ASK THE BORED: BOW directs handicapped sidewalk users into traffic lanes as downtown corner ramp replacements make a mockery of safety, but bolster campaign finance slush. Also, downtown RR crossing expenses.It shouldn't come as a surprise that someone had to prod before City Hall felt the need to answer. In New Albany, "proactive" means that 5% of the 80% tithed by the federal government has been safely installed in its comfortable new Cayman Islands home. After this cardinal rule is obeyed, coin flips are sufficient for future information dissemination.
None of this has to do with functionality, service to citizens, or even basic competence. It's purely a financial transfer scheme and Team Gahan is making the previous two mayors look like rank amateurs.
Initial Work on Grid Modernization Begins
Initial work on the Grid Modernization Project, which will transform New Albany’s downtown grid from a 1-way traffic system to 2-way streets, has begun.
Two initial steps have been taken to start the process:
1. All non-American with Disabilities Act compliant ramps in the downtown grid system are currently being updated to provide connectivity and access for all that use our downtown sidewalks.
Working from an inventory that was recently completed by local engineering firm Jacobi, Toombs, & Lanz, Inc., crews have been working since early January on bringing these important infrastructure items up to code. While the largest number of updated ramps are mostly limited to Spring, Market, and Elm streets, side streets with non-compliant ramps are being updated as well. This initial work is expected to be completed by the end of February.
2. Bumpouts on the north side of Market Street are being reconfigured beginning Monday, January 30th.
The bumpouts along the north side of Market Street are being reconfigured in preparation of 2-way traffic along Market Street. By having these bumpouts re-aligned, the city will be able to retain the same number of parking spaces along this corridor when the conversion to 2-way streets is made. During the construction, an estimated 6 parking spaces will be unavailable until the full conversion is made. However, once the 2-way street conversion is complete, all current parking spaces are expected to return.
Future schedule for the Grid Modernization Project
Milling and paving of the downtown grid will begin shortly after asphalt plants reopen in Spring 2017. The project will then begin the installation of a new signalization system, along with accessible pedestrian facilities at each signalized crossings. The contractual completion date for the entire 2-way conversion is September 30, 2017.
The Mayor Who Broke Harrisburg, by Brentin Mock
Stephen Reed used to be known as Harrisburg’s “Mayor for Life.” His tenure as head of the Pennsylvania capital spanned almost 30 years, and in some quarters he still holds that title, even after he was voted out of office in 2009. Now he may be known as the “Mayor Who Avoided Life,” after dodging a sentence of thousands of years in prison for a 499-count indictment of theft, bribery, and corruption while he was mayor.
Today, Reed was sentenced to two years probation after pleading guilty to 20 counts of the least-serious crimes on his docket. Earlier this week, he admitted that part of his small collection of artifacts was bought with taxpayer money. The stolen items were part of an even larger collection of Civil War-era trinkets, documents, statues, and other memorabilia left over from Reed’s failed campaign to make Harrisburg a “city of museums.” Reed began siphoning taxpayer money into a secret account that he used to purchase heaps of 19th century American relics, all in an effort to transform the city into a “Westworld” of the East.
This was just one of Reed’s poorly (and criminally) conceived schemes that brought Harrisburg to the brink of bankruptcy—and almost landed the ex-mayor a 2,439-year jail sentence. How he got off with a two-year no-prison cakewalk instead is owed to a unique confluence of circumstances ...
Called to Purchase: How mayor Stephen Reed shopped Harrisburg, PA, straight to hell, by David Gambacorta
... No one was really prepared to question Reed, or to peek behind the curtain of his kindly, eccentric persona. If they had, they would have found a petty autocrat hunkered down on a pile of redevelopment schemes, mistaking hoarding for a model for governance—a scenario only too possible in municipal America, the land that term limits forgot. The artifacts? Oh, they were just the spoils of a spending bender fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. When the spree was over, Reed would end up facing hundreds of criminal charges, and Harrisburg would be left in fiscal ruin.
The shared rise and fall of Reed and Harrisburg was decades in the making, a story of ambition and corruption that stands out even in Pennsylvania, a state that can’t go more than a few years without seeing one of its political giants succumb to arrogance, egotism, or the irresistible urge to take, take, take. As Reed prepares to finally go to trial on 114 charges, including theft, his case offers a stark reminder that the urban renewal and revitalization initiatives of the last century continue to dog our cities—and that too many of those initiatives turned out to be rip-offs, luring tourists to urban “playgrounds” at the expense of existing residents.
... According to state prosecutors, in the decades that followed (Reed's election in 1981), he set out to seize the puppet strings of anyone who had a say in the city’s financial decisions.
