There can be no progress without ordinance enforcement that is built to succeed

(Note) For more on this topic, see these articles:
NA Confidential: The time is now for New Albany's Constituency for Progress
Volunteer Hoosier: A Constituency for Progress

For many decades, the city of New Albany has enacted ordinances against filth, squalor, and the sort of nasty habits that bad neighbors flout with scant regard for the opinions of their fellow men, and yet for most of us, one of the highest goals in life is the maintenance of a civilized society, not for the benefit of some, but for the furtherance of all.

Happily, many residents of New Albany live their entire lives in near perfect compliance with these ordinances despite not having once encountered them on a sheet of paper.

Others, a significant minority at the very least, choose consistently to ignore the responsibilities of living in a civilized society while at the same time enjoying the benefits, such as garbage collection, police protection and a fire department.

It is by no means elitist to suggest that these basic responsibilities be enforced fairly and universally by the city with the consent of the citizens who populate it, because to refuse these obligations is to promote anarchy, not freedom.

However, universal enforcement is unashamedly egalitarian, in the sense that the equality of all people living in New Albany is advanced when there is a level playing field, whether this is denoted by the struggle for human rights irrespective of sex, color or creed, or by the justifiable insistence that we all acknowledge shared responsibilities that are a prerequisite of civilization – whether homeowner, business owner, renter or absentee landlord.

For as many decades as the city has enacted ordinances, it has lacked the political will to mandate fair and universal enforcement of them. For reasons that lie deep within the unfortunate dysfunction that has characterized New Albany’s traditional leadership cadre, the fair and universal enforcement of the basic prerequisites of civilization has been deferred because somehow it is construed as a threat to the power of the city’s politicians.

Rather than viewing the rule of law as the ultimate affirmation of equality and opportunity, New Albany’s political leaders deride it as the pointy-headed province of intellectuals and outsiders and people who read far too often to be trusted.

In the fevered minds of the Councilmen Cappuccino’s of New Albany, to enforce ordinances is to lose the votes of those living in their districts who are not in compliance … and who, by refusing to acknowledge their responsibilities in a civilized society, are thumbing their noses at their neighbors.

And so, in the end, it would seem that the rights of the anti-social minority, not the law-abiding majority, are of the most enduring concern to generations of political leadership in New Albany, for if this were not true, wouldn’t New Albany’s political leadership enact an enforcement ordinance with genuine teeth, fund it to succeed, place good people in charge of it, and step back to reap the benefits of a cleaner, more livable city, one more attractive for investment and economic growth, and the kind of place where our best and brightest can remain living rather than moving elsewhere to find the better things in life?

Earlier this year, after much discussion and interminable wrangling, an ordinance enforcement ordinance was approved by the City Council and signed by Mayor Garner.

Like the starving victims of pestilence, gratified that a scrap of food was being tossed in our general direction, we hailed this achievement, along with neighborhood associations, fellow Bloggers and decent, caring folks on all corners.

But upon closer examination, as it is written and as it is proposed to be structured, funded and managed, this ordinance quite likely is doomed to failure – and in all likelihood intentionally so, for the same political reasons outlined above.

NA Confidential believes that the first goal of New Albany’s Constituency for Progress should be to examine the condition of the foundation of the city, and there is nothing more fundamental to the civilized coexistence of people in an urban area than the egalitarian sharing of responsibility and the fair and universal enforcement of the rule of law, whether that enforcement lies within the realm of the criminal code or the ordinance prohibiting junked automobiles.

Ordinance enforcement must be built to succeed, not fail.

Politicos, take note.