NA Confidential's favorite Larry Kochert quote, ever -- bar none.

But don’t hold us to it, because there’s always the chance we’ll agree with him again some day.

In January, 2004, the longtime city councilman, and equally long-serving sewer board member, was asked by the Tribune’s Amany Ali to consider the motives of a group of city and county residents, a veritable who’s who of congenital obstructionism then loudly engaged in opposing the city’s granting of a sewer connection to the LaFollette Station project (now close to completion) along Highway 150 in Floyds Knobs, whose appeal to the Indiana Office of Environmental Adjudication was laughed out of court by the Environmental Law Judge in July of the same year.

Kochert responded to the reporter’s question with palpably mystified exasperation as to “why anyone would appeal the project,” and his analysis nestled gracefully into the very center of the target:

They're against everything. I've not seen one thing they've agreed with … I think they're wasting taxpayers' money. I don't think they're going to stop it. I think they're only going to delay it.

Then, noting that the city would both save money in building the sewer line and make money from those tapping in, CM Kochert closed with this:

Why wouldn't you want to do that?

Verily, it’s a question that defines our “little” epoch here in New Albany.

New Albany residents protest plan linking city sewers to new county development, by Amany Ali, Tribune City Editor (link to the Indiana Economic Digest reprint of the January 29, 2004 Tribune article).