The Mayor of Bicknell along with the Bicknell City Council members, PACE and I think the Bicknell Board of Works has decided that it would be benificitual to sell the PACE houses themselves instead of paying a commission to any realtor.

In the first place they (PACE and the City of Bicknell) allowed only one realtor to handle the sales and by mutual agreement decided to not place the houses for sale on the Multiple Listing; because; well I don’t understand why.

When the City of Bicknell decided to sell the duplex to anybody who could afford it they only contacted a handful of realtors and ended up only listing with one, who sold it apparently as first come first serve without pursuing any more profitable sales, thereby the builder; again not using the Multiple Listing in an effort to obtain the best offer. I believe determined by a commission bid, lowest I presume.

They, the city, have decided to go back to the same realtor who they just removed the houses for sale from if they are unsuccessful in their sales pursuit because, well I don’t understand why yet. I can only guess that the city just likes to keep houses as I am quite certain that the city does not have the means to sell real estate, at least once they run out of friends and relatives, but on the other hand if they simply do not want to sale the houses then their decision is correct; I only say that because they didn’t seem to want to get the word out that there were houses for sale at an obscenely low price otherwise they would have listed on the multiple listing so that they could reach the maximum number of people who wants to own a home.

They are worried about sales commission, I have heard, but this does not seem to a problem as the seller can set the maximum amount of commission that they will pay per sale and each realtor can decide whether or not they are OK with the pay and as far as multiple listing is concerned the city really does not or at least should not have been concerned about the listing/selling commission split as that is up to the individuals involved in the sale; at least as I understand it.

John R. Stanczak

Duplex
402 & 404 Alton, Bicknell, In 47512
Asking price------------- $110,000.00 Discount $38,373.00
Selling price------------- $71,627.00
Buyer--------------------- J. & S. Jones
Building contractor----- J. & S. Jones
Lenders name----------- None
Selling agent------------ Beth Meeks
Meeks Real Estate and Insurance
Closing date 10/26/2011
This is the duplex that the City of Bicknell had built using the grant via PACE; it appears that it was sold to the person or company that was paid to build it and not according to the guide lines as per the low income purchaser.

On the other hand if it was cleared to sell on the open market I am not aware of any notification to the general public that it was open to offers. I am aware of a couple of people who would have liked to purchase a brand new duplex that is giving a nearly $40,000.00 discount.
The question seems to be why was this, particular buyer, offered such a discount and how much was the profit for the builder when a person adds in the $40,000.00 discount to the monies collected for construction.
Surely they did not also purchase the lots from the builder. This is similar to giving a contractor an additional $40,000.00 interest on a $72,000.00 investment which is about 56% interest on the investment; who wouldn’t love such a deal if it is as it seems.

I am discouraged with the Republican Senators and both Republican and Democratic Representatives who has allowed the light bulb bill that outlaws our light bulbs in favor of a much more expensive type and places the government in the communistic style of government where the government controls the purchasing and use of products by the voters.

I understand that there has not been a lot of repercussion over this but today I was talking to around 40 people in the dollar general and only 2 plus myself even was aware of the stupidity of the law passed by the last congress. Now there are not only 3 people pissed over it but 40 pissed about the stupidity of such legislation.
Isn't there any republicans or democrats who will stand up for Americans instead of oversea job creation?
John R. Stanczak

I worked last night, Saturday 12/3/11, in Vincennes and was returning home, arriving in Bicknell at about 9:30 or so and noticed that the Dollar General on the corner of highway 67 and Mary Street was still open so I pulled in to pick up a couple of cans of dog food hoping to save myself a morning run to the store. As I entered the store I read the hours sign advising that they are open until 10 o’clock so I entered.

To my surprise was the lady clerk’s response when I greeted her by saying to her “hello how are you tonight? Her response to me”why don’t you people just stay home?” I thought that I misunderstood her so I went on to pick up the cans of dog food.

When I arrived to check out there was nobody available to run the register so I waited and after a couple of minutes or longer then she came in from outside and walked over to ring up my cans of dog food so I could pay for my purchase.

“This is worth you coming in!” was her response to my purchase of dog food so I asked her what she was talking about and she told me the when people like me don’t just stay home at night and keep coming in to the store after 9 pm that Dollar General will never start closing at 9 o’clock again and she will have to work to 10 o’clock from now on.

