The awful rowing towards haute cuisine

In the thread below, our friend Lloyd "Highwayman" Wimp capably outlined the accomplishments of last night’s second neighborhood forum.

The paraphrased highlights:

1) With the help of DNA, a committee consisting of representatives from each neighborhood association in attendance will request a meeting with the Mayor and City Attorney to begin a dialogue about the legal resources necessary for effective code enforcement. Hopefully, schedules will coalesce in such a way as to allow for the meeting prior to the next neighborhood gathering.

2) Another committee of volunteers will begin collecting information about how other cities' legal departments function so that ongoing conversations with our own officials can be informed by the experiences of others.

3) The next meeting will occur on Tuesday, April 25th, with both committees reporting answers and better questions obtained at that point. IU Southeast Professor Dr. John Newman will again moderate the discussion as we consider the next steps in the process.


To be sure, it was an effective gathering with all residents in attendance clearly understanding both the decisions made and the reasoning used to arrive at them. I’m proud to report that, even in the absence of skilled moderation, most in attendance continued to nobly set aside any previous differences, committed to coming together, focusing on the common good. It was heartening to say the least. What’s not yet clear, however, is the role that City Council Members Schmidt, Price, Kochert, and Coffey hope to play in the process. Their attendance is welcomed but, if eighty percent of success is showing up as Woody Allen suggests, it must be the other twenty that's confounded many who've witnessed the testimony of the council members. While resident legal scholar Brandon Smith chose to take the high road, displaying admirable diplomacy in both the live session and his comments written in the previous thread, a post-meeting survey of a random but sizeable sample of forum attendees found most rather disgruntled with the amount of energy wasted in fending off the interloping agendas they felt evident in much of what the CMs had to offer.

In reference to the African-American experience in the United States, Malcolm X once said, “Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on the plate.” What Malcolm later learned and so ably expressed, though, is that, in order to truly enjoy a meal, one must first learn to use sharp utensils for something other than jabbing the diner next to you. It’s instructive of New Albany political history to witness the difficulty with which the four CMs in question grapple with that concept. At a time when the spirit of cooperation and rational, objective thinking are the plats du jour, these men seem to be ordering from a menu prix fixe with selections not updated since the cold war. Apparently, years of finger pointing have led to poked-out eyes and a lessened appreciation of more palatable fare. Questions of motivation aside, they just don’t know how to act at the table.

What’s on that table is a living, breathing microcosm of what government can look and, perhaps more importantly, feel like. Ideas were debated and augmented. Responsibilities were agreed upon. Hands, rather than voices, were raised. And, when it was over, handshakes and smiles were shared as easily as documents and email addresses. The political reality that Brandon referred to is very much a product of the citizens and politicians that participate in it. And just because that political grounding occurs near the river, it’s absolutely no reason we should have to face drowning before we pull ourselves up out of the water beyond the floodplain. If I’m not mistaken, saving ourselves from that particular fate is exactly the purpose of building the boat of credibility referred to in All4Word’s analogy yesterday.

Grab a fork and an oar, gentlemen. We’ll show you how to use both.