The Sherman Minton Bridge still stands.
The many vacated commercial buildings in downtown New Albany haven’t collapsed – yet.
People are moving, going to work, shopping, living their lives.
When the sun again sets, the highlands we know as Silver Hills will cast a long evening shadow over the city’s west side, where New Albany Adult DVD finally has opened on Main Street in spite of persistent and generally bungled efforts on the part of the city to keep the business shuttered.
The First Amendment has survived another beating at the hands of small-minded ward heelers, and now the market will commence its judgment on the veracity of New Albany DVD’s business plan.
Naturally, owing to the ongoing litigation and various settlement possibilities, we’ll never know if the store’s strategic aims were designed with day-to-day profit in mind, or whether inviting the city’s misguided wrath and collecting the proceeds was the store’s only goal from the beginning.
Amany Ali’s Sunday Tribune survey of the New Albany DVD saga concludes with this account of the Wizard of Westside’s latest bizarre rationale for self-insertion with respect to arbitrating New Albanian morality.
West end resident Dan Coffey said he is attempting to raise enough money to buy the building and use it for a senior center. Coffey is a City Councilman, but said his efforts are strictly as a New Albany resident who does not want the adult bookstore in New Albany.
Coffey said he has taken pledges so far, and said he will not actually begin collecting money until he knows that enough money could be collected to accomplish the goal.
Coffey said the new business is not an asset to the city.
"I try not to look at it," he said. "It kind of breaks your heart when you drive by it."
Coffey said he doesn't think local residents will frequent the store.
However, he said he thinks customers will keep the business open.
"I think the vast majority of people will come from Louisville," he said.
Citizen Coffey is to be commended for belatedly swapping his elected persona for a more properly expressed private one, which places him firmly within the ranks of concerned taxpayers like David Huckleberry, whose recent suggestion that we do a better job of fleecing Caesar’s-bound motorists drew enthusiastic nods from Councilman Coffey.
However, Coffey is heartbroken at the sight of New Albany DVD, a rare “new business” that even the Wizard can see fits the bill of enticing transitory Louisvillians to spend money in New Albany, something that “local residents” assuredly won’t do … but these same “local residents” still must pay, either by pledging the money they wouldn’t spend on adult DVDs toward a crusade to uproot the store, or providing it indirectly to city government to atone for its botched campaign against the First Amendment.
All the while, whether through Coffey’s congenital grandstanding or the city’s mangled legal strategies, New Albany DVD is provided free publicity and maximum exposure (pun intended) far beyond what it could receive in paid advertising.
Had the city ignored New Albany DVD in the spring of 2004, allowed it to open for business, passed ordinances restricting future projects of the same ilk, and all in all, treated the phenomenon according to a policy of containment rather than aggression, it is quite possible that New Albany DVD would already have passed into history by now.
Instead, fueled by the puritanical zeal of the Coffeyites, the city faces a lose-lose situation, with every available option standing to cost us money we don’t have to spend.
As for the Wizard himself, it is quite likely that he see the situation as clearly as NA Confidential … but when it comes to ambition, self-aggrandizement means never having to say you’re constructive.
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Monday, February 28, 2005
Friday, February 18, 2005
New Albany DVD: It may well depend on the pocket being picked
Cash strapped New Albany’s bungling attempts to prevent New Albany DVD from opening were laughed out of court, and now the adult store’s lawyer offers settlement options for the city to consider as the store readies for opening.
The Courier-Journal’s Ben Zion Hershberg writes that the City Council remains divided over its response to the settlement options, which range from allowing the store to go about its business to buying it out with cash the city doesn’t possess.
Self-styled majority whip Dan Coffey, the Wizard of Westside, predictably seizes center stage in the article by Hershberg:
“His own view, Coffey said, is that decisions about New Albany DVD shouldn't be only based on dollars and cents but should include the consideration of much broader issues, such as moral values and future economic development.”
Hershberg fails to identify any intelligible strand in Coffey’s relentless demagoguery on the issue of New Albany DVD that might pertain to economic development, other than the potential precedent of the city buying out any business that doesn’t fit Coffey’s narrow definition of “moral.”
At last evening’s City Council meeting, ostensible Coffey ally of convenience David Huckleberry devoted his public speaking time to a vision of economic redevelopment that promotes the passive incorporation of the city’s river port heritage into a Native American interpretive center.
This would take precedence over current proposals to build a youth soccer complex, which both Huckleberry and Coffey evidently fear will be the taxpayer-supported bastion of eggheaded, upper-income privilege, whereas an interpretive center (funded how?) would siphon large numbers of revelers headed for Caesar’s casino, allowing New Albany to “pick their pockets.”
The “morality” of picking pockets? How remarkably quaint.
Well, we’ve got news for both Huckleberry and Coffey: New Albany’s heritage as a port city has far more to do with brothels, bars and New Albany DVD than it does with the crazily futile notion of diverting gambling-obsessed, Caesar’s-bound drivers to a celebration of Native Americana.
But how silly of us to forget that it's not about morality and economic development at all. It's about "no progress at any price" on the one hand, and "self-aggrandizement at any price" on the other.
Adult video store offers to settle; New Albany given four options to suit, by Ben Zion Hershberg
The Courier-Journal’s Ben Zion Hershberg writes that the City Council remains divided over its response to the settlement options, which range from allowing the store to go about its business to buying it out with cash the city doesn’t possess.
Self-styled majority whip Dan Coffey, the Wizard of Westside, predictably seizes center stage in the article by Hershberg:
“His own view, Coffey said, is that decisions about New Albany DVD shouldn't be only based on dollars and cents but should include the consideration of much broader issues, such as moral values and future economic development.”
Hershberg fails to identify any intelligible strand in Coffey’s relentless demagoguery on the issue of New Albany DVD that might pertain to economic development, other than the potential precedent of the city buying out any business that doesn’t fit Coffey’s narrow definition of “moral.”
At last evening’s City Council meeting, ostensible Coffey ally of convenience David Huckleberry devoted his public speaking time to a vision of economic redevelopment that promotes the passive incorporation of the city’s river port heritage into a Native American interpretive center.
This would take precedence over current proposals to build a youth soccer complex, which both Huckleberry and Coffey evidently fear will be the taxpayer-supported bastion of eggheaded, upper-income privilege, whereas an interpretive center (funded how?) would siphon large numbers of revelers headed for Caesar’s casino, allowing New Albany to “pick their pockets.”
The “morality” of picking pockets? How remarkably quaint.
Well, we’ve got news for both Huckleberry and Coffey: New Albany’s heritage as a port city has far more to do with brothels, bars and New Albany DVD than it does with the crazily futile notion of diverting gambling-obsessed, Caesar’s-bound drivers to a celebration of Native Americana.
But how silly of us to forget that it's not about morality and economic development at all. It's about "no progress at any price" on the one hand, and "self-aggrandizement at any price" on the other.
Adult video store offers to settle; New Albany given four options to suit, by Ben Zion Hershberg
Thursday, January 06, 2005
City Hall's $69,000 question: Does Kevlar protect the wearer from self-inflicted wounds?
Loyal NA Confidential readers will recall my brief conversation with New Albany City Attorney Shane Gibson, who laughed off my question as to the future of civil liberties in New Albany given the city’s efforts to prevent New Albany DVD (adult video) from opening for business on West Main Street.
In the wake of yesterday’s ruling by a U.S. District Judge that the city “erred in attempting to regulate New Albany DVD through a zoning ordinance that is too broad,” it emerges that we have spent $69,000 to date in the struggle to keep New Albany morally clean.
I repeat: $69,000.
At the same time, Mayor James Garner’s pathological obstructionism has exacerbated a yearlong territorial pissing match with the City Council, resulting in a pocket veto of the council’s efforts to enact an ordinance enforcement position.
Among the reasons cited by the Mayor for his stubbornness on the ordinance enforcement debate (beyond the obvious – that it wasn’t his idea) is his insistence that the part-time attorney Gibson will have too little time to handle the flood of complaints that will ensue when at long last city residents are forced at the point of financial loss to observe ordinances that have been on the books for years, and that would make the city far cleaner in the physical sense, perhaps leading in part to a rejuvenation that would make concerns about adult DVDs superfluous.
Which begs the question: Who is dirtier - an adult bookstore customer, the owner of a junked automobile on the street, or a supporter of the Mayor who owns a building downtown but won't use it in a way compatible with the public good?
But I digress. To repeat: $69,000 to wage war against civil liberties.
On the evening of January 5, an entire City Council meeting passed without mention of Smith Furniture’s forthcoming departure from downtown New Albany, or Randy Stumler’s recent Tribune op-ed piece suggesting that the scope of Scribner Place be broadened to include a new City-County office building (to name just two issues of potential significance).
Instead, New Albany citizens in attendance earnestly went to the lectern one by one, united in annoyance with Mayor Garner’s bizarre and unsupportable detachment from the issues that concern them: Ordinance enforcement, pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey hiring practices, and thinly-veiled vendettas against whistle-blowing city employees ... to name just three.
Depressingly, City Hall already has begun to circle the wagons in preparation for what may be a protracted legal struggle with the demoted and ultimately deposed building inspector and whistle-blower Steve Broadus, a campaign the stands to further deplete coffers that already are symbolized by an image in the mind’s eye of the Mayor, pockets turned out, standing in front of a vacant downtown building owned by an upstanding local family with a jagged cardboard sign hand-lettered in crayon that reads “will doo know werk for somethin.”
And yet, in the midst of this ongoing chaos, the city of New Albany has the princely sum of $69,000 to flush on a rear-guard legal action necessitated by the city’s unpreparedness with respect to the same federal judge’s assertion that there is indeed a right to regulate adult businesses – just not the ex post facto, shoddily written variety predictably chosen by City Hall.
To attend a City Council meeting in New Albany is to observe a steadily growing disconnect between City Hall's opinion of its own public relations abilities and its actual performance when the red light come on.
Mayor Garner generally floats through the council proceedings like a discombobulated pixie on Zoloft, huddling theatrically with his team, forever oblivious to those members of the public who desperately seek to gain his attention to make a point that might well become the central theme of growing opposition to his shambolic tenure:
Mister Mayor, at some point in four years, something that remotely resembles vision and leadership absolutely must emanate from your immediate vicinity, or else you will not deserve the respect you incessantly demand, because respect derives from accomplishment, not the bathroom mirror.
It goes without saying that Garner will not deserve re-election.
Puzzlingly, the administrative firm of Garner, Gibson & Toran seems to fancy itself as master of political form over intellectual substance, and yet when tested (as last evening), it invariably emerges in a confused, unfavorable light when compared to a fractious City Council that itself does not bring to mind blissful visions of tulip tiptoeing.
At a crucial juncture in the city’s history, our helm is being manned by an empty suit.
If anyone can explain to me how this epic underachievement somehow constitutes a “different kind of Mayor,” I will buy you a beer.
But honestly, I think my money’s safe.
We do deserve better … don’t we?
----------------
Ben Zion Hershberg’s Courier-Journal article (New Albany DVD ruling) of January 6, 2005:
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2005/01/06in/A1-dvd0106-8095.html
In the wake of yesterday’s ruling by a U.S. District Judge that the city “erred in attempting to regulate New Albany DVD through a zoning ordinance that is too broad,” it emerges that we have spent $69,000 to date in the struggle to keep New Albany morally clean.
I repeat: $69,000.
At the same time, Mayor James Garner’s pathological obstructionism has exacerbated a yearlong territorial pissing match with the City Council, resulting in a pocket veto of the council’s efforts to enact an ordinance enforcement position.
Among the reasons cited by the Mayor for his stubbornness on the ordinance enforcement debate (beyond the obvious – that it wasn’t his idea) is his insistence that the part-time attorney Gibson will have too little time to handle the flood of complaints that will ensue when at long last city residents are forced at the point of financial loss to observe ordinances that have been on the books for years, and that would make the city far cleaner in the physical sense, perhaps leading in part to a rejuvenation that would make concerns about adult DVDs superfluous.
Which begs the question: Who is dirtier - an adult bookstore customer, the owner of a junked automobile on the street, or a supporter of the Mayor who owns a building downtown but won't use it in a way compatible with the public good?
But I digress. To repeat: $69,000 to wage war against civil liberties.
On the evening of January 5, an entire City Council meeting passed without mention of Smith Furniture’s forthcoming departure from downtown New Albany, or Randy Stumler’s recent Tribune op-ed piece suggesting that the scope of Scribner Place be broadened to include a new City-County office building (to name just two issues of potential significance).
Instead, New Albany citizens in attendance earnestly went to the lectern one by one, united in annoyance with Mayor Garner’s bizarre and unsupportable detachment from the issues that concern them: Ordinance enforcement, pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey hiring practices, and thinly-veiled vendettas against whistle-blowing city employees ... to name just three.
