New Albany isn't Denmark, but it isn't Mogadishu, either.

Seldom can I avoid laughing out loud when one of Shirley Baird’s anonymous blog followers uses her comment space to boldly respond to something I wrote here at NAC.

That trait in itself is evidence of a hooded dysfunction sufficiently profound to rest the case, but because I’m such an aficionado of dysfunction – why else would one choose to inhabit the Open Air Museum? – that I'll take a stab at expanding on a previously posted response.

Anonymous said...

Which part doesn't the New Albanian understand? No one and I mean no one pulls for this City to fail. This City has already failed. A failure to taxpayers and its citizenry. We didn't create this mess his buddys in City Hall did. He will never be able to see this issue and I for one don't understand why.

I guess he has either his blinkers on or he doesn't care or he's full of it. None of it matters to me but I will argue the point with him about this City's failures. And, they weren't created by taxpayers.
.

I understand it quite well, thank you, and I disagree with your unsupported and overly broad assertion that the city has "already failed." While there certainly are models of such civic and state failure, New Albany has yet to match them, except within the fevered craniums of the “mad as hell” (and mostly anonymous) faction.

Not that I deny failure in selected areas. It has long been my view that the city as a whole, an entity that must be regarded as including oblivious residents as well as your targeted public officials, has failed to perform in a number of ways. It’s just that I don’t think these are incurable or irrevocable, and I don’t see them adding up to the conclusion “already failed.”

As an example, take code enforcement. It has been almost completely ignored for decades, and until recently can’t even be said to be remotely near the radar screen. Is this entirely the fault of politicians and their appointees?

C’mon, anonymous, how could a ball of this magnitude be dropped without the complicity of the “taxpayers” and “citizenry”? In fact, code non-enforcement has been a fully cooperative non-effort between elements of government and elements of the citizenry at large, because each of us demands to see the law enforced unless it’s our rental property, our unmowed grass or our porch sagging with junk.

Then, we turn for succor to the city’s King Larrys and demand that they prevent dispassionate code enforcement decisions, leaving these instead to neighborhood ward heelers to manipulate for political purposes. This idiocy couldn’t survive without the support of the electorate, could it?

However, it still doesn’t add up to a failed city. You want a genuinely failed vicinity? Try Somalia, where effective government is barely recognizable in any form, where anarchy reigns and warlords more powerful than our blundering council members hold sway, and which, quite strangely to me, is never cited as an example of glowing success by those eager to downsize government and drown it in a bathtub.

Somalia is what we mean by failure. By almost any broad, embracing, objective and rational standard, and by comparison to other places with similar problems and challenges, New Albany has not failed. Infrastructure sometimes creaks, but most often works. There are policemen and firemen on duty. The majority of residents obey the “big” laws, although like anywhere, the “small” laws are ignored. It isn't Denmark, but it isn't Mogadishu, either.

Is it a success, a shining example of wonderment? Nope. It would require all of us to row in that direction, and it has yet to be seen whether people in New Albany are willing to make the compromises necessary to go there. Increasing the size of the minority that currently does the heavy lifting might be the best we can do, in good times or bad. There is an element of human nature at play here, which extends beyond our own water supply and its deleterious effects on the drinker.

Rather than snipe back and forth between blogs, wouldn’t it be far better if all of us could convene in one place and discuss such matters? I understand that such a mature, adult strategy wouldn’t easily quell the rages, and would be found objectionable by the stodgy political factions, and would require personal effort. Consensus wouldn't sanction the ongoing blame game of character assassination, would it?

Maybe RemCha or someone totally new to the city can pull it off. If so, you have my support.