Some readers are aware that I have an approaching date with a surgeon to repair a thoroughly shredded left rotator cuff. The injury was not suffered while tossing vicious curveballs, seeing as I throw right handed -- and quite softly, at that. Perhaps tilting at windmills – peddling good beer where swill is the norm, reading books with real words instead of betting lines and the TV schedule, and expecting literacy and sensibility from local elected officials – has had something to do with it. I simply never should have started stitching those sow’s ears left-handed. That type of purse trade takes it out of you.
The need for an MRI brought me to the door of Priority Radiology at 6:45 this frigid morning, and quality time spent napping in the plastic big tube while the imaging apparatus whirled provided me ample time for reflection on the events of Thursday night.
Forget CM Steve Price’s recurring Jethro Bodine public performance art. He doesn’t know any better way than lowering the bar to subterranean depths, and in fairness, he probably never thought he’d be in a position where real, thinking people would question his plaintive yelps, which increasingly sound like those that emanate from flea-bitten sheep on yonder moor -- with the difference being that you're inclined to feel sorry for the sheep.
The 6th district’s GOP hopeful? Another curious non-entity, with nothing to offer except the laughably executed caricature of a senior citizen reverting to elementary school playground boorishness – teasing, goading, and intent on nothing so much as attracting the maximum attention with the least effort expended on genuine worthiness.
In other words, a perfect fit for a dysfunctional council currently run by the personification of self-aggrandizing underachievement.
Lost in last evening’s scuffles (though not quite scofflaws) was the classic, patronizing performance of the council’s president, Larry Kochert, who established an all-time council fence-sitting record by simultaneously occupying three positions at once. I mentioned it in the previous post, but it’s worth returning to examine anew. Here’s the scene: ----
Just ten days ago, the council approved a first reading of the Summit Springs zoning change by a resounding 8-1 margin, with 2nd district CM Bill Schmidt alone in opposition. Last night, with councilmen Blevins and Zurschmiede absent, the vote had reached 5-1 (Schmidt one again opposing) when it came council president Larry Kochert’s turn, and he provided sweeping justification for his “slippery” sobriquet by … abstaining.I laughed aloud, and was immediately affixed with a presidential glare.
When Kochert’s turn came for the third reading, he looked directly at me, sarcastically said “thank you,” and voted against the ordinance, remarking that only then – at the last possible moment, and having first voted in favor of the measure prior to abstaining on the second reading – could he reveal a hitherto unspoken objection, which had to do with jurisdiction for future zoning decisions. To repeat: 4th district CM Larry Kochert recorded one vote for, one abstention, and one against … and all three stances were taken at various times on exactly the same ordinance.
---- Earlier in the evening, 6th district incumbent Jeff Gahan posed a handful of insightful, pithy and entirely unanswered questions pertaining to CM Kochert’s ongoing inability to properly manage agenda items, particularly the firefighter hiring ordinance, which is something that the typically outspoken Fire Chief Ron Toran addressed more succinctly a short time later:
Vote it up, or vote it down … the president is stalling.
To put it mildly, CM Kochert’s brief tenure in the president’s chair has been shaky, the results unconvincing, and the quality of acting somewhat below the dinner theater level.
Word on the street has been that the slippery one has intended this council year to be a glorious exclamation point to a preceding sentence that, in reality, hardly exists in discernable form. He'd scheme and connive, and manage something approximating a time-server’s cherished trifecta: Cornering a mayor he abhors, indefinitely delaying truly pressing neighborhood reforms, and instituting a smoking ban that almost no one believes is as important a use of legislative time as any number of other concerns, and then retiring to openly support a Republican in the 4th district race to replace him.
Whether he runs again or not, again I ask: How is it possible to vote three ways on one issue without being a blatant hypocrite?
For the answer, we look to the longtime ward heeler and “Democratic” powerbroker Larry Kochert … the cynical originator of the “ordinance enforcement costs votes” plan for slumlord empowerment … the go-to mover and shaker who somehow always lacks the right information … the man who used to hold city elections in his own damn garage.
Banana Republic refugee, or future hope for a better New Albany?
Forget CM Steve Price’s recurring Jethro Bodine public performance art. He doesn’t know any better way than lowering the bar to subterranean depths, and in fairness, he probably never thought he’d be in a position where real, thinking people would question his plaintive yelps, which increasingly sound like those that emanate from flea-bitten sheep on yonder moor -- with the difference being that you're inclined to feel sorry for the sheep.
The 6th district’s GOP hopeful? Another curious non-entity, with nothing to offer except the laughably executed caricature of a senior citizen reverting to elementary school playground boorishness – teasing, goading, and intent on nothing so much as attracting the maximum attention with the least effort expended on genuine worthiness.
In other words, a perfect fit for a dysfunctional council currently run by the personification of self-aggrandizing underachievement.
Lost in last evening’s scuffles (though not quite scofflaws) was the classic, patronizing performance of the council’s president, Larry Kochert, who established an all-time council fence-sitting record by simultaneously occupying three positions at once. I mentioned it in the previous post, but it’s worth returning to examine anew. Here’s the scene: ----
Just ten days ago, the council approved a first reading of the Summit Springs zoning change by a resounding 8-1 margin, with 2nd district CM Bill Schmidt alone in opposition. Last night, with councilmen Blevins and Zurschmiede absent, the vote had reached 5-1 (Schmidt one again opposing) when it came council president Larry Kochert’s turn, and he provided sweeping justification for his “slippery” sobriquet by … abstaining.I laughed aloud, and was immediately affixed with a presidential glare.
When Kochert’s turn came for the third reading, he looked directly at me, sarcastically said “thank you,” and voted against the ordinance, remarking that only then – at the last possible moment, and having first voted in favor of the measure prior to abstaining on the second reading – could he reveal a hitherto unspoken objection, which had to do with jurisdiction for future zoning decisions. To repeat: 4th district CM Larry Kochert recorded one vote for, one abstention, and one against … and all three stances were taken at various times on exactly the same ordinance.
---- Earlier in the evening, 6th district incumbent Jeff Gahan posed a handful of insightful, pithy and entirely unanswered questions pertaining to CM Kochert’s ongoing inability to properly manage agenda items, particularly the firefighter hiring ordinance, which is something that the typically outspoken Fire Chief Ron Toran addressed more succinctly a short time later:
Vote it up, or vote it down … the president is stalling.
To put it mildly, CM Kochert’s brief tenure in the president’s chair has been shaky, the results unconvincing, and the quality of acting somewhat below the dinner theater level.
Word on the street has been that the slippery one has intended this council year to be a glorious exclamation point to a preceding sentence that, in reality, hardly exists in discernable form. He'd scheme and connive, and manage something approximating a time-server’s cherished trifecta: Cornering a mayor he abhors, indefinitely delaying truly pressing neighborhood reforms, and instituting a smoking ban that almost no one believes is as important a use of legislative time as any number of other concerns, and then retiring to openly support a Republican in the 4th district race to replace him.
Whether he runs again or not, again I ask: How is it possible to vote three ways on one issue without being a blatant hypocrite?
For the answer, we look to the longtime ward heeler and “Democratic” powerbroker Larry Kochert … the cynical originator of the “ordinance enforcement costs votes” plan for slumlord empowerment … the go-to mover and shaker who somehow always lacks the right information … the man who used to hold city elections in his own damn garage.
Banana Republic refugee, or future hope for a better New Albany?
You be the judge. The evidence mounts.
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