On the Bicentennial's Crutchfield seat cushions: How many were sold? Was the loan paid back?

According to tweets, news stories and other secondary sources ...

At last night's city council meeting, Pat "Patty Mac" McLaughlin retained his seat in the lead chair, with John Gonder agreeing to another term as sidekick.

A wholly redundant "aggressive panhandling" ordinance was adopted, to be immediately relegated to the considerable civic file folder (paper only, and quaintly non-electronic) marked "shit we'll never bother enforcing," but at least Shirley "Farmer Baird" now has a legislative achievement apart from creatively siphoning money to DNA's corner market stalls.

Curiously, Dan Coffey got all belligerent about the Port Authority, placing him in rare non-accord with the Gahan administration, for which the erstwhile Wizard of Westside has acted as de facto whip for the past two years. The PA was passed, anyway, and my guess would be that those unfortunate schmucks in attendance were witnessing some carefully scripted boilerplate: Pick an ordinance sure to pass, oppose it anyway with advance clearance from the top, and bolster one's credentials in the race for commissioner by taking a hard line on nothing.

Yawn.

But as Mrs. Beam pointed out, all we really want to know is how well those hired-gun Bicentennial books sold, how many of the 5,000 (!) remain to be sold, and whether Redevelopment's loan was paid back. We're fairly gripped with mercenary gala nostalgia just thinking about it.

Whatcha say, CeeSaw? Here is the newspaper report from November, 2011:

BOOK DEAL

In related news, Caesar updated the redevelopment commission on the status of a bicentennial book being prepared for release next year.

To produce and print 5,000 copies of the book will cost $144,000, Caesar said.

“I know that’s a lot of money, but there’s a lot of work that goes into these,” he said.

Redevelopment funds were used as a loan to the bicentennial commission to get the book started, and Caesar said the advance will be paid back after sales start accumulating.

Standard copies of the book will be sold for $40, but 200 limited editions will be sold for $200 through an invitation process, Caesar said.

As Caesar said the $144,000 will be derived from donations to the cause, proceeds from the book sales will go straight to funding bicentennial activities.

About $107,000 of the production total has already been raised, Caesar said.

He added the book will be extremely detailed and an appropriate representation of New Albany’s history.

“We feel there won’t be any problem selling it,” Caesar said. “These stories will have flavor to them.”