To the public, he appeared to use this power for good. Eateries and museums cropped up, along with hotels and a university. Reed was like a gleeful patriarch who continually surprised his children with vacations and shiny new toys—just never mind about how any of it would be paid for.
Reed sometimes ran unopposed for reelection, earning the “mayor for life” tag from the media along the way. And why not? The ongoing projects seemed to prove that Harrisburg was a city on the rise. But with at least 33 percent of its residents now living in poverty, according to 2014 census data, and with state-owned tax-exempt land comprising a significant portion of the capital, where was the money coming from to cover the cost of these huge efforts?
“Nobody asked those questions,” sighs Patty Kim, a Pennsylvania state representative who worked with Reed when she served as a Harrisburg city councilwoman from 2005 to 2012. “He was able to play a shell game. He always had a new project to distract people.”
So money began to flow into the Special Projects Fund from every imaginable direction. Mealy said Reed began tacking on inexplicable “administrative fees” to the multitude of bond sales and debt that the Harrisburg Authority incurred at the mayor’s direction, and those fees were routed directly to the fund, according to the grand jury records.
“It was always, ‘You vote with me or you are the enemy,’” former Harrisburg City Council president Richard House told state investigators, according to the records. But Reed, apparently, had a lighter touch too. House said Reed offered him a community relations coordinator job in 2001 with the Harrisburg Senators—a position that previously didn’t exist—with the understanding that Reed was buying House’s votes, and the votes of other council members.
... After a month of combing through handwritten records, (Eric Papanfuse) pieced together the big picture: Harrisburg was fucked. Everyone knew the incinerator was costing the city a fortune, but it seemed no one had done the math on the years and years of bond and debt deals that had built the city’s new attractions and also covered the cost of Reed’s artifact obsession. The total sum was north of a billion dollars—for a city with a population that couldn’t fill up a professional football stadium.
(Linda) Thompson, at least, broke the “mayor for life” cycle, lasting only one term. She took heat for spending $35,000 to renovate the mayor’s office, after complaining about the inescapable cigarette odor that Reed left behind—and was replaced by Papenfuse, who was tasked with rescuing a city that had been revitalized almost into oblivion.
Maybe Reed’s growing pile of dead-end revitalizing fantasies, tied more to his idiosyncratic understanding of leisure than to the interests of his city, was firmly in line with late twentieth-century urban-planning trends, which held that no city was too small to bet the farm on tourism-first redevelopment projects, the benefits of which would somehow trickle down.
 |
| An "alternative fact" of a skyline? Learn more here. |
Austin Carmony, the firm's vice president of development, said the complex's 66-unit residential building, where tenants have already started moving in, was completed in December. The second 125-unit building will be done in April. Rent for the units ranges from $650 to $1,650.
The renovated former Coyle showroom will house retail and amenities including a heated pool, gym, grilling stations, fire pit and a dog park. Carmony said no one has signed on to fill the space yet, but he thinks a restaurant would be ideal in the location.
Coyle showroom now luxury clubhouse in New Albany, by Madeleine Winer (Courier-Journal)
The clubhouse is open and the first tenants have started to move into The Breakwater, a luxury apartment complex still under construction in New Albany.
Padgett family offers to help start New Albany halfway house; 1514 E. Spring St. home will be purchased if the city approves, by Danielle Grady (Hanson Obliviousness Modulator)
NEW ALBANY — Thanks to a charitable business family, plans to build a halfway house for women in New Albany are back on.
Pending city approval, the family that owns Padgett, Inc., will purchase 1514 E. Spring St. to transform into Nicole’s Place, a home for women recovering from addiction.
The life of the party — 7 truths for Democrats, by Robert Reich (San Francisco Chronicle)
The ongoing contest between the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders wings of the Democratic Party continues to divide Democrats. It’s urgent Democrats stop squabbling and recognize seven basic truths ...
7 The party must change from being a giant fundraising machine to a movement. It needs to unite the poor, working class and middle class, black and white — who haven’t had a raise in 30 years and who feel angry, powerless and disenfranchised.
... If the Democratic Party doesn’t understand these seven truths and fails to do what’s needed, a third party will emerge to fill the void.
Third parties usually fail because they tend to draw votes away from the dominant party closest to them, ideologically. But if the Democratic Party creates a large enough void, a third party won’t draw away votes. It will pull people into politics.
And drawing more people into politics is the only hope going forward.