I told her that I was not coming from my home that I was return from my job in Vicennes and that on the other hand had she not been open I wouldn’t have stopped in and she said “that’s what I mean people like you will never stop coming in.”

I left.

I think that it may be time for Dollar General to help out this employee and allow her to look for other employment where she can get off at 9 o’clock pm instead of 10 o’clock pm where she will be much happier. I’m sure that Dollar General can easily find a replacement especially in this economy. Then all of us will be happy, the clerk because she will no longer be required to work until 10:00, the Dollar General because they will stop losing customers because of her attitude and for me because it won’t make me feel like I’m evil for shopping at Dollar General after 9 pm.

Right now my choices are to never stop at the Bicknell Dollar General again after 9:00 or face a hostile employee when I do shop there so I'll most likely just not shop there as there are many other places for me to pick up things on the way home from work.

Just my opinion
John R. Stanczak

The Bicknell water department employees are being pressured to check every water/sewer bill payment to see if the bill is in arrears and to schedule it for shut off even if the outstanding amount is less than $10.00 regardless of whether or not they have paid a large amount on their outstanding balances. This is not the girls who work behind the counter, the rule comes down from above; you know people with no names such as "them" or "they" but I suspect it comes from the department head backed by Mayor Flickinger who I don’t really understand since his own family, when he was growing up, suffered from low income and struggled daily. I personally know of one lunch that the Mayor and his siblings only had instant pudding to eat; can a person's memory be so short?

I’m not sure why they need every dollar right now even at the detriment of the poor and elderly Bicknell residents.

I wrote a story earlier that the water filter is in bad shape but the council chose not to repair it, I see no water line repairs taking place and as far as I know there are no pumps that need or are being replaced so outside of payroll and electricity where is the money going. We all understand that water is free being supplied by nature; I know chemicals; but how much are chemicals and why that expense is going up enough to force people to decide between water and food or water and medicine is unclear. We did just absorb the nearly doubling of our water rates thanks to Councilman Frank Gugliotta. What happened? Wasn’t the rate increase high enough? Maybe Frank should re-evaluate his report and double the rate again, I know the rest of the city council will blindly follow just as they do at every other meeting on every other subject that is mostly you wash my back and I'll wash yours. Personally I suspect that the rule comes from the fact that the council and mayor just went through an election with no challenges for their seat so now they feel indestructible because they can't be touched for another four years, one month and so many days.

If the water department and mayor can or even can’t show why they suddenly need to assault the poor and elderly to maintain the Bicknell water system then maybe it would be a good idea to let the water department set up a fund for people to donate and use the money to pay the small arrears instead of shutting off their water placing an unnecessary burden on Bicknell residents and their families.

As soon as a fund is set up I’ll donate a $100.00 bill to start it.

John R. Stanczak

Bicknell would be a good place to live and would be growing if the mayors and city councils would just leave it alone. Bicknell is being destroyed from the inside out by those who should be healing it not the desease that is killing it. I have found it very difficult to remove the good ol boys mentality, you know you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

I have worked to remove democrats and replace them with republicans but the republicans turned into the exact same people that they replaced; 12 years ago the city elected officials cost Bicknell, this has been going on with the democratic party for 20 years or more, so 8 years ago we changed to a republican council and they did the exact same thing as the democratic council did so 4 years ago we, the city voters, mixed the council and guess what they did the exact same thing that the last 2 councils did.

So if you can't vote for a democrat to help Bicknell and you can't vote for a republican to help Bicknell and you can't mix them to help Bicknell what is the Bicknell voter supposed to do?

John R. Stanczak

There will be 50 coal plants closing due to the EPA developing and enforcing regulations that the Obama administration is allowing the EPA to govern where he is unable to get the US congress to sign on to his green programs. It seems that only the green jobs that are total failures are under the protection of Obama’s people.

Today the president is traveling around on the public’s dime criticizing everybody who is disagreeing with his “tax and spend” policies as anti-job rhetoric while at the same time on his orders the EPA is systemically guaranteeing at least 50 plant closing in the coal industry where a lot of people in that industry will be losing their jobs.

