By James Feichtner
The Constitutional Patriots, a local conservative watchdog group, held their first meeting of the year on Jan. 20. An announcement was made that the organization aims to develop a committee structure. During a previous meeting, four committee groups were proposed to start out the structure. The first would be a political committee followed by a social/programming committee, a membership committee and an IT committee, which will include all of the social media coordination of the group.
“The idea behind all of this is to create engagement amongst all of our members,” member Lee Crannell said. “We just felt like it was important to get people more engaged with the activities of the Constitutional Patriots and so we felt the committee structure was a good avenue.”
Other agenda for the meeting was the discussion of transparency within Carmel’s government, specifically within the Carmel City Center Community Development Corporation and the Carmel Redevelopment Commission. Members strongly believe that the two are subject to audit.
“We ought to be able to see what the 4CDC is spending its money on,” member Dwight Lile said. “The 4CDC is subject to audit and we would like to see that done so that we see how much money is being spent on what, and what we are actually supporting as a city.”
The interest comes from Carmel’s current debt situation and the Patriots’ opinions on the lack of public information for a solution.
