NAC says: New Albany's City Council should approve the appointment of Jack Messer as interim ordinance enforcement officer.

At the Monday, August 1, City Council meeting, New Albany’s elected leaders will have the opportunity to approve the appointment of Jack Messer, veteran police officer and at-large city council member, as interim ordinance enforcement officer.

NA Confidential urges the council to do so, and to permit CM Messer to contribute his obvious enthusiasm and unquestioned experience to the task of helping launch a new culture of code accountability in the city of New Albany.

We recognize that nothing good comes easy when the guest list includes the likes of Councilman Cappuccino, and that this refreshing appointment, which ranks alongside looking both ways before crossing the street in the lexicon of monumental no-brainers, might well be a struggle.

That's because it just wouldn’t be New Albany if rumors weren’t already swirling to the effect that the city’s usual troglodyte’s arsenal of accumulated grudges, political paybacks and plain mean spiritedness will coalesce into a witch’s brew of entropy, and result in Messer’s rejection.

If such a repudiation actually does occur, New Albany will be taking a major step backward into the primordial “business as usual” slime that the past months have gone so far toward erasing from the city’s battered self-image.

It’s easy to see that as one of the council’s emerging thinkers and doers, CM Messer is ripe for rebuke at the hands of certain of his reactionary colleagues on the council, primarily those comprising the intellectually vacant, nay-saying Gang of Four, whose obstructionist tendencies over the course of previous months have nonetheless failed to stymie a mounting series of victories for those New Albanians capable of acting – of believing – in the future tense.

And make no mistake: CM Messer’s record over this period clearly places him within the ranks of those seeking progress for the city. His remarks at the June council meeting that confirmed approval for the Scribner Place project rank among the most inspiring words uttered by a public servant this year, or perhaps any other year in recent memory.

CM Messer deserves the opportunity he obviously relishes to place his professional reputation on the line and take a shot at the truly ambitious task of reforming a long-tolerated cultural norm of non-compliance with the law.

We can't think of a better man than CM Messer to initiate this laborious process, and trust that the City Council will view his candidacy in like fashion.

After all, each current sitting member of the City Council has publicly indicated support for effective ordinance enforcement, sometimes even effusively, although private reservations over potential vote loss should the city finally conclude that compliance with its own rules is the best path to a cleaner and better future has been expressed by at least one longtime councilman.

He knows who he is.

It should now be clear to even the most stubbornly calculating of the council’s obstructionist members that the rising tide of progressivism in New Albany, if snubbed, stands to pose an even greater threat to electoral security than slumlords howling over accumulated citations.

It would be particularly hypocritical for any council member who owns rental properties to vote against the appointment of CM Messer, who is beyond any reasonable doubt the most qualified candidate, both temperamentally and in terms of law enforcement credentials, to guide the process of ordinance enforcement, much of which will involve the constructive but firm engagement of the city’s oft-times parasitic rental property-owning class.

Did we mention that Monday’s council vote ledger holds special significance for residents of the city’s Third Council District, who will be watching what quite possibly will be CM Steve Price’s final chance to act in the best interests of his constituents before beginning his inexorable slide toward the oldies circuit and well-deserved political oblivion?

Price has spent the better part of six months actively, and sometimes gleefully, thumbing his political nose at those Third District voters whose collective vision of a vibrant New Albany provides hope that the city might exceed the depressingly narrow boundaries urged by those pogram-seeking “little people” who look up from their thimble-sized recliners at Price as a Messiah who'll somehow lead them backwards into the umbilical depths of the Eisenhower administration.

Alas, and in the end, CM Price is the Third District’s dross to bear, and just as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays retain a mathematical chance of ousting the Red Sox as World Series champion, it’s always possible that the councilman will awaken to his impending disappearance from the local political scene, and for once, vote with his district on a matter of importance.

We repeat: CM Jack Messer not only should be confirmed on Monday night as New Albany’s interim ordinance enforcement officer, but the City Council itself should take this unprecedented opportunity to put forth a display of public unity on the absolutely crucial necessity of the establishment of a new culture of accountability within the city.

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