Over and over this president seems to do one thing after another to keep the American workers unemployed acting every time as if he is surprised at the outcome. It is time for people to realize that we have elected an under qualified person who has no executive experience who is simply following a life time of training in socialism that keeps him working toward the only thing that he knows which is in his own words is spread the wealth.

What is his experience record? Well begging, tricking and threatening people, businesses and government who have money or can tax the people under the disguise of helping the poor in Chicago where the poor is still poor and he is a millionaire.

I guess that there is money missing once more in Bicknell, the question is who, what and why.
I think that Bicknell can’t afford to let people in our government keep taking our money when the mayor says he can’t afford to repair the city streets or anything else.
A plus of course is that we no longer have a city attorney who did everything in her power to sink Bicknell; I for one was tired of an unelected city attorney running the council meetings all the while making up Indiana Codes to push through bad legislation; of course a mayor and council with some knowledge could have helped.

I also hear, rumors, that Mayor Flickinger put everything he could into PACE to get grants or at least into one of the girls on top of PACE. Maybe it’s just a rumor! I guess this is between him and his wife but I like morals in the government when possible. Unfortunately the Knox County Republican Party is inept so we have no republicans running for mayor in the next election; meaning bad leadership for another 4 years at least short of jail time.

Just my opinion
John R. Stanczak

According to the polls:
74% of the American people believe that the political system is not working as it is supposed to; yet the people vote in the same people over and over and over and over.
74% believe that Sarah Palin should not run for president: yet in the entire republican and democratic parties she is the only one who is not part of the same political mind set as all of those that 74% believe are not doing their jobs. Among other things in her election wake in Alaska it was jail time for both the democrats and republicans who were crooked politicians which explains why the liberal media is continuously attacking her.
Polls make little sense.

People need to read the writing on the walls of the White House and the Congress. First it is important to understand the terms used in our government: first communist, second socialist and third progressives. These words are all the same; progressive is the newest name for communism or at least the communism doctrine but being used all over the western world. It is the back door to introduce communism to capitalism nations.

Most of the federal elected officials on the democratic side are progressives by their own admission. Many of the republicans are also admitted progressives which mean that the American people are not represented in congress or are at least poorly represented. If a person would check all of the old guard in congress both republican and democrats you will find that they all claim to be progressives and now blame the new guard (the non-progressives) for the problems that this country is in finically, but of course the problem is the congressional people whom have been re-elected 10, 15, 20 or even 30 times back into office until they actually believe that they are the American Royalty. This old guard must be removed.

Follow the president’s words and actions; saying I can’t get as much done as I would like because I have to work in the confines of a sloppy democracy, from his speech at his 50th birthday speech (to liberals) and being Surrounded with a full list of people who favor spreading the wealth not earning the wealth, all of them either of low morals and/or trained in the communist doctrine; being called Czars, a non-elected body that neither answers to the people or the congress. Not to mention George Soros who claims to have followed the communist doctrine to cause the financial collapse of several countries and is now working on this country via our President and the progressives.

Let’s track the history of President Obama and the democratic congress; I’ll spread the wealth (take from the rich and give to the poor, like Robin Hood) except his plan is not to stop the government from stealing from the poor and return their cash back to them, his plan is to steal from those who earned it and give it to those who don’t want to earn it.

Destroy the middle class and grow the poor seems to be the president’s plan; today it appears that the United States has nearly a 50% population that does not show the initiative to earn a living which is what the President seems to be counting on in the next election, 2012. The more voters that can be pushed into the lower dependent group the easier it is to get them to vote for free money, housing and cars. (Not jobs)

Because the new congress did not fall in line the world put pressure on the US trying to force its economy down with the Standard and Poors down grading that was by the most part simply their way of getting their 15 minutes in the spot light following several rating errors in the past; they followed the spin of the communist and/or socialist world while passing several countries who are far worse off than the US with no means of pulling themselves up and out of debt as the US is not only capable of but will do.

The 12 that will be chosen to decide on cuts in the national debt will be most likely ½ liberal (progressives) and ½ conservatives (which will be at least 1/2 progressives) and if they cannot decide on the cuts the cuts will be made automatically by cutting ½ from the poor and/or retired and ½ from the military. This is supposed to be a choice that will make both sides compromise because the conservatives will not want to cut down the military and the liberals will not want to cut the aid to the poor; this will not work because the liberals (progressives) will always throw the poor and the retired under the bus if they can do harm to the military; therefore look for gridlock and a large cuts in the military and the retired and poor.

