going to bring more traffic on Smith Valley Road, so we know we need to widen that, and the same with Main Street. With what’s going on on Main Street there are 24,000 cars a day, and they get on the interstate off of Main Street, so we’re going to widen Main Street from the city limits on the east side all the way to the Valle Vista area. … We’re finishing the widening of Worthsville Road, Stones Crossing (Road) to make that east-west connector. The second to the last phase will be finished this summer we hope.
Tax abatements and TIF
» Do you think tax abatements are necessary?
Hubbard: (They’re) not a bad thing, but it needs to be done responsibly. If you bring in a larger company and give them a tax abatement to compete against our local residents that grew up here in Greenwood. For example, if you have a kid that went to Greenwood High School, went to C9, learned a trade, opened a business, has 10 employees, he has to pay all his taxes. So how does that benefit him, our local residents, to bring in a bigger company to directly compete against people that live here and give them a tax abatement to where now they can undercut the jobs and charge less money because they don’t have the same overhead that our people that live right here in our community do … It’s unfortunate that’s become a tool now. If you don’t give it to them, they’re gonna go right down the street and get it somewhere else … You need to put some things in place to ensure that when that tax abatement runs out, they don’t run down to the next exit and build the exact same thing there. You need to put some tools in place, some checks and balances in place to keep them here in Greenwood once that tax abatement runs out.
Myers: They are necessary to help bring new business into the community … They’re really to help the developer get that building built, and then they pass that on to their tenant, so the tenant … it helps them ease into those payments as their businesses continue to grow. Most businesses … don’t come in with a full workforce from day one. … It might take them a few years to ramp up to it, and as they’re ramping up, those abatements are falling off so their payments are going up. But they’re able to cover those by ramping up their business and their businesses continue to grow. We are becoming a lot more stringent on who gets them and who doesn’t, and the length of time they are.
» Do you feel TIF funds are being appropriately used?
Hubbard: I’ve complained about TIF (tax increment financing) districts in the past, but TIF is a good tool if it’s used correctly. Our mayor is not using it, in my opinion, correctly. I’ll give you an example of that. When you TIF a certain area and you take that funds and you let your attorneys get involved, and you spend it on another project of yours, to me that’s not using TIF the way it was intended. If you’re going to TIF an area, that money should be spent on that area that was TIF’d … Where Smokey Row Road and State Road 135 is, he TIF’d … that area for $30-some million dollars and took that money and built a water park with it. That’s not the intent of the TIF … You can TIF something if it’s considered blighted and if that area is blighted, you’re supposed to use that money to rebuild that specific area. … They did it right when they did a lot of stuff in Indianapolis, but I think here, you get people involved, you get attorneys involved, and people start looking out for interests of other things, and they’re borrowing money over here and they’re spending it over there. That’s kind of disingenuous to do to the community.
Myers: Yeah, absolutely. TIF is designed to help build the infrastructure and also to build the amenities to bring those businesses into the community. We use the TIF funding to pay those bonds back, whether it’s roads, sewers, stormwater infrastructure. But you have to provide the amenities and the infrastructure or they’re not going to come. So yes, TIF is definitely being spent for exactly what it’s meant for. Every year, the state tries to buckle down harder on TIF spending and TIF use and the redevelopment commission and it makes it more difficult for us. But there are obviously many checks and balances that are put in place so that we do properly spend that money.
» Is debt from TIF bonds an issue for the city?
Hubbard: We’re $206 million in debt right now with TIF funds. When you do a State of the City and you’re telling the community our budget is balanced, I think you’re kind of being disingenuous. You need to be honest with the community to say, ‘We might have balanced our budgets that paid our bills this year, but now we are $206 million in debt that we’re paying a monthly payment on or a bond on.’ … It puts the city at risk. It puts them at a big liability … Back to my example with the water park, he took that money to build a water park. If that water park is not successful, that money was wasted and how are we gonna get that bond paid back. So Kroger and Kopetsky and all these tax abatements from other places are paying back that bond. Another thing that I don’t like about TIF is TIFs really hurt schools. It hurts school teachers and schools because when you TIF an area, you lock that tax rate. … If you TIF, you lock that farmland, they might pay $300 in tax a year, for example. Now you build all these businesses in there, and now that tax rate might be $300,000. So now the schools still are locked in at the farm rate, the city gets 100% of all that tax money until that bond is paid back.
Myers: Obviously we’re in debt. We carry heavy debt, and by carrying heavy debt, we also fund those debts on a short-term basis. When we do that, we’re also able to get debt at a very low interest rate. The Western Regional interceptor started out as a $60 million dollar project, and it ended up coming in under budget. But we’re able to fund that $60 million through the state at 2.4 (or) 2.6% interest rate. So that’s an incredibly low debt that we’re able to then fund and pay it back. When we say we have a balanced budget, yes, we have debt. But we also have enough income to know we’re going to cover plus be able to put money in savings and reserves every year. … Right now, we’re probably in the best financial state that the city’s ever been in. No criticism of anybody in the past, but with bringing in those new businesses, they’re paying higher taxes. The assessed valuation of the city has gone up $1.5 billion since I came into office, and it’s actually $1.7 (billion), according to my controller … which means it’s bringing in more money to be able to cover all of those debts. As we build roads and as we put in sewers, we have to take out debt or put bonds out against those, the same as for paving projects.
