In yesterday’s Courier-Journal, Ben Zion Hershberg chronicled the City Council’s various trial balloons for a Sanitation Department intervention and bailout, but the proposals were not explored in depth.
Privatization of sanitation opposed; New Albany council plans alternatives.
Beyond the necessary theatrics to ensure that their political flanks are covered prior to the next election, it remains unclear what jurisdiction the City Council really has in this area.
Be that as it may, among the “fresh” new ideas emanating from the hallowed halls of CM Coffey’s alma mater, Bazooka Joe U. (in Hershberg’s words):
An ordinance that would let any business or household in the city choose its own private waste hauler, preventing city government from giving an exclusive contract to one company.
This proves what?
As Volunteer Hoosier notes: “It would have you dealing directly with one hauling company, while your neighbor deals with another, and the guy across the street struggles to get his car out of the drive because it's blocked by the half-dozen or more garbage trucks jockeying for position.”
A resolution stating that the sewer department's subsidy of the sanitation department should continue through the end of the year, giving the council and the department time to develop an alternative to the mayor's plan.
The “mayor ate my homework” defense, redux.
If one thing has been proven conclusively time and again throughout the history of New Albany, it would be that longer you’ve served in office, the more time it takes to find things.
Does this seem backward?
Why, yes – we are.
A resolution that would reduce the city's financial commitment to Scribner Place, a downtown development project. It would make more of the economic development income tax money now committed to the project available for sanitation and other city needs.
Ah, the savory legislative plat de jour … and out from the barbecued bologna kitchen to be reheated for the umpteenth time.
Ignore for a moment the precedent being sought by this maneuver, which in essence is the freedom to break a contract by nothing more so than whim.
Rather, recall that our local political dysfunction grows best in the fertile soil of chaos -- and it all makes sense.
Not unexpectedly, it’s back to the culture wars for New Albany, with the obstructionist lunatic fringe seated to the right remaining determined to hoist the Scribner Place straw man at every opportunity so that it can be pelted with Luddite brickbats, meanwhile ignoring the most simplistic of municipal cost/benefit analyses as though such a concept were written in Sanskrit.
English is challenge enough.
Aside from the random biochemical reactions passing as deep thought amongst the luminaries of the Gang of Four, Scribner Place and the Great Sanitation Debate of ’05 are and have been wholly separate matters, should remain wholly separate matters, and would not be an issue at this juncture in the least if not for the indisputably malign influence of New Albany’s four-headed Mt. Rushmore of ineptitude.
Scribner Place is a beneficial public/private investment that will help lead the way to attract people and their money downtown, where some of the money will be spent, and some of it will make its way back to local government, where it then can be used (if you insist) to defray economically inefficient but politically expedient and electorally popular departments.
Like Sanitation.
Consequently, if you support a city-run Sanitation Department and are prepared to pay more each and every year to have it out of general principle, that’s just dandy, but by simple extension you should be just as supportive of the forthcoming revitalization of downtown, so that a broader and stronger local economy can generate revenue to keep the price of your preferred city-owned garbage pickup affordable.
Not that you won’t be complaining again, anyway, two years from now, or that retaining the current system makes any sense given the numbers involved, but if your objective is “saving” Sanitation, it makes no sense to abandon revitalization as though it were some sort of “price” to pay for garbage service.
It isn’t a price at all – it’s an obligation on the part of government to move the city forward.
On the other hand, if you support another ritualistic public effort toward the emasculation of Scribner Place, and cheer further messy public acknowledgments that partisan political flim-flammery comes before the good of the many in the jaundiced eyes of the Gang of Four … and if you’re licking your tiny, envious chops at the de facto abandonment of the best plan to achieve progress toward downtown revitalization that has been presented in your lifetime … and if in your world, preventing less than a dozen net job losses is more important than the economic interests of the remaining 39,975 people in New Albany … then by all means, cuddle in the bosoms of your accommodating CMs Coffey, Price, Schmidt and Kochert, and receive exactly what you deserve.
But don’t neglect the Astroglide.
Like Bob Knight said – if rape is inevitable …
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Further reading:
Volunteer Hoosier, The Facts Speak for Themselves
Volunteer Hoosier, Here Come the Faeries
New Albany Tribune, Sanitation concerns to be prominent subject of tomorrow's gathering, by “staff reports.”
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3 comments:
If any of the Gang of Four were serious about "saving" sanitation, they would have done so long ago. With the exception of Price, they've had more than a decade(s) to do so.
Year after year, they've signed off on the problem, unwilling to take the heat for raising rates or other corrective measures.
It would be interesting to hear them explain how over twenty years of neglect is indicative of their respect for public employees and the citizens who pay their salaries.
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