If a person stops and thinks they will find that the country has had a debt to pay off for quite some time but the county itself started collapsing when the congress was turned over to the progressives during the last two years of President Bush’s second term. When the people turned the congress over to the progressives now almost 5 years ago progressives (liberals) headed up every financial committee in Washington and systematically destroyed the business community of this nation, it was intentional and planned.

Just my opinion
John R. Stanczak

So Bicknell spent 5 million dollars of the people’s monies and the plant still overflows! Spring rains and an overflowing sewer plant; just as it was before our town went into debt 5 million dollars as per IDEM’s orders and our last mayor and council’s lack of leadership and balls.

IDEM came to Bicknell and buffaloed our weak government into selling out the people and Bicknell’s future.
I argued for the repair of the sewer lines prior to the unnecessary building of a costly sewer plant. I pointed out how the old sewer plant could handle the population of Bicknell if the city repaired the sewer lines and upgraded the old plant which would have taken about 4 years and cut the cost from 5 million dollars to less than 1 million dollars. Our system was supposed to be a sealed system and was not capable of handling ground water and the forced flow of the many Bicknell sump pumps.

I told the city that IDEM would never leave if they let them in the front door but the city would not listen and bent over and kissed a lot of IDEM ass; now IDEM is pointing out that Bicknell is still under an agreed order and they will force the city to replace and when it comes to the council who are sitting now Bicknell is in worse shape than it was with the last IDEM ass kissing council.

I guess here we go again with IDEM looking to push more cost on the residents of Bicknell and we have another ass kissing council sitting who can’t handle actual business that could cut the cost of living in Bicknell but has plenty of time to harass horse and rental owners and any number of self fulfilling ordinance passing to make their life easier but with no thought of the rest of the people. You know like a councilman’s mother has a problem with a lazy horse owning neighbor so outlaw horses, a dirty yard so charge landlords to pay the city to inspect; pay every year but they only inspect once every two years. I guess the inspection isn’t as important as the annual collections.

We’re building new houses in a dead housing market that will, if their plans go right, sell for something like half price; but only for people who make less than 40 thousand a year who of course cannot get financing in this Obama market. On top of that it appears that the mayor has allowed new rental complexes to be built in Bicknell so that those who struggled for years to maintain rental houses will have more competition from the city who will be selling units at bargain prices but wants to charge those who have been struggling in Bicknell for 20 years, good plan mayor.

Bicknell needs to look to Matt to clean up the sewer leakage problems, run off IDEM telling them to look to Indianapolis where they live and has more leaks in one rain than Bicknell does in 40 years. Bicknell needs to work with landlords not make it more costly than it already is to do business in Bicknell; Bicknell needs to change the horse ordinance to read keep them clean and require a quarter acre per horse and the city needs to forget attacking people and spend time thinking about getting business to come to Bicknell, hint cut the cost of living here and leave the business community alone.

In my opinion
John R. Stanczak

On TV they are selling gold! At least on my TV they are always trying to sell me gold. The advertising keeps advising me of how week the US dollar is and how safe it would be if I would place my money in their gold, sometime stocks and sometime actual gold. What I don't understand is that if the dollar is so poor and gold is so great why do they want to sell their gold for dollars?

Why do they want to exchange their gold for cash, cash that they say is not secure and is apparently going out of business soon.

John R. Stanczak

It is really disappointing to see how inept the leader of the Knox County Republican Party is when a person looks at the Bicknell list of Republican Candidates.

Take note the republicans do not have anybody running for city offices as:
City Council district 4,
City Councilman at large,
Clerk Treasurer or
Bicknell Mayor.

Maybe it is time for the Republicans to look for a person who will actually seek out candidates for public offices instead of going to work and then returning home hoping that somebody will call to apply for candidate status.
But I expect that the party will simply continue to replace inept with another inept as they have for years and years when it comes to Bicknell.
I don’t know if it is because in their minds Bicknell is unimportant and they spend all of their time working on Vincennes and County business or if Bicknell is just out of sight out of mind.
John R. Stanczak

I'm planning to open this site and allow readers to post their own stories as well as comments. I'll post when

Coming soon old style light bulbs illegal and new light bulbs expensive and even more expensive to discard as hazardous waste. Better buy a life time supply of the good bulbs now because once again our congress and presidents know more about what we need than we do.

