Open Letter to Mayor Tom Henry

Mayor Tom Henry
City of Fort Wayne

Mr. Mayor,

I am writing to express my concern on the proposed casino as not only a citizen of Fort Wayne but as an Executive Director of a local non-profit serving marginalized homeowners in our city. NeighborLink mobilizes local churches and interested community groups to meet these needs by coming to the table with their own resources and time.  We have helped hundreds of elderly, disabled, single moms, and those struck by life’s circumstances over the years. We have worked with Cindy Joiner at Code Enforcement and Denise Porter Ross in the Neighborhood Quadrant System to meet the needs that they were not able to as well. 

I have been coming to the table as you have been calling on all of the area social service organizations, churches, and non-profit organization by participating in your Social Service Summit meetings. You are calling on all of us to “work together” to prioritize the City’s biggest social issues and come up with an action plan on how we can make strides in solving some of those issues. Things like homelessness, hunger, job training, child wellness, and the list could go on. 

I also sat in on some of your early neighborhood partnership meetings where you urged the community to offer up ideas and to choose what areas of funding should be cut and what shouldn’t be. I thought this was a great step towards cutting budgets in a healthy way. It showed that you were interested in tackling the budget issues by reform and not by quick fixes. It showed that we all must make make the choice together.

I acknowledge that your job is multi-faceted and it never going to please everyone, but I believe your responsibility is to make the City of Fort Wayne a better place to live and to provide opportunities for it’s citizens to succeed in life. The decision to put in place an action that will bring social harm does not seem to support your other actions in making our city a better place.

Mr. Mayor, I am all in for doing my part in making our city a better place and have devoted my life to doing so. I am ready to support your efforts for strengthening our social service efforts as well. But I have a hard time supporting those efforts when you are attempting to bring something like a casino into our city, which has proven social consequences that will only make our social service issues even worse. The idea that a casino will provide additional funds to aide in whatever plan comes from these Social Service summits is false and will not be enough to even begin covering the increased need from those that tried to “win big” to solve their financial woes.

Please don’t contradict your efforts. This isn’t just a letter attempting to persuade you away from making a decision, but a call on behalf of all social service agencies that are already overwhelmed and under resourced to choose responsibly.  I am willing to continue this conversation and do whatever is possible to support the efforts that will bring positive change to our city.

Thank you for you time and the openness that allows people like me to share my voice.

Grace and Peace

Andrew Hoffman
Executive Director of NeighborLink Fort Wayne
Concerned Citizen