Depressingly, City Hall already has begun to circle the wagons in preparation for what may be a protracted legal struggle with the demoted and ultimately deposed building inspector and whistle-blower Steve Broadus, a campaign the stands to further deplete coffers that already are symbolized by an image in the mind’s eye of the Mayor, pockets turned out, standing in front of a vacant downtown building owned by an upstanding local family with a jagged cardboard sign hand-lettered in crayon that reads “will doo know werk for somethin.”
And yet, in the midst of this ongoing chaos, the city of New Albany has the princely sum of $69,000 to flush on a rear-guard legal action necessitated by the city’s unpreparedness with respect to the same federal judge’s assertion that there is indeed a right to regulate adult businesses – just not the ex post facto, shoddily written variety predictably chosen by City Hall.
To attend a City Council meeting in New Albany is to observe a steadily growing disconnect between City Hall's opinion of its own public relations abilities and its actual performance when the red light come on.
Mayor Garner generally floats through the council proceedings like a discombobulated pixie on Zoloft, huddling theatrically with his team, forever oblivious to those members of the public who desperately seek to gain his attention to make a point that might well become the central theme of growing opposition to his shambolic tenure:
Mister Mayor, at some point in four years, something that remotely resembles vision and leadership absolutely must emanate from your immediate vicinity, or else you will not deserve the respect you incessantly demand, because respect derives from accomplishment, not the bathroom mirror.
It goes without saying that Garner will not deserve re-election.
Puzzlingly, the administrative firm of Garner, Gibson & Toran seems to fancy itself as master of political form over intellectual substance, and yet when tested (as last evening), it invariably emerges in a confused, unfavorable light when compared to a fractious City Council that itself does not bring to mind blissful visions of tulip tiptoeing.
At a crucial juncture in the city’s history, our helm is being manned by an empty suit.
If anyone can explain to me how this epic underachievement somehow constitutes a “different kind of Mayor,” I will buy you a beer.
But honestly, I think my money’s safe.
We do deserve better … don’t we?
----------------
Ben Zion Hershberg’s Courier-Journal article (New Albany DVD ruling) of January 6, 2005:
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2005/01/06in/A1-dvd0106-8095.html
Monday, February 07, 2005
Mullah Goebel and the battle against New Albany DVD
A letter to the editor entitled “Fight against pornography is not over” appears in Sunday’s New Albany Tribune.
The author is Tony Goebel, pastor at the New Beginnings Community Church.
Pastor Goebel begins by presenting his credentials as a “pastor and a lawyer,” and provides his game plan for the “battle against pornography creeping into our community through New Albany DVD.”
In Pastor Goebel’s view, “Round One ended with Federal Judge Sarah Evans Barker refusing to dismiss a federal lawsuit filed by NA DVD alleging the city of New Albany had violated its (NA DVD’s) Constitutionally protected ‘free speech’ rights … (because) Judge Barker held that the actions taken by the city to stop this adult business from opening ‘are susceptible to an inference of bad faith prosecution’ … but her denial is not the end of the story.”
For what he perceives as Round Two, Pastor Goebel offers “free legal advice” with respect to the city’s appeals options.
As for Round Three, he belatedly comes to the obviously grudging admission that, “the sale and distribution of ‘pornography’ as defined by the courts is protected ‘speech,’ while the sale and distribution of ‘obscenity’ is not.” Pastor Goebel recommends enforcing current obscenity laws and passing new ones.
Round Four constitutes the inevitable advertisement for Pastor Goebel’s primary business, saving souls: “The only way to defeat the predominance of sin is by sharing the saving message of the gospel of Jesus Christ with the lost … the more people who are converted to Christ, the less demand and profit there will be for any adult business.”
And, just as inevitably, who better to unite the “churches and Christians of New Albany” than Pastor Goebel himself? Accordingly, on February 17, New Beginnings will be hosting a meeting to organize the “knockout punch to pornography.”
Above all else, Pastor Goebel’s letter serves to remind us that in the struggle to create a revolution from nothing and to move society forward, those among us who embrace superstition and advocate regression stand ever ready to assist us in making the journey backwards in time to the primordial ooze.
Granted, it is quite likely that there’s not a single person currently living in New Albany who, if asked, would publicly profess a predilection for pornography.
However, and far more importantly, there are many hereabouts who understand that Pastor Goebel’s intentionally slippery rhetorical slope poses grave problems for the maintenance of free speech, free expression, and free choice when it comes to matters of conscience like religious observance.
Pastor Goebel begins with the word “pornography,” shifts to “obscenity” in mid-argument, then concludes with “sin.” Even Tribune readers can see that these three words do not mean the same thing, and as a lawyer trained in the importance of semantics, Pastor Goebel knows it, too.
Cleverly, Pastor Goebel does not address the legal concept of community standards with respect to obscenity, preferring instead to sidestep this most crucial (and complicated) consideration by introducing the concept of sin, in effect pole-vaulting over any legal and secular obstacles to the Inquisition to nestle safely in the realm of theology.
And guess who is ready, willing and able to provide the suggested view according to his particular version of Christian theology?
Theology is not the realm addressed by the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, but this simple fact will never suffice to convince the theocrats among us.
Those who do not wish to reside in a place where Mullah Goebel defines concepts like obscenity for you, rather than in a place where you have the freedom to consider these concepts on your own, must remain vigilant, because it would be tragically mistaken to presume that Adult DVD is the sole target of any such Crusade.
As for the involvement if tax-exempt religious groups in political matters, we’ll just have to leave that one for another time.
The author is Tony Goebel, pastor at the New Beginnings Community Church.
Pastor Goebel begins by presenting his credentials as a “pastor and a lawyer,” and provides his game plan for the “battle against pornography creeping into our community through New Albany DVD.”
In Pastor Goebel’s view, “Round One ended with Federal Judge Sarah Evans Barker refusing to dismiss a federal lawsuit filed by NA DVD alleging the city of New Albany had violated its (NA DVD’s) Constitutionally protected ‘free speech’ rights … (because) Judge Barker held that the actions taken by the city to stop this adult business from opening ‘are susceptible to an inference of bad faith prosecution’ … but her denial is not the end of the story.”
For what he perceives as Round Two, Pastor Goebel offers “free legal advice” with respect to the city’s appeals options.
As for Round Three, he belatedly comes to the obviously grudging admission that, “the sale and distribution of ‘pornography’ as defined by the courts is protected ‘speech,’ while the sale and distribution of ‘obscenity’ is not.” Pastor Goebel recommends enforcing current obscenity laws and passing new ones.
Round Four constitutes the inevitable advertisement for Pastor Goebel’s primary business, saving souls: “The only way to defeat the predominance of sin is by sharing the saving message of the gospel of Jesus Christ with the lost … the more people who are converted to Christ, the less demand and profit there will be for any adult business.”
And, just as inevitably, who better to unite the “churches and Christians of New Albany” than Pastor Goebel himself? Accordingly, on February 17, New Beginnings will be hosting a meeting to organize the “knockout punch to pornography.”
Above all else, Pastor Goebel’s letter serves to remind us that in the struggle to create a revolution from nothing and to move society forward, those among us who embrace superstition and advocate regression stand ever ready to assist us in making the journey backwards in time to the primordial ooze.
Granted, it is quite likely that there’s not a single person currently living in New Albany who, if asked, would publicly profess a predilection for pornography.
However, and far more importantly, there are many hereabouts who understand that Pastor Goebel’s intentionally slippery rhetorical slope poses grave problems for the maintenance of free speech, free expression, and free choice when it comes to matters of conscience like religious observance.
Pastor Goebel begins with the word “pornography,” shifts to “obscenity” in mid-argument, then concludes with “sin.” Even Tribune readers can see that these three words do not mean the same thing, and as a lawyer trained in the importance of semantics, Pastor Goebel knows it, too.
Cleverly, Pastor Goebel does not address the legal concept of community standards with respect to obscenity, preferring instead to sidestep this most crucial (and complicated) consideration by introducing the concept of sin, in effect pole-vaulting over any legal and secular obstacles to the Inquisition to nestle safely in the realm of theology.
And guess who is ready, willing and able to provide the suggested view according to his particular version of Christian theology?
Theology is not the realm addressed by the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, but this simple fact will never suffice to convince the theocrats among us.
Those who do not wish to reside in a place where Mullah Goebel defines concepts like obscenity for you, rather than in a place where you have the freedom to consider these concepts on your own, must remain vigilant, because it would be tragically mistaken to presume that Adult DVD is the sole target of any such Crusade.
As for the involvement if tax-exempt religious groups in political matters, we’ll just have to leave that one for another time.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Al Goldstein and New Albany DVD (Cleopatra's) both are dead. Somewhere, a dog barks.
2005 photo
But Larry Flynt lives.
Zach Everson had it pegged on Twitter yesterday.
Al Goldstein Dies at 77; Made Porn Dirtier // Best-ever @nytimes obit contains paper's best-ever correction http://nyti.ms/1fp9c7y
The correction:
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 19, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a movie Mr. Goldstein starred in. It is “Al Goldstein & Ron Jeremy Are Screwed,” not “Al Goldstein & Ron Jeremy Get Screwed.”
The obit: Al Goldstein Dies at 77; Made Pornography Dirtier, by Andy Newman
Meanwhile, Cleopatra's (formerly known as New Albany DVD is going out of business. In itself, this means quite little, but back in 2004/205 when the Main Street sex shop opened for business, the entertainment value was extreme, even by this blog's typically jaundiced standards.
Click here for "New Albany DVD" search results at NA Confidential
It turns out that the presence of New Albany DVD/Cleopatra's did far less to compromise New Albany's integrity than lingering one-way arterial streets. With the money spent to fight the store's presence, we could have purchased quite a few traffic calming measures.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Porn merchants need economic development, too
A dozing U.S. District Court in Indianapolis hosted yesterday’s “dueling mouthpiece” New Albanian porno/zoning extravaganza. The topic was New Albany DVD, the seemingly ill-fated adult bookstore that hasn’t been able to open its doors owing to the city’s nimble legal footwork in delaying the store’s required site inspection until after a prohibitory ordinance was passed.
The judge may yet rule against the city, but although it is difficult to work up much in the way of feeling for the business and its owners, the local media has failed to ask important questions.
First, conceding that crime statistics are indeed admissible with respect to zoning decision-making and the ordinances that spring from such thinking, is it at all relevant that there’s a church right across the street? As a strict church-state separationist, I must answer the question with a tittering “no.” As my friend Boris (a resident of the Netherlands) has pointed out, where he lives you’ll always find the red light district right next to the city’s oldest church. That way, they can keep close tabs on one another. Sounds reasonable to me. If this were true in N.A., I’m guessing the store would have to be located more centrally on Main Street, opposite the Civil War-era Baptist church.
Second, given that the residents of New Albany’s west end are statistically not as well off as those in other areas (for instance, areas like Silver Hills that tower above and behind them – coincidentally, the home of Mayor Garner), shouldn’t the city’s attempt to squelch New Albany DVD be viewed as discriminatory on economic grounds? After all, wealthier New Albanians can get all the porn they need from the Internet, while those in lower income levels need a bricks-and-mortar venue. Furthermore, this is income lost to places like the venerable Theater-X superstore in Clarksville
Third, if our current city government were really serious about supporting local businesses, existing video stores that carry adult selections would have had access to capital to improve their selections of adult DVDs, especially for upgrading from the archaic VHS modes. In such a manner, there would be no demand for New Albany DVD’s product, and by extension, no need for an ordinance that still might be found to possess serious First Amendment deficiencies, the city attorney’s claim to the contrary.
You know what they say: Rent a smutty DVD, and the terrorists win.
The judge may yet rule against the city, but although it is difficult to work up much in the way of feeling for the business and its owners, the local media has failed to ask important questions.
First, conceding that crime statistics are indeed admissible with respect to zoning decision-making and the ordinances that spring from such thinking, is it at all relevant that there’s a church right across the street? As a strict church-state separationist, I must answer the question with a tittering “no.” As my friend Boris (a resident of the Netherlands) has pointed out, where he lives you’ll always find the red light district right next to the city’s oldest church. That way, they can keep close tabs on one another. Sounds reasonable to me. If this were true in N.A., I’m guessing the store would have to be located more centrally on Main Street, opposite the Civil War-era Baptist church.
Second, given that the residents of New Albany’s west end are statistically not as well off as those in other areas (for instance, areas like Silver Hills that tower above and behind them – coincidentally, the home of Mayor Garner), shouldn’t the city’s attempt to squelch New Albany DVD be viewed as discriminatory on economic grounds? After all, wealthier New Albanians can get all the porn they need from the Internet, while those in lower income levels need a bricks-and-mortar venue. Furthermore, this is income lost to places like the venerable Theater-X superstore in Clarksville
Third, if our current city government were really serious about supporting local businesses, existing video stores that carry adult selections would have had access to capital to improve their selections of adult DVDs, especially for upgrading from the archaic VHS modes. In such a manner, there would be no demand for New Albany DVD’s product, and by extension, no need for an ordinance that still might be found to possess serious First Amendment deficiencies, the city attorney’s claim to the contrary.
