Isn’t that what you are doing? Send me something that is actually an idea or is a fact about Bicknell or pictures around Bicknell and I’ll post them giving you all of the credit.
John R. Stanczak

Dear Anonymous, Sorry you think you don't like contra dances! Do you like to waltz? Most folks do, and waltzes are a big part of contra dances. Give us a try sometime, I think you will enjoy yourself! I tell folks if they can walk and hear the music they can enjoy dancing.

Ron Ackman

Bill Smith likes to send jokes to me for posting and occasionally a short opinion, Sue French is more religion and politics and Ron Ackman enjoys Contra Dancing but sometimes enjoys pointing out some city successes and/or failures so that is not likely to change regardless of who decides to write articles; there is room for all opinions and likes that each person has.

I agree with you that the site needs authors who enjoy writing about a multitude of subjects such as city politics including council meetings. I have spoken too many who, like you, wish to improve the website yet not one of them ever decided to write for the site. The subjects are wide and their opinions vary but I have not had a single person follow through with consistent article submissions; occasionally one will write a single article that I post for them and rarely they will submit a second follow up but that is when it always ends.
Talk about bloviating; it is my experience that most letters or comments like yours is simply that “bloviating” as most do not wish to get involved with anything that matters, I hope that you are not one of them as I like your style of writing but I always find at least in the past that when a person does not sign their name their commitment is not very strong. I understand that it is your choice to either get involve or set on the sideline and snipe others thoughts and that is OK with me.

I invite you to become a writer on this blog; so there is one of your advice comments that you have given me and I have acted upon it.

Here are a couple of things that I tried to get the city to do and was completely shot down: nearly 4 years ago, in the Industrial Park between Mullins Supply and the fire department put in 400 camper sites for the Edwardsport power plant workers, the sewer and water is already there and electric is a simple matter. Without going into details this would generate 5.9 million dollars in revenue which would have paid off the debt of the sewer plant cutting sewer and water rates to less than $25.00 per month on average as well as repaired the Bicknell streets, this would have been a huge boost in Bicknell population and development. This administration’s response “we don’t want no damn trailers in Bicknell”.

Don’t try to recreate Vincennes in Bicknell, allow horses but set zone requirements; their response outlaw horses.
Use existing code to control junk yards in Bicknell rentals as well as owners of private property by ticketing the owner or owners and the city court to enforce through the Bicknell Police Department which would change the code valuation to a contempt valuation, their response a tax on all rentals that will not be enforced.

I spoke to the mayor about forgetting about the Industrial Park area as until highway 67 becomes 4 lanes the park will only attract Bicknell business from one location to another with little possibility of attracting outside businesses on a permeate bases; the mayor’s plan to enlarge the Industrial Park.

I advised the mayor “Flickinger” to use the industrial park as a history of the railroad switching tracks as it was in the past by putting in rails and train cars via grants; a long term growth plan that would in time put Bicknell on the map as a point of history including rail, coal mines and small business. I’m sure you can see the mayor’s plan to follow through.

I told both administrations to enlarge the gazebo and add one at the park and use them as a stage for local bands to perform throughout the spring and summer weekends as well as holidays.

I suggested that the Bicknell Main Street be returned to Bicknell and remove the asphalt as to return it to its original brick surface to conform to the mine and train theme. Again, there has been no action by either administration at least to date.
I suggested that the city “lay” ground work via code to assure that rebuilding and remodeling of business on Main Street assure construction to theme. To do anything on Main Street it is necessary to control looks and perception and taking years to correct a problem such as the building on the corner of 3rd Street and Main Street that has been an eyesore for at least 4 years with the city actually allowing the entire sidewalk area to be boarded off from Bicknell citizens for something like 3 years.

I not only advised but attempted to change the districts for councilmen so that the council people would only be required to run in their own districts with no success as the council people always believe that their own district voters would vote them out of office.

Mayor Trowbridge did nothing but pile on debt for the Bicknell residents and Mayor Flickinger has only tried to apply icing on a cake that has not been baked yet. Building houses does not help unless you prepare the city for new people to move here, this requires making it a place not only to raise kids but a place they can afford to live and still drive to another town to work and shop, right now Bicknell is a sleep over town and that is the place that an administration must start their plan for growth.

I along with Councilman Bill Kitchens and Ron Ackman traveled to Indianapolis to offer suggestions to remodel the sewer plant instead of building new, thereby keeping down the cost on Bicknell residents and was successful even though Mayor Trowbridge call Mr. Easterly and told him that we were not a representative of Bicknell and Councilwoman Lydia Duncan contacted him advising him that she thought that we were simply trouble makers. Our plan was to remove outside water for a system that was designed as a closed system and repair existing equipment to put it back into service along with many other things at which he approved but the State required an independent engineer to lay out the plan; we had a commitment from an engineer who would have completed the State requirements for $5,000.00 but Mayor Trowbridge and the council would not even consider the agreement and pushed ahead with the new 5 million dollar plant that also overflows when it rains as if they were being paid or something.

At one time we had a committee that met once a month and sent suggestions to Mayor Trowbridge who was originally a member until I told him that I disagreed with his approach to the sewer plant problem, at which time he left the committee along with all of his ass kissers; the mayor chose to never use any suggestions and even called Ron Ackman and cussed him out because he had gone to the State to see about a sign that would hang on the stop light post pointing to the downtown area, so you can see that the administrations will not accept any outside suggestions.