This is not Obama it was Bush.

Goes to show you that you can't stop watching any of them. I guess that it is possible that Obama hates Bush enough to do the right thing and tell the government to leave our light bulbs alone; or maybe not.

John R. Stanczak

I think that it is time for the City of Bicknell’s administration to begin to look forward to the future and start solving some of the problems like population loss, bad streets, building repair, job saving actions, sidewalk repair, sewer repair and Main Street maintenance; planned maintenance programs for vehicles, water plant, and sewer plant as well as city hall.
I’m sure that there are many things that can be done to improve living conditions in Bicknell that have not and are not being done. A couple of years ago the mayor left a message on my telephone in response to a message I had left him about putting some gravel on the end of West 4th Street; the mayor’s message advised me that he was planning to repair the street but he didn’t actually know when. That was about two and half years ago I think with not action to date.
I’ve noticed quite a bit of this taking place around Bicknell aside from the house building project that is also moving like a snail race. There is a problem with money, but this problem is not going to get better, it will be getting a lot worse.
I believe that it is time to start developing a plan to fix Bicknell something that should have been started three years ago.
Just my opinion
John R. Stanczak

Congress should not be a career consisting of drinks, dinners and speeches and should not be designed as such; all benefits should be removed and each congress person should be presented with a place to live (dorm type), medical while serving, no retirement plan or benefits unless set up and paid personally , transportation to and from congress should be furnished and overseas trips should be a personal expense paid for by the office holder not the tax payers; it is way past time for people to ask how a person can go to congress and work for the people and accumulate millions in their bank accounts, all monies paid by outside sources should be given to the people not the politicians whether trips, items or cash.
This would go hand in hand with term limits just as the presidency has (two terms) otherwise only the rich would be able to serve because everybody else would need to return to whatever career they earned a living at. The United States of America does not need 90 year old office holders who have been in office for 40 years; our country does not need a dynasty that lives off of the people while active in office or retired from office, let’s leave this to the Europeans.
No foreigners should ever be allowed to contribute to the American congress via campaign contributions direct or indirect; all contributions must be accompanied with a money trail proving the starting point. If they are not a legal immigrant or a citizen then they should not be allowed to interfere with our elections.
John R. Stanczak

The illegal alien problem now infecting all states; every law and every police action to stop this inflow is not designed to stop the problem but to add busy work to the border patrol and law enforcement in an attempt to satisfy the American voter.
The facts are that if a police officer goes to a house where dogs are tearing up the neighborhood trash creating a smelly mess and if that police officer shoots one of the dogs or takes one to jail (pound) the punished dog does not understand the point of the punishment nor do any of the other dogs watching so the very next week when the neighborhood trash bags are put out the rest of the dogs, not understanding the problem, will tear them apart looking for food again. No matter how many dogs are shot or arrested the rest will keep tearing up the trash bags looking for food; but if the same officer goes to the house and punishes the dog’s owner the dog will no longer go out at night and tear up trash and the other owners who allow their dogs to go out at night and tear up trash will in fact understand the reason for the punishment and will in fact put up their dogs on trash night.
For the exact same reason the people who are coming illegally across the American borders to support their families cannot understand why they should not risk arrest to provide for their families, neither the one punished or the ones watching but if the employer is punished he will understand why and all other employers will also understand why and they will cease to hire illegal’s as the risk will be to great compared to the wage savings, providing legislative judges don’t write laws from the bench.
Of course there must be put place a guest worker program that allows worker s to come to the American job market including laws that allow these workers to come to work and to return home to their families until the next seasonal work arrives. Unlike legal immigrants where time and cost is so great that it nearly makes it impossible for a person to migrate to America without American citizen help the cost to the migrant worker must be minimal without the two and three year period of time it takes a legal immigrant to achieve the proper paper work to receive a work permit.
Once this is completed then every other person crossing the border illegally is a criminal or a terrorist and can be dealt with accordingly.
John R. Stanczak

Vincennes has raised their trash sticker cost up to as I understand it $1.25 each because I assume that they are faced with a money shortage and as usual they had a couple options one right and one wrong and of course as usual they chose wrong.

