Our town

Guess this could go in both the "for what it's worth" and the "it could be worse" files: Children's Health magazine has rated "100 noteworthy cities" across the country for what kind of places they are in which to raise a family. The list goes from No. 1 Burlington, Vt., to No. 100 Detroit. Only two Indiana cities are on the list -- Fort Wayne at No. 45 and Indianapolis at No. 49. The criteria:

It's like they had a secret meeting or something. Evansville:

If the City Council adopts proposals by the city's Water & Sewer Utility, starting next year, Evansville residents will receive two new 96-gallon containers — one for trash and the other for recyclable refuse.

[.  . .]

At Mark Souder's health care town hall meeting Friday, former City Councilman Dr. John Crawford succinctly identified a major problem with Obamacare and similar proposals:

Wonder if the Good Old Boys will start mingling more with the riffraff now, or maybe they have a secret back room somewhere that you need to know the magic handshake to get in:

After nearly 40 years of service, Fort Wayne's Summit Club has closed without notice.

The Summit Club was an exclusive private members club for Fort Wayne's elite business men and women.

Roland Maxwell and about 12 other people were let go by their Fort Wayne company. Maxwell doesn't buy the reasons the company gave him for letting him go, so it must be discrimination. But he's not taking any chances with claiming just one or two puny charges:

"I think it was my race—it could have been my age, too,” said Maxwell, who is 54.

So, the city is going to buy a building for $7 million and spend another $7 million to fix it up. We don't know yet if it's going to do it on its own or in conjunction with the county, and we don't know what the relationship will be between city and county in the City-County Building. Where are city and county police going to end up, and which government functions will be where?

If any of you remember Andrea Muirragui Davis, there is news that is both sad and life-affirming. Andrea grew up in Fort Wayne, then came to The News-Sentinel as a reporter and eventually became assistant metro editor. She then left us for greater job opportunities and is now associate editor of the Indianapolis Business Journal. She recently learned that she has breast cancer:

"Schoolyards could be hotbeds of swine flu infection" -- Gee, do ya think?

One of the main battlegrounds in the fight against an expected resurgence of swine flu this fall will be the schoolyard, a place where the disease could, well, go viral.

[. . .]

Large groups of children and young adults? Check.

In close proximity? Check.

Lax sanitary standards? Check.

Halle-damn-lujah (that's an example of an infix, as opposed to a prefix or a suffix, for all you budding grammarians) -- we do have some honest-to-goodness small-government officeholders in Allen County. County Commissioners are hot to enter into joint ownership with the city of the City-County Building and the yet-to-be-purchased and -renovated Renaissance Square.

It seems the city is finally giving up on the idea of condos at Harrison Square:

The condos aren't selling in a tough housing market, and city officials now admit they were probably over-priced in the first place.