You know what they say: Rent a smutty DVD, and the terrorists win.
Friday, January 14, 2005
Coffey suggests the "Steinbrennering" of Adult DVD; Gulf fishermen ecstatic
City Councilman Dan Coffey has suggested that the city of New Albany negotiate to purchase the building owned and remodeled by Adult DVD, which was barred from opening for business last year by a series of “too little, too late” city maneuvers that were laughed out of court earlier this month.
Following the court decision allowing Adult DVD to open, it was disclosed that the city of New Albany really had chosen to tackle its ongoing sewer problems by throwing vast sums of money at them – in this case, flushing $69,000 down the commode in order to fight Adult DVD, which by all accounts had broken no laws in its quest to operate.
Coffey and others now propose to send hundreds of thousands more to a final resting place in the Gulf of Mexico by paying Adult DVD to go away rather than recognizing that this is one fight the city has lost, period, and that other strategies slightly more clever than spending them into oblivion will have to be devised and pursued if the greater public good is to be served.
If Coffey’s viewpoint prevails and the city buys the building, then a pattern for future extortion will have been established.
Besides, if the city seeks to enter the real estate game full time, perhaps a better use of the money would be buying old commercial buildings from their non-civic-minded owners and leasing space at reasonable terms to entrepreneurs whose activities would improve the overall value of New Albany’s neglected downtown and generate the sort of buzz that would make Adult DVD superfluous.
Yep, it’s the vision thing again … that, and New Albany’s cataracts.
Adult video site aims to open: New Albany looks at its legal options, by Ben Zion Hershberg
Following the court decision allowing Adult DVD to open, it was disclosed that the city of New Albany really had chosen to tackle its ongoing sewer problems by throwing vast sums of money at them – in this case, flushing $69,000 down the commode in order to fight Adult DVD, which by all accounts had broken no laws in its quest to operate.
Coffey and others now propose to send hundreds of thousands more to a final resting place in the Gulf of Mexico by paying Adult DVD to go away rather than recognizing that this is one fight the city has lost, period, and that other strategies slightly more clever than spending them into oblivion will have to be devised and pursued if the greater public good is to be served.
If Coffey’s viewpoint prevails and the city buys the building, then a pattern for future extortion will have been established.
Besides, if the city seeks to enter the real estate game full time, perhaps a better use of the money would be buying old commercial buildings from their non-civic-minded owners and leasing space at reasonable terms to entrepreneurs whose activities would improve the overall value of New Albany’s neglected downtown and generate the sort of buzz that would make Adult DVD superfluous.
Yep, it’s the vision thing again … that, and New Albany’s cataracts.
Adult video site aims to open: New Albany looks at its legal options, by Ben Zion Hershberg
Monday, August 22, 2005
Business up at New Albany DVD as city's Luddites finally given their "full Inquisition."
Today, more free publicity for an unpopular local business.
Pastors rallying against adult store ; Prosecutor urged to file charges, By Ben Zion Hershberg, bhershberg@courier-journal.com (short shelf life on C-J links).
An excerpt:
The Rev. Gary Cooper, left, and the Rev. Tony Goebel (right) minister to a sinner caught coming out of New Albany DVD, an adult video store located near to the streets paved with gold that lead to Caesar’s.
The Mullahs are critical of Floyd County Prosecutor Keith Henderson’s failure to bring criminal charges against New Albany DVD for violating a “state law that makes it illegal to sell or display materials harmful to minors within 500 feet of a church or school.”
It is uncertain whether photos of war dead in Iraq, “American Idol” videos and Councilman Dan Coffey’s barbecued bologna recipe fall within these “harmful” parameters, but in any event, the prosecuting attorney is understandably too busy contending with the access demands of "Court TV" during the forthcoming Camm trial of the century to comment on the NADVD case.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Whither downtown retail - the Tribune views the Downtown Merchant's Association
Today’s Sunday edition of the New Albany Tribune contains much of substance.
In “Merchants looking to improve downtown,” the Tribune’s Kyle Lowry describes the return of the Downtown Merchant’s Association, which a handful of downtown businessmen have revived on a volunteer basis in an effort to explore strategies for “getting people into their shops.”
Although you’d never know it by attending a City Council meeting, Lowry insists that the city of New Albany shows concern for “keeping downtown alive” through its support of the Develop New Albany non-profit organization, which in turn was set up by the Indiana Main Street Program.
According to DNA’s associate director, Jane Alcorn, the organization enhances design, promotes the downtown, retains and recruits businesses and provides economic restructuring.
This is interesting. In terms of the institutional lack of accountability that defines New Albany, it’s worth noting that when Smith’s Furniture and Appliance announced its imminent departure from downtown, a snoozing City Hall hastily tossed the hot potato into DNA’s hands, presumably so the non-profit organization could fall on its sword for failing to “retain” business.
But we digress. Before reminding Lowry that downtown’s decline is the fault of the late and lamented General Eisenhower’s interstate highway system (here’s another news flash: “Man lands on moon”), Alcorn describes DNA’s work as “a slow process … we have to figure out how to repackage downtown.”
The answer is provided by Don Preston, who elsewhere in the article bluntly asserts, “let’s stop kidding ourselves – there’s no reason for general, multi-purpose shopping downtown; it’s mostly for specialty stores.”
NA Confidential couldn’t agree more. Alcorn herself should know it, having manned the sign-in table at last year’s DNA seminar promoting hope for America’s neglected downtown business districts in the form of niche and destination businesses.
And what are these? Simply stated, “they must identify a product or service niche that they can dominate, and they must deliver that product or service better than their competitors.” The result is a business that a consumer will go out of his way to visit.
The entrepreneurs who possess the potential to operate these niche and destination businesses are out there, and in fact NA Confidential has seen them sniffing around downtown New Albany.
To be sure, DNA already hawks the standard package of incentives relating to the Urban Enterprise Zone, but when it comes right down to it, there’s only one activity worth considering when it comes to attracting these entrepreneurs.
City government – City Hall and City Council, planners and zoners, adjuncts like DNA – must publicly resolve that it is an absolute priority to place as many of these entrepreneurs and their destination businesses as possible in what are literally dozens of empty storefronts downtown, recognizing that those owners of downtown buildings who seem to regard it as their fiscal priority not to participate in downtown’s revitalization are in fact behaving in an inescapably anti-social manner, and that they will be dealt with by use of the carrot and the stick to play ball with the rest of us.
Firm in this resolve, city government then must address infrastructure needs, prime among them parking. In addition to the parking garage already in existence and the one planned for Scribner Place, municipal surface parking lots should be developed with the money that Councilman Coffey proposes throwing at New Albany DVD. Two locations exist on either side of Stein Glass, one at Third and Main and the other at Fourth and Main.
If City Hall is unable to contribute anything else to this process, perhaps it would be interested in devoting a share of political capital to something remotely approximating leadership. The idea is to organize different community interests so they’re lifting together, not separately.
Perhaps this wasn’t taught at the Dry Cleaning Academy.
Kyle Lowry’s Tribune article
A brief explanation of niche/destination business
Develop New Albany
In “Merchants looking to improve downtown,” the Tribune’s Kyle Lowry describes the return of the Downtown Merchant’s Association, which a handful of downtown businessmen have revived on a volunteer basis in an effort to explore strategies for “getting people into their shops.”
Although you’d never know it by attending a City Council meeting, Lowry insists that the city of New Albany shows concern for “keeping downtown alive” through its support of the Develop New Albany non-profit organization, which in turn was set up by the Indiana Main Street Program.
According to DNA’s associate director, Jane Alcorn, the organization enhances design, promotes the downtown, retains and recruits businesses and provides economic restructuring.
This is interesting. In terms of the institutional lack of accountability that defines New Albany, it’s worth noting that when Smith’s Furniture and Appliance announced its imminent departure from downtown, a snoozing City Hall hastily tossed the hot potato into DNA’s hands, presumably so the non-profit organization could fall on its sword for failing to “retain” business.
But we digress. Before reminding Lowry that downtown’s decline is the fault of the late and lamented General Eisenhower’s interstate highway system (here’s another news flash: “Man lands on moon”), Alcorn describes DNA’s work as “a slow process … we have to figure out how to repackage downtown.”
The answer is provided by Don Preston, who elsewhere in the article bluntly asserts, “let’s stop kidding ourselves – there’s no reason for general, multi-purpose shopping downtown; it’s mostly for specialty stores.”
NA Confidential couldn’t agree more. Alcorn herself should know it, having manned the sign-in table at last year’s DNA seminar promoting hope for America’s neglected downtown business districts in the form of niche and destination businesses.
And what are these? Simply stated, “they must identify a product or service niche that they can dominate, and they must deliver that product or service better than their competitors.” The result is a business that a consumer will go out of his way to visit.
The entrepreneurs who possess the potential to operate these niche and destination businesses are out there, and in fact NA Confidential has seen them sniffing around downtown New Albany.
To be sure, DNA already hawks the standard package of incentives relating to the Urban Enterprise Zone, but when it comes right down to it, there’s only one activity worth considering when it comes to attracting these entrepreneurs.
City government – City Hall and City Council, planners and zoners, adjuncts like DNA – must publicly resolve that it is an absolute priority to place as many of these entrepreneurs and their destination businesses as possible in what are literally dozens of empty storefronts downtown, recognizing that those owners of downtown buildings who seem to regard it as their fiscal priority not to participate in downtown’s revitalization are in fact behaving in an inescapably anti-social manner, and that they will be dealt with by use of the carrot and the stick to play ball with the rest of us.
Firm in this resolve, city government then must address infrastructure needs, prime among them parking. In addition to the parking garage already in existence and the one planned for Scribner Place, municipal surface parking lots should be developed with the money that Councilman Coffey proposes throwing at New Albany DVD. Two locations exist on either side of Stein Glass, one at Third and Main and the other at Fourth and Main.
If City Hall is unable to contribute anything else to this process, perhaps it would be interested in devoting a share of political capital to something remotely approximating leadership. The idea is to organize different community interests so they’re lifting together, not separately.
Perhaps this wasn’t taught at the Dry Cleaning Academy.
Kyle Lowry’s Tribune article
A brief explanation of niche/destination business
Develop New Albany
Monday, December 19, 2005
PART 1 (January – March, 2005): Why 1st District City Councilman Dan Coffey should not be selected as the council’s 2006 President.
Part 1 of 4.
NA Confidential believes that CM Dan Coffey, while indisputably eligible for the post of city council president by virtue of a measurable pulse, is fundamentally unsuited for this position of visibility and responsibility, owing to what Thomas Jefferson once referred to as a “long train of abuses and usurpations,” ones that we have assiduously documented throughout 2005.
We propose to emulate Jefferson’s method of presentation by listing these examples of unsuitability, organized quarterly and in chronological order, as we have reported them here.
The viewpoints expressed in this series are entirely ours, and all quoted passages in the series were written by The New Albanian, unless otherwise attributed.
Unfortunately, many hyperlinks to local media sources have become broken during the months since the original publication dates, and while this is infuriating from an archivist's perspective -- the Courier-Journal's inconsistent articles-for-pay policy and the Tribune's web site revamp are to blame -- it simply can’t be helped.
As always, and subject to NA Confidential's procedures, reader comments are welcomed.
January 24: NA Confidential challenges both the Mayor and the City Council to improve communications with the people of this city.
At last week’s City Council meeting, a citizen speaker asked how many of the eight council members present for duty (Bill Schmidt was ill) had visited the city’s web site lately.
One member raised his hand. There was a half-hearted nod from another. Some looked down at the floor, while others eyed the ceiling. Dan Coffey stated publicly that he hadn’t looked at the web site for a couple of years. All members present looked uncomfortable at having been put on the spot.
January 28: Blevins, Laduke and Toran appear before the East Spring Street Neighborhood Association.
Furthermore, it was pointedly noted that concerns relayed by citizens to their elected council representatives also should be presented before the BPWS. To illustrate this point, Steve produced complete minutes from 2004 BPWS meetings that showed which council members had taken constituent problems to the board.
According to the minutes, only Bill Schmidt (numerous times), Larry Kochert and Donnie Blevins did so in 2004.
The message was clear, to the point, and buttressed by the presence of Donnie, who agreed that City Council members may or may not know correct procedures, and may or may not play by the rules when they do, for what might be political reasons – or, as Steve answered when asked by an audience member, for the sake of "power."
