Into the phone booth: The Cleaner’s brand new clothes

At 9:05 p.m. last night, sitting City Council President Jeff Gahan rested his weary gavel arm and announced that is was time for communications from Mayor James Garner.

Normally this is cause for great tittering among the faithful, as the possibility of the mayor actually communicating seems as remote as an Iranian mullah endorsing Anheuser-Busch’s latest alcoholic soda pop.

Lest you doubt it, such skepticism is indeed merited. Only on widely scattered occasions does Mayor Garner enter the meeting room during City Council functions. Naturally, by remaining at his chosen post in the hallway, he manages to conveniently miss hearing most of the concerns voiced by the citizens he purports to represent, insisting instead that people should come see him privately.

Quite simply, City Hall is uncomfortable with the notion of give and take that is exemplified by the “town hall” style forum, something we need desperately in New Albany if one is to judge by the sheer numbers of citizens who see City Council meetings as their sole opportunity to interact with elected officials.

From City Hall’s obvious distaste for meaningful dialogue, two important themes can be inferred.

First, there is an implicit recognition on the part of Mayor Garner’s advisors that style in politics does in fact matter, but owing to the mayor’s limited abilities in any extemporaneous setting, such settings must be carefully controlled to avoid missteps. Scripted and staged … that’s the rage.

Photo ops? Well, you can go back and reshoot the scene, can’t you?

Second, and potentially more serious, is an equally obvious determination on the part of City Hall to control the flow of information about what it is doing and what it plans to do.

While such control remains one tool in the arsenal of any organization, great or small, it must yield to escalating accountability with each step away from the private interest into that of the public.

In other words, in most cases an individual’s plans for the future may remain concealed with little potential impact on others, but an elected public official must accept an obligation of more complete disclosure with respect to work that impacts the body politic.

His bosses.

Against this backdrop, Mayor Garner greeted the City Council at 9:05 p.m., arranged his prepared text atop the lectern, and announced that heretofore, he would be making a quantum leap from dry cleaning to hardware: No longer James the Cleaner, but James … The Hammer.

Not in so many words, of course, but the strategy was crystal clear. Having already engaged in the necessary closed-door bartering with the Council to achieve satisfactory compromises on ordinance enforcement and the legislative body’s acceptance of his chosen candidate to become Economic Development Director, the Mayor chose his moment of one-sided communication to answer the critics without fear of further humiliation.

And, by the Mayor’s standards, it was quite an answer. Gone was the flighty breeziness, and purged was the whiny demeanor of previous appearances. Instead, there was a furrowed brow, angrily shuffled papers and a hard edge to Mayor Garner’s voice.

Not John Facenda, but presumably mad as hell, he proposed not to take it any more.

The Mayor began by returning to his most cherished of mantras with the allegation that there somehow remain people in the community who treat him disrespectfully, and broadly insinuating that the City Council’s lax management of its meetings, i.e., allowing critics to speak in such terms, actually encourages such disrespect.

President Gahan was spotted caressing his gavel.

Furthermore, in the finest tradition of conspiratorial theory, Mayor Garner noted that such critics seek only to destroy City Hall’s progress from within even as he attempts to serve all the citizens of New Albany irrespective of party affiliation.

Since Councilman Steve Price earlier had raised the specter of encroaching Nazism in response to citizen Huckleberry’s perfectly valid point about the tolerance of illegal gambling in local Legion halls (Price mistakenly thought Huckleberry said “tanning salons”), prompting a heated exchange, Gahan’s ubiquitous gavel and a quick appearance by the chief of police, one might guess that Communism were to blame for the vicious assaults on City Hall as perceived by the Mayor.

Fortunately, he didn’t go there. But make no mistake: Mayor Garner’s tone was suitably indignant, the chosen persona was loaded for bear, the message was non-partisan, and for once there was evidence of a pulse.

Subsequently, in a communal glow testifying to the genuine effectiveness of thoughtful stage management, Mayor Garner removed his iron-studded glove for long enough to sign ordinance enforcement into law, and youthful but experienced Paul Wheatley was approved as the new economic development czar.

Last evening’s competently choreographed public expression of annoyance, and the accompanying behind-the-scenes compromises with the City Council, were designed to show that City Hall is aware of the public relations beating it has absorbed and is seeking to stop bleeding.

That’s a start, but it goes without saying that these gestures are only a beginning, for they must be sustained and followed by bona fide changes in the way this administration both conceives and imparts what is likes to call “the right information.”

Conceptually, “the right information” must be expressed concretely in terms of ideas that take the form of accountable strategic goals in all aspects of the city’s operation, and what will be done to achieve them.

As an example of what is vague and unacceptable, the Tribune’s Amany Ali quotes Mayor Garner: “There are a lot of things that we want to do in economic growth.” (Tribune, Thursday, January 20, 2005).

In the sense of communications, City Hall must find a way to impart its version of “the right information” in timely and coherent way.

As one citizen noted last evening, the city’s web site is a shambles compared with other cities of comparable size, revealing a mayor and council alike that has yet to come to grips with computer literacy as a necessary precondition of the world we live in today.

More importantly, recent attendance at the twice-monthly City Council meetings has made it irrefutably clear that there must be other forums for public contact with our elected officials, the Mayor chief among them.

NA Confidential hereby challenges the Mayor to inaugurate a series of town hall meetings for the purpose of meeting and hearing the citizens of New Albany, and thus fostering a beneficial hands-on dialogue.

The frustrating and ultimately most damning indictment of the current administration is that such a fruitful idea, one involving frequent contact, dialogue and an exchange of ideas with the people of New Albany, openly and in public, and not behind closed doors, must come from outside City Hall rather than from within it.

Shouldn’t The Hammer want that?