As the Sewer Board dithers, a city council faction is "Running Scared"

As so many times before, NA Confidential happily recommends that you go directly to today’s Volunteer Hoosier and read Randy Smith’s “Running Scared.”

Here’s are excerpts:

“Faced with an ingenious solution provided by city controller Kay Garry, a majority of the (city) council is preparing to thrust the city into peril …

“This council is prepared to thumb its nose at the state-approved solution, prepared to avoid making the tough decisions needed to address the state-ordered budget restrictions …

“There is a constituency in this city that supports the Garry Plan as presented. It is not partisan. It is not factional. It is not driven by support for any individual. It is driven by sound policy. It recognizes the city's real problems and will rise up to support leaders who offer solutions and reject 'leaders' who run scared. Boasting about ignorance is running scared. Deferring important decisions is running scared. Bowing to the perception that New Albanians are frightened fools without any vision for the future is the definition of running scared …

“If you hold office only to 'run scared,' just step down now and save yourself the humiliation of rejection by this city's constituency for progress.”

From Running Scared, in today's Volunteer Hoosier.

Before reading the following local media pieces on the Sewer Board’s role in the budgetary showdown, bear in mind that the board is composed of five members, one of whom is Mayor James Garner.

Of the remaining four who are relevant in the present tense, one is Mark Seabrook, the City Council’s lone Republican, and the other is veteran City Council representative Larry Kochert, a Democrat and a legendary wielder of back-room power in local circles.

Most emphatically, NA Confidential is not recommending that there is any connection between City Council factions, or concurrent political jockeying, or the many and varied coincidences that owe to the presence of certain councilmen on other boards and committees during a time of fiscal crisis, when skeptics among us might catch the faintest whiff of … nah, couldn’t be.

No. Not at all. Never should have watched that “JFK” flick.

Sewer Board balks at loan idea; New Albany mayor asking for $500,000, by Ben Zion Hershberg of the Courier-Journal.

Mayor's request for sewer loan comes up dry, by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor.