Editor:
Mr. Mayor I want to thank you for your recent “State of Aurora” address and after reading the entire address, I would like to make some comments.

I think hiring our city attorney full time under the auspices of a “do all guy” is a bad idea.

We will no doubt be paying the $118K salary, whether used or not. We need to use our elected and appointed officials to do the contracts, then call him in for legal opinions and changes.

The second comment is about the number of parks we operate. I realize some of the “start up” money comes from grants and donations, but when the projects are finished we are facing the upkeep expenses.

The population of Aurora in 2010 was 3,750, with age group 0 to 19 years being about 1,000 kids. Our population has dropped every year, so I think we should be peaked out on parks.

A couple of years ago I was at a park board meeting where an Aurora soccer association spokesman made a pitch to use land by the city wells for the complex. He was given permission to use and to also build needed buildings at the city’s discretion.

I wonder why we spent $260K of “found” money to buy land for the complex when the plans were to use the cities bottoms ground, and this was after telling the city utilities department we were “broke” and had no money for raises.

Now for my last comment, Mr. Mayor you forgot to mention the unfunded $4 million sewer project which is mandated by the EPA (Editor’s Note: the work is mandated by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management under an agreed order with the city).

The city has known about this for at least 10 years. We need to start to “pay instead of play.”

To me all this mismanagement only leads to higher taxes, utilities bills, and more vacant business building. Too expensive to do business in Aurora.

Robert Martin
432 Park Ave.
Aurora, IN 47001