It's no big deal: Volunteers will clean what the city's design makes dirty.

This week, we learned that the new $7.6 million aquatic center will be clean. Really, really clean.

“We’ll have the cleanest public pool in the region.”

Apparently this leaves no money for making the city fundamentally better, insofar as becoming better might require paid positions, and so after bringing former One Southern Indiana administrator Tonya Fischer (with a "c") aboard to help New Albany economically develop as "economic development business coordinator," she's now organizing neighborhood clean-ups, probably at the behest of a Democratic grandee who had one too many Bud Lights and watched an 8mm Peace Corps retrospective before throwing some Jefferson Airplane vinyl on the Victrola.

Perhaps we can work with Volunteers for Peace to bring an international brigade to New Albany. They can occupy lawn chairs in front of my house and count the heavy trucks speeding past, and as the unpatrolled arterial streets encourage further decay and neglect, other volunteers can perform temporary, ineffectual clean-ups. Then, when we dupe the Feds into rehabbing some houses, someone can clip off $108K. There'll be dancing in the streets, and hit-and-runs in the crosswalk.

But I digress.

We welcome the advent of the City Services Network.

We shake our heads in wonder that there must be a public volunteer organization on duty as well as a private one (Clean & Green).

We walk down streets and survey the abundant evidence that band-aids like this tend not to address truly fundamental problems, and we drink a lot, and then we ask: WTF?

But consider this: There are people out there who are complimentary about the physical condition of the city.

That's nothing short of stupefying.

New Albany seeking volunteers for future cleanup projects; City Services Network will tackle various tasks, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — Since Mayor Jeff Gahan took office in 2012, he’s had several conversations with people about the physical condition of the city.

There are some who are quite complimentary, and there are others who believe more needs to be done to cleanup certain parts of New Albany.

Gahan said he’s had the vision of launching a volunteer service network for more than two years, and that the time has come to make it a reality.

Volunteers are sought to join the City Services Network, which will be a group of people to take on different types of tasks from sprucing up buildings and properties to aiding nonprofits in the community.