UPDATED: Councilman (oink) Steve Price for (oink) ordinance enforcement (oink) officer.

See also Profiles in abject and supremely petty moral cowardice: CMs Coffey, Schmidt, Price & Kochert publicly urinate on code enforcement in NA.

At last night’s tumultuous city council meeting, police officer and councilman Jack Messer was publicly humiliated and ritualistically lashed by four of his far lesser colleagues – if we were playing ball, I’d identify them as the ones unfit to wash, much less hold, his jockstrap – when the time came to approve his appointment to the new post of New Albany’s ordinance enforcement officer, one for which he is ideally suited in terms of credentials and temperament.

If there were 75 people in the room last evening, 71 of them knew deep in their hearts that in spite of the flagrant grandstanding, the florid demagoguery and the cheap rhetoric thrown out to them by obfuscating, obstructionist councilmen Coffey, Price, Schmidt and Kochert, it was obvious that Jack Messer would be a very good choice -- as one citizen said, the “right person now” -- to undertake the difficult task of restoring a culture of ordinance enforcement in the city of New Albany.

Most of them sat and watched in obvious discomfort as CM Messer was made to pay big time for his tormenters’ startling absence of detectable conscience, forward vision and basic human decency, none of which mattered a solitary jot to the Gang of Four so long as paybacks were rendered for the fact that times have changed inexorably, and will continue to change just as certainly, and very soon, the names Coffey, Price, Kochert and Schmidt will be as anachronistic in New Albany political circles as the Edsel is in the rolodexes of Detroit automakers, as rotary dial phones are in LA dealmakers’ conclaves, and as leech therapy is in the lexicon of defensible curative strategies in the corridors of Floyd Memorial.

Last night, Dan Coffey, Bill Schmidt, Steve Price and Larry Kochert informed the citizens of New Albany that they don’t give a ward heeler’s damn about anything other than the “business as usual” politics that the eldest three have practiced to the outright detriment of New Albany for a combined six decades of encroaching squalor, semi-literate nonchalance, probable venality and fewer truly sensible and creative solutions to the city’s problems than might be expected to emanate from the combined wit and wisdom of the furry denizens of the county animal shelter.

And so, with the Gang of Four indicating once and for all that they cannot be trusted to act in the best interest of New Albany, it’s time to consider the best choice to be the next nominee for ordinance enforcement officer.

NA Confidential says: Make it Steve Price.

Please, make it Steve Price.

First, and significantly, CM Price is absolutely acceptable to his conniving confederates on the plainly destructive Gang of Four, and also to prevaricating and undeniably culpable Republican schemer Mark Seabrook, whose statement of intent to abstain from taking a stand on CM Messer’s appointment surely soon will rank alongside Richard Nixon’s “Checkers” speech in the annals of politically calculating disingenuousness.

Second, CM Price is the only remaining Luddite councilman who might reasonably be expected to be willing and able to serve in the post, and probably can use the money, to boot, because owning rental property simply isn’t the cash cow it used to be, and won’t get any better once the ordinances … oh, never mind.

I forgot. CM Price and his brethren urinated all over those ordinances Monday night.

Anyway, CM Kochert is retired from whatever flange-polishing job that qualifies him to incessantly pretend that he owns the sewer system, and CM Schmidt’s far too old for such an active (or passive) position, up to and including the one he currently holds.

CM Coffey already has taken on the onerous responsibility of being a Bazooka Joe, board-certified expert on each and every field of human endeavor known to man, and besides that, he still wears the keys to the public toilet around his neck so that he can lord it over the parks department.

Boy, you’re gonna carry that weight.

That leaves CM Price – another wrong man for the right time, or right man for the wrong time, or something equally preposterous. He’s filled with objections, so let’s see him object to tall grass, junk cars and porch appliances, and make it stick.

It’s something he should know instinctively, right?

Think of the money he'll save the taxpayers by refusing to use a cell phone, and never mind that the efficiency of his performance might be enhanced by it.

NA Confidential urges Mayor James Garner to do the next best thing and challenge the city's inveterate gameplayers to put what is left of their reputations on the line just the way Jack Messer was willing to do and submit the name of Steve Price to the city council for consideration as ordinance enforcement officer at the body’s next meeting on August 18.

Steve Price: He'll clean up New Albany.

Yep, and pigs will fly, fly away.

Oink. Oink.

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See also Council denies Messer new enforcement position, by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor.

Courier-Journal coverage of the meeting last night focuses on the sanitation department controversy and excludes mention of the ordinance enforcement debacle. Ben Zion Hershberg's article is here, and remember that there is a short shelf life for C-J links.