Wednesday, November 26, 2014

ON THE AVENUES: Better access, quality of life, public safety, and various other Orwellian aspects of the New Albanist’s experience.

ON THE AVENUES: Better access, quality of life, public safety, and various other Orwellian aspects of the New Albanist’s experience.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Author's note: The bountiful holiday harvest of sheer and unrequited bile brings you today's early edition of ON THE AVENUES, including links to previous editions of our New Albanist's Dictionary (see below), as well as the annual Thanksgiving column tomorrow. 

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If you do not speak up when it matters, when would it matter that you speak? The opposite of courage is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.
-- Jim Hightower

Last week, New Albany’s Board of Public Works acted with unaccustomed principle and bold decisiveness to address the perennial dysfunction of New Albany’s one-way arterial street grid, courageously braving the wrath of almost one potential voter in unanimously approving the reconversion of East 5th Street to two-way traffic.

In doing so, the board and its chairman, former mayor Warren Nash, heeded the testimony of city engineer Larry Summers, who described the action as necessary because it would result in “better access.”

Before assuming “better access” to signify a universal concept, it might be informative to ask: Better access to what?

Primarily, to VFW Post 3281, which in itself would be a matter of supreme irony to city officials if they actually paid attention to the real world outside, given that last winter the very same VFW post didn’t give a nanosecond of a tinker’s damn about “better” pedestrian “access” to sidewalks, which were piled high with snow removed from its vast and largely unused parking lot by clueless flunkies.

Of course, back then a typically somnolent Board of Works was unable to muster a coherent response when “better access” meant walkers and their sidewalks stupidly blocked with someone else’s snow, but in the aftermath of the Main Street Disprovement, Deforestation and Semi Trailer Non-Diversion Project’s installation of a median directly in front of the VFW’s traditional Main Street entrance, and with 5th Street forever inaccessible via Main by virtue of it being pointed one-way south … well, then the wheels turned with lightning speed, and the pieties and hypocrisies dutifully were glue-stuck into place.

It is either amusing or tragic that the Main Street project’s $2 million or more in largesse was completely spread among its various intended political orifices before anyone stopped to consider the VFW’s driveway, and now we’re left with “better access” as a selective imperative for the VFW’s aging membership, probably since these same folks have been observed periodically to cast ballots.

Thus, the city acts with unprecedented haste to preclude one wastage of time and gasoline caused by driving unnecessarily around the block, while staring dully at passing tumbleweeds as other examples of precisely the same phenomenon are never addressed.

For instance, there’s the notion of “better access” from Elm Street to Dragon King’s Daughter, Larry Ricke’s firm, Uptown Arts, the Carnegie Center, Fox Law Office and Bank Street Brewhouse. Why should visitors to these establishments be forced to drive all the way around the block?

Here’s a hint, Warren: Reconfigure Bank Street to two-way traffic.

Or am I being too technical for you?

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Hence, the recurring problem with city officials delightedly settling on the repeated deployment of cute little buzz phrases they’ve spent all of 35 seconds considering in terms of their potential implications, and also why the pesky meaning of words in the English language bedevils them so.

Consequently, “better access” now takes it rightful place alongside “quality of life” and “public safety” as trite hack phrases rendered utterly nonsensical by the Gahan administration. It’s only a matter of time until classic Orwellian doublethink gems are resurrected as local Democratic Party campaign slogans:

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength.

I’m sure all former Democratic mayors can endorse these solid administrative dictums, if not their irony.

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Mayor Jeff Gahan apparently considers Nash to be a grandfatherly guiding light and party elder worth heeding, hence Nash’s position of weekly civic obfuscation at the Board of Works, where he does quite little save running interference for the ever-deepening conceptual muddle that has characterized Gahan’s disappointing term in office.

What’s interesting about this symbiotic attachment between Gahan and Nash is that they share a distinction as the only two Democratic mayoral candidates in a half-century (or more) to capture 60% of the vote in winning office. Gahan took 64% against a split Republican effort in 2011, and Nash scored 60% in 1971 in deposing the “All-American” Tuffy Inman.

Ah, but it gets even better.

When Nash ran for re-election in 1975, he became perhaps the only Democratic mayor in the history of New Albany to see a 60%-plus share for a second time. Unfortunately for Nash, it was his opponent Bob Real’s victorious tally, not his own.

1975: Republican challenger Robert Real defeats Nash, 9,264 to 4,763.
Total votes: 14,027
Percentage: 66 - 34

Whoa! And to think we regarded the election results of November 4, 2014 as an epic beat down. Even Mark Seabrook didn’t win this year by a 66-34 percentage -- although he came tantalizingly close.

Note that as a political insurgent, I’m not complaining at all. The Board of Works may do little or nothing to address real infrastructure issues, and city officials can continue to merrily butcher the beauty of the English language – just so long as Gahan continues to model his political career on Nash’s.

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Several years back, in the newspaper, when it still covered New Albany, I published two installments of the New Albanist’s Dictionary.

A New Albanist’s Dictionary (Oct. 15, 2009).

A New Albanist’s Dictionary, Volume 2 (Jan. 6, 2011).

Granted, almost four years have passed, and certain of the topical references are quite dated. It may be time for an update, and the three favored civic bullshit phrases considered here today occupy the top of the list.

Better access
Quality of life
Public safety

Readers, any thoughts on simple definitions for these?

You needn’t over-think them; after all, the current occupants aren’t, either.

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