I was born in Auburn, Indiana in 1961. From the time I was born, I regularly attended the First Christian Church, was baptized and married there. About 30 years ago I switched to the Auburn Missionary Church (Dayspring Community Church) where I had been very active in the choirs, stage performances, set designs, ushering, paving, snow removal, etc. until my children moved (7 years ago). Though I then felt the need (as a grandparent) to be available to travel on short notice and could not be sure of fulfilling those duties, I still attend regularly. I am ready to begin committing myself to the needs of the area again and feel that fixing our government is the greatest need.
I bought my first hive of honeybees when I was 11 and raised honeybees as a hobby until I was about 29. I sold them and started raising solitary bees until a few years ago. I still get calls from people with swarms of bees in their yard and will catch them and give them to local beekeepers when I can. I graduated Dekalb High School in 1979 and am a Licensed Residential Master Electrician. I am currently serving as an apointee of Governor Danials on the Indiana Manufactured Housing Professional Licensing Board. I am an Instrument Rated Private Pilot and belong to the High flying Club in Fort Wayne. I hold a General Amateur Radio License. I am a PADI Certified Scuba Diver and have a Commercial Drivers License (with Organ Donor). I am currently the Vice President have been President of the Northeast Chapter of the Indiana Manufactured Housing Association several times. I believe in a strong defense and am receiving Karate instruction at Bushido-Kan Karate in Auburn. I am a Property Manager, part owner, builder and Manager of the largest Manufactured Home Community in NE Indiana. I have two children and two grandchildren.
My father was a two-term Republican Mayor of Auburn (he chose not to run for a third term). He pursued office to bring jobs to Auburn. In the 8 years he was in office he brought 8 industries to our small town. In the beginning of his second term, I discovered the city was charging us for our property's sewer connection to the city and then they charged our park residents again for connecting to our lines (the ones we had already paid to have the service provided to from the city). I pleaded with the city attorney first to just stop the charges and I wouldn't sue for the past charges, but he would not stop them. I pleaded with the city clerk to just stop the charges, she would not. I pleaded with the board of works to just stop the charges, they would not. I pleaded with the city council for a full year to just stop the charges or I would take them to court if I had to, they would not stop them. In that whole time I was asked one question by one board member, in private, after the council meeting. It was stated, “What I don’t understand is this, what do you get out of this”. I told him that I wanted a more affordable place to live for our resident -- that’s all, nothing for myself. I just wanted them to stop charging our resident -- because it was wrong. As a politician he couldn’t understand. So I sued the city while my father was still Mayor. It was not what I wanted to do. I tried for over a year to avoid it. I made it a class action lawsuit. We hired a good-named Fort Wayne Attorney because no one in Auburn would represent us -- they were afraid of getting “blackballed” by the city in the future. I told the attorney that we would be hiring him by the hour, that it was not a contingency case. He told me that he did not understand the case well enough to take it on a contingency basis anyway, that it would have to be hourly. The law prohibited us from asking for attorney fees in the damages from a municipality. During the year after filing, while preparing for the case, I could never get my $200/hour attorney to understand the problem well enough to defend it -- so he had to hire another attorney as a consultant to make sure he filed things right. We had paid the attorney over $12,000 before trial. When we got to court the city immediately settled for the exact amount in back charges I was asking (7 years) and stopped charging the charges. Then the Judge said he had ruled that my attorney had done a lot of work in preparing for this trial and should receive a third of the settlement for his fee. I told the judge that my attorney was not hired on a contingency basis, that he had agreed to be paid by the hour. The judge told me to be quiet, that I should consider myself lucky because the law allowed him to get up to half of a class action settlement. I later heard that the city had a mock trial to see how their case would hold up in the real court. I was told that they all gathered for the trial but only asked one question of their rate consultant. “Can you justify these charges for the court?” and he said “No, the way the city has been charging cannot be justified.” That is why they settled. Then we were ordered by the court to find all the residents that had lived in our parks for the previous 7 years and disperse the award. The law only allowed us to charge for postage and mailing supplies but not for any of our time --our attorney did not help. However, he did refund the money we had paid him for his time. Don’t tell me that our laws weren’t written by the lawyers, for the lawyers to enrich the lawyers! I also learned that when you are right, you can fight city hall and win.
Just like the court case, I don’t want to take the lawyer-politicians to task, but they are ruining this country to enrich themselves and this is the only way I can think of to stop them.
I don’t want Government to Fix America. I want Americans to Fix Government.