I'm not sure if I like this or not:
BBB of Northern Indiana will introduce the ratings/letter grade system on Feb. 1 to the northern Indiana community.
The new ratings system, adopted by all BBBs in the United States and Canada, is one more step in our branding strategy. When consumers search reports on companies, they will no longer see just “Satisfactory” or “Unsatisfactory.” It will be a letter grade, A+ through F.
About two-thirds of the way through the story about the Shawnee Middle School student who took a gun and 13-round clip to school is this disturbing detail:
The incident stemmed from a group of students, including the one who brought the gun, being harassed outside the Boys & Girls Club on Fairfield Avenue last week by some boys, one with a gun, the report said.
We have an interesting column on today's page from Eleanor Marine, chair of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic board, about the ongoing search for a new music director for the orchestra. It's a lot bigger and more complicated process than you might imagine for a philharmonic in a city this size. They got more than 275 applications.
Harrison Square is in trouble. The baseball field is moving right along, but there are growing doubts about the condos and the hotel and the shops. Boy, if we could just turn the corner and get that thing finished. Then the tourists would come and the money would flow and the downtown renaissance would begin. Well, maybe. Let's consider Indianapolis, where sports promoters have been more successful in getting projects off the ground:
Just so you don't feel so bad -- Fort Wayne, as the second-largest city in Indiana, a place with no special geographic or cultural feature, is not alone in feeling insecure and in need of a special "brand" to sell itself. The largest city in Canada, with more than 2.5 million people, has an inferiority complex, too:
Others were whimsical: Why, asked one participant, is Toronto afraid to market itself as a great place to come in the winter?
Is this one of those cases in which a public official lets down his guard and accidentally blurts out the truth? Because of people wanting to vote early or file for tax extensions, the city-county parking garage took in about $30,000 in October, about $10,000 more than the monthly average. But the 932-space garage had only an average December, and January is expected to be sub-par, so the facility is going to be a money-loser again this year, which is a continuing concern to one official:
Yesterday, I expressed the opinion that the pilot of the flight that landed in the Hudson, though he saved the day, wasn't really a "hero" -- he was in the right place to do what he was supposed to do and did it. Now comes a local example of what a hero is, two men who went out of their way to save a man in a burning car, though they could have been caught ina an explosion by doing so:
Larry DeBoer, Purdue University professor of agricultural economics, explains to Clark County officials that the "circuit breaker" system of property tax caps now in play in Indiana means officials in all taxing districts of a county are going to have to work together:
Before any Fort Wayne officials get the bright idea to copy this, they might want to look into the legality of restricting parking on publicly financed streets:
Parking in front of your neighbor's house overnight is now against the law in Richardson.
What kind of delicate flowers are we raising these days?
Allen County school districts follow a simple guideline when temperatures drop: If wind chills reach minus 25 degrees, then school will either be delayed or closed. All four local districts are closed today.