I heard a couple of years ago, maybe three years ago that there was a building available for a teen center so I called the man and worked out a deal the included the least of the building for something like a dollar a year, he would maintain the insurance on the building, he would repair the interior floors and ceilings and do whatever was necessary to assure that the heating and air conditioning worked properly. I suggested that the equipment that would be placed could be covered with the city blanket insurance policy most likely at no additional cost. I told them to include the center as a department of the city so that the city workers and police could service the center for its security and cleanup and maintenance which except for cleaning products would be basically at little or no cost.
I attempted to advise them that volunteer operations will not last, their decision to give it Frank Gugliotta who promptly gave it to Lydia Duncan to develop and you can see how that worked out so far, what’s it been 3 years? I approached Vincennes University for 12 computers for the project and was successful but was told that they were going to get the computers from Bill Gates, I had on hand three commercial video games that I offered to the center at no cost and still have not received an answer, I guess you can see how that worked out so far.

Right now I have advised the horse owners how to collect petitions to correct the horse ordinance and I am working with others to hold a meeting of renters and landlords at the Bicknell library in an attempt to correct the rental owners tax that was recently passed by an uninformed council and mayor.

It is easy to set on the sidelines and advised what others should do but that is not my policy, I am not a cheerleader yet I have done hundreds of things form offering them the webmaster at VU to develop a city website which of course they turned down, I guess the cost was too low.
I tried to complete, as I did not start it Councilman Bill Kitchens did, neighborhood watch but the mayor and Lydia Duncan actually went around and removed the signs because they had not OK’d the project, even though they had had several meeting. The signs where actually paid for by the French Club who we need to thank for their community work, but it was all wasted,$200.00 because Lydia Duncan a council woman at the time actually called the company who places a little man on their signs and told them that we were stealing their logo. The signs are gone, I spoke to the logo people and they told me they thought that we were printing thousands of signs and the 50 or so was OK with them.

How does a mayor stop unfair gossip? Write an article or contact me and I’ll write the article to let people know the actual facts about city operations, but that is not likely to happen as every mayor seems to think that the voters are not important enough to keep notified; and we have a council who believes that they work for the mayor. Over the years people have contacted me like you who chastise me about my site and views only to stop by a few years later to let me know that they now agree with me.

What have you done to date? Do you want to write an article and if so what do you want it named.

John R. Stanczak

Thank you for writing; I disagree with policies that one, do not work; policies that two, are for the sole benefit of a single person especially when the person is related to or is a council member and three, policies that have no plan for the future such as the tear down of old homes to be replaced with new homes, especially when such an act reduces the rest of the property values thereby making home sales in Bicknell unprofitable for all other home owners.
I understand that right now because of missing cash the building of the new homes has stopped, hopefully forever but at least for now. As I wrote before I have no idea if the mayor is involved or not, I hope not, but it is a fact that something is wrong and the normal ways to investigate it, the local newspaper, is not interested.
You may be right that Mrs. Flickinger has worked hard for Bicknell but you never said what she did. Maybe you can make a list. I know that she worked hard to stop the advancement of neighborhood watch while working with Peggy Magill and Lydia Duncan. I could name many things that she either work for or stopped according to whether or not she was in charge or not.
Now she is heading up what may be her last committee, “Good Start” of which she is now working to disband because she doesn’t want to be involved with it and it appears that she is not capable of just leaving but she, as usual, must destroy it first for everybody else in Bicknell.

I have no problems with democrats or republicans as I respect anybody who wants to advance Bicknell, I had no problem with the mayor but since then I have noticed that he has little respect with the will of the people and forces the will of the few on all of his citizens. Whether it is a group, an individual or a business does not seem to matter. The Mayor chose to build new houses and sell them at half price without understanding the consequences of the action; true it did clean up some private property but he does not understand the damage to current home owners in Bicknell and I would be more understanding of his choice to clean up a portion of Bicknell had he chose Maplewood where nine tenths of it is poverty in appearance. Yet in Maplewood he chose to band horses?

Instead of using existing code to correct rundown rentals in Bicknell he chose to punish all landlords by passing a city tax on rental properties.

I do not know what part pertained to the mayor with the missing money but I do know the city attorney quit due to in her words "a trust issue with the mayor", so read into it whatever you like. As far as his sex life I would just as soon not think about it.

Sorry I did not respond to “not the mayors purvue” as I think that you misspelled something and I’m not sure what you were or are referring to.

I think that my back yard has pretty much been investigated over and over every time certain people do not agree with my opinions, but feel free to look and let me know what you find. I’ll help you start; I do not go out on my wife, I do not lie, I do not steal, I do not bother my neighbors and when writing or speaking about Bicknell or Bicknell representatives I only want them and the town to succeed yet rarely do any of them ever request or act upon my suggestions.

To date; nothing that mayor Trowbridge did has helped Bicknell, nothing that Mayor Flickinger has done has helped Bicknell and the same with both councils. In fact every action taken by both administrations has costs the people of Bicknell whether in monthly utilities, loss of businesses and/or property values.

John R. Stanczak