The Democratic Base Is Marching Right Past Its Leaders, by Jennifer Bendery and Ryan Grim (Huffington Post)
... (Senate confirmation votes) came just days after millions poured into the streets in more than 650 women’s marches on Saturday made it that much more jarring. Those marches, after all, had not been sparked by Planned Parenthood, or the Democratic Party, or unions, or MoveOn.org, even if they did pitch in to help once it got going. Instead, they came from regular, angry people ― people who may try to replace the ones in power ...
... The organizers of the march provided the platform that an angry electorate demanded, but they didn’t dictate what comes next. Yes, they co-hosted the march with well-established, progressive groups in Washington D.C., like Planned Parenthood and the Natural Resources Defense Council. But they didn’t coordinate with those groups to collect attendees’ names and email addresses to keep them engaged in those groups’ fights around reproductive rights or climate change. Instead, the organizers collected contact information for the local organizers themselves, which may wind up being far more powerful than another giant list of progressives.
NEW ALBANY CITY COUNCIL PUBLIC HEARING REGARDING WASTEWATER RATE CHANGE AND THE IMPLEMENTATION OF CONSUMER PRICE INDEX
The New Albany City Council will conduct a Public hearing February 6, 2017 at 6:30 p.m. at 311 Hauss Square, 3rd Floor, Assembly Room 330, New Albany, Indiana at which persons may be heard concerning the proposed changes to rates, charges, and implementation of a consumer price index for the sewer utility user fees. The City Council will consider an increase in wastewater rates and charges effective July 1, 2017 or at a date set upon adoption of the rates and yearly thereafter. The proposed rates and charges are as follows: 3% increase in the monthly charges for all consumer categories and the implementation of a consumer price index yearly thereafter. Users of the sewage works for service of property located outside corporate boundaries may be entitled to petition the commission under section IC 8-1.5-3-8.3 et seq. to review and adjust the rates and charges imposed on the users if a petition under IC 8-1.5-3-8.2 or under IC 36-9-23-26.1 with respect to the same rate ordinance has not been filed.
These Prominent Evangelicals Are Pretty Sure Trump’s Refugee Ban Is Perfectly Moral, by Carol Kuruvilla (Huffington Post)
Apparently, America is only a Christian nation when it’s convenient.
Some of President Donald Trump’s top evangelical advisors have reached a troubling, and somewhat baffling, theological consensus about a restrictions he’s placed on refugees entering the country.
Based on The Huffington Post’s interviews with a few leaders who have the president’s ear, the consensus is this: The Biblical command to welcome, clothe and feed the stranger applies only to churches and individuals. The government doesn’t have to abide by that standard.
In essence, for these evangelicals, their traditional Christian values should have an impact on how the president makes decisions about abortion and same-sex marriage. But on the matter of refugees fleeing war, it’s perfectly fine for the president to turn his face away from suffering, because safety comes before being a Good Samaritan to those in need.
White evangelical Christians’ overwhelming support for Trump helped put him in the White House. As a whole, members of this spiritual tradition have a high regard for the Bible as the source of ultimate moral authority. But beliefs about how to apply Biblical principles to politics can vary greatly ― and the debate about Trump’s “extreme vetting” plan is bringing up some of that tension.
Trump signed an executive order on Friday that establishes new vetting measures to keep “radical Islamic terrorists” out of the country. The order blocks refugees from Syria indefinitely and temporarily bans people from a few unnamed countries from entering the U.S.
The National Association of Evangelicals, which has helped refugees for decades through the resettlement agency World Relief, called Trump’s plans “alarming.” Other Christian aid groups have also criticized the temporary ban.
But some prominent evangelicals, including a few who were part of Trump’s evangelical advisory committee, find no problem with it.
'A heady fusion of Hopper and Vermeer', by Michael Palin
... I don't think Hammershoi would have liked the confessional times we live in now, when a desire for privacy is considered suspect and appreciation of any work of art seems to depend on how much we know about the artist's personal life. He left us his quirky, innovative paintings and I think he intended them to say everything about himself that he wanted the world to know.
 |
| Vilhelm Hammershøi, Interiør. Stue med klaver og sortklædt kvinde, 1901 |
Why I'm Not a Cyclist, by Kea Wilson (Strong Towns)
... I resist the term “cyclist” because I don’t believe riding a bicycle should, by necessity, be an extreme sport. You don’t magically become a NASCAR racer when you get behind the wheel of your Honda—and if the street outside your house was designed like the Indianapolis motor speedway, you’d probably be pretty stressed out. I ride a bike for the same reasons many Americans do. Or the reasons that many of them would if they thought they’d be safe doing it:
- Because it’s cheaper to get to the grocery store or the movies on my bike, and quicker, especially if I’m headed to that ultra-packed downtown food festival
- Because some of my best memories are from group rides with friends to north city breweries, rain-soaked and happy by the time we sat down for burgers and $4 drafts
- Because it’s good exercise? Kind of. But I’d be lying if I said that mattered much to me ...
