(Colonial Manor edition): GREEN MOUSE presents NAWBANY WEEK IN REVIEW for 28 February 2020.

Good morning, and HAPPY GRAVITY HEAD.

There's really only one important New Agony story from the past week. Rumors from previous weeks were confirmed, and it was revealed that the Colonial Manor shopping center on Charlestown Road was sold to new owners, and also that a plan had been minted by these new owners for its revival ... without any involvement whatever from City Hall.

Hmm, how could it be? Doesn't the mayor write all our business plans?

Of course, this didn't stop Gahan's goons from claiming credit, or the Redevelopment Star Chamber from tithing a cool million for infrastructure improvements. They're nakedly shameless, and largely unable to tell truth unvarnished by sheer spin.

But in reality, as opposed the Gahan dreamworld, this is a far better outcome than the one proffered as an election year gambit by the mayor-for-life and his sycophants in 2019. Let's let councilman Al Knable explain. His take is more diplomatic than it needs to be, but otherwise lands right on the money.

Al Knable NA City Council at Large

February 25

I’m happy to see a truly private-public partnership afoot to move this important area of New Albany forward.

I applaud the efforts of the citizens in the surrounding neighborhood, the Economic Redevelopment team-including the Mayor- and the Hoagland Group for bringing us to this auspicious point.

The city’s pledge of $1,000,000 for infrastructure improvement is wholly appropriate and has my full support.

The arrangement announced today is clearly superior to the 2019 proposal, rejected by a majority of the City Council, which would have required a purchase price of approximately $2,600,000 (significantly above assessed value) in taxpayer money and cast our city’s government in the awkward role of commercial property manager.

A savings of $1,600,000 and major private investment in our community validates the Council’s 2019 decision and the patience of all involved.

I join everyone in welcoming today’s encouraging news and the promise of better days ahead for Colonial Manor.

City Hall's spellbindingly self-serving propaganda can be found here: City Partners with Investor to Revitalize Charlestown Road Corridor.

John Boyle's coverage at the News&Bune features testimony from 5th district councilman Josh Turner.

Colonial Manor to receive significant facelift with multimillion-dollar investment

NEW ALBANY — A point of emphasis for New Albany City Council member Josh Turner has been his push to “revive District 5.”

It’s his hope that the district he serves can soon witness a transformation, at which point that motto will become “come thrive in District 5” ...

... Turner said he’s happy to see this type of project come to the area, noting the grassroots effort from residents it took to get this outcome. Some early plans from the city’s previous attempts to purchase the property included residential developments, which Turner did not see as a good fit.

“If the current administration had its way there would have been housing here, and I’m really glad a private investor stepped up and is bringing some much needed amenities and services to the area,” he said. “This is a big win for the district.”

Last April the city council rejected the redevelopment commission’s plan to purchase the property for $2.6 million.

Though the city is not the main driver of the project, it is still partnering with the developer in the form of a $1 million investment.

In other developments, it appears that Team Gahan's appalling public housing policies have resulted in taxpayers absorbing a big bill for the mayor's avarice.

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Has Bob Lane settled his lawsuit against NAHA for wrongful termination?

An analysis of the local chain newspaper's "opinion" page reveals something that should surprise no living human.

ON THE AVENUES: There is a complete absence of diversity among regular News and Tribune columnists.

Prohibitionism must be guarded against.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Paternalism, classism and prohibitionism in Family Dollar's neighborhood.

And, with Harvey Weinstein down for the count ...

New Albany too? How will #MeToo play out here at the grassroots?

In closing, a reminder: Why wait for Lent to give up organized religion?

Bob Lane will serve as interim director of the South Bend Housing Authority, making Jeff Gahan's dismissal of Lane even more questionable.

Bob Lane, director of the New Albany Housing Authority for 16 years, didn't pass muster with the petulant Genius of the Floodplain, but he's plenty good enough to have a thriving consultancy, and now to help stabilize the mess in South Bend left behind by a director who appears to have been just as corrupt as Gahan.

And, by sheer coincidence, it's the city steered in absentia by Pete Buttigieg, centrist darling of the ideologically vacuous Gahanites.

There might be a compelling message there, somewhere, but the recurring stench of Gahan's incumbency keeps clogging the nostrils.

