Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my (bald) head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!
-- David Duggins at last night's NAHA board meeting
Let's review.
For quite some time, former New Albany Housing Authority chief Bob Lane and his staff had a plan -- a genuine, real, written design -- to revamp public housing in New Albany on a 1-to-1 demolish/rebuild unit basis.
For Lane to achieve this plan, Mayor Jeff Gahan and certain of his vapid minions had to sign a few documents -- and they refused. In fact, Gahan purposefully neglected to replace housing board members, and in most significant respects, the mayor did what he could to thwart Lane's plans.
It's about a "C-minus" student's mythology, but more on this in a moment.
Gahan then seized control of NAHA, fired Lane, purged the board by replacing its members with reliably servile bootlickers and sycophants, and solved a huge 3rd-floor etiquette problem by shifting the completely unqualified David Duggins a long mile away from HWC Engineering's branch office of municipal government.
The new public housing regime promptly promised to demolish half the existing units, to be replaced with vouchers, the utility of which is contradicted by every prevailing academic study -- but what does this mean to those among us who don't ever bother reading?
Except for the mythology, of course.
This abrupt putsch had the predictable effect of creating opposition; naturally, with no specific plan apart from the vague voucher bauble, and with the fix so very obviously in, thoughtful housing residents and community members viewed Gahan's actions in precisely the proper context: a hostile takeover of NAHA to facilitate social engineering according to the "vision" of a typical veneer salesman's lifelong prejudices.
So far, these verbal assurances to residents and the community have taken the form of veiled threats and strong-arm tactics, which are sure to become more prevalent when the police sub-station (see below) is up and running; ironically, it isn't about the crime, it's about "boy, do you really need to be signing a petition when Pappy Gahan disapproves?"
Is the police chief capable of embarrassment at this point?
Years of Gahan's conniving over Bud Light Limes at the Roadhouse, followed by ten months of pure bungling by people who can't even lie very well, and only yesterday does the handpicked board of demolition coordinators bother to release an official statement of calming, the tone of which was immediately contradicted by an increasingly strident and intemperate Duggins, who denounced freedom of expression while pointing a paranoid finger at the emerging conspiracy against his selfless band of heroes.
It's an absolute and expanding mess of Gahan's own making. Six years into this reign of anchor-weighted error, Gahan is frantically scratching the most irresistible generational and mythological itch of all, this being his earnest and impeccably crackpot theory that honest DINOs can't ever get what they really deserve in this town until public housing is scourged and the unsightly poor dispersed.
Carbohydrates don't matter as much as plausible deniability, and Gahan's loading up on the latter, importing a red-faced bag man from Clark County to do the dirty work.
Gahan probably believes he's in the clear, but actually his ongoing public housing putsch reveals the fathomless depths of a moral and ethical void.
Not only is the stain uncontained, it's spreading. The monetizing vandals at Team Gahan finally are getting worried, and their poise is fast eroding. With the next coronation due in 2019, and so many beaks to keep wetted, things are about to become even dirtier.
So let's keep pushing, shall we?
New Albany housing board signs resolution stating none will be homeless after demolition, by Elizabeth Beilman (News and Tribune)
Resolution in response to "false information"
NEW ALBANY — The New Albany Housing Authority Board of Commissioners signed a resolution Monday stating no current residents living in public housing "will be made homeless" as the result of a plan to demolish hundreds of units.
The board unanimously approved the resolution during its regular meeting, putting into writing assurances that members have previously verbally made to the community.
"This is no different than what we've said, but clearly I think people don't believe or are listening to us ... this is in line with what the board believes, this is in line with regulations by [U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development]," board president Irving Joshua said.
The resolution mentions "there has been false information circulated that has led NAHA residents to believe that they may be evicted or otherwise forced from their homes."
NAHA Interim Executive Director David Duggins called this information "extremely harmful," disseminated by "members of the community and former members of this board."
This information — that "people will be made homeless, that they will be evicted and that we are going to come in and tear down all these structures and put people on the streets" could not be "farther from the truth," Duggins said, adding some residents have asked if that is what will occur.
"We are here every day. The people who have gotten involved are not," he said, declining to name specific groups or individuals. "They do not have the residents' best interest in mind. We do, because we deal with it every day."
Click here to view a selection of previous NAC posts about the public housing putsch.
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