Jon Seidel, Post-Tribune
Mary Wilson sat on a Gary doorstep on a warm March day, thinking about her hometown's future as weather hinted at better things to come.
She sat outside a new Horace Mann apartment, but she could see shuttered Broadway buildings on the horizon.
"Gary's eventually going to be a ghost town," Wilson said, shaking her head. "It's already a ghost town."
Three of her cousins disagree.
Gloria Whittler, JoAnne Taylor and Elmer Henderson grew up when the city was booming. They insist there will always be a Gary, Indiana.
"As long as Jesus Christ is Lord," Whittler said, "we're going to make it."
But they know the city's been in trouble for years. Aside from prayer, they're not sure what's going to save it.
Neither, it seems, does anyone else. Rep. Chet Dobis, D-Merrillville, stood inside the limestone walls of the Indiana Statehouse last month, and he said Gary's financial crisis "may be an unsolvable problem."
"There's not a person in this building, there's not a person in this chamber, there's not a person in this state that can tell me or anybody else how you bail out Gary, Indiana," Dobis said.
Lawmakers turned their cheek to his warning, voting down the city's request for a land-based casino. Gary advocates have few other plans for revitalization. Critics smell blood, saying it's time for Northwest Indiana's largest city to die.
But if that happens, local government experts say it will hurt more than just Wilson, her cousins and their neighbors.
Raymond Scheele, co-director of the Bowen Center for Public Affairs at Ball State University, said major cities like Gary simply don't disappear.
If Gary fails, taxpayers outside the city will pay the price.
"You just don't dissolve a city," Scheele said. "The people don't go away. The streets don't go away. All of the infrastructure's still there, and somebody's got to take care of it."
Today the Post-Tribune begins a continuing series about the future of Gary, this newspaper's hometown, and how it might be rescued by its own people. It begins by acknowledging a serious problem is festering on Lake Michigan.
Jim Flannery, executive director of the Northwest Indiana Quality of Life Council, said Gary's solution must come from its residents, but Northwest Indiana must support it.
"Some of this stuff has to be revolutionary," Flannery said.
Speaking not in his official capacity but as a Lake County resident, Flannery said there are plenty of ideas for turning the city around.
"If you ask a lot of people, a lot of people will give you a lot of answers," Flannery said.
But so many proposals face daunting political and economic obstacles. Take the land-based casino: Despite the bipartisan prediction that it would create $11 million in needed state revenue, lawmakers facing re-election couldn't be sold on an expansion of gambling in Indiana.
Asked about Gary's plight, downstate politicians often drift immediately toward the Lake County Council's failure to pass an income tax. The council shot down the idea in 2007 and shows no signs of budging.
Gary's leaders often glance out City Hall's northern windows toward U.S. Steel Corp., lamenting a set of tax breaks given by the state to heavy industry. General Assembly members and Gov. Mitch Daniels warn the company might close up shop if those breaks are rolled back.
James B. Lane, a long-time Gary historian, said the city's failure would be "shocking," given not only the tax breaks for U.S. Steel but also federal bailouts of major investment firms.
"If any company like AIG was too big to fail," Lane said, "a proud city like Gary, in my opinion, is too big to fail."
Fall from glory
U.S. Steel effectively created Gary when it built a new plant on the shore of Lake Michigan in 1906. Before long, Gary was a bustling metropolis. The public schools were a national model. Shoppers crowded Broadway's sidewalks.
Whittler and her cousins reminisced about it last week.
"It was the most awesome place," Whittler said. "They came from all over the states to come to Gary."
The city birthed several famous musical acts, but none more notable than the Jackson 5. It also elected one of the country's first black mayors, Richard Gordon Hatcher, and played host to the groundbreaking National Black Political Convention in 1972.
Gary fell victim to suburbanization and white flight in the latter half of the 20th century and eventually earned the country's "murder capital" title. Poverty, unemployment and sparse economic development plagued the city's budget.
But the reason for today's urgency is a set of property tax caps headed toward the state's Constitution, a change championed by Daniels. The caps will save Hoosier property owners millions of dollars. But they cut off revenue for local governments all over Indiana. Many will struggle, but none more so than Gary.
"It could be devastating for Gary," Scheele said.
For now, the caps are simply law. The Indiana Distressed Unit Appeals Board raised them in Gary in 2009, and is likely to do so as long as it can. But when voters go to the polls in November, they will decide whether to make the caps constitutional.
A vote to do so will dissolve the Distressed Unit Board by 2012, leaving Gary to survive on its own. Many people, including one member of the Distressed Unit Board, have wondered aloud if there is enough assessed value for Gary to survive.
Estimates show its property tax revenue would be reduced to $29.7 million if the caps kick in by 2012. That's less than the city spends now on its police, fire and ambulance departments.
The Distressed Unit Board forced Gary to hire a fiscal monitor, Philadelphia-based Public Financial Management Inc. Its report, released late last year, is meant as a financial roadmap to life under the caps. But it's based on 100 percent tax collections in Gary, giving fodder to critics who point to 72 percent collections in 2009.
Nonetheless, PFM makes painful recommendations. It suggested laying off 57 firefighters this year. City Hall is trying to lay off fewer by finding other budget cuts.
Though the outlook isn't good, Mayor Rudy Clay said seeds have been planted for economic development that could bolster the city budget.
"As far as Gary's concerned, you have to take it a day at a time, take it a month at a time," Clay said.
Enter politics
If Gary is to survive past 2012, it will need to endure a familiar test: politics.
The city's primary election is just 14 months away. Already it promises to be dramatic. Clay, a career Democrat politician in his 70s who lived through the civil rights movement, has said he will seek a second full term.
At-large City Council member Ragen Hatcher filed paperwork last week to explore challenging Clay. Her father, former Mayor Hatcher, is a civil rights icon.
Jack Lieske also signed campaign paperwork. Lieske and Hatcher are Democrats, and other members of their party are likely to jump into the race. The winner is sworn in Jan. 1, 2012, the year the constitutional tax caps would take effect.
"If there's going to be change, I think it has to come from within Gary, and I think it ultimately has to be at the voting booths," Flannery said.
Toward that end, citizens are rising up. The Miller Citizens Corp., a historical watchdog of Gary government, has been joined by the Central District Organizing Project. Together they nearly scuttled a move to privatize trash collection last year.
They say City Hall's budget cuts don't reflect the priorities of its people. Lori Peterson, CDOP's 31-year-old leader, said people who say, "Let Gary fail," are truly referring to City Hall.
Peterson repeatedly denies an interest in political office. Instead, she said she values "what happens when regular people participate in the process."
"The city should really listen to what they're saying," Peterson said. "I feel like my role, and what I think I've maybe been called to do, is just set up that forum."
Peterson said she is proud of Gary's history as the crucible of black political empowerment, and she's not ready to see it die any more than Whittler, Taylor or Henderson. But she said Gary is resilient, and this crisis could be a chance for it to build a new sense of self-determination.
"It's reminding me of Hurricane Katrina," Peterson said. "It could create an opportunity, but at the same time, nobody wants a hurricane."