A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.
I met with a journalist yesterday to be interviewed for a forthcoming article about civic affairs, and eventually the conversation turned to Jeff Speck’s Downtown Street Network Proposal for New Albany, and a good question followed:
“So, what does the mayor think about it?”
Well, Jeff Gahan doesn’t think much about Speck, at least as we are left to guess from sparse, cautious public pronouncements that might be mistaken for the oracle of Delphi’s vapor-induced gibberish, except that the latter had a far better feel for genuine poetry.
As I write, tea leaves will magically reconstitute the Gettysburg Address before Gahan emerges from the Down Low Bunker to lead on this issue. The candidate who once promised vigorous action for street change – privately, of course – now has adopted the pose of elderly, buzz-kill, petty-local-bureaucrat-in-chief:
“You can rest assured that we won’t do anything to let those anti-establishment inmates run your asylum.”
Of course, as remains plainly evident, the asylum itself is to be taken for granted, and the founding principle of any local political party is immutable: Our inmates, not yours. It may be the only promise a local DemoDisneyDixiecrat ever kept – and that’s the problem.
Especially in an election year.
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In fact, the current governing cabal may well comprise the most uniformly anti-intellectual grouping witnessed hereabouts since the 1990s milieu of England Doug, Guido and His Angry Inch, but even then, there was Carl Malysz, who while often bizarrely mistaken in terms of job performance, could converse quite fluently about the history of Poland and Central Europe, areas that lie to the east, somewhat beyond Silver Creek, and must be feared as a result.
Thus, it is quite possible that what we have here is a failure to recall vocabulary lessons from halcyon days of ScribnerWood. I’m happy to be of assistance.
LEAD
lēd/
verb
1. cause (a person or animal) to go with one by holding them by the hand, a halter, a rope, etc., while moving forward.
2. be in charge or command of.
"a military delegation was led by the Chief of Staff"
synonyms: be the leader of, be the head of, preside over, head, command,govern, rule, be in charge of, be in command of, be in control of, run,control, direct, be at the helm of
noun
1. the initiative in an action; an example for others to follow.
"The US is now taking the environmental lead"
synonyms: first position, forefront, primacy, dominance, superiority, ascendancy
2. a position of advantage in a contest; first place.
"they were beaten 5-3 after twice being in the lead"
synonyms: the leading position, first place, the van, the vanguard
There you have it.
Clearly, Mayor Gahan stopped reading after the first definition. He intends to lead, and desires us to be led, not unlike a tethered animal – perhaps a burro, alpaca or camel. Naturally, as an authoritarian, he must be in charge, but in the sense of taking the initiative, providing an example and occupying the vanguard, not so much.
My view is that the animal should break into a trot. This would illustrate an important lesson about ropes, bridles, leashes, and the proper identification of the real parties responsible for leading the issue of street network reform from the very start.
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Hence the most telling reflex of Gahan’s hermetic politburo, which is a profoundly passive-aggressive daily exercise in “divide and conquer” politics.
There are New Albanians favoring Speck, and others opposed, and all of them will be reassured privately that the forever “principled” mayor and his minions are in complete agreement with the public, whatever the public’s proclivities.
But aloud and for attribution, a pose of lofty and vacuous mayoral distance will be maintained as the respective camps are encouraged to compete with each other to curry Lord Gahan’s favor by bestowing kisses, showering flattery, reaffirming fealty – and most important of all – ensuring the big guy’s re-election in 2015.
In short, Gahan will not “lead” in any coherent sense of leadership.
In effect, having all but ceded the possibility of substantive action on street network reform until 2016, the mayor instead is demanding to be rewarded first, with another term. Only then can anything happen, and if anything happens at all, it will do so owing to the bare, stated minimum of traffic alterations aimed at preparing for a changed dynamic when Ohio River bridge tolls come on line.
As for the second and far more transformational aspect of Speck’s proposals, altering social conditions and facilitating a civic lifestyle change, Gahan’s silence speaks volumes.
It would be easy for rational observers to formulate the situation like this: Gahan does not understand the sweeping potential impact of such a social transformation, because if he did, he would not press forward with fluffy and unnecessary enemas like the farmers market debacle on the corner of Bank and Market.
But that formulation is incorrect. You see, Gahan actually does understand the transformational stakes, and he cannot allow them to occur, because his only guiding principle as a political party-bound mayor is to maintain the continued dominance of the DemoDisneyDixiecrat local power and patronage machine.
And the DemoDisneyDixiecrat local power and patronage machine simply cannot survive a sweeping civic lifestyle change. To implement Jeff Speck’s Downtown Street Network Proposal on any basis of its lifestyle component, however slight, is tantamount to glasnost, perestroika and the French revolution rolled into one, or put more succinctly: A swift and painful demise for the local DemoDisneyDixiecrats.
To do so would be to reward the party’s critics, not its Luddites.
To do so would be to concede that the best-ever idea for reality-based economic development in New Albany originated so far outside the DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party’s wheelhouse that it might have been mailed to us from … Poland and Central Europe.
However, Speck's from the East Coast, and there is a serious flaw in Gahan’s brutally deceptive “Me or Nothing in 2016.”
We need not play along … politically.
Ongoing efforts on the part of the citizenry to advance the cause of Speck’s street network proposals and to advocate their immediate implementation, are fitting and proper. They must and will continue, but they are utterly separate from the politicized blackmail being practiced at present.
Since Gahan has determined to do nothing in 2015, it follows that nothing will happen in 2015. That’s regrettable, but doing something in 2016, beginning on the first of January, is not reliant on Gahan’s presence. Rather, it relies on the disposition of his replacement. If the replacement is not beholden to a political patronage machine, all the better.
Select the correct replacement, and we’re one step closer to rational streets … and rational politics.
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