Where'd the city council go? Glimmers of civility and sanity peek through the Coffeyesque politics of bile and animus.

If the council were voting on a “common sense” ordinance, would Councilmen Coffey and Price be obliged to recuse themselves?

-- graffiti on the 3rd floor bathroom wall (with apologies to J)

I know; you’re looking for a coherent city council Thursday meeting wrap, but let me tell you: I’m just plain beat. It’s been an intense past few days in my world, and I need to catch some shuteye … but here’s a brief summary with exhausted, scantly edited commentary.

A-08-01 An Ordinance To Amend Ordinance A-07-43 Setting Salaries for The Year 2008 for Non-Bargaining Unit Employees

The “salaries” ordinance, reviled by the “Grover Norquist for Emperor” crowd out in the exurb, which includes the provision for a much needed concentrated code enforcement officer – something that the city’s neighborhood associations gathered together to support, and predictably, the conjoined councilmen and Pavlovian dog poster children Dan Coffey and Steve Price loudly and illogically opposed for reasons that no sane person on earth can fathom.

It was approved on its second and third readings, although Diane McCartin Benedetti inexplicably joined Coffey and Price in opposition after voting affirmatively on the first reading, proving little other than to make it obvious that she hasn’t done her homework. Is it too much for me to expect that a person who wants to serve on the council might come to the job with sufficient knowledge of current affairs so that she doesn’t have to ask Pam Badger what her duties as OEO involve?

Or are my expectations just too high?

R-08-02 Resolution Relating to the Settlement of Litigation Pending Against The Civil City of New Albany and the Common Council Thereof

The city’s Kochert Retirement Dividend was made plain, as the previous council’s foredoomed redistricting ordinance, passed on two separate occasions primarily owing to the former Gang of Four’s undisguised personal animus toward certain of the plaintiffs in the celebrated redistricting lawsuit, and in spite of a federal judge’s explicit instructions, was rescinded by a vote of 6-3.

Council president Jeff Gahan, who might be expected to know better but seems never to have grasped the redistricting issues from the start, joined the conjoined councilman in opposing this overdue interjection of common sense (see graffiti above) into the redistricting proceedings.

In turn, this clears the way for the lawsuit’s disappearance and a return to the redistricting drawing board by a council committee and concerned citizens as specified in a proposed consent decree that might have dispensed with the unnecessary drama long ago if people like Coffey weren’t prone to misrepresentation and innuendo the way cats are prone to hairballs.

G-08-02 An Ordinance to Amend Sewer Board Membership

The first reading passed 7-2, but no seconds were forthcoming on a motion to change the rules to allow a vote on all three readings, as requested by Mayor Doug England. I’d guess the likely outcome will be approval on the 2nd and 3rd readings next time out, and then a completely new sewer board composition to be instituted in 2011, and again in 2015 … and no matter how many times the sewer board is reinvented, Coffey's knowledge will remain paramount - at least that's what it says on the Bazooka Joe degree in sanitary engineering.

R-08-03 A Resolution for $9,000 to be set aside out of Riverboat Funds to Create Digitized Zone Maps in 2008

An easy choice for unintended irony of the night, this move to provide funds to digitalize zoning maps was introduced by the thoroughly analog councilman Price. Passed.