Ballad of a Thin Man

"Character is not made in a crisis - it is only exhibited."
Robert Freeman

Today’s weather forecast is bizarrely metaphorical. Strong storms are predicted during the afternoon hours, immediately preceding the deliberations of the City Council and its vote on the Garry Plan, which addresses state-mandated budget cuts.

You already know that NA Confidential believes the Garry Plan to be the best response to a bad situation.

Not unexpectedly, it seems terminally difficult for opponents of the Garry Plan to grasp that endorsement of the plan does not imply approval of the errors that have led to the necessity of its enactment.

As the State Board of Accounts makes clear in its annual financial report (for 2002), there is sufficient blame to go around – mayors, controllers, city councilmen, ancillaries, pizza delivery drivers, the founding Scribners and the man in the moon all are responsible for an institutional culture that perhaps never during the past century has functioned at a level of efficiency commensurate with the expectations of its citizenry, some among whom would use this as a pretext to abolish the city.

You already know that NA Confidential believes opponents of the Garry Plan to have offered absolutely nothing in the way of a credible alternative, preferring instead to indulge in various public performances of self-aggrandizing demagoguery, fear-mongering and flat-earth sophistry.

For those of a rational bent, the real questions are whether the city of New Albany is doomed for perpetuity to the clannish vituperation and political blood feuds (both within and without the ruling party of the hour) of a dirty little river town, or whether there might be a different paradigm, one that looks ahead to transcending our self-imposed limitations rather than deriving comfort and a sense of tolerable co-dependence from them.

For or against the Garry Plan, tonight’s vote will address the short-term budgetary repair required by the state of Indiana – a state of affairs over which there is far less maneuverability than opponents of the Garry Plan would have you believe.

But the implications reach much further than tidying the current mess.

Tonight’s City Council vote stands to provide the context for what comes next in New Albany – and make no mistake, somewhere over that horizon, the future is rushing headlong to meet us whether we like it or not.

Choices in the necessarily future tense already are being made, as in the inevitability of generational succession within the dominant political parties, the growing confidence and activity of the neighborhood associations, and the emergence of a constituency for progress that proposes to explore that most derided and misunderstood of all New Albany landscapes – the ones lying outside the box that we've chosen to inhabit for too long.

We believe that tonight’s City Council vote is an opportunity to learn more about ourselves, to take stock of respective roles and talents in forging a better future for the city of New Albany, and to initiate the process of identifying who we are and what we intend to do.

There’ll never be a better time than tonight to publicly declare for progress, to decry the politics of regress, and to become a part of the solution.

We’ll see you at the teach-in.

2:00 p.m. update - Leadership Yardstick at Volunteer Hoosier.