Why I am voting for Mayor James Garner in Tuesday’s primary.

From time to time, little men will find fault with what you have done ... but they will go down the stream like bubbles, they will vanish. But the work you have done will remain for the ages.
-- Theodore Roosevelt

The city of New Albany’s four mayoral candidates are impeccably arrayed before Tuesday’s primary voters. It is a group of uniformly competent and entirely likable men that includes Democratic incumbent James Garner, challengers Doug England and Larry Scharlow, and Republican Randy Hubbard.

I propose that we act decisively to clear the decks of verbiage and subterfuge, and address the hopefuls with a sole consideration in mind:

Who among you will be proactive, rather than reactive, with respect to the single major issue of the mayoral campaign?

And what is this pre-eminent issue?

It embraces all the everyday manifestations and contingencies that emanate from the most fundamental of core aspects pertaining to city life:

Namely, the quality of life for city residents. What could be simpler?

Taking it a step further, I ask the candidates:

Can we achieve “progress by design” in New Albany through implementing the principles of Smart Growth and New Urbanism in our neighborhoods?

Or do we permit inertia and degradation to continue as the default and lamentably regressive non-policies of choice?

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On the eve of a mayoral primary, I (and a great many others) look at New Albany at the current time as an escalating battleground of ideas.

I firmly believe that the front line of this struggle runs directly through New Albany’s neighborhoods – primarily those neighborhoods that are situated in the city’s historic center, but also those built during more recent times and now stand as a sort of buffer between downtown and the burgeoning, soulless, McCartinesque exurb.

The dimensions and implications of these warring ideas -- and their underlying ideals -- are critical for city’s future … and for whether it actually has a future.

At last Tuesday’s 3rd district candidate debate, accidental councilman Steve Price offered a typically offhand, purely buffoonish reference to potential “rebellion” out “in the streets,” presumably having confused passages in his crayon-smudged notes with lyrics from a hoary Rolling Stones hit from the 1960’s, but as remains the case with all pre-digital stopped clocks, even Price can hit the target twice on a good day.

There certainly are expanding pockets of disaffection, but the rebelliousness that Price perceives does not match his interpretation of a dramatic taxpayer revolt by “little people” with pitchforks. Rather, it stems from an ever more clearly delineated clash between two distinct models of neighborhood life.

The first is the familiar model of urban deterioration management, wherein neighborhoods are treated largely in the breach, with the city’s ordinances and building codes generally ignored in favor of a lowest-common-denominator culture of non-enforcement, which in turn supports the depreciatory financial interests of investors – many of them absentee rental property owners – who proliferate and thrive in such an unregistered and unregulated habitat.

The second model emphasizes the time-honored virtues of stability within a community-oriented neighborhood fabric that encourages home ownership and the societal rewards that accrue from livability, something that in turn enhances the value of investment in, and within, the city itself. It is a model that is adaptive, taking what already exists and rendering it into something sought after by a new generation of urbanites.

Call it Smart Growth, or New Urbanism, or just plain common sense, but just know that it represents the wisest future-oriented municipal exploitation of available opportunities, and know also that the single most effective way for local government to encourage growth and investment of this type is to fairly and consistently enforce its own ordinances and codes.

However … well, there’s always a “however.”

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Local government’s institutional attitude toward its own ideal function and its mate purpose must be dramatically retrofitted to actively transform the neighborhood landscape from one purposefully neglected to suit the depreciatory short-term profitability of the rental property ownership interests to another intended to nurture instead the longer-term benefits to the community of investment in single-family, livable, sustainable neighborhoods.

Passivity has brought us to the current juncture. To say that purposeful neglect stands discredited as a future-oriented management strategy is to commit criminal understatement, but timidity has been quite useful for the interests that profit from urban decay. As dysfunctional as their business model is for the city as a whole, it pays as the situation stands, and they’ll not be modifying it without, shall we say, persuasion.

That’s the front line in New Albany’s battle of ideas, and absent principled stewardship, it is almost certain that further erosion will occur.

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Those men in suits have returned for their cross-examination: James Garner, Doug England, Larry Scharlow, and Randy Hubbard.

Who among you will be proactive, rather than reactive, with respect to the single major issue of the mayoral campaign?

Who among you is prepared to fight for what is right for the future of New Albany’s neighborhoods, and assist in the grassroots process of bringing the city’s urban core into line with the needs of the 21st century, as opposed to the gaping chasm of brains and willpower that have colored the sadly expedient and largely failed past?