February 8: NA Confidential vs. NA Incontinent at Monday's City Council meeting.
Dan Coffey’s immediate, visceral and jarringly defensive reaction was as indicative of an ill-tempered, anti-progressive mindset as one is apt to find without running to the library for transcripts of Senator McCarthy’s 1950’s-era witch hunt hearings in the US Senate.
These hearings might be available on video for the benefit of those who feel threatened by the act of reading.
Coincidentally, Dan Coffey does not read Blogs because “anyone can hide behind the keyboard,” but by means of osmosis or the Vulcan mind meld, he purports to know exactly what is written in NA Confidential.
Dan Coffey, who sits as part of an elected body known as the “city” council, which is charged with matters pertaining to the city as a whole, sees no need to speak with anyone outside his own district, where he holds public meetings six times a year ... and ... hey, you ... outsider … you don’t live here, do you? … well, congratulations, you’ve just been invited not to attend!
Dan Coffey emphatically and abrasively possesses not the slightest intention to attend any town hall, public forum or revival meeting that is not organized by himself in the safety of his own fiefdom, especially if he’s invited only to listen to the taxpayers throughout the city who pay his salary (and whose money he spends) rather than speak himself.
February 18: “Steve, sometimes we have to listen to what’s going on.”
(Quote from Councilman Dan Coffey, who after three almost uninterrupted hours of listening to himself speak paused long enough to urge colleague Steve Price to do the same).
February 18: City Council seeks "leadership" transplant; donors scarce in New Albany.
Dan Coffey uses most of each meeting to prattle, pontificate and insert himself into every conceivable nook and cranny that might someday come in handy to further the pursuance of his partisan political agenda, whatever it is.
The same tired attack dogs are trotted out, meeting after meeting. Like some Pavlovian experiment gone haywire, the same stimuli prompt the same responses, meeting after meeting. Observers can predict almost to the second when the imaginary red light flashes, the salivary glands take their cue, and one or the other council member launches into their time-tested grandstanding routines.
February 20: If Muzak is playing but there's no one around to hear it ...
A StoneDeaf Band reunion at a benefit concert at the Trinkle Dome, and accompanying anti-porno telethon, with speaking slots for the Mullah Goebel and Councilman Dan “Wizard of Westside” Coffey … plenty of lemonade, weenies and elephant ears, and all proceeds going to buy a couple gallons of gasoline and a Bic to help send the evil pornographers packing.
Then, concerned citizen David Huckleberry could use the leftover flammables to roust the remaining bars and taverns downtown ... and we would be free to descend into a golden era of conformity, sterility and Third World taxation rates.
February 23: Floyd County Demos seek new leader.
Although Randy (Stumler) may have disqualified himself for a party leadership role by daring to express a progressive vision for the city of New Albany, and at half Nash’s age would undoubtedly frighten the stodgier party pillars, the thought of a bona fide teacher manning the controls of Floyd County’s Democrats is a pleasant one.
Consider the indigestion it likely would induce in Dan “Wizard of Westside” Coffey’s Anti-Thought Gang. That alone would be worth the price of admission.
February 24: On disappointment, epiphanies and progress.
All too often our political luminaries inform us that progress is bad, and stagnation is good – it’s preserving our way of life, we’re told – except that in the absence of movement forward, there is no standing still because the only constant is change, so instead, there is regress, and regress is the lifeblood of the populist political cadre that has dominated New Albany for decades, content to obfuscate progressive attitudes and impede the efforts of progressives because the atmosphere engendered by progress is incompatible with the retention of control by the traditional system.
After all, nothing scares the big fish in the little pond more than the pond becoming bigger.
Progressive or regressive?
Yesterday we considered the forthcoming Democratic Party leadership contest. A slate was provided. On one side are names like Randy Stumler, Marcey Wisman and Tony Toran.
On the other, one name stands out: Dan Coffey.
February 28: Although we can't spell "obscenity," we sure as hell know it when we see it ... by the way, is that item for sale?
Citizen Coffey is to be commended for belatedly swapping his elected persona for a more properly expressed private one, which places him firmly within the ranks of concerned taxpayers like David Huckleberry, whose recent suggestion that we do a better job of fleecing Caesar’s-bound motorists drew enthusiastic nods from Councilman Coffey.
However, Coffey is heartbroken at the sight of New Albany DVD, a rare “new business” that even the Wizard can see fits the bill of enticing transitory Louisvillians to spend money in New Albany, something that “local residents” assuredly won’t do … but these same “local residents” still must pay, either by pledging the money they wouldn’t spend on adult DVDs toward a crusade to uproot the store, or providing it indirectly to city government to atone for its botched campaign against the First Amendment.
All the while, whether through Coffey’s congenital grandstanding or the city’s mangled legal strategies, New Albany DVD is provided free publicity and maximum exposure (pun intended) far beyond what it could receive in paid advertising.
March 7: Weekend political recap: Floyd Demos, GOP select new leaders.
Over the past weekend, both of Floyd County’s mainstream political parties met to select new leadership.
NA Confidential believes that CM Dan Coffey, while indisputably eligible for the post of city council president by virtue of a measurable pulse, is fundamentally unsuited for this position of visibility and responsibility, owing to what Thomas Jefferson once referred to as a “long train of abuses and usurpations,” ones that we have assiduously documented throughout 2005.
We propose to emulate Jefferson’s method of presentation by listing these examples of unsuitability, organized quarterly and in chronological order, as we have reported them here.
The viewpoints expressed in this series are entirely ours, and all quoted passages in the series were written by The New Albanian, unless otherwise attributed.
Unfortunately, many hyperlinks to local media sources have become broken during the months since the original publication dates, and while this is infuriating from an archivist's perspective -- the Courier-Journal's inconsistent articles-for-pay policy and the Tribune's web site revamp are to blame -- it simply can’t be helped.
As always, and subject to NA Confidential's procedures, reader comments are welcomed.
January 24: NA Confidential challenges both the Mayor and the City Council to improve communications with the people of this city.
At last week’s City Council meeting, a citizen speaker asked how many of the eight council members present for duty (Bill Schmidt was ill) had visited the city’s web site lately.
One member raised his hand. There was a half-hearted nod from another. Some looked down at the floor, while others eyed the ceiling. Dan Coffey stated publicly that he hadn’t looked at the web site for a couple of years. All members present looked uncomfortable at having been put on the spot.
January 28: Blevins, Laduke and Toran appear before the East Spring Street Neighborhood Association.
Furthermore, it was pointedly noted that concerns relayed by citizens to their elected council representatives also should be presented before the BPWS. To illustrate this point, Steve produced complete minutes from 2004 BPWS meetings that showed which council members had taken constituent problems to the board.
According to the minutes, only Bill Schmidt (numerous times), Larry Kochert and Donnie Blevins did so in 2004.
The message was clear, to the point, and buttressed by the presence of Donnie, who agreed that City Council members may or may not know correct procedures, and may or may not play by the rules when they do, for what might be political reasons – or, as Steve answered when asked by an audience member, for the sake of "power."
February 8: NA Confidential vs. NA Incontinent at Monday's City Council meeting.
Dan Coffey’s immediate, visceral and jarringly defensive reaction was as indicative of an ill-tempered, anti-progressive mindset as one is apt to find without running to the library for transcripts of Senator McCarthy’s 1950’s-era witch hunt hearings in the US Senate.
These hearings might be available on video for the benefit of those who feel threatened by the act of reading.
Coincidentally, Dan Coffey does not read Blogs because “anyone can hide behind the keyboard,” but by means of osmosis or the Vulcan mind meld, he purports to know exactly what is written in NA Confidential.
Dan Coffey, who sits as part of an elected body known as the “city” council, which is charged with matters pertaining to the city as a whole, sees no need to speak with anyone outside his own district, where he holds public meetings six times a year ... and ... hey, you ... outsider … you don’t live here, do you? … well, congratulations, you’ve just been invited not to attend!
Dan Coffey emphatically and abrasively possesses not the slightest intention to attend any town hall, public forum or revival meeting that is not organized by himself in the safety of his own fiefdom, especially if he’s invited only to listen to the taxpayers throughout the city who pay his salary (and whose money he spends) rather than speak himself.
February 18: “Steve, sometimes we have to listen to what’s going on.”
(Quote from Councilman Dan Coffey, who after three almost uninterrupted hours of listening to himself speak paused long enough to urge colleague Steve Price to do the same).
February 18: City Council seeks "leadership" transplant; donors scarce in New Albany.
Dan Coffey uses most of each meeting to prattle, pontificate and insert himself into every conceivable nook and cranny that might someday come in handy to further the pursuance of his partisan political agenda, whatever it is.
The same tired attack dogs are trotted out, meeting after meeting. Like some Pavlovian experiment gone haywire, the same stimuli prompt the same responses, meeting after meeting. Observers can predict almost to the second when the imaginary red light flashes, the salivary glands take their cue, and one or the other council member launches into their time-tested grandstanding routines.
February 20: If Muzak is playing but there's no one around to hear it ...
A StoneDeaf Band reunion at a benefit concert at the Trinkle Dome, and accompanying anti-porno telethon, with speaking slots for the Mullah Goebel and Councilman Dan “Wizard of Westside” Coffey … plenty of lemonade, weenies and elephant ears, and all proceeds going to buy a couple gallons of gasoline and a Bic to help send the evil pornographers packing.
Then, concerned citizen David Huckleberry could use the leftover flammables to roust the remaining bars and taverns downtown ... and we would be free to descend into a golden era of conformity, sterility and Third World taxation rates.
February 23: Floyd County Demos seek new leader.
Although Randy (Stumler) may have disqualified himself for a party leadership role by daring to express a progressive vision for the city of New Albany, and at half Nash’s age would undoubtedly frighten the stodgier party pillars, the thought of a bona fide teacher manning the controls of Floyd County’s Democrats is a pleasant one.
Consider the indigestion it likely would induce in Dan “Wizard of Westside” Coffey’s Anti-Thought Gang. That alone would be worth the price of admission.
February 24: On disappointment, epiphanies and progress.
All too often our political luminaries inform us that progress is bad, and stagnation is good – it’s preserving our way of life, we’re told – except that in the absence of movement forward, there is no standing still because the only constant is change, so instead, there is regress, and regress is the lifeblood of the populist political cadre that has dominated New Albany for decades, content to obfuscate progressive attitudes and impede the efforts of progressives because the atmosphere engendered by progress is incompatible with the retention of control by the traditional system.
After all, nothing scares the big fish in the little pond more than the pond becoming bigger.
Progressive or regressive?
Yesterday we considered the forthcoming Democratic Party leadership contest. A slate was provided. On one side are names like Randy Stumler, Marcey Wisman and Tony Toran.
On the other, one name stands out: Dan Coffey.
February 28: Although we can't spell "obscenity," we sure as hell know it when we see it ... by the way, is that item for sale?
Citizen Coffey is to be commended for belatedly swapping his elected persona for a more properly expressed private one, which places him firmly within the ranks of concerned taxpayers like David Huckleberry, whose recent suggestion that we do a better job of fleecing Caesar’s-bound motorists drew enthusiastic nods from Councilman Coffey.
However, Coffey is heartbroken at the sight of New Albany DVD, a rare “new business” that even the Wizard can see fits the bill of enticing transitory Louisvillians to spend money in New Albany, something that “local residents” assuredly won’t do … but these same “local residents” still must pay, either by pledging the money they wouldn’t spend on adult DVDs toward a crusade to uproot the store, or providing it indirectly to city government to atone for its botched campaign against the First Amendment.
All the while, whether through Coffey’s congenital grandstanding or the city’s mangled legal strategies, New Albany DVD is provided free publicity and maximum exposure (pun intended) far beyond what it could receive in paid advertising.
March 7: Weekend political recap: Floyd Demos, GOP select new leaders.
Over the past weekend, both of Floyd County’s mainstream political parties met to select new leadership.
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Human rights in New Albany?
Thus far in 2015, it has been a year in which the United States Supreme Court took up same-sex marriage, and the streets of Baltimore echoed with violence. In America, we're debating the legalities and illegalities of immigration, the pros and cons of the death penalty, and theory and practice of terrorism.
In Indiana, among other forays, a recent question has been whether intravenous drug users deserve to contract HIV for using dirty needles. In short, considerations of civil rights and human rights are very much with us ... if we bother to listen to their recitation.
Civil right and human rights co-exist and are very much a part of one another. Both are designed so that people can live the lives they choose without fear of persecution, and these rights apply to every single person no matter where they live in the world.
Often in these pages, we advocate the notion of progress by design, and since 2012, New Albany has possessed a reconstituted Human Rights Commission. Since it was formed again and duly stocked with appointees, it has had very little to do, not because New Albany is a fundamentally functional utopia of tolerance and good sense, but because City Hall's evident design for the HRC has been that it remain unused -- reserved for show and public relations pronouncements, while kept hermetically sealed and out of controversy's way.
