“Useless laws weaken necessary laws.”
-- Montesquieu
At last evening's surreal and occasionally disjointed city council meeting, we learned that Mayor Jeff Gahan has in fact signed the beefed-up anti-littering ordinance passed by the body earlier this summer.
On Thursday night, CM Bob Caesar was to have introduced a corollary revision of ordinances pertaining to littering, this time focusing on the alley dumping and tree-cutting waste that some believe to be a province of Eco-Tech's garbage collection contract, and others the street department's daily job.
Caesar didn't attend, but the ordinance was introduced and approved on 1st and 2nd readings, now to go back into committee at the stated request of the city's single highest paid employee, corporate attorney Shane Gibson, who dominated the proceedings in the continued absence of the mayor.
My uninformed guess is that Gahan's annoyance with the previous littering ordinance as being a presumed "victory" for the GOP's councilman Al Knable was mollified by further (and in this instance proper) back channel discussion, with the result being the "balancing" ordinance of Caesar's, allowing everyone to -- dare we suggest it -- cooperate in crafting a useful and far more importantly enforceable clean-up measure.
We've been conditioned to eschew hope, although perhaps this time will be different. Of course, absolutely none of it addresses underlying socio-economic conditions that always preface the perceptions and practice of "littering," but action on this front would be far too much to hope for.
The city's 2018 budget and salary proposals were approved on 1st and 2nd readings with little discussion apart from independent (read: thoroughly isolated) councilman Scott Blair's insistence that a $500K line item for furnishings in a new city hall, as yet still on the adaptive reuse drawing board, was reason enough to amend the budget by stipulating that Gahan's plans for the governmental transfer to the Reisz building must come before council for review.
CM Dan Coffey, apparently satisfied that his recent assaults on Knable's littering ordinance had been sufficient to repay the mayor for a "historic preservation" facade grant awarded to his favored Knights of Columbus, unexpectedly joined Blair in supporting the amendment.
With Caesar absent and the council's GOP bloc once again failing to coalesce as a unit, the amendment was defeated by a 4-4 vote (ties don't count, folks).
Interestingly, Republican council member David Barksdale sided with City Hall in this vote, indicating that historic preservation is a more pressing concern to him than public vetting of expenditures.
Straight up: The Reisz-Turned-City Hall transaction is a decent enough idea, but still murky enough to merit scrutiny. It includes two other "historic preservation" building improvements, embracing both Coffey's KoC payback and the luring of the Indiana Landmarks office to New Albany.
In addition, there is an obvious element of crony corporate welfare, in that the Schmitt family finally will be paid reasonable money for a building they've plainly neglected for too long.
Vacating the current City County Building also is a middle finger to the GOP-dominated county; Gahan will be praised for his progressive commitment to adaptive reuse, while the other arm of government remains stuck in a homely, outdated structure that in a parallel universe might have been Stasi headquarters in an East German provincial city.
Consequently, Blair was absolutely correct in pressing the amendment point, because last evening's budget vote might well have been the last chance for council to wield a seeming technicality of future furnishings in order to reclaim a semblance of control over mayoral planning and spending prerogatives currently being almost entirely exercised without the legislative branch's participation.
Barksdale apparently was more interested in historic preservation sans qualifiers, and that's hardly a surprise, but shouldn't council have some say in this, too?
As we approach the end of Gahan Year Six, the council's power balance remains Democratic, though just barely. The mayor has shown no compunction in bedding down with Coffey, the politically promiscuous former Democrat turned conservative culture warrior, and a steady stream of well-placed, cash-stuffed envelopes to the Wizard of Westside have provided the fifth vote when necessary, as well as periodic theatrical obstructions and consistent comic relief.
Monetization or principle? We already know which of these Gahan will choose, every single time.
Meanwhile, an ever more dismal Caesar carries the mayor's jockstrap for the presumed Democrats, hoping that someday he might be king, and the other three Democrats usually line up behind him without question.
Blair has tried his best to be a watchdog; however, as an independent he has no natural allies and just isn't very good at making them. Knable and Barksdale are omnipresent and responsive, while David Aebersold flails ineffectually.
Well, at least there wasn't a non-binding Dreamer resolution. CM Greg Phipps mentioned DACA while refraining from the gesture; he also upheld the veracity of the two-way street reversion.
It's going to be a very long two years in what for all intents and purposes is a one-party mediocracy. After these many long years of beer, it may at last be time to delve into hard liquor, and put the hammer down -- or smash something with it.
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