In Friday’s “UPDATED: Scribner Place: Who's for it, who's against it, and who hasn't decided,” we included the 3rd District Councilman Steve Price in the list of “who’s against” the Scribner Place project.
This generated the following response from Tim Deatrick, correspondent for the Weekly World News (or the Tribune – we can’t recall which), who says:
“I was at the May 17th S. Ellen Jones meeting. CM Steve Price didn’t say he is against Scribner Place as a project, he said he is against Scribner Place being financed the way it is being proposed, because (1) the county is not willing to become a financial partner in this endeavor, (2) the current condition of the city's financial status is precarious at best, and (3) the Mayor and his Economic Development chief do not have any commitments from private investment in Scribner Place.”
Okey dokey, Tim.
At various times during the S. Ellen Jones neighborhood association meeting -- at least when Price spoke for himself and did not hurriedly defer to the numerological elders at the FacTable to speak for him -- he managed to offer at least two other "plans" as obvious improvements over Scribner Place.
First, Price mentioned transforming the old Reisz Furniture building on Main Street into condos and a rooftop bar to watch exciting events like Thunder Over Louisville. When asked who would pay for such a worthy project, one of the ranking Brambleberries laughed and pointed to the room at large: “You will!”
Second, Price interjected that he’d always thought it a good idea to take the funds earmarked for Scribner Place infrastructure development and use them to buy and redevelop derelict downtown buildings, in effect offering to nationalize them and have the city go into the landlord business, much in the same fashion as Havana and Pyongyang.
(NA Confidential’s not the only socialist in New Albany, after all.)
Add these statements to Price's admonition against "putting all the eggs in one basket," or whatever phrase from the Andy Griffith Show that happened to be in the homily file that particular evening, and then throw in the three factors Tim cited in his comment.
Taking these statements together, as a whole, how can it be said that Price is not opposed to Scribner Place as a project?
If Steve Price is reading, we’ll gladly post his clarification in the space beneath this.
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3 comments:
I, too, was at the meeting in question. Price did say that he was against Scribner Place because it was "putting all the eggs in one basket". From what I understood, he seemed to be talking about EDIT money when he made the references to eggs, suggesting that the city was putting all of its EDIT money into the Scribner Place project.
He repeated it enough, in fact, that IUS Economics Professor Dagney Faulk finally asked exactly how much money he was talking about, ie, what's the total amount of EDIT money available to the city.
Price answered that he didn't know.
Hearing that, Faulk then asked how he could claim that the city was putting all of its EDIT money into the project if he didn't know how much was even available.
After that, Price stammered a bit and then backed off his "all" claim and started talking in percentages but I'm not sure if he ever settled on a percentage.
By my count, Tim is the fifth person to speak for Price either during or as a result of the S. Ellen Jones meeting. It's really too bad he chose an attempt at paraphrasing Price's positions instead of offering up direct quotes from his notes, though.
I had a difficult time relating much of what Price said to city finances and operations, but a lot of his banter was quite high in entertainment value for a confirmed Andy Griffith fan like myself.
Tim,
I compliment you on your decision to attribute words to the author that wrote them this time. Dare I call it progress?
Since you've taken your first baby step, perhaps you'd care to take another and use your literary knowledge to explain to us how the relationship of King Claudius and Queen Gertrude relate to Price's misrepresentation of facts to his constituents and Valla Ann's subsequent attack on the administration.
Actually, Tim, I think you'd be better suited to the task. It was your journailstic prowess, after all, that captured Price describing a situation as "precarious". I've not heard that from him before.
Since you seem to ask the right questions, perhaps you could utilize your position as a reporter at the Tribune to ask Valla Ann where she got the information that led to her accusations against the administration.
If the city is, in fact, keeping information from the public, it seems contradictory that she would have such a wealth of it.
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