This has disgusted me from day one, and continues to do so. It implies that "quality of life" derives solely from capital intensive building projects, and has nothing to do with fundamental human dignity. It is both cynical and cowardly to first enable a Human Rights Commission, then render it caged and impotent.
My most recent reprinting of the following column on the topic of the Human Rights Commission was on March 21, 2011. The column itself was written in 2009. Ironically, as I read the final paragraphs, there is considerable itony. We certainly did determine that the members of New Albany's political class could vote "for" something.
Unfortunately, they seem to be content with form over content. This needs to change.
---
REWIND: Human rights in New Albany? (2009).
As you already know, I am running for city council at-large, and my newspaper column is on hiatus pending the outcome of the primary election in May. During my first incarnation as columnist, from January 2009 through February 2011, a total of 111 essays were published, and because many of them pertain directly to campaign issues, it seems appropriate to reprint some of them. The following appeared in the Tribune on April 16, 2009.
---
Human rights in New Albany?
To my delight, last week the Iowa Supreme Court defied the American theocratic establishment by affirming a non-discriminatory definition of marriage as a secular institution, existing concurrent with organized religion, but not dependent on its supernatural sanction for validity.
By doing so, the court did its own little bit to reclaim genuinely salvageable culture, correctly espousing the rule of law and exposing the fraudulence of those whose vision of America as a “Christian nation” forever requires depriving fellow Americans of basic human rights clearly enunciated during the founding. Moreover, I’m reminded of this passage written by H. L. Mencken more than 75 years ago:
“The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking … Since the earliest days the church, as an organization, has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.”
Coincidentally, my wife and I, who were married in 2004 by the city clerk, recently had the chance to watch “Milk,” the acclaimed biopic of gay activist, politician and martyr Harvey Milk. Sean Penn, the finest actor of his generation, stars in a riveting, Oscar-winning performance as the title character. Drop what you’re doing, rent the DVD of “Milk,” and prepare to be challenged, rewarded and enriched.
While the real Harvey Milk’s principled political activism in the diverse milieu of 1970’s San Francisco specifically espoused gay rights, his focal point is inseparable from the broader context of human rights and freedoms, providing the basis for a question I won’t stop asking until some semblance of a coherent answer is provided:
Precisely which aspects of the past are organizations like Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana (ROCK) seeking to reclaim?
---
Buried deep within New Albany’s terminally neglected Code of Ordinances is a 1974 law mandating a Human Rights Commission. It existed for a time, and then was unceremoniously discarded, so today I’m embracing a custodial public service duty by reminding the community that there is statutory authority to re-energize and staff a new Human Right Commission. We should do so immediately.
The administration of Mayor James Garner displayed a keen private grasp of the moribund commission’s potential importance, but nothing happened, and if you’re looking for a nutshell summary of the Garner era, this is as good a place as any to begin. Excellent intentions were accompanied by a supreme mastery of detail, but an inexplicable absence of political acumen and simple stick-to-it-ive-ness resulted in stasis.
No matter. That was then, and this is now. I support a rehabilitated Human Rights Commission simply because I always try to put myself in others’ shoes, imagining how it must feel to do as I’ve done by publicly promoting civic improvements and espousing reforms in an effort to make the city itself a more livable and civilized place, while recognizing that even these hard-fought gains may not provide protection from discrimination and harassment owing to race, gender or sexual orientation.
For instance, consider the fundamental human act of walking.
I walk New Albany’s streets on a daily basis, and do so at all hours, seldom giving the notion a second thought. Then again, I’m a white male standing well over six feet, and weighing 270 lbs. at last reading. Naturally, in a world filled to the brim with firearms, physical stature alone neither precludes violent acts nor negates harassment … but it does have a way of reducing problems.
Even so, occasionally a passing dullard finds it amusing to bait a man my size. Imagine going out for a walk as a more vulnerable potential target: Female, or gay, or an ethnic minority, or handicapped, or all four together, perhaps leading one to forsake activities and pursuits taken for granted by others, thanks to social and cultural primitivism that extends well beyond familiar urban woes like drugs and impoverishment, into public racism, overt homophobia and violence.
Just as speeding is not an enforcement issue, but a design issue, so goes an active daily consideration of human rights. A tweaked and reconstituted Human Rights Commission, even if chronically underfunded in the sad New Albanian tradition of penny wise, pound foolish, might provide an effective bully pulpit for making this city a place that welcomes diversity and its accompanying benefits, and not views “different” as opportunities for abuse and exploitation.
Now is the time. Is there the will?
A Human Rights Commission is sorely needed in a place where topics like basic rights, diversity, and fundamental human dignity are regularly the targets of gleeful disparagement and outright malice on the part of those of dominant white, male culture, who've obviously never suffered institutionalized deprivation.
Furthermore, thinking back to its conceptual origins in housing discrimination, a functional Human Rights Commission might be a component of solutions to the city’s rental housing problems. Tenant rights and human rights are cut from the same bolt, aren’t they?
Are any members of our local political establishment willing to go on record as supporting the revival of New Albany’s Human Rights Commission?
Or: Are any of them willing to go on record as supporting anything?
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
NA Confidential vs. NA Incontinent at Monday's City Council meeting
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. Author Ray Bradbury
“What are you reading?”
As opening lines go, this is a fairly innocuous one. Most of us regard it in the same manner as other common greetings, like “how are you?” and “what’s up?”
How is it, then, that a seemingly harmless supposition with respect to one’s view of the act of reading is transformed into an offense, a provocation, a seeming challenge to one’s masculinity?
Mention the words “NA Confidential” to New Albany Councilman Dan Coffey, and you’ll find out what those of us who grew up on a farm have known since childhood.
Wild skunks spray as a defense mechanism when they perceive a threat.
At least one beleaguered local politician has now been observed to display similar characteristics.
At last evening’s City Council meeting, I took advantage of the time allowed for public comment to speak briefly on three matters:
(1) To restate NA Confidential’s opposition to the further expenditure of public monies to fight a losing battle against the 1st Amendment in the New Albany DVD case,
“What are you reading?”
As opening lines go, this is a fairly innocuous one. Most of us regard it in the same manner as other common greetings, like “how are you?” and “what’s up?”
How is it, then, that a seemingly harmless supposition with respect to one’s view of the act of reading is transformed into an offense, a provocation, a seeming challenge to one’s masculinity?
Mention the words “NA Confidential” to New Albany Councilman Dan Coffey, and you’ll find out what those of us who grew up on a farm have known since childhood.
Wild skunks spray as a defense mechanism when they perceive a threat.
At least one beleaguered local politician has now been observed to display similar characteristics.
At last evening’s City Council meeting, I took advantage of the time allowed for public comment to speak briefly on three matters:
(1) To restate NA Confidential’s opposition to the further expenditure of public monies to fight a losing battle against the 1st Amendment in the New Albany DVD case,
(2) To encourage the mayor (who was absent) and the council to consider setting up public forums for discussion of matters not reserved to the weekly Board of Public Works and Safety meetings, and
(3) To support the March 2 Public Affairs Symposium, "New Visions for Downtown New Albany."
NA Confidential regards these statements as general in nature, fully in keeping with the “respect” factor and time limitations enforced by President Jeff Gahan, and certainly not directed toward any single individual on the City Council.
But Dan Coffey’s immediate, visceral and jarringly defensive reaction was as indicative of an ill-tempered, anti-progressive mindset as one is apt to find without running to the library for transcripts of Senator McCarthy’s 1950’s-era witch hunt hearings in the US Senate.
These hearings might be available on video for the benefit of those who feel threatened by the act of reading.
Coincidentally, Dan Coffey does not read Blogs because “anyone can hide behind the keyboard,” but by means of osmosis or the Vulcan mind meld, he purports to know exactly what is written in NA Confidential.
Dan Coffey, who sits as part of an elected body known as the “city” council, which is charged with matters pertaining to the city as a whole, sees no need to speak with anyone outside his own district, where he holds public meetings six times a year ... and ... hey, you ... outsider … you don’t live here, do you? … well, congratulations, you’ve just been invited not to attend!
Dan Coffey emphatically and abrasively possesses not the slightest intention to attend any town hall, public forum or revival meeting that is not organized by himself in the safety of his own fiefdom, especially if he’s invited only to listen to the taxpayers throughout the city who pay his salary (and whose money he spends) rather than speak himself.
That’s because Dan Coffey, red-faced and sermonizing, is in fact gravely insulted at not being consulted.
By his own admission, he doesn’t read, but also by his own admission, he is one of the select group able to understand the money, who controls the purse strings of the city, who knows how things get done, who certainly doesn’t need the advice of mere "complainers" who should know their place in the back of the cosmos bus or else get up off their laggard butts and run for office – as if there were no other way to participate in the political process in this city.
The meeting room was quiet as the Wizard of Westside self-destructed.
Then, having encapsulated the most virulent form of New Albany’s native disease in far more eloquent fashion than has been attempted in NA Confidential or any other repository of the written word, Dan Coffey ceased his diatribe.
Ten minutes later, Dan Coffey nodded in assent as fellow Councilman Bill Schmidt produced the results of personal research indicating that neither he nor Coffey, or for that matter, anyone else on the City Council really knows how much money the city has borrowed or if it has been paid back.
NA Confidential earnestly hopes that Dan Coffey’s outburst last evening was the result of the stress and strain that doubtless accompany the task of sifting through New Albany’s current budgetary woes. The Courier-Journal’s and Tribune’s coverage of the meeting make clear the extent of the crisis.
But extenuating circumstances aside, Dan Coffey’s performance cannot be allowed to pass without comment.
His narrow parochialism with respect to the responsibilities of elected public representatives is sadly indicative of the discredited “ward-heeler” school of political “thought,” once the norm but now utterly incapable of providing the unifying vision critical in a world increasingly reliant on the very qualities of communication and inter-dependence that Coffey regards with open contempt.
And, for the record, I’m reading “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History,” by John Barry.
Volunteer Hoosier's essay "Contrapunction" analyzes the February 7 City Council meeting
New Albany budget questions put vehicle requests on hold, by Ben Zion Hershberg of the Louisville Courier-Journal
Outstanding loans force delay in possible purchase of city vehicles, by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor
Thursday, January 06, 2005
The Tribune's take on New Albany's Super Wednesday Vaudeville Show
With a timeliness and vigor entirely uncharacteristic of the New Albany Tribune, Thursday articles already are posted on the newspaper’s web site.
The Tribune’s City Editor Amany Ali authors pieces on last night’s uproarious City Council meeting as well as yesterday’s important Adult DVD court decision.
Both articles are well-reported. Score two for Ali.
In particular, Ali provides this wonderful quote from Mayor James Garner on the topic of innkeeper Valla Ann Bolovschak’s blistering denunciation of Garner’s error-ridden administration:
"The only reason she could have an ax to grind is because my (dry cleaning) business has dealings with the owners of a competitive bed and breakfast of hers."
Like Pinocchio’s phallic nose, Mayor Garner’s innate disingenuousness becomes ever more prominent.
Ali Adult DVD report yields something not reported by the Courier-Journal’s Ben Zion Hershberg: Not satisfied with the $69,000 already poured down the drain by the city, Councilman Dan Coffey has advocated a war chest of up to $100,000 to help protect the city from Adult DVD.
Considering the many tangible benefits this money could bring to the city of New Albany, it’s obvious that neither the administration nor Coffey have a clue in this matter.
Gentlemen, can one of you contribute something of genuine merit to the notion of vision for New Albany's future? If not, would you mind terribly just going away and making room for someone who can?
Amany Ali on the meeting:
http://www.news-tribune.net/articles/2005/01/06/news/new_albany_tribune/news08.txt
Amany Ali on the Adult DVD ruling:http://www.news-tribune.net/articles/2005/01/06/news/new_albany_tribune/news07.txt
The Tribune’s City Editor Amany Ali authors pieces on last night’s uproarious City Council meeting as well as yesterday’s important Adult DVD court decision.
Both articles are well-reported. Score two for Ali.
In particular, Ali provides this wonderful quote from Mayor James Garner on the topic of innkeeper Valla Ann Bolovschak’s blistering denunciation of Garner’s error-ridden administration:
"The only reason she could have an ax to grind is because my (dry cleaning) business has dealings with the owners of a competitive bed and breakfast of hers."
Like Pinocchio’s phallic nose, Mayor Garner’s innate disingenuousness becomes ever more prominent.
Ali Adult DVD report yields something not reported by the Courier-Journal’s Ben Zion Hershberg: Not satisfied with the $69,000 already poured down the drain by the city, Councilman Dan Coffey has advocated a war chest of up to $100,000 to help protect the city from Adult DVD.
