Every day, not every now and then.
"Day in, day out" encapsulates my preferred tactic to achieve progress. Speaking for myself as the owner of an independent local business, the daily business climate almost always trumps special, one-off events. It is the undertow, and the cash flow.
In terms of small business, the main point is determining what can be done to improve quality of life every single day, rather than hope a one-off festival or recurring special event attracts "new" and potentially returning customers. If the festival or event is of sufficient gravity to attract a crowd, it stands to reason that most attendees are coming for the music, art or beer -- not to take note of the surroundings. Some surely will, but spreading the risk and the reward throghout the year, every day, is the better formula for ultimate success.
It is uncommon for me to reprint an article so soon (below), but with New Albany having so many "micro" issues going chronically unaddressed, the randomly "macro" aspect of Indiana's Regional Cities Initiative has struck me as a red flag (or more aptly, red herring) from the very start.
More succinctly, when One Southern Indiana starts getting giggly and giddy over the Regional Cities Initiative, it meant we should be getting very cautious. As we'll see in part two, Clark County's council already has.
I'm not entirely rejecting the Indiana Regional Cities Initiative.
As the Indy Star noted recently, it might have genuine merit. When a WDRB reporter asked me what I thought, we had a long conversation, and I said that in the end, whatever compels adjacent communities talking with each other probably is a good thing.
Conversely, we could be talking regionally right now, and working on smaller projects right now. There is a "win the lottery" aspect of the Regional Cities Initiative that is worrisome, and the involvement of the same old regional suspects who brought us the Bridges Boondoggle is even more alarming, owing to yet another loss of local planning sovereignty (see part two).
Might we finish a project first, before embarking on a moon landing?
The following was posted on January 5, 2015.
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Council Night 3: The Regional Cities Initiative's bait 'n' switch comes to a Greenway near you.
Before tying things into the council meeting tonight, let's catch up.
The most recent downtown merchant "mixer" meeting was held on December 16 at Strandz & Threadz, and weirdly enough for a group that seldom attracts more than a dozen attendees, and is routinely ignored by the city's ostensible "economic development" officials, the chat was attended by both State Representative Ed Clere and Mayor Jeff Gahan.
They were there to inform struggling downtown merchants about the potential sheen of the Indiana Regional Cities Initiative, which at first glance appears to be one of those world-classic, chamber-endorsed, bait 'n' switch ideas designed to divert attention from the mundane daily grind of the here and now (which abjectly terrifies City Hall) and instead, to fix all our gazes toward a bountiful harvest ... a coin flip to be determined some day, down the road.
I was fascinated by the spectacle. In November, David "Industrial Park First" Duggins had dominated the merchant meeting as visiting enforcer, there to silence me and gloweringly assure shop owners that they didn't want to hear about the potential for two-way streets to improve their businesses quite soon, in the short term.
Then a month later, here was the mayor himself, spending half an hour describing the Regional Cities Initiative, a strictly "might be" iffy proposition, tantamount to time spent allocating future lottery winnings to the background noise of a Disney soundtrack instead of counting the change actually occupying the jar. If only someone other than a dissident like me would have said:
"But if it would help business downtown, couldn't we change the streets next week?"
The fact is, the missed opportunity cost of Jeff Gahan’s present-day neglect of small business is irrefutable, and the evidence to support my position is overwhelming, but I've already made these points.
Back to tonight, when a council currently configured to do quite little will listen as the Greenway explains its place in that future largesse from Big Daddy Pencebucks.
McLaughlin to seek third term as Mayor Gahan's pliant boy (News and Tribune)
... Though there’s only one voting item on Monday’s agenda — a final reading on a road salt purchase appropriation — the body is slated to hear a report on a potential expansion of some of the features of the Ohio River Greenway.
After holding public meetings on the idea in Clark and Floyd counties, representatives of the Paul Ogle Foundation will detail their plan to assist the Ohio River Greenway Commission to “possibly elevate the Greenway to the next level in both scope and scale.”
The Ogle Foundation hopes to pair its plan with the Regional Cities Initiative to be considered by the state legislature this year. The legislation could leverage up to $1 billion in public and private investment for infrastructure and quality-of-life projects around the state, as communities would compete to garner those funds.
Right now, we have a few hundred thousand dollars worth of bigger fish to fry, and so at least it's encouraging to hear Scott Blair publicly question the latest unelected back room board diktat, this one being last week's behind-the-council's-posterior decision by the Board of Works to fund an ill-considered farmers market buildout and a bizarrely situated dog park, three miles out of town on Budd Road.
Councilman Scott Blair said he would like to see the city’s dog park, which is slated to be constructed at Cannon Acres, moved near the Greenway to further bolster the usefulness of the walking and biking path.
“We need to add amenities along that facility,” Blair said.
What we really need to do is finish the Greenway's decades-long first phase, don't you think? After all, Silver Creek might as well be Puget Sound for all the good an unbridged Greenway in pieces does us.
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