Housing authority hires interim director, but still won't say why former director was fired, by Caleb Bauer (South Bend Tribune)

SOUTH BEND — The South Bend Housing Authority board named a new interim director, a month after firing the former head under mysterious circumstances amid a pair of ongoing federal investigations.

Bob Lane, who was the director of the New Albany Housing Authority for 16 years and now runs a public housing consulting firm, will take over as interim director. The board approved a contract with him running through December as it plans to conduct a national search for a permanent executive director.

Previous Executive Director Tonya Robinson was fired last month after the FBI and other federal law enforcement informed the oversight board of “serious” misconduct allegations, the board previously said.

Earlier this year, the FBI raided the housing authority’s office and other properties in South Bend. The Department of Housing and Urban Development inspector general’s office is also investigating the public agency.

Lane’s hire comes with the recommendation of HUD Region V administrators, the division which oversees housing authorities in Indiana, said board President Virginia Calvin.

In 2017, Lane was fired after 16 years as head of the New Albany Housing Authority in southern Indiana. He said pending litigation prevented him from speaking specifically on his dismissal.

According to local media reports and Lane’s breach-of-contract lawsuit against the New Albany Housing Authority, Lane was fired after expressing skepticism of a plan to demolish more than 600 units of public housing in the city. A complaint filed by Lane in Marion Superior Court last year alleges board of commissioner members “apparently became disenchanted with him in the wake of Lane’s assessment of the City of New Albany’s 13-point plan with (the New Albany Housing Authority) to restructure its public housing.”

“Even though Lane had expressed concern with several of the points, he never subverted the Board’s authority nor stated he would not comply with the Board’s decision,” the legal document states.

Following his firing, reports noted residents were shocked at his firing and that the new director of the housing authority violated HUD regulations and orders relating to oversight of the authority’s finances.

According to public records, the New Albany Housing Authority was rated by HUD as a “high performer” in the years immediately prior to Lane’s firing. In an interview, he said the authority had never been scored as “troubled” during his 16 years there. South Bend Housing Authority was scored as “troubled” by HUD in four out of the five years from 2013 to 2017.

The South Bend authority has been plagued in the past by financial reporting problems, poor inspection results and sub-par living standards in public housing units ...

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Friday) Jeff Gahan fired NAHA's Bob Lane to promote David Duggins, but now it's time for voters to do some firing of their own at the ballot box.

Last week was so much fun, I did it again.

As a run-up to Decision 2019, again this week I delved into the ON THE AVENUES archive for five more days of devastatingly persuasive arguments against four more years of the anchor-imbedded Gahan Family Values™ Personality Cult.

I've already made the solid case for Mark Seabrook as mayor.

The case against Gahanism has so many chapters that it might be necessary to lob five additional informative and entertaining installments next week. After all, heaven knows we have enough raw material.

Following are this week's and last week's Rice Krispies MisTREATments:

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Monday) The Reisz Mahal luxury city hall, perhaps the signature Gahan boondoggle.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Tuesday) Gahan the faux historic preservationist demolishes the historic structure -- with abundant malice.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Wednesday) The shopping cart mayor's cartoonish veneer of a personality cult. Where do we tithe, Leader Dearest?

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Thursday) That Jeff Gahan has elevated people like David Duggins to positions of authority is reason enough to vote against the Genius of the Floodplain.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Friday) Slick Jeffie's hoarding of power and money is a very real threat to New Albany's future.

And this week's "please let there be a pink slip" chronicles:

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Monday) No more fear, Jeff. This isn't East Germany, and you're not the Stasi.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Tuesday) In 2015 roughly 14% of New Albany's eligible voters opted for the Anchor Deity, and they’re getting exactly what they deserve – good and hard.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Wednesday) When he seized NAHA, Slick Jeffie depicted himself as a wise, caped, fatherly hero, when in fact he was more two-faced than Harvey Dent.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Thursday) Slick Jeffie's car-centric street grid remains designed to maim and kill, and his clique doesn't give a damn.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Friday) Jeff Gahan fired NAHA's Bob Lane to promote David Duggins, but now it's time for voters to do some firing of their own at the ballot box.