Considering the many tangible benefits this money could bring to the city of New Albany, it’s obvious that neither the administration nor Coffey have a clue in this matter.
Gentlemen, can one of you contribute something of genuine merit to the notion of vision for New Albany's future? If not, would you mind terribly just going away and making room for someone who can?
Amany Ali on the meeting:
http://www.news-tribune.net/articles/2005/01/06/news/new_albany_tribune/news08.txt
Amany Ali on the Adult DVD ruling:http://www.news-tribune.net/articles/2005/01/06/news/new_albany_tribune/news07.txt
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Rewind to Dan Coffey on blogging, circa 2005: "Anyone can hide behind the keyboard."
Here's the scorecard so far over at The Coffey Corner, councilman Dan Coffey's newly minted blog.
Total posts: 2
Comments made by me: 5
Comments of mine erased: 5
Comments and erasures of others: 1 (the second at any minute)
Comments agreeing with Coffey, therefore not erased: 1
Hmm. That looks, feels and sounds like a small-time tinpot censor hiding behind a keyboard -- but wait, didn't Coffey himself once ... yes, he did. Read on. I doubt the links work, although they really aren't the point, are they?
---
NA Confidential vs. NA Incontinent at Monday's City Council meeting (February 8, 2005).
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
-- Author Ray Bradbury
“What are you reading?”
As opening lines go, this is a fairly innocuous one. Most of us regard it in the same manner as other common greetings, like “how are you?” and “what’s up?”
How is it, then, that a seemingly harmless supposition with respect to one’s view of the act of reading is transformed into an offense, a provocation, a seeming challenge to one’s masculinity?
Mention the words “NA Confidential” to New Albany Councilman Dan Coffey, and you’ll find out what those of us who grew up on a farm have known since childhood.
Wild skunks spray as a defense mechanism when they perceive a threat.
At least one beleaguered local politician has now been observed to display similar characteristics.
At last evening’s City Council meeting, I took advantage of the time allowed for public comment to speak briefly on three matters:
(1) To restate NA Confidential’s opposition to the further expenditure of public monies to fight a losing battle against the 1st Amendment in the New Albany DVD case,
Total posts: 2
Comments made by me: 5
Comments of mine erased: 5
Comments and erasures of others: 1 (the second at any minute)
Comments agreeing with Coffey, therefore not erased: 1
Hmm. That looks, feels and sounds like a small-time tinpot censor hiding behind a keyboard -- but wait, didn't Coffey himself once ... yes, he did. Read on. I doubt the links work, although they really aren't the point, are they?
---
NA Confidential vs. NA Incontinent at Monday's City Council meeting (February 8, 2005).
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
-- Author Ray Bradbury
“What are you reading?”
As opening lines go, this is a fairly innocuous one. Most of us regard it in the same manner as other common greetings, like “how are you?” and “what’s up?”
How is it, then, that a seemingly harmless supposition with respect to one’s view of the act of reading is transformed into an offense, a provocation, a seeming challenge to one’s masculinity?
Mention the words “NA Confidential” to New Albany Councilman Dan Coffey, and you’ll find out what those of us who grew up on a farm have known since childhood.
Wild skunks spray as a defense mechanism when they perceive a threat.
At least one beleaguered local politician has now been observed to display similar characteristics.
At last evening’s City Council meeting, I took advantage of the time allowed for public comment to speak briefly on three matters:
(1) To restate NA Confidential’s opposition to the further expenditure of public monies to fight a losing battle against the 1st Amendment in the New Albany DVD case,
(2) To encourage the mayor (who was absent) and the council to consider setting up public forums for discussion of matters not reserved to the weekly Board of Public Works and Safety meetings, and
(3) To support the March 2 Public Affairs Symposium, "New Visions for Downtown New Albany."
NA Confidential regards these statements as general in nature, fully in keeping with the “respect” factor and time limitations enforced by President Jeff Gahan, and certainly not directed toward any single individual on the City Council.
But Dan Coffey’s immediate, visceral and jarringly defensive reaction was as indicative of an ill-tempered, anti-progressive mindset as one is apt to find without running to the library for transcripts of Senator McCarthy’s 1950’s-era witch hunt hearings in the US Senate.
These hearings might be available on video for the benefit of those who feel threatened by the act of reading.
Coincidentally, Dan Coffey does not read Blogs because “anyone can hide behind the keyboard,” but by means of osmosis or the Vulcan mind meld, he purports to know exactly what is written in NA Confidential.
Dan Coffey, who sits as part of an elected body known as the “city” council, which is charged with matters pertaining to the city as a whole, sees no need to speak with anyone outside his own district, where he holds public meetings six times a year ... and ... hey, you ... outsider … you don’t live here, do you? … well, congratulations, you’ve just been invited not to attend!
Dan Coffey emphatically and abrasively possesses not the slightest intention to attend any town hall, public forum or revival meeting that is not organized by himself in the safety of his own fiefdom, especially if he’s invited only to listen to the taxpayers throughout the city who pay his salary (and whose money he spends) rather than speak himself.
That’s because Dan Coffey, red-faced and sermonizing, is in fact gravely insulted at not being consulted.
By his own admission, he doesn’t read, but also by his own admission, he is one of the select group able to understand the money, who controls the purse strings of the city, who knows how things get done, who certainly doesn’t need the advice of mere "complainers" who should know their place in the back of the cosmos bus or else get up off their laggard butts and run for office – as if there were no other way to participate in the political process in this city.
The meeting room was quiet as the Wizard of Westside self-destructed.
Then, having encapsulated the most virulent form of New Albany’s native disease in far more eloquent fashion than has been attempted in NA Confidential or any other repository of the written word, Dan Coffey ceased his diatribe.
Ten minutes later, Dan Coffey nodded in assent as fellow Councilman Bill Schmidt produced the results of personal research indicating that neither he nor Coffey, or for that matter, anyone else on the City Council really knows how much money the city has borrowed or if it has been paid back.
NA Confidential earnestly hopes that Dan Coffey’s outburst last evening was the result of the stress and strain that doubtless accompany the task of sifting through New Albany’s current budgetary woes. The Courier-Journal’s and Tribune’s coverage of the meeting make clear the extent of the crisis.
But extenuating circumstances aside, Dan Coffey’s performance cannot be allowed to pass without comment.
His narrow parochialism with respect to the responsibilities of elected public representatives is sadly indicative of the discredited “ward-heeler” school of political “thought,” once the norm but now utterly incapable of providing the unifying vision critical in a world increasingly reliant on the very qualities of communication and inter-dependence that Coffey regards with open contempt.
And, for the record, I’m reading “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History,” by John Barry.
Volunteer Hoosier's essay "Contrapunction" analyzes the February 7 City Council meeting
New Albany budget questions put vehicle requests on hold, by Ben Zion Hershberg of the Louisville Courier-Journal
Outstanding loans force delay in possible purchase of city vehicles, by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor
Sunday, February 20, 2005
If Muzak is playing but there's no one around to hear it ...
Ed, a friend and mentor, came into the pub for a pint yesterday, and we chatted about what it’s like to live in the city of New Albany.
Our verdict: There are times when one must pause, take a deep breath, and have a good laugh. It’s either that, or curl up in a corner and cry all day.
It’s either that, or the cranium again explodes at the thought of the fear, stubbornness, passivity, stupidity, blindness and mediocrity.
But enough of New Albany’s “leadership” class.
Scratch off a lottery ticket, turn on NASCAR, pop open an ice-cold Miller Lite and smoke ‘em if you got ‘em as we consider a story by Gregory Hall in today’s Courier-Journal:
Making a scene Performers sing, recite at audition for roles in summer shows
“Performers sang and recited lines before Bob Trinkle, New Albany's riverfront director who also produces and directs shows at the French Lick facility. The auditions took place at the Kentucky International Convention Center.”
Whoa -- THE Bob Trinkle, erstwhile leader of the StoneDeaf Band and New Albany’s foremost professional altruist during the forgotten decade of the 1980’s?
The man who once entered Scoreboard Liquors, ostensibly to buy chewing gum, and asked, “why do you hate me,” and when informed that it wasn’t hate, it was satire, stated that he didn’t know what “satire” meant?
How fitting, perhaps even touching, that the man who gave his name to our beloved Trinkle Dome amphitheatre on the Ohio should be appointed the director of the riverfront.
Trinkle’s stewardship ensures that solid, family-style good taste will prevail … hey, wait, that’s it!
Suddenly, the solution to the city’s nagging New Albany DVD problem is at hand!
A StoneDeaf Band reunion at a benefit concert at the Trinkle Dome, and accompanying anti-porno telethon, with speaking slots for the Mullah Goebel and Councilman Dan “Wizard of Westside” Coffey … plenty of lemonade, weenies and elephant ears, and all proceeds going to buy a couple gallons of gasoline and a Bic to help send the evil pornographers packing.
Then, concerned citizen David Huckleberry could use the leftover flammables to roust the remaining bars and taverns downtown ... and we would be free to descend into a golden era of conformity, sterility and Third World taxation rates.
Okay, laughter’s done.
It’s crying time again …
Our verdict: There are times when one must pause, take a deep breath, and have a good laugh. It’s either that, or curl up in a corner and cry all day.
It’s either that, or the cranium again explodes at the thought of the fear, stubbornness, passivity, stupidity, blindness and mediocrity.
But enough of New Albany’s “leadership” class.
Scratch off a lottery ticket, turn on NASCAR, pop open an ice-cold Miller Lite and smoke ‘em if you got ‘em as we consider a story by Gregory Hall in today’s Courier-Journal:
Making a scene Performers sing, recite at audition for roles in summer shows
“Performers sang and recited lines before Bob Trinkle, New Albany's riverfront director who also produces and directs shows at the French Lick facility. The auditions took place at the Kentucky International Convention Center.”
Whoa -- THE Bob Trinkle, erstwhile leader of the StoneDeaf Band and New Albany’s foremost professional altruist during the forgotten decade of the 1980’s?
The man who once entered Scoreboard Liquors, ostensibly to buy chewing gum, and asked, “why do you hate me,” and when informed that it wasn’t hate, it was satire, stated that he didn’t know what “satire” meant?
How fitting, perhaps even touching, that the man who gave his name to our beloved Trinkle Dome amphitheatre on the Ohio should be appointed the director of the riverfront.
Trinkle’s stewardship ensures that solid, family-style good taste will prevail … hey, wait, that’s it!
Suddenly, the solution to the city’s nagging New Albany DVD problem is at hand!
A StoneDeaf Band reunion at a benefit concert at the Trinkle Dome, and accompanying anti-porno telethon, with speaking slots for the Mullah Goebel and Councilman Dan “Wizard of Westside” Coffey … plenty of lemonade, weenies and elephant ears, and all proceeds going to buy a couple gallons of gasoline and a Bic to help send the evil pornographers packing.
Then, concerned citizen David Huckleberry could use the leftover flammables to roust the remaining bars and taverns downtown ... and we would be free to descend into a golden era of conformity, sterility and Third World taxation rates.
Okay, laughter’s done.
It’s crying time again …
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Thursday's Tribune column: "On pedestrians and human nature."
Now I remember why this reminder wasn't previously issued: My Tribune column of Thursday, July 16 has yet to be archived on-line. This should constitute an acceptable rationale to reprint it here in its entirety.
---
On pedestrians and human nature.
One of these days, there’ll be time for recounting H.L. Mencken’s bathtub hoax. Until then, there are two items of unfinished business for consideration.
Just last week, I suggested that it is safer to jog down a ten-foot-wide medieval hilltop street in Pamplona, Spain, alongside massive horned fighting bulls and three or four thousand of your closest friends, than it is to drive an automobile through New Albany’s rutted, unkempt streets.
Within hours, a native Spaniard was gored during the daily run with the bulls and subsequently died, the fifteenth such fatality since San Fermin’s inception in 1911.
Less than 24 hours later, I brought my bicycle to an abrupt, sliding halt to avoid hitting an oblivious, shirtless pedestrian who never took his eyes off the ground before meandering into my path. My elderly two-wheeled conveyance comes equipped with a bell, and I dinged it early and often before applying the brakes.
The non-mechanized dullard flipped me off as he shuffled to the curb, leaving me cognizant of my error in blaming the city’s routine roadway chaos solely only on those drivers who steer their SUVs with their knees while devouring tacos and watching Transformer 18 on the DVD. It is increasingly obvious that in New Albany, the term “street person” takes on shadings that extend beyond homelessness, which is regrettable enough.
A New Albanian street person is one who ostensibly lives indoors, but spends much of life, night and day, ambulatory or unconscious, in the middle of the closest available street – piloting an errant skateboard, engaging in car repairs, talking on a cell phone, smoking a pack of cigarettes, throwing a football, or gazing at the sky. The list is uniformly depressing, and seldom permits through traffic.
