Jane Burgess Addresses Parks Department Invoice Scam

Zionsville, IN – Republican candidate for Zionsville mayor, Jane Burgess, shared her concern over the Town’s mishandling of payment for the Winterfest ice rink.

“I am disappointed to learn about the Town falling victim to an obvious scam that diverted payment on a $59,000 invoice due to Ice America.  From the WISH TV news report issued on January 27th, the fake invoice was full of punctuation and grammatical errors and included a request to have payment sent to a personal bank account.  I will institute cybersecurity training for my administration to be better prepared to spot and mitigate fraud.  We will have safeguards in place to detect these egregious red flags, and we will improve the security of all financial dealings by our Town.”

Burgess went on to say, “While this situation involves fraud, this isn’t the first time that the administration has experienced issues in getting vendors paid.  In July, 2022, WRTV reported on a story involving City Wide Paving (CWP), a company hired to re-pave the golf course paths; CWP experienced months-long delays in receiving over $500,000 for their services.  Mayor Styron has run our Town into complete financial chaos. If elected, I will work to restore our Town’s operations as quickly and comprehensively as possible.”

“Even more unsettling was how long it took the Town to report this loss to authorities. Two months is totally unacceptable." Jane added, "A well-managed administration needs to be both transparent and timely in their response to a serious issue such as this scam.”

A cornerstone of Burgess’s platform is Fiscal Responsibility & Leadership. If elected Mayor, she is pledging to restore financial accountability and will call for an independent audit within the first 90 days in office.

“I am pleased that the Zionsville Police Department has turned the investigation over to the Indiana State Police (ISP) to avoid any self-dealing.  I have confidence that the ISP’s subsequent investigation will allow us to learn more about how this happened and will give us context on how to prevent it in the future.”