By Ann Craig-Cinnamon
Voters in Fishers go to the polls May 6 and, for the first time, will see the office of Mayor of the City of Fishers on the ballot.
That’s because in a referendum in 2012, those voters decided in favor of making Fishers a traditional second-class city. That vote, along with a change in state law, set up a rather complicated scenario. Counsel for the Town of Fishers, Jennifer Messer of Church Church Hittle & Antrim, says the election of a mayor needed to take place at the next opportunity.
“State law requires the ‘transition election’ to occur on the next election date following the referendum vote, 2014 in this instance. Also by state law, Indiana municipal elections are typically held every four and in odd-numbered years. Therefore, in 2015, Fishers must hold another election in the municipal election year. The officials elected in 2015 are elected for the typical four-year term,” she said.
So that means that whoever wins this election immediately will be faced with another campaign cycle with little time in office to establish a record. Messer said it is a unique situation.
“I am unaware and would be surprised to learn of any (other examples), because the law requiring Fishers’ 2014 election was passed just one year ago,” says Messer.
Another unique aspect of this election is that there are only Republican candidates running for the mayoral office, which has led to the conclusion being drawn that whoever wins the Republican primary will be the first mayor of Fishers. That is, however, not entirely true as it is still possible for other parties to caucus a candidate to run against the Republican candidate. According to Abbey Taylor, the campaign finance coordinator with the Indiana Election Division, the deadline for that to occur is June 30.
As it stands now, however, there are six Republican primary candidates running for mayor of Fishers. Unless another party selects a candidate to run in November against the winning Republican candidate, the primary winner will be mayor.
Renee Cox
Personal: Husband, David; Fishers resident nine years
Background: Degree in elementary education; sales professional; Currently serves as Town Council member; past: Fall Creek Township Board
Web Site: reneecoxformayor.com
What qualifies you to be the Mayor of Fishers? Specifically, my sales background. I’ve been in sales for 17 years. And really just taking that sales experience in the private world, which I was very successful in, and literally took a small family owned independent business doing a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in business to over $21 million in seven years, very much of a shoe string budget. I was able to bring people together and support me and in shoring up my shortcomings which, knowledge-wise, I didn’t really know anything. But I surrounded myself with people who helped me get there and together we got it done in a very frugal manner. So, I was very successful there. So taking that private business world experience and bringing that to the mayor’s office and sales and marketing that’s definitely what I most qualified to do.
What is the single most important issue for Fishers? Transparency, without a doubt. Transparency and open government. What I mean by that is that as elected officials we are elected by constituents to be honest and upfront with them and because we are doing their business, so there’s no reason to keep everything hush-hush or quiet-quiet underneath the table but to go ahead and share with them what is going on with their money. Without taxpayer dollars, we don’t exist.
Why do you want to be mayor? I’m enjoying what I’m doing on the council. I want to take my sales experience and bring it to the next level and make citizens proud of living here in the town of Fishers and soon to be city of Fishers.\
Scott Fadness
Personal: Wife: Aunna; Fishers resident seven years
Background: B.A. in political science from University of North Dakota; master’s degree in public affairs from Indiana University; Has worked for Town of Fishers for seven years served as town manager for past three years
Website: fadnessforfishers.com
What qualifies you to be the Mayor of Fishers? I think that if you look at my past experience and education, it makes me uniquely qualified from the nuts-and-bolts tactical side of things. My masters degree is in public affairs, which means basically government, but I had a focus on local government management so city government because that was where my passion was. So, along with that I have a focus on public finance; so keeping the books in the black, if you will. From my formal education on to my work experience, I’ve only worked in city government and worked in various capacities and so I’ve done everything from budget director all the way through to currently running the daily operations of the city. Along with that, I’m an adjunct professor at IUPUI in their graduate program and I teach public finance and I also teach strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations. So I think from the purest sense of just the technical capabilities and the ability to execute and run an organization of this size, I think I have a unique qualification for that. Along with that, I think I have given a lot of thought about the vision of the long term for our community and I am very passionate about what I think the opportunities are that lie ahead for Fishers.