Daily, we are offered the novel and plainly hazardous spectacle of drivers too busy multi-tasking to bother driving, barreling down corroded streets that our shambolic city council refuses to pave, toward dazed pedestrians too busy ambling along non-existent center lines to bother noticing.
In my opinion, a fine morning’s run with the bulls would cure the lot of them, although it just as easily might have the opposite effect and scare the fight out of the bulls.
Speaking of stage fright, two weeks ago I learned the hard way not to trust Wikipedia. To paraphrase the immortal words spoken by WKRP’s Arthur Carlson: As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly -- and that the Scribner brothers came from Albany, New York.
Not so. Their journey took them from the vicinity of the Big Apple to subsequent immortality as founding paragons of New Albanian civic virtue. There aren’t enough pigeons on Pearl Street to sully that sort of achievement, even if we’ve yet to erect the requisite statuary to serve as target for the pigeons’ own freedom to screech.
Suitably contrite, I duly concede my error. However, the heretic in me cowers only briefly even at the risk of another lashing. My respect for history’s lessons is genuine and sincere, but as a contrarian, I’m nonetheless obliged to ask why the Scribner brothers didn’t call this place New Brooklyn, New Manhattan or New Harlem?
Were they intent on embarrassing future generations of sassy commentators like me?
Was Joel Scribner slyly acknowledging his mistress’ home address in Albany?
Or did he lose the naming rights to the future city in a card game somewhere on a grimy flat boat drifting down the Monongahela?
WHAP! THUNK!
Ouch … okay -- put away the whip, will you?
Evidently I’m prone to that most controversial of realms, satire, the bane of literal-minded Americans everywhere. Did you know that in New Albany, satire is so widely feared that there exists an ordinance prohibiting it?
Satire within earshot of a church building or governmental toilet is strictly forbidden. It is the only ordinance on record known to have been consistently enforced within the city limits, penalized by irrevocable exile to Birdseye or placing the satirist in nickel and dime store stocks at the whim of the magistrate’s, and ...
BAP! SLUG!
Hey – those stung.
Here’s the point. Historical accuracy is marvelous but forever elusive. We should laugh along with history more often. Rote names and dates mean less than the gist of the story, and history itself ideally is a well- and entertainingly-told story, not a canonical scroll to be venerated. We’ve too many of them already.
Diligent contemporary scholarship into the life, times and private proclivities of historical figures like Thomas Jefferson should be a counterweight, gently suggesting reassessment and a recognition borne of tolerance that our forbearers were living, breathing people no different than us. Some were brilliant, and some unspeakably dull. So it goes.
Racier old-timers may have been unafraid to take a healthy leer up an accidentally raised skirt, to wager carelessly on the ponies, or to drink long and hard from the bottle of corn whisky they’d hidden from the prying eyes of the prevailing protectors of propriety – then wander into the bumpy brick street to panic a delivery wagon.
I’m confident that one or more of New Albany’s founders periodically let loose with giggly bursts of unrepentant flatulence, even during the Sunday worship service. Eons may pass, but men are always like that, aren’t they?
It doesn’t mean these people weren’t capable of great and memorable achievements, just that they were real people. To me, that’s enough.
And you?
---
On pedestrians and human nature.
One of these days, there’ll be time for recounting H.L. Mencken’s bathtub hoax. Until then, there are two items of unfinished business for consideration.
Just last week, I suggested that it is safer to jog down a ten-foot-wide medieval hilltop street in Pamplona, Spain, alongside massive horned fighting bulls and three or four thousand of your closest friends, than it is to drive an automobile through New Albany’s rutted, unkempt streets.
Within hours, a native Spaniard was gored during the daily run with the bulls and subsequently died, the fifteenth such fatality since San Fermin’s inception in 1911.
Less than 24 hours later, I brought my bicycle to an abrupt, sliding halt to avoid hitting an oblivious, shirtless pedestrian who never took his eyes off the ground before meandering into my path. My elderly two-wheeled conveyance comes equipped with a bell, and I dinged it early and often before applying the brakes.
The non-mechanized dullard flipped me off as he shuffled to the curb, leaving me cognizant of my error in blaming the city’s routine roadway chaos solely only on those drivers who steer their SUVs with their knees while devouring tacos and watching Transformer 18 on the DVD. It is increasingly obvious that in New Albany, the term “street person” takes on shadings that extend beyond homelessness, which is regrettable enough.
A New Albanian street person is one who ostensibly lives indoors, but spends much of life, night and day, ambulatory or unconscious, in the middle of the closest available street – piloting an errant skateboard, engaging in car repairs, talking on a cell phone, smoking a pack of cigarettes, throwing a football, or gazing at the sky. The list is uniformly depressing, and seldom permits through traffic.
Daily, we are offered the novel and plainly hazardous spectacle of drivers too busy multi-tasking to bother driving, barreling down corroded streets that our shambolic city council refuses to pave, toward dazed pedestrians too busy ambling along non-existent center lines to bother noticing.
In my opinion, a fine morning’s run with the bulls would cure the lot of them, although it just as easily might have the opposite effect and scare the fight out of the bulls.
Speaking of stage fright, two weeks ago I learned the hard way not to trust Wikipedia. To paraphrase the immortal words spoken by WKRP’s Arthur Carlson: As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly -- and that the Scribner brothers came from Albany, New York.
Not so. Their journey took them from the vicinity of the Big Apple to subsequent immortality as founding paragons of New Albanian civic virtue. There aren’t enough pigeons on Pearl Street to sully that sort of achievement, even if we’ve yet to erect the requisite statuary to serve as target for the pigeons’ own freedom to screech.
Suitably contrite, I duly concede my error. However, the heretic in me cowers only briefly even at the risk of another lashing. My respect for history’s lessons is genuine and sincere, but as a contrarian, I’m nonetheless obliged to ask why the Scribner brothers didn’t call this place New Brooklyn, New Manhattan or New Harlem?
Were they intent on embarrassing future generations of sassy commentators like me?
Was Joel Scribner slyly acknowledging his mistress’ home address in Albany?
Or did he lose the naming rights to the future city in a card game somewhere on a grimy flat boat drifting down the Monongahela?
WHAP! THUNK!
Ouch … okay -- put away the whip, will you?
Evidently I’m prone to that most controversial of realms, satire, the bane of literal-minded Americans everywhere. Did you know that in New Albany, satire is so widely feared that there exists an ordinance prohibiting it?
Satire within earshot of a church building or governmental toilet is strictly forbidden. It is the only ordinance on record known to have been consistently enforced within the city limits, penalized by irrevocable exile to Birdseye or placing the satirist in nickel and dime store stocks at the whim of the magistrate’s, and ...
BAP! SLUG!
Hey – those stung.
Here’s the point. Historical accuracy is marvelous but forever elusive. We should laugh along with history more often. Rote names and dates mean less than the gist of the story, and history itself ideally is a well- and entertainingly-told story, not a canonical scroll to be venerated. We’ve too many of them already.
Diligent contemporary scholarship into the life, times and private proclivities of historical figures like Thomas Jefferson should be a counterweight, gently suggesting reassessment and a recognition borne of tolerance that our forbearers were living, breathing people no different than us. Some were brilliant, and some unspeakably dull. So it goes.
Racier old-timers may have been unafraid to take a healthy leer up an accidentally raised skirt, to wager carelessly on the ponies, or to drink long and hard from the bottle of corn whisky they’d hidden from the prying eyes of the prevailing protectors of propriety – then wander into the bumpy brick street to panic a delivery wagon.
I’m confident that one or more of New Albany’s founders periodically let loose with giggly bursts of unrepentant flatulence, even during the Sunday worship service. Eons may pass, but men are always like that, aren’t they?
It doesn’t mean these people weren’t capable of great and memorable achievements, just that they were real people. To me, that’s enough.
And you?
Thursday, September 22, 2005
UPDATED: Did you hear the one about the golf cart?
Neither did we, so instead ...
Tonight, in an epochal moment that will be remembered for generations in New Albany, our City Council heeded the sage advice of the community’s most reliable witnesses and resoundingly approved the appointment of Brandon Smith to the Historical Preservation Commission.
Well, almost all of the council did, ‘cuz nothing’s ever simple here in the Land that Brains Forgot.
With CM Jack Messer's absence leaving the council with only eight members present, the HPC appointment vote was 6-0, with CMs Bill Schmidt and Steve Price bizarrely abstaining from one of the only genuine no-brainers that we’re likely to see this year.
Presumably, they were holding out for “concern taxpayer,” Jouett Meekin or one of SL Price’s well-rehearsed needy renters to be nominated for the post.
Congratulations, Brandon – we think.
In other council news, the body’s lone Republican, CM Mark Seabrook, joined the city’s controller, Kay Garry, in asking the council’s Gang of Four – to judge by their reactions, specifically CM Price and fellow Siamese councilman Dan Coffey – why the local press (read: Ben Hershberg of the Courier-Journal, who was attacked by name at least twice during the session) generally seems to get wind of resolutions and ordinances before he and she do.
Check their cell phone records, Mark.
Mrs. Garry’s dispassionate, concise and detailed explanations of the reality of city finances yet again deprived the inevitably pontificating CM Coffey of the Category Five wind required to inflate his considerable gills, leading to the garbled Cappuccino back-peddling that is as much a necessary part of city council meetings as gasoline is to the internal combustion engine: “We really don’t know how much of what is being spent.”
If the air weren't hot, it would help cool the meeting room.
Treachery lurked just around the corner through most of the evening’s proceedings, as when CM Price plumbed the depths of his high school rhetoric textbook (Chapter One: “Play Some Skynyrd”) to praise the inspired brilliance of Mrs. Garry, only to suddenly point his finger at her and say, “You can help us find the money, but you won’t.”
Pssst, Steve – the money’s hidden under the neon condom display, aisle three at New Albany DVD. Didn’t the Mullah Goebel tell you?
Meanwhile, NA Confidential sincerely notes the very human tragedy that CM Donnie Blevins has found himself flailing through ever since the issue of the sanitation department (his employer) first surfaced, but it’s rather obvious that by failing to consistently abstain on votes that represent certain conflicts of interest for him, CM Blevins has made his problem far worse.
Tonight, he intemperately called Mrs. Garry a “liar,” then later issued the last of the evening’s many “clarifications” just prior to adjournment, insisting that it was a “misunderstanding,” and that he respects her deeply.
Phil Collins said it best: “(You’re) in too deep.”
Yes, it certainly was a choreographed affair up on the third floor. First, the Sewer Board reported en masse, in essence informing the council that there’s no available money to be redistributed from the sewage utility’s coffers to support other arms of the city, i.e., a sanitation department awash in red ink.
With the Sewer Board’s collective fingers furiously wagging, and the proposed Industrial Disposal privatization contract now gone by the wayside, submerged beneath New Elbonia’s primordial glop, all parties in attendance agreed to make nice, form a new committee and consider options for the future of sanitation in the city of New Albany.
Apparently the bleeding will continue until morale improves.
A love-in of a different sort was staged by two earnest female members of the speaking public, who used their time to lob fat softballs in the general direction of their beloved regressive icons, CMs Coffey and Price, and despite being joined at the hip, these well-prepared luminaries were easily able to hit the scripted-in-advance pitches clean out of the park.
It’s a short porch in wrong field, you know.
Speaking of male bonding, there were numerous instances of gentle nuzzling, affectionate back-slapping and protests of chaste intent passing back and forth on the Gang of Four’s side of the table.
The crowd groaned as CM Larry Kochert paused briefly from his favored pastime of bashing the county to question why CM Price had not been recognized by name for his gratis musical performance at the recent Silver Grove Neighborhood Association’s street fair.
Tossing those panties on stage was a bit much, though.
Earlier, CM Schmidt strangely chose the portion of the agenda labeled “Communications from City Officials” to read his own prepared comment, in which he professed steady support for ordinance enforcement and castigated anyone who doubted it, then immediately changed the subject and began outlining his plan to expand the standing sanitation committee by adding non-council members.
Perhaps Valla Ann’s cameraman inadvertently got in the way of CM Schmidt’s teleprompter.
But give him his due: CM Schmidt joined with all council members in approving Pam Badger as New Albany’s OEO.
Finally.
That’s a wrap, and tonight’s cool, refreshing Bug Light “Outstanding Grandstander of the Meeting” nod goes to CM Steve Price, who with his predictably cowardly HPC abstention managed to thumb his nose at his own district for a Gang of Four leading 176th time this year.
Not only did CM Price confide that he had once “read something on a Blog,” but he also contributed this classic quote:
“We’re scrambling here – there’s families out there who aren’t going to have a Christmas.”
