The coming week in local politics surely will be the most entertaining in quite a long while, and while I’m not yet willing to offer odds on what will happen Thursday at the city council meeting, we can be sure that hitherto unseen political courage will not suddenly materialize out of nowhere and provide parameters for problem solving.
That's because public safety and sewers are on the agenda.
The meeting will be operatic in its clutched-to-the-chest grandstanding, factional and Balkan in its angry squabbling, and punctuated by the cries of anguished wee ones eager to punish the rest of us for their shortcomings (pun intended).
Given that trognonymous correspondents already are abusing NA’s policemen and fire fighters from the safety of their pusillanimous, masked perches, fisticuffs are a possibility. We’ll need medics (can we afford them?) and a beer dispensing station. In the absence of bandages -- send more beer.
I heard the council president John Gonder on 89.3 FM this morning, remarking that much research was required of the council (true) before it considers matters, and that it is unlikely a 70% sewer rate increase will be approved, with funds being sought from elsewhere.
We all know what that means: EDIT, bend over for another round of wasteful, penny-wise, pound-foolish subsidies that blithely perpetuate New Albany’s historic un-potty-trained sewer fallacies even as they do nothing to correct the fundamental concerns.
This predictably cynical grab will leave less cash in the EDIT slop trough for using to rectify the police and fire imbalances, hastening the eventuality (April at the latest) of Dan Coffey or Steve Price blaming the sewer board for a crime wave and/or a series of rental property blazes.
Entertaining? You bet. Constructive? Not so fast, jack. However, either way, my Thursday Tribune column is going to be about other diversions, namely, sports. That's right.
If you’ll excuse me, I have a snow shovel to catch.
Bayh just announced he will not run again
ReplyDeleteBlech - 99.9% of the civic energy around this issue is sucked out focusing on who pays and how much for what the situation we have now. How can people logically address these questions without a meta sense of the whole context of sewage infrastructure and environmental policy and the vital social issue of whether Southern Indiana will move to a “restoration” mind-set which asks that the real costs of pollution and waste management be paid.
ReplyDeleteThere are no incentives in New Albany I’m aware of that support conservation. No rain run-off catching programs, no metering of homes for conservation, no restrictions on how much you can flush...
Our family believes we have a moral responsibility to always be mindful of conserving resources. We wish the government felt likewise. We need the government to incentivize reducing consumption. Use tax policy to reward conservation. The discussion amongst the elected-for-life never strays far from “where can we get more money”. Hardly progressive.
As I’ve often stated, just getting the native hardwood forest replanted would solve big chucks of the storm water problems. Trees do that work in the nature. It’s beyond comic, it’s tragic, that one of the world’s greatest hardwood forests was felled to settle all the little people in Southern Indiana and now like some Dante’s ring of hell, the little people who cut the forest forever swirl in a maelstrom of sewage, poison, and mud screaming “help!! toss us more money, we’re drowning in our own sewage”
RAISE SEWER RATES NOW!