For those who are just tuning in to “The Life and Times of New Albany,” a quick glance at the calendar reveals a special meeting of the Common Council of the City of New Albany, a gathering scheduled for Wednesday night at 6:00 p.m.
The presumed topic: The impending necessity of establishing interim storm water impact fees, which are the result of a federal mandate to (a) improve water quality, and (b) find a way to pay for it ourselves.
For a clear, concise and hyperbole-free explanation of what this means, please read Storm Sewers, Water Quality, etc. by the Volunteer Hoosier, Randy Smith.
Unrelated topics that might intrude upon this seemingly straightforward agenda are virtually limitless, and restricted in conspiratorial scope and overall irrelevance only by the genetic conceptual limitations of the native Luddite imagination.
However, NA Confidential is far from discouraged.
Lately, when asked to describe the ongoing campaign for progress in New Albany, I’ve likened it to football, not my favorite spectator sport, but one that is quite valuable metaphorically in times like these.
“Three yards and a cloud of dust,” I say, “and then back up the middle again on the next play.” The sheer force of oppositionist inertia makes the passing game problematic, but we’re gaining ground with each plunge.
It’s hardly surprising that local tempers have become torn and frayed as we approach the conclusion of a year that has seen intense and sometimes viciously personal debate about the speed with which New Albany should proceed – sometimes quietly, and other times kicking and screaming – into a position of competitiveness with respect to the city’s future.
You’d simply not expect to begin changing a municipality’s lifetime of underachievement all at once, although some citizens take longer to reach than others.
With his own goal line coming ever closer into view to the immediate rear, Councilman Cappuccino has become even more ill-tempered than usual, snapping to the C-J’s reporter that he “resents” being pushed into doing the homework necessary to unravel the complexities of the impact fees, a task that might include reading, a hobby he has publicly disavowed on more than one occasion.
It doesn’t help that New Albany’s masked troglobyte obstructionists lately have taken to questioning Cappuccino’s commitment to their lynch-first, think-later “plan” to improve the city by depriving it of the resources to function (thus providing convenient proof for their contention that it doesn’t work properly).
Last week’s chili supper and FRD dinner were the official kick-offs for next year’s political campaigns, and the murky stew of partisanship, blood feuds and obtuse paybacks engendered by these exercises in American democracy can be expected to add color to the urban landscape as our progressive revitalization effort proceeds, but make no mistake: Proceed it will, because in the year since NA Confidential’s inception, the ground floor has gotten more and more crowded with people who are working and networking to make it happen.
The next year will be even better. Thank you for reading, thinking and acting for the ultimate betterment of this community.
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To quote an unnamed server at a downtown eatery yesterday, "It was getting worse but now it's getting better. Things are improving in New Albany."
The following is an essay by Studs Terkel broadcast recently by my former employers, This I Believe, on NPR. I find it apropos not only of recent New Albany history but of a certain Mr. Baylor as well. The site counter at the bottom of the page is closing in on 45,000 unique viewings for a reason.
Congratulations on a year of being that reason.
My own beliefs, my personal beliefs, came into being during the most traumatic moment in American history: the Great American Depression of the 1930s. I was 17 at the time, and I saw on the sidewalks pots and pans and bedsteads and mattresses. A family had just been evicted and there was an individual cry of despair, multiplied by millions. But that community had a number of people on that very block who were electricians and plumbers and carpenters and they appeared that same evening, the evening of the eviction, and moved these household goods back into the flat where they had been. They turned on the gas; they fixed the plumbing. It was a community in action accomplishing something.
And this is my belief, too: that it's the community in action that accomplishes more than any individual does, no matter how strong he may be.
Einstein once observed that Westerners have a feeling the individual loses his freedom if he joins, say, a union or any group. Precisely the opposite's the case. The individual discovers his strength as an individual because he has, along the way, discovered others share his feelings -- he is not alone, and thus a community is formed. You might call it the prescient community or the prophetic community. It's always been there.
And I must say, it has always paid its dues, too. The community of the '30s and '40s and the Depression, fighting for rights of laborers and the rights of women and the rights of all people who are different from the majority, always paid their dues. But it was their presence as well as their prescience that made for whatever progress we have made.
And that's what Tom Paine meant when he said: "Freedom has been hunted around the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth that all it asks, all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. In such a situation, man becomes what he ought to be."
Still quoting Tom Paine: "He sees his species not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy" -- you're either with us or against us, no. "He sees his species as kindred."
And that happens to be my belief, and I'll put it into three words: community in action.
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