---
Friday morning update:
The C-J's Ben Zion Hershberg focuses on the council's approval of the Scribner Place bonding mechanism, which was passed last night, with the only "nay" vote coming from lame duck councilman Steve Price:
Scribner bond-finance plan OK'd; New Albany backs financial arrangements, by Ben Zion Hershberg (short shelf life for Courier-Journal links).
Tonight, in an epochal moment that will be remembered for generations in New Albany, our City Council heeded the sage advice of the community’s most reliable witnesses and resoundingly approved the appointment of Brandon Smith to the Historical Preservation Commission.
Well, almost all of the council did, ‘cuz nothing’s ever simple here in the Land that Brains Forgot.
With CM Jack Messer's absence leaving the council with only eight members present, the HPC appointment vote was 6-0, with CMs Bill Schmidt and Steve Price bizarrely abstaining from one of the only genuine no-brainers that we’re likely to see this year.
Presumably, they were holding out for “concern taxpayer,” Jouett Meekin or one of SL Price’s well-rehearsed needy renters to be nominated for the post.
Congratulations, Brandon – we think.
In other council news, the body’s lone Republican, CM Mark Seabrook, joined the city’s controller, Kay Garry, in asking the council’s Gang of Four – to judge by their reactions, specifically CM Price and fellow Siamese councilman Dan Coffey – why the local press (read: Ben Hershberg of the Courier-Journal, who was attacked by name at least twice during the session) generally seems to get wind of resolutions and ordinances before he and she do.
Check their cell phone records, Mark.
Mrs. Garry’s dispassionate, concise and detailed explanations of the reality of city finances yet again deprived the inevitably pontificating CM Coffey of the Category Five wind required to inflate his considerable gills, leading to the garbled Cappuccino back-peddling that is as much a necessary part of city council meetings as gasoline is to the internal combustion engine: “We really don’t know how much of what is being spent.”
If the air weren't hot, it would help cool the meeting room.
Treachery lurked just around the corner through most of the evening’s proceedings, as when CM Price plumbed the depths of his high school rhetoric textbook (Chapter One: “Play Some Skynyrd”) to praise the inspired brilliance of Mrs. Garry, only to suddenly point his finger at her and say, “You can help us find the money, but you won’t.”
Pssst, Steve – the money’s hidden under the neon condom display, aisle three at New Albany DVD. Didn’t the Mullah Goebel tell you?
Meanwhile, NA Confidential sincerely notes the very human tragedy that CM Donnie Blevins has found himself flailing through ever since the issue of the sanitation department (his employer) first surfaced, but it’s rather obvious that by failing to consistently abstain on votes that represent certain conflicts of interest for him, CM Blevins has made his problem far worse.
Tonight, he intemperately called Mrs. Garry a “liar,” then later issued the last of the evening’s many “clarifications” just prior to adjournment, insisting that it was a “misunderstanding,” and that he respects her deeply.
Phil Collins said it best: “(You’re) in too deep.”
Yes, it certainly was a choreographed affair up on the third floor. First, the Sewer Board reported en masse, in essence informing the council that there’s no available money to be redistributed from the sewage utility’s coffers to support other arms of the city, i.e., a sanitation department awash in red ink.
With the Sewer Board’s collective fingers furiously wagging, and the proposed Industrial Disposal privatization contract now gone by the wayside, submerged beneath New Elbonia’s primordial glop, all parties in attendance agreed to make nice, form a new committee and consider options for the future of sanitation in the city of New Albany.
Apparently the bleeding will continue until morale improves.
A love-in of a different sort was staged by two earnest female members of the speaking public, who used their time to lob fat softballs in the general direction of their beloved regressive icons, CMs Coffey and Price, and despite being joined at the hip, these well-prepared luminaries were easily able to hit the scripted-in-advance pitches clean out of the park.
It’s a short porch in wrong field, you know.
Speaking of male bonding, there were numerous instances of gentle nuzzling, affectionate back-slapping and protests of chaste intent passing back and forth on the Gang of Four’s side of the table.
The crowd groaned as CM Larry Kochert paused briefly from his favored pastime of bashing the county to question why CM Price had not been recognized by name for his gratis musical performance at the recent Silver Grove Neighborhood Association’s street fair.
Tossing those panties on stage was a bit much, though.
Earlier, CM Schmidt strangely chose the portion of the agenda labeled “Communications from City Officials” to read his own prepared comment, in which he professed steady support for ordinance enforcement and castigated anyone who doubted it, then immediately changed the subject and began outlining his plan to expand the standing sanitation committee by adding non-council members.
Perhaps Valla Ann’s cameraman inadvertently got in the way of CM Schmidt’s teleprompter.
But give him his due: CM Schmidt joined with all council members in approving Pam Badger as New Albany’s OEO.
Finally.
That’s a wrap, and tonight’s cool, refreshing Bug Light “Outstanding Grandstander of the Meeting” nod goes to CM Steve Price, who with his predictably cowardly HPC abstention managed to thumb his nose at his own district for a Gang of Four leading 176th time this year.
Not only did CM Price confide that he had once “read something on a Blog,” but he also contributed this classic quote:
“We’re scrambling here – there’s families out there who aren’t going to have a Christmas.”
---
Friday morning update:
The C-J's Ben Zion Hershberg focuses on the council's approval of the Scribner Place bonding mechanism, which was passed last night, with the only "nay" vote coming from lame duck councilman Steve Price:
Scribner bond-finance plan OK'd; New Albany backs financial arrangements, by Ben Zion Hershberg (short shelf life for Courier-Journal links).
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
City counts spare change as Adult DVD readies for opening
According to the Courier-Journal's Ben Zion Hershberg, it's nothing but bad news for New Albany today as the city's brain trust contemplates its next headlong retreat in a laughably ill-considered struggle against 1st Amendment rights.
(1) No matter what else happens in the short term, Adult DVD is free to open its doors at the current location in the west end.
(2) If the city of New Albany, having suffered a $69,000 defeat in its first skirmish with Adult DVD, wishes to whip the store in court, it will have to wait as much as two years and allow the store's operation to continue at the current site until then.
(3) Accordingly, the city proposes to settle with Adult DVD, which might cost as much as $350,000.
You read that right ... $350,000.
(4) Because the fiscal dike has sprung another leak -- the city just learned that it owes $2 million on an unpaid loan dating to 2003 -- there probably isn't any money for such a settlement unless Adult DVD agrees to a cup of coffee and a handshake at Little Chef.
Shall we all begin selling adult materials and queue up for the buy-out?
Unpaid loan may restrict/hinder settlement - New Albany still at odds with store, by Ben Zion Hershberg
(1) No matter what else happens in the short term, Adult DVD is free to open its doors at the current location in the west end.
(2) If the city of New Albany, having suffered a $69,000 defeat in its first skirmish with Adult DVD, wishes to whip the store in court, it will have to wait as much as two years and allow the store's operation to continue at the current site until then.
(3) Accordingly, the city proposes to settle with Adult DVD, which might cost as much as $350,000.
You read that right ... $350,000.
(4) Because the fiscal dike has sprung another leak -- the city just learned that it owes $2 million on an unpaid loan dating to 2003 -- there probably isn't any money for such a settlement unless Adult DVD agrees to a cup of coffee and a handshake at Little Chef.
Shall we all begin selling adult materials and queue up for the buy-out?
Unpaid loan may restrict/hinder settlement - New Albany still at odds with store, by Ben Zion Hershberg
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
C-J: "New Albany again rebuffed in battle against adult bookstore."
Thanks to P for the link to the C-J, which I don't always see. He wrote:
"Did you see this? What a sad waste of our resources to have fought such a losing battle. Hope ROCK chipped in for our losing attorney fees."
Right on, brother, but I suspect Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana is too busy wielding Tony Dungy as a fundraiser for the ongoing anti-Theatair X theocrat'sdesigner jihad to bother much with Cleopatra's, or whatever it's called now.
Note that the most interesting part of the article excerpted below is the comments section.
"Did you see this? What a sad waste of our resources to have fought such a losing battle. Hope ROCK chipped in for our losing attorney fees."
Right on, brother, but I suspect Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana is too busy wielding Tony Dungy as a fundraiser for the ongoing anti-Theatair X theocrat's
Note that the most interesting part of the article excerpted below is the comments section.
New Albany again rebuffed in battle against adult bookstore, by Harold J. Adams (Courier-Journal).
The City of New Albany must decide whether to keep fighting following another loss in its long-running battle to shut down an adult bookstore.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week denied the city’s request that the full court reconsider a September ruling by a three-judge panel blocking the city from closing New Albany DVD.
Thursday, December 08, 2016
Ooh, ooh that SMELL: Jeff Gahan proposes arbitrary CPI pegs to raise sewer rates annually, when sewer rates already are illegally subsidized.
Jeff Gahan, who draws a salary as both mayor of New Albany and head of its sewer board, proposes that in the future, annual sewer rate increases are to be pegged to one or another variants of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in a formula yet to be identified.
This vague mechanism appeared from nowhere, as appended to a sewer bonding ordinance, and was approved 7-2 in its first two readings, with a final vote coming next Thursday (December 15). As in previous years, city officials are stampeding the vote at year's end, citing tremendous urgency in solving problems no one knew existed until December.
Returning to the concept of pegging sewer rate increases to CPI-something, there is an obvious question that must be answered first: Is the current sewer rate legal?
Many of us believe it isn't. Randy Smith wrote the following in the spring of 2015, and it remains a must read for anyone seeking to understand the year-to-year mishandling of New Albany's sewer utility -- and did I mention that the mayor appointed himself to "run" the sewer utility?
(Bold text added)
Sewer Utility Still Draining Tax Dollars
... I had thought the (illegal sewer rate subsidy) chicanery had finally ended when I read last year that the subsidy had been removed. But just to make sure, I perused the city’s 2015 budget. There, to my astonishment, was yet another transfer of $570,000 from the income tax fund (EDIT) to the sewer utility.
I have written at length in the past about the illegality of this transfer. To be brief, while a city in Indiana can own and operate a municipal utility, the finances of that utility must be completely separated from other city funds. That is, the utility must stand on its own, without subsidies of any kind.
With this budget year, Jeff Gahan has in 11 budget years (as a councilman and as mayor) approved more than $10 million in transfers from city taxes to prop up the utility.
One might be of the opinion that using tax dollars to fortify the sewers is a good thing, but none of us are entitled to an opinion on this matter. State law is extremely clear. It’s illegal. (It happens to be illegal in Louisville, too, under a different state’s laws – ref: MSD.)
This misfeasance on the part of the mayor and council subjects the utility itself to the jeopardy of a taxpayer lawsuit to recover these millions of dollars.
However, illegality has become normal in New Albany. It’s not just the law-breaking that New Albany voters need to be aware of as they go to the polls. This transfer is possibly the single dumbest way to divert tax money and demonstrates innumeracy and financial incompetence on the part of the mayor and his advisors.
Also from Randy Smith, this week:
SEWER RATE INCREASE imminent in New Albany. But instead of taking responsibility for setting a legal rate, the city council has voted to begin an automatic rate increase pegged to some version of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Final vote is on Thursday, December 15. That is not the legal way to set rates. CPI is not an economic variable - it's merely a statistic.
My information is that the wastewater utility needs a rate increase of $0.21 per billing unit, meaning even the lightest user would see a rate increase of about 2.8%. But no CPI will provide those funds, leading back to illegal tax subsidies for the heaviest users of the city-owned utility.
Contact your council representatives before it's too late.
At-Large – David Aebersold (R), Voted FOR
(812) 944-9823, daebersold@cityofnewalbany.com
At-Large – David C. Barksdale (R), Voted FOR
(812) 945-1839, dbarksdale@cityofnewalbany.com
At-Large – Al Knable, MD (R), Voted AGAINST
(502) 386-5051, aknable@cityofnewalbany.com
1st District – Dan Coffey (I-D), Voted FOR
(502) 797-8347, dcoffey@cityofnewalbany.com
2nd District – Robert Caesar (D), Voted FOR
(812) 945-8744, rcaesar@cityofnewalbany.com
3rd District – Greg Phipps (D), Voted FOR
(812) 949-8317, gphipps@cityofnewalbany.com
4th District – Patrick McLaughlin (D),Voted FOR
(812) 949-9140, pmclaughlin@cityofnewalbany.com
5th District – Matt Nash (D), Voted FOR
(502) 718-4986, mnash@cityofnewalbany.com
6th District – Scott Blair (I), Voted AGAINST
(812) 697-0128, sblair@cityofnewalbany.com
Sudden stealth sewer rate hikes reveal the breathtaking extent of Jeff Gahan's intellectual dishonesty. Isn't it time to hold Team Gahan and its toadies accountable?
Council Crackers: Final victory over Nawbany's EPA sewer nemesis is so crucial that Jeff Gahan stayed home and watched "Walker, Texas Ranger" reruns on DVD.
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