Who among you will be aggressive, persistent and statesmanlike in stating the sought after goal for New Albany’s neighborhoods, then moving strongly to convene the respective sides currently facing each other across no man’s land, hammering out the necessary compromise that will keep the rebellion from escalating into something far less savory than our present condition, and following up with a renewed commitment to the force of law?

Anyone here willing to lead, not pander?

I believe that if local government in New Albany does not do something principled, firm and immediate to support the stable community investment potential of its single-family home ownership cadre inside the beltway, those residents best placed to advance the city’s future interests will grow weary of the struggle and relocate, and the resulting vacuum will be filled to an even greater extent with the unstable disinvestment potential of the city’s slumlords, which in turn will poison the gains achieved in the historic business district.

Rest assured: They’re waiting for the opportunity to expand their cynical mandate.

It’s as simple as that.

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Proactive or reactive?

You’ve been patient. You’re waiting for me to inform you which of the candidates for mayor fit into the respective categories, and to make a recommendation accordingly. You already know who I’ll be selecting on Tuesday. Here’s why.

First, this being a primary and not a general election, consider the unopposed Republican.

Randy Hubbard’s platform signals to date have been overwhelmingly banal, and these reveal neither comprehension nor curiosity with respect to any of the matters commonly discussed in this forum. He has all the appearance of an elderly political caretaker, with none of the fire that burns in the belly of a younger man – and that’s the quality most needed right here, right now.

Generational change?

Remember that term. I’ll be coming back to it.

It’s been a wonderful pleasure to get to know Larry Scharlow, who has done undeniably good things for the downtown business district, and has sufficient experience to suggest that he would do a workmanlike job as mayor. I can plausibly see him in a number of positions of responsibility in local government. But, given what our turbulent times demand, I regret to say that I cannot see him as mayor.

Former mayor Doug England retains a strong following. As ever, his chief asset as a salesman and a politician is a larger-than-life, ebullient, grandstanding personality, but have age and experience truly tamed the less savory manifestations of this inimitable character – those edgy overtones of cronyism run amok that so soured the city by 1999 that voters replaced England with a female Republican – and by an unprecedented double-digit margin to boot?

To be sure, England has worked hard to reassure voters that he’s seen numerous redemptive lights, and amid a flood tide of platform planks and promises, New Albany’s progressives certainly can’t argue that England has ignored their concerns. In fact, he’s positively mimicked them, and speaking for myself, I appreciate the chats we’ve had on these topics, and look forward to others. If England’s political comeback is successful, I’ll not be a naysayer, and he’d have my support in a campaign against Hubbard, as would Scharlow.

But England will not receive my vote on Tuesday.

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Curiously, and I believe wrongly, incumbent James Garner has become a crazily polarizing figure on the local political stage. Even in the operatically vicious world of big-fish, small-pond politics, certainly the bile and venom are undeserved.

There have been missteps, bad appointments, learning experiences and poor communications, and that’s the way it goes. That’s the way it will go for the next occupant of the mayor’s chair, regardless of the name on his driver’s license.

However, if one examines Garner’s record without jaundice, there have been many more positives than negatives during his term:

Scribner Place’s startup
The inception (albeit imperfect) of ordinance enforcement
Palpable progress in sanitation and sewage disposal
Construction on the Ohio River Greenway
The Purdue education and technological incubator project
The downtown Riverfront Development area
A steadily simmering upswing within the historic business district
Cannon Acres sports park

Yes, these and other steps are embryonic in many cases, but without doubt a discernable foundation for success is being laid even if a great deal remains to be done (see “front line” in the neighborhoods, above). In the end, it has been an above-average term for a guy younger than NAC’s senior editor. It’s good to have a doctor younger than yourself. Same goes for mayor.

In stark contrast to the city’s Luddite bloc, I personally find it admirable that a man fully and intelligently committed to the most vital core ideological aspects of being a Democrat – who actually knows what these tenets are and why they’re important – also retains a sufficiently pragmatic flexibility to make bold and sensible moves when crises arise, as was the case with the public-private partnership that has successfully addressed chronic red ink in the sanitation department.

