Passing notes during class, and other Monday post-mortems.

“There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.”
-- Saul Bellow

----

As many readers already know, the latest challenge to the Scribner Place project on the part of New Albany’s rogue council faction went down in fully deserved flames on Monday evening.

Our own All4Word provided sterling NAC coverage of the meeting:

He wears a “K” on his chest, but it doesn’t mean “strikeout.”

Randy reported here:

For the record: Voting to kill Scribner Place were CM’s Coffey (District 1), Schmidt (District 2), and Price (District 3). All other members in attendance voted against any notion of killing the project and creating a lasting stain on the name of New Albany.

Note yet again – perhaps for the final time – that three of the four council members representing the city’s historic core of business and residential areas joined together to support CM Bill Schmidt’s cowardly resolution to renege on the city’s commitment to Scribner Place, in effect openly opposing a downtown revitalization effort that would greatly benefit their own districts, and by extension, the entire city.

No matter how many times it happens, such self-defeating behavior persists in defying rational explanation, but in the end, these are the patently unrepresentative and simply tragic depths to which these three overmatched politicians have plummeted in response to inner demons characterized by consistent, spasmodic, and knee-jerk opposition to change, revitalization and reform.

Don’t we deserve better?

At the Tribune, Eric Scott Campbell provided the straight story:

Amount of pledge to Scribner is disputed at Albany council meeting; September meeting minutes under scrutiny as latest funding challenge fails.

New Albany's plan for the Scribner Place downtown aquatic center remained unchanged Monday night after the introduction and defeat of a resolution to remove property tax revenue as an emergency funding option and limit the city’s annual income tax contribution to $137,500.

The reporter Campbell closed his account with a Priceless anecdote.

Resident Randy Smith said he’d file a complaint because someone from the audience passed a note to Price during the meeting. He believed the note should be read aloud into the record.

Gahan brought up the issue at meeting’s end, and Price said, “What do you want me to do, throw it back?” Price declined to read the note aloud.

Verily, Jethro knows full well that it’s catch and release time back at his cement pond, and rest assured that the voters of the Third District would very much like to throw Steve Price back into the electoral has-been reservoir, given his unfathomable and unbroken record of voting against the best interests of his own district … against his own neighbors … against the value of his own properties!

But we’ll be getting to that important task in earnest in just a few months, and until then, here’s idle speculation as to what the note passed Monday night to the purely oppositionist incumbent said:

Play some Skynyrd, Steve!!

Just a dozen eggs, white bread, peanut butter – generic’s fine, dear, you know how those nickels and dimes add up to dollars – N.

Hey Steve -- check out www.MrLandlord.com for all the new property management techniques.

Your vocabulary builder for Monday, July 3 is “argumentative.”

If it looks like you’re about to lose the argument, blame the city clerk.

We love. You. You’re a true Americain. Will you autograph my convalescent smock after the meeting? Signed, Professer Erika.