Northwest Indiana Discussion

To drunk to come up with an original thoght at 3:30 in the morning? Scotch I presume.

No councilman, from a wonderful night on the water.

I prefer red wine.

And mike you know mcdermott has spent thousands of his campaign dollars investigating opponents. you should have know this. Mije apparently you are out of the loop.

Btw mike have investigators contacted you on the personal use of city gaming money?

Speaking of drinking too much tom seem to be seeing fbi agents following him.

When you tell lies you can't remember them, right tom

He just really might be seeing them.

One should consider not only the level of debt but the ability of the city residents to pay off that debt when broken down per capita. Hammond reportedly has near 80% of its students on free or reduced lunch programs, which tells me the ability of its residents to meet their portion of debt obligation is not good. I thought I read recently where the population of Hammond has dropped by app. 1100 people. Were those who left,ones who were in a better or worse position to meet their portion of debt obligations?

That McDermott would bring a per capita argument to the question of debt can mean that he doesn't understand it, that he is trying to mislead, or both. Any resident can literally walk away from the debt obligations that Hammond has incurred, except for real property owners who will be facing lowered property values. Per capita is exactly the wrong metric for debt. Whiting and EC have very high personal property values in the form of mills and the BP refinery. Their debt ratios per capita can appear skewed high because their debt will be mostly paid from taxes on industrial personal property. For every dollar per capita to pay Whiting's debt, many more times that will come from personal property tax on BP. As Hammond does not have that infrastructure to tax to pay it's debts, it's a bigger concern for Hammond even if Tom won't admit it. It's ironic that Mcdermott dismisses a Times' writer by saying “you can make numbers say whatever you want them to.” Tom McDermott and his handlers know that game very well.

What can I add to the comments of both BERT and LUBU? A good percentage of Hammond's populace is composed of unproductive bums and illiterates. Any town in Da' Region can alter its per capita debt by throwing up a few slums and opening its doors to refugees from the Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini Green. If a given town had a population of one and that one person happened to be Bill Gates that town could have a massive amount of debt per capita and not sweat it too much. Does that make sense or is my understanding being altered by absentee landlords flying around in black helicopters?