Today we return to Gahan's 2017 public housing putsch, which remains the single greatest indicator of his fundamental unsuitability to serve New Albany as mayor.

At the time, several DemoDisneyDixiecrats were scandalized by Gahan's hostile takeover and concurring promise to demolish living spaces as a way of purging the city of poor people who have failed to budget properly and thus failed contribute their fair share to the Genius of the Floodplain's bulging campaign finance coffers (demolition is an effort that stalled yet stands to regain lost momentum if he succeeds in securing a third term).

Many of those who dissented have since groveled returned to the fold -- because ya know, the Re-Pubs are always worse. Some might even be in this photograph of protesters from early 2017.

Here's some eye candy.

Now for the words. As we know, NAHA director Lane was fired and Deputy Dawg Duggins brought aboard to make an experienced administrator's salary absent an iota of qualifications -- when he wasn't "joking" about Tasers and various other forms of physical violence -- but of course, the idea wasn't ever that Duggins actually would run NAHA (Tony Toran does THAT boring work) but instead wheel, deal and leverage properties like a Trump lackey to keep the special interest campaign donors pumping green lifeblood into Gahan's veins.

Mission accomplished ... unless you're a public housing resident.

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March 16, 2017

Burger Chef and Jeff? No, it's TIF Man and Warren.

ON THE AVENUES: It's all so simple, says Jeff Gahan. Remove the impoverished, and voila! No more poverty!

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It was another vintage week for home-wrecking and game-playing by the tittering, braying donkeys who populate Team Gahan's toxic bunker bullpen (surely they're possessed of a remarkable consistency, if nothing else noteworthy), but let's try to disregard the latest round of slapstick and self-parody, and look instead at the purported blueprint for a "balanced mix of public and subsidized housing."

It is revealed within the recent, artfully contrived Comprehensive Plan, a Disneyesque document written by many of the same malleable functionaries now fairly itching to seize the controls of their testosterone-charged bulldozers, which currently idle nervously for the signal to VAROOM.

Bullet points "a" and "b" are sufficiently vague as to be nonsensical.

We know from long, repetitive experience that the desired Gahanian context for terms like these can be summarized in a sentence.

City Hall encourages you to redistribute a percentage of your lucrative new contract to the Gahan for Life fund, and we can assist in extracting your wallet if mandatory tithing is a burden.

Furthermore, if the objective of public housing demolitions is to reduce density, improve the condition of surviving units and geographically distribute new construction (the latter is thoroughly dubious), why target Riverside Terrace for destruction?

Riverside's units are many blocks away from the densest concentration of public housing, and make up some of the NAHA’s newest and best maintained buildings.

Location, location ... LOCATION. Riverside Terrace has the misfortune of being situated within a healthily-lofted Duggins spitball of Loop Island Wetlands, which straddles the Greenway and is envisioned by city planners as potentially rivaling New York City’s Central Park in sheer, “Are you fucking kidding me or what?” grandeur.

They must be spiking the Kool-Aid with LSD.

Point "c" is an example of classic Gahanite circular reasoning. These "recommendations" are not to be found in the detailed program already devised by the professional, trained staff of the New Albany Housing Authority, but rather as stipulated in the form of demolition-friendly reductions forced on the NAHA by means of a daintily termed Memorandum of Understanding, a writ of annexation slated for approval by a board packed by the mayor with the usual servile sycophants, as fully intended to render the result Gahan has fixed in advance.

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The scant slivers of meat on these otherwise bleached bones are to be found in points "d" and "e."

First comes the soothing panacea of "voucher-based units," which numerous local social service agencies already have publicly testified as being non-existent, at least in numbers sufficient to re-house public housing residents facing eviction.

Because Deaf Gahan and Donald Trump might be twins as it pertains to a genetic predisposition to ignore dissenting expertise, perhaps the testimony of an ordinary human being would be useful in making this fact clear.

Hmm.

Did Gahan even once bother speaking with any real people before pursuing his hygienic “reforms” on their behalf?

I'm one of those tenants with a Section 8 voucher. I've been trying to find a new place to live for over a year. Pickings are slim and coming up with the deposit on a limited income is nearly impossible. Now I'm afraid to let go of what I have, however unsuitable it is for my needs. Fortunately, I only have to be concerned