Sunday, February 20, 2011

Parks district questions, most so far unanswered.

If Floyd County parks district proponents have evidence of an insidious plot to sell off park lands to line the pockets of area politicians, is it too much to ask that they present the facts?

Same goes for the mysterious secret donors who cannot give until special legislation is passed. Who are they, and why the cloak and dagger, spy movie routine?

Why can't proponents put all the facts on the table, and let the community decide what's best?

Why must this be decided not by the community, but by legislators in Angola, Warsaw and Brazil? Where was the grassroots interest in a parks district, apart from the fear-mongering now being used as justification? And, why are parks more important than police and fire protection? Does public safety get a special district, too?

I support parks. I also support transparency, which is sadly lacking in this instance.

7 comments:

  1. Indeed, if we need a special district it would make sense to start with public safety. Perhaps I say that as a downtown resident who was unaware there existed in Floyd County some emerald string of natural beauty that needed special protection.

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  2. The parks bill was to protect a portion of Sam Peden Park from being sold to developers.

    I agree there has been a huge lack of transparency.

    And a bill like this would have been better created with a few public forums.

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  3. Wow. Those sound amazingly similar to the sort of questions a newspaper might ask.

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  4. What part of community park was going to be sold? The part that was adjacent to the property that nobody actually considers part of the park.

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  5. In a democracy, a free press, an investigative press, is essential for transparency in government.

    There has not been ANY legitimate newspaper operating in this region since the Courier-Journal was shanked way back when I was a child.

    The New Albany Tribune is a profit-driven commerical enterprise that works on an advertising and community legal notices format. Just the legal notices gov't and citizens must publish via the Tribune establish it's revenue base.

    In the real newspaper business, those legal, advertising and classified revenues supported the news operations. CNHI, or whoever the Tribunes parent company is, instead pocket all the profit by cutting out news gathering and editorializing.

    The Tribune is such a total scam when they allege they are a "newspaper" and have some noble interest in helping out the community.

    By the same token, local government as been enabled for generations to be self-interested and corrupt because who would report on it?

    And around and around our third-world civil society goes.

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  6. "Sam Peden Park from being sold to developers."

    ..when did our elected officials and real estate professionals ever object to turning public green space over to developers in the past?

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  7. "The Tribune is such a total scam when they allege they are a "newspaper" and have some noble interest in helping out the community."

    LOL!!!! Ah the stories I could tell, but I'm not much on patting myself on the back. Oh well, it's Monday. Most people need a hug on Mondays.

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