SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Touts, displacements and why our levy matters.

From flood to mud in less than a week.

WDRB's staffer may or may not have chosen the word "tout" on purpose, but I'm happy he or she did.

New Albany touts no displaced residents or water rescues thanks to infrastructure improvements, by Chris Sutter

 ... "No one has been displaced from their home," Mayor Jeff Gahan said. "I can tell you just a few years ago, we couldn't have made that boast."

Officials say that's because the southern Indiana river city started making big changes in how it handles flooding back in 2014.

The first definition of "tout" at vocabulary.com is sufficient.

1

vadvertise in strongly positive terms

“This product was touted as a revolutionary invention”

Type of:

judge, label, pronounce

pronounce judgment on

vshow off

Synonyms:

blow, bluster, boast, brag, gas, gasconade, shoot a line, swash, vaunt

Types:

puff

speak in a blustering or scornful manner

crow, gloat, triumph

dwell on with satisfaction

congratulate, preen

pride or congratulate (oneself) for an achievement

Type of:

amplify, exaggerate, hyperbolise, hyperbolize, magnify, overdraw, overstate

to enlarge beyond bounds or the truth

nsomeone who advertises for customers in an especially brazen way

Synonyms:

touter

Type of:

adman, advertiser, advertizer

someone whose business is advertising

In its zeal to fluff Team Gahan, the Floyd County Democratic Party naturally upped the ante by citing 1997 as the pivotal year in Gahan's equation.

PUTTING PUBLIC DOLLARS TO GOOD USE: The recent flooding was the worst our area has seen since 1997, yet thanks to improvements in the City of New Albany's storm water and flood levy systems, no residents were displaced or required a water rescue.

Kindly note AdamBot's improper use of the word "levy." It's levee, of course. The sewer rate increases we'll now be enjoying on a yearly basis? Those are levies -- and not surpisingly, unmentioned by the party hacks. 

Consequently, it's a fair question to ask how many New Albanians were displaced or required a water rescue in flooding since 1997.

Does anyone know?

It's a fact that in 1997, several dozen folks were living along the river side of the levee, many of them squatters (including the boat club) and others simply homeless.

In New Gahania, only the riverside squatters survive.

Then there's the New Albany Boat Club. It clearly was squatting for decades (see links below), but was given an 11th-hour reprieve when City Hall exercised eminent domain against a property owner who'd only just emerged victorious in a lengthy court fight against the squatters -- who were given back the property, which hadn't been theirs in the first place, by a City Hall that operates by divine decree, and not rule of law.

This no longer is the case, meaning that sewer improvements and pump maintenance, while commendable, cannot be entirely credited for what likely was, in effect, occupants displaced not by water, but by Gahan himself in order to make the Greenway properly gentrified.

Except for the boat club, which evidently has played a "get out of displacement free" card. Maybe it's where the party elders store their rubber duckies.