... We can all see the problems in our neighborhoods—and if people get the message that they need to be experts to participate in conversations about how to fix their towns, then we’re losing out on an enormous and crucial resource.
Engaged citizenry shouldn’t require expertise, any more than riding a bike should require a $2000 frame and a mastery of cycling lingo (and to my cyclist friends reading this: forgive me for whatever I’ve butchered). If you’re a Person Who Lives in a City, your voice matters. If you’re a Person on a Bike, get out there and ride.
Rumors fly about fate of Bluegrass Brewing Company’s St. Matthews restaurant
During the past week, Insider Louisville has received tip after tip from people who say they’ve heard that the Bluegrass Brewing Company plans to close its St. Matthews bar and restaurant.
Bluegrass Brewing Co. to leave St. Matthews
Bluegrass Brewing Company is moving from its St. Matthews location after 23 years on Shelbyville Road.
On Friday, co-owner Pat Hagan told the Courier-Journal that the company has agreed to forgo its lease on the brewery's building so that another restaurant can move in. Partners in the new venture were previously involved in Sully's Saloon, a Fourth Street Live! bar and restaurant that closed in 2013 after an 11-year run ...
... Soon, construction will start on a new BBC restaurant in the Kindred Healthcare facility at the corner of Broadway and Fourth Street. And Hagan hopes to find a new building in the East End where he can reopen a taproom and resume retail production.
BBC leaving St. Matthews after 23 years
Bluegrass Brewing Co. is leaving the St. Matthews space it's called home for 23 years. The brewpub, located on Shelbyville Road, near Breckenridge Lane is closing up shop Feb. 5, allowing a new concept to move in to the location.
The area has changed in the more than two decades since BBC opened there, owner Pat Hagan told me in an interview today.
"It's more of a night club area now, which we're not," he said.
Set out in three parts, the action takes place from 13-20 April 2009, mostly in cars, hotels, houses, and buildings in El Paso and, primarily, Juárez and Guanajuato, Mexico. The book begins with an amnesiac trying to figure out who and where he is. A “United Kingdom driver’s license, with an address in Scotland,” identifies him as Alvaro de Campos, one of the many heteronyms[1] created by the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), with an 80-year-old photo of Pessoa to match. The amnesiac isn’t taken in, and later on becomes Probably-Not Alvaro for a short while. Underlying the surface calm in the presentation of his situation is an edginess of mood when faced with no idea who he is, how he came to occupy his hotel room with a crude photo card, an ATM card with no PIN, and a large bump on the back of his head, or why a FedEx package with clippings showing mass graves relates to his life. The second narrator is the nameless capitalist who provides a brief summary of his early life, mostly from the business angle, leaving out the identities of his first and second wives, but eager to discuss his financial successes, aside from a venture involving Dacha Wireless. The third narrative thread follows two gunmen, Raymond and Eugene, as they search for the venture capitalist whose financial gain from Dacha bothers their Mexican cartel drug lord boss, the Shakespeare-quoting Gomez. There are a few ancillary men and women whose lives intersect, briefly or longer, with these figures.
For some, these may remain as serious obstacles to enjoyment, and bring up the questions: Why? And how is this literary prose? Years ago, someone I once knew came up with a handy triad (or else appropriated it from goodness knows where) that can be applied in diverse situations: esoteric—knowledge of which you approve; arcane—knowledge of which you are afraid; anachronistic—knowledge of which you are ignorant. It is no less intrinsically worthy to read about “Redeemable bait” than a description of a park or a character’s haircut. What matters most is that these distinct vocabularies assist in presenting and thickening the milieu the characters’ thoughts spring from. What at first look to be unwieldy fragments of language are entirely germane to the worlds inhabited by VC and Ray. As Ludwig Wittgenstein—a definite touchstone for Gauer—says in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922): “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
This iconic Louisville beer brand is considering a major expansion, by David Mann (Louisville Business First)
Falls City Brewing Co. is planning a major Louisville expansion and it's teaming up with Heine Brothers' Coffee to do so.
Neace Ventures, Fall City's parent, has signed a letter of intent to acquire ownership in the building that houses the Heine Brothers’ Coffee headquarters, according to a news release. The building would be co-owned by the companies. And the move would bring 100 percent of Falls City’s brewing operations to Louisville.