What is the single most important issue for Fishers? A clear vision. I think if you can give the community a clear vision that everyone can marshall their resources around and get excited about, the rest will fall in line. I think right now we are at a bit of a crossroads, honestly, about who we are; what do we aspire to be and where are we going. And I think if we can create that; if we can work together to find that singular vision then I think the sky’s the limit for Fishers.
Why do you want to be mayor? I want to be mayor for a number of reasons. First and foremost is, when I moved here and got involved in this city, I just fundamentally believe that we have a tremendous amount of potential. And I think that I have the right passion, the right vision, the right skill set to see it through. So, when I look at that, I’m just committed to that concept. I wasn’t looking to become a politician, to be honest with you, but the opportunity to serve this community and help facilitate it into its next chapter is something that truly excites me.
Maurice Heitzman
Personal: wife, Carlene; two adult children; Fishers resident 40 years
Background: Purdue University (IUPUI), BS engineering (engineering management); design/project consultant specializing in transportation
Website: MauriceHeitzmanforMayor.com
What qualifies you to be the Mayor of Fishers? I understand the needs for the infrastructure. I’ve designed infrastructure and planned it for many years. And that’s a big component. I understand people. I understand what their needs are. I understand what their likes and dislikes are. I’m a pretty good communicator with people; I have to be with the number of people that I deal with on an everyday basis. I understand the family values; the community values; the image. So, with all those technical and personal and social put together, I think I have a pretty good package encompassing the whole span of what the mayor does. I can be a pretty good image for the mayor and I can be a very good lobbyist and communicator for the town.
What is the single most important issue for Fishers? That depends on what perspective you’re looking at. I think the biggest single issue is the quality of life. If you don’t the quality of life you’re going to lose your residents and you’re going to lose your business both. And without that you have no town, no city, no community. So, I think the quality of life is the number one issue. But that includes so many things, including public safety. So many areas are wrapped up into that.
Why do you want to be mayor? I want to be mayor because I became very displeased with our town management as we have it now. I don’t like the way they have been going. I don’t like some of the items that they’ve done as common practice. I believe that we need very strong ethics and integrity in the government and I’m not sure that we have it to the extent that I would like to see it. There are things going on that I believe are very, very questionable and should be looked at very closely.
Walt Kelly
Personal: Wife: Sheila; three children; four grandchildren; Fishers resident 38 years
Background: Indiana University, B.S. in accounting; Retired CPA, retirement distributions and investments; Former Fishers Town councilor serving 21 years, 17 as council president
Website: walterkellyformayor.com
What qualifies you to be the Mayor of Fishers? Without question, I have the most experience. I was council president for 17 of my 21 years on the council. And that was a period we went and built most of the parks; put a process in place so that development would pay for itself so that’s why we have low tax rates because we had development pay for a lot of the building that we did; park impact fees; road impact fees. So I was at the helm for all those years giving clear and consistent signals to the community and to the developers and businesses. So, I had that experience. Coupled with that experience, and that’s executive leadership experience where you have to make decisions because I was fortunate to be the council president when we had three, when we had five and then when we grew to seven and so we made those as choices because I just thought that was right that to have more people. And did little things that helped symbolize things: created the flag and it was created for a reason and it has a certain symbolism. Started a process almost 30 years ago of having comprehensive annual financial reports and even though it wins an award, the award isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that it gives full and complete disclosure of financial information and it puts a lot of information in there about what we said we were going to do and what we did.
What is the single most important issue for Fishers? Right now, we’ve got to get back on track about what our allocation of resources are to be. There’s never a single most important issue, but that’s a very important issue. Also, it’s going to be important that – as we transition – the mayor and council forge a working relationship because you need to have a working relationship. But there’s also different roles and it’s going to be hard for existing councilors. I went to the city council debate and some of the things that were talked about were really things that probably the mayor is going to be doing and offering up. But, nonetheless, we need to work together. Fishers was fortunate that we used to not have all the turmoil we’ve seen of recent years. There was a reason for that is that we were responsive to what the community wanted and what they thought they were buying when they moved to Fishers.
