If the director of Community Housing Initiatives is involved, does it mean Legacy Square will have condos?

In a single news story, the News and Tribune’s Daniel Suddeath provides one of the best ever assessments of New Albany’s perennially comic pandemic of cross-pollinated, multiple-board staffed, conflicted-interested, “but I know better than you”, backdoor-dealing, palm-greasing, sheer caterwauling dysfunction of a “ruling” class.

Blessed with such a wealth of material, Suddeath coolly functions as concise journalistic straight man, permitting the words of the principle players to function as self-hoisting petard mechanisms. Excellent work.

In this instance, the narrower topics are a rapidly approaching Bicentennial, the future of the former slumlord property in the epicenter of downtown, and how many hundreds of thousands of dollars it will take to bring to fruition the specific vision of just one from a handful of competing community political pillars, who are united only in a determination that whatever planning is done might occur with as little public input as possible.

But the story might have been written to describe the local political process as it pertains to any number of civic matters doomed to perpetual misfiring in precisely the same fashion.

New Albany council may be asked for more funds for Bicentennial Park; Horseshoe Foundation yet to vote on construction grant

Benedetti said the council has been supportive of bicentennial events, and the body wants to ensure any projects associated with the celebration are handled appropriately.

In a larger sense, we’re only one month into the new mayoral administration, and already the probable course of the coming years can be clearly grasped.

The new council president, who seemingly regards a razor-thin election squeak-through as mandate, has spotted a power vacuum, and now she will be weaving spider webs from her adroitly chosen, power-brokering seats on Redevelopment and the Horseshoe Foundation.

Her chief council enabler from the 2nd council district will rally the DNA shock troops and hoard the Bicentennial portfolio as closely as his fairy godmother will allow, eager to prevent the slightest whiff of counter-cultural impropriety to intrude on his buttoned-down worldview, even as discredited England administration’s operatives who inexplicably remain in positions of authority seek to assert their time-honored influence, simultaneously preparing the ground for the ex-mayor’s forthcoming, doomed candidacy against Ed Clere in the House 72 race.

As for Mayor Gahan, a few simple and unsolicited words of advice should suffice: As it pertains to the Bicentennial, the culture vultures are not going to wait for you to take the initiative, so please do it now.

And as it pertains to every other aspect of running the city?

Same exact advice.