Vincennes like Bicknell cannot seem to understand that the higher the cost to live there the fewer people are willing to live there.

They also seem to be spending a lot of unnecessary time worrying about the Executive Inn which makes absolutely no sense; either the property owner has paid the property tax or they haven’t. It would seem that it would be the property owner’s responsibility to worry about homeless moving in illegally over the winter not the cities. All other city action on this subject appears to be some sort of property grab which usually relates directly to some money scheme that does not benefit the people but the politicians.

Of course the higher Vincennes raises its cost of living there and the more they rape their property owners the better it is for Bicknell.

Bicknell, I hope, should have enough sense to not add to the cost of living here as that is what is causing all of the financial problems here. Bicknell must find other cuts to in order to stop the population flow away from our city.

I do expect that Bicknell will follow Vincennes in the trash bag sticker increase.

John R. Stanczak

For the next couple of years it is doubtful if a small town like Bicknell will be able to obtain grants for municipal improvement such as downtown expansion; in today’s market a small town must concentrate on holding on to what they have. The Bicknell housing market is not strong and will not be strong for sometime in the future so the town must work daily to maintain its grant for new construction of houses in Bicknell.

Today there is no physical need for new house construction in Bicknell even though it may make a particular neighborhood look new again for at least a few years; people who live next door to a rundown structure are more than happy to allow the city to tear it down with plans to rebuild, but isn’t that teardown actually the responsibility of the owner?

In time it will become apparent to the grant people that Bicknell is a place of a high cost of living and it will be apparent to everybody that the population of Bicknell is in a sharp decline mold. Once this has been established it will only be a matter of time until the grant people start looking for other more productive towns to invest in infrastructure projects; towns with more political clout such as a right republican leaning town not a left leaning democratic town that rarely does anything for itself.

It is certain that this administration does not have the will to work towards reducing the sewer rates in Bicknell no more than it has the will to work to reduce the current property tax rate in Bicknell.

Until the people of Bicknell decide that it is time to elect people who will look closely at the cost overruns in Bicknell the town will continue to shrink in population.
Declining population causes problems like difficulty in obtaining grants, causes the cost per household to rise, removes political clout in both the county and the state, and reduces the possibility of road repair and infrastructure improvements.

The city must work to stop the decline which will require looking forward to a time when the power plant workers have left and electric rates are even higher than they are now or even the possibility of the power plant being simply shut down because the state will not allow the rate increase or the federal government decides to investigate the illegal or at least unwise spending at the plant, either way the people will be gone and that will reduce or end the temporary transit population in Bicknell. Either way the power plant will not produce enough people to help the population of Bicknell much.

Bicknell must do some specific things to slow, stop and reverse the population loss; sewer rates must be reduced at least by half and to do this there are a number of options that can be used with one being expanding the sewer services to the outskirts of Bicknell.

Places around the parks must be annexed and sewer lines attached even as far out as the Oaktown county road. Johnstown is dumping waste and should be attached to the Bicknell sewer plant as it is already mandated by Indiana law. Freelandville is facing a huge plant building cost that will bankrupt their town in the near future and if the Bicknell administration would be willing to work with Freelandville they could also hook up to the Bicknell sewer plant which would benefit both parties as it could save Freelandville as much as 2 or 3 million dollars by the time IDEM get done with them; savings would come from the much lower cost of a few miles of sewer line and a couple pumping stations and it would help Bicknell reduce their rates by simply adding numbers to the list of users when looking at the number of those paying for service compared to the cost of the Bicknell sewer plant payments, Likewise Edwardsport could also be helped in the same way for the same reasons and just as with Johnstown Indiana law requires it.
Of course unlike the last administration who allowed those who would benefit most from building a new sewer plant to negotiate not building a new sewer plant and surprise they could find no reason to not build a new plant; so now maybe it would be possible for this administration to think for themselves and work out agreements with Johnstown, Freelandville and Edwardsport that was not designed to bankrupt our possible partners.

Following this plan Bicknell could cut sewer cost and lower costs would promote growth in Bicknell.

John R. Stanczak