Why do you want to be mayor? I think the time is now and I have the most experience and qualifications. My children live here; my grandchildren live here. I have been blessed with good health; I know the history; I know what I started; I know what we put in place; I’m a financial, I shouldn’t say expert (no one should say that), but I am certainly recognized for financial acumen in the public sector. I have helped so many communities in that regard. I have also made sure we had a financial structure and a budgetary process from years ago, fine-tuned by various people over the years. So I understand how all that works. And I have leadership experience where I’ve grown a CPA firm, I’ve grown an office of a CPA firm, I grew Fishers. So, I’ve demonstrated experience so I just think this is what I’m going to do now. I’m not really ready to hang up the cleats.
Marvin Scott
Personal: Married; four children; Fishers resident one year
Background: Received doctorate at age of 26; former college president, tenured professor of sociology at Butler University; former president of Indianapolis Waterworks; former candidate for U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives
What qualifies you to be the Mayor of Fishers? I think my contacts on Capitol Hill, number one – in order to get monies that could flow here and discover where they are. I lobbied for Amtrak. We brought back billions of dollars for Amtrak. The governor appointed me to the Midwest Interstate High Speed Passenger Rail Commission and I’ve served diligently on that for many years. Also, I have been on the National Council for the Humanities which is a big deal because you are voted on by senators and they approve and then you serve and I did that for I think three or four years, which is not only an honor, but also gave me greater fervor in terms of understanding how the political process works and being an actual part of it via committees and other kinds of things. So I have a vast amount of knowledge of Capitol Hill and I want to bring my expertise to bear on the position as being the first mayor of the City of Fishers.
What is the single most important issue for Fishers? I think controlling growth and that is making it strategic to the mission of the town; making sure that it’s not helter skelter; or things are not put in strategic locations so people can access it. I think we need a Lord and Taylor as an anchor in one of our malls. We need to have notoriety so that Fishers is a destination – this is where people come. The museum that we have over here where we have memorabilia and that kind of thing held should be made an attraction along with the approval of that, of course, by the people who own it. There are a lot of things that we can do, but that’s not a problem; those are opportunities. I think sustained growth, job creation.
Why do you want to be mayor? First of all, I think it’s a wonderful opportunity. It gives an endpoint in many ways to my career; serving people; having a government that includes people; that’s inclusive and one that has a transparent mayor. There’s nothing you can’t ask me; there’s nothing you can’t want to know about and I think all people should have influence on what we do in this city. And most cities don’t have that. We must have immediate response from citizens in terms of complaints about things that are not handled well. And I’ve sat at the feet of masters and learned how to do that. So, I think I think I come with a set of skills that no one else has.
Elaine Viskant
Personal: Married; one son; Fishers resident 18 years
Background: Wright College, Illinois-Chicago, Elmhurst College; credit manager, “trailing spouse”, community activist.
What qualifies you to be the Mayor of Fishers? I’ve been fairly actively involved with major issues in Fishers. From an activist standpoint, I have been environmentally involved. I was involved with the 96th Street and Allisonville flood plain development over there. I didn’t think they should be reworking the flood plain because it would cause problems further down. So I protested with the apartment complex across the street, with the Hoosier Environmental Council, with the Sierra Club and with a bike club. So I was involved in that development down there. I’ve also been involved with Richey Woods where I cut out a whole newspaper article from where we came from in Illinois that was related to developing wildlife rehab centers where depending on where you were in Illinois, they had some centers that were really nice where you could have activity areas for moms and strollers to meet other new moms and strollers. To have the babies looking at injured animals, like a mini zoo but smaller and more approachable for a new mom (who) can’t travel much.
What is the single most important issue for Fishers? The mass transit issue, because basically it’s a chance to keep us independent versus involved with Indianapolis politics. I think that Chapter 8 housing relieves the pressure for mass transit. If a person could live there, there’s really no reason for them to be traveling across town and if they want to visit a doctor across town when they have a hundred living next door to them or in the vicinity of them, there is really no reason why I should be funding that.
Why do you want to be mayor? The mass transit issue was very, very big with me. The fact that as I was looking at other people’s background I knew that I had more accounting and finance than they did. They might have more suave in talking; two of the candidates are off-the-cuff type speakers but I talk to hundreds of thousands of people on the phone in part of my credit management, where I can hear intonations and phone voices. I‘m much better on phone than in person because you get confused by facial expressions; you get confused by a lot of things in person but when you are on the phone you can really key into what a person is thinking.