Unfortunately, during most of Garner’s first term in office, he has been forced by circumstance to conduct city affairs from a defensive and reactive posture, a situation derived from a multiplicity of sources, but often deriving from the Gang of Four, those obstructionist fellow party members in the council who have mounted a relentless, vitriolic insurgency, in the process immeasurably complicating the mayor’s difficulties in dealing with numerous, mostly inherited messes like the sewage system and city budget.

Steve Price calls this insurgency “checks and balances.” I call it politically motivated character assassination by the outmoded, disaffected and terrified.

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Setting aside the fall threat posed in the fall by Hubbard – assuming the Republican stays awake – if James Garner is given a second term in office, will he be proactive, rather than reactive, with respect to the future of New Albany’s neighborhoods?

As I’ve stated here on numerous occasions, to speak with the mayor privately about virtually anything that relates to the operation of the city is to come away impressed with his comprehensive knowledge of the whys and wherefores. He understands the issues and the principles of governance that impact them. The minutia does not elude him. He knows what Smart Growth and New Urbanism mean. The grasp is there.

The problem has been not grasp, but reach.

What has been lacking during Garner's first term is boldness and passion in conveying and communicating what he knows to be true to the city at large by mounting the bully pulpit and taking a leading role in defining the problem, proposing solutions, pursuing consensus and following through with implementations.

Instead, City Hall has pursued a tactical, incremental approach to neighborhood issues, and while these generally have paralleled the progressive and proactive platform advocated by NA Confidential, the frustratingly tortoise-like pace of reform is deeply disturbing, and threatens to function as a deal-breaker with regard to political support for the mayor.

In fairness, there are those pundits hereabouts who note that deal-breaking is a two-way street, and who persuasively maintain that Mayor Garner’s proclivity for caution is less indicative of personal preference than a defensive imperative borne of an inability (or unwillingness) on the part of New Albany’s concurring progressives to unify and to offer cogent political cover for the mayor to tackle deep-seated neighborhood dysfunctions.

According to this scenario, progressives – who should be the mayor’s natural allies – have failed to understand the way the game is played, have couched their participation in terms of demands without commensurate vows of support, and in general, have frittered away momentum by refusing to come together to consolidate their power and to use it to make gains.

This assessment is as personally annoying as it is annoyingly accurate, and that’s sad.

After all, progressives in my own 3rd district have made just such a senseless, unforced error in throwing not one, but two well qualified candidates against an inadequate incumbent in the Democratic primary – all because they would not communicate with each other. Perhaps now, at last, we’ll learn.

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In fact, I take the position that we’ve all had much to learn since 2004, and it is my sincere hope that the learning curve gets shorter, because the pre-digital clock steadily ticks.

NAC has spent the past three years exploring New Albany’s various successes, failure, trends and paradoxes, always with an eye toward explicating the view from where we stand – and, indeed, we’re standing, not sitting, and in fact excitedly poised in expectation astride a window of civic opportunity that is tantalizingly ajar, while warily recognizing that there are as many residents determined to slam it shut as to pry it fully open.

There can be no confusion as to our viewpoint on the matter. The faster the window is lifted, the better.

Not one of the mayoral candidates can force the window open acting alone. Other elected officials must play their parts, as well as the business community, and of course the people who live here. Reversing decades of institutional neglect takes hard work, time and money, and we’re short of at least two of these, but even so, the effort is underway, the pathway is clear, and the odds have improved.

I believe that if James Garner wins now and in the fall, he will come to be viewed for what he really is, and that's a harbinger of generational change in New Albany, one who represents a shift away form the tired political ward heeling of the past, and the rare politician who comprehends better than most what it will take for the city to compete in the future.

And so, I’ll be voting for the incumbent in the primary, but with a caveat:

New Albany’s neighborhoods can’t afford a cautious waiting game this time around. While downtown is progressing inevitably toward a “creative class” revitalization reality, the situation in the neighborhoods is serious, and it needs addressing immediately. There is a revolution of rising expectations, and the expectations aren't being met. Leadership is needed, and it is needed not later, but now.

Let’s all get off to a better start this time around, get more accomplished sooner, and recognize that the pieces to the puzzle are here, along with people talented enough to fit them together. Working together, we can be proactive, not reactive. Working together, we can throw the window open and see this city come all the way back.

But standing aloof and apart, we’ll all be watching impotently as the know-nothings slam the window shut and return to their caves. They’re frightened of the future. We should not be.

James Garner isn't. He gets my vote for mayor.

--By Roger A. Baylor, NAC senior editor