The American left will be reborn under President Trump, by Owen Jones (The Guardian)
Clintonian-centrism was defeated in November, but attempts to repeal Obamacare show the Republicans are weak and divided. Now is the time for the left to craft a populist alternative
Donald Trump is now the most powerful man on Earth. You would expect the American left to be despondent; it’s not. The left is stronger than it has been for decades. They are up against a president who lost the popular vote, who assumes office with the lowest approval rating on record, and whose party is riven by divisions. In November, Clintonian-centrism – whose compelling selling point was the ability to win – was defeated, plunging the American republic into its gravest crisis since the war ...
... A battle for the soul of the Democratic party now beckons. There are siren voices who claim that the Democrats were too radical, too vociferous in their support of women and minorities. But a powerful new movement is determined to transform the Democrats into a party that unapologetically challenges vested interests.
The First Step to Electing More Democrats? Getting Them to Run, by Tim Murphy (Mother Jones)
How one group is trying to channel the Trump resistance into political gains.
... Run for Something's mission is not to stop Trump in 2020, at least not directly. Its focus is on local races, where Democrats have been creamed over the last eight years, losing some 935 state legislative seats during the Obama era. In 2017, it is focusing its efforts on Virginia and North Carolina, two places where Democratic gains at the state level (the party controls the governor's mansion in both states) are undercut by conservative legislatures. In Virginia, a blue state in the last three presidential elections, Democrats have failed even to show up in some races: 44 of the state's 67 Republican delegates ran unopposed in 2015, including three Republicans in districts carried by Hillary Clinton. Democrats have a long way to go to recoup what they lost, but they've also left a lot of low-hanging fruit on the vine.
A Letter to POTUS on Infrastructure, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)
... What do we do today? To paraphrase former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, we're going to make investments in infrastructure with the systems we have, not the ones we wish we had. There are ways to get better results now.
- We need to prioritize maintenance over new capacity. With so many non-performing assets, it's irresponsible to build additional capacity. Project proposers will try to add additional capacity with their maintenance projects. If it is truly warranted, it can and should be funded locally. Cities need to discover ways to turn such investments into positive ROI projects, a process the federal government can only impede.
- We must prioritize small projects over large. Small projects not only spread the wealth, they have much greater potential for positive returns with far lower risk. Large projects exceed their budgets more often and with greater severity -- dollars and percentage -- than smaller projects. A thousand projects of a million dollars or less have far more financial upside than a single billion-dollar project ever will. It's administratively easier to do fewer, big projects, but that is a bureaucratic temptation we need to overcome.
- We should spend far more below ground than above. Many of our sewer and water systems are approaching 100 years old. When these core pipes fail, the problems cascade throughout the system. Technology may soon dramatically change how we use our roads and streets making investments in expansion there obsolete, but water and sewer will still flow through pipes as it has for thousands of years. We should spend at least $5 below ground for every $1 we spend above.
- We should prioritize neighborhoods more than 75 years old. We've modeled hundreds of cities across the country and in every one the neighborhoods with the highest investment potential are the ones that existed before World War II. These are established places where small investments have a huge impact. Most investments in neighborhoods built after World War II are simply bailouts, pouring good money after bad.
ON THE AVENUES: Gahan's stadium arcadium kicks off a new year with hilarity, pathos and own goals.
... Such was their enthusiasm for this idea, at a price tag of as much as $30 million, that New Albany’s Mayor Gahan, his adjutant David Duggins and their council fixer, Pat “His Master’s Voice” McLaughlin, apparently spoke openly with Ladwig. In the aftermath, they were left looking like naïve rubes propped atop an incoming hay wagon when Neace and Louisville City FC’s varied clarifications began flowing the morning following Ladwig’s story.
Louisville City FC has entered into partnership with global architecture firm HOK for design of a soccer-specific stadium and adjacent development projects, a key step in the club’s pursuit of a long-term home.
HOK will provide the vision for a 10,000-seat stadium that could later expand in capacity to 20,000. The overall site plan will also include space for office and retail development.
“We’re getting closer to securing a lot in urban Louisville, and now we’re thinking about what we can build on it,” said LouCity Chairman John Neace. “HOK’s work ensures that once a location is determined, community members will have a tangible picture of Louisville City FC’s future.”
... For LouCity, this year, its third in the league, is shaping up to be a pivotal year. Club leaders have identified the need for a soccer-specific stadium as their primary goal this year. The club hopes to build a $25 million venue in Louisville, but hasn’t ruled out moving to Southern Indiana, depending on how the finances work out. Chairman John Neace has said that the local owners plan to raise millions of private dollars toward construction, but likely will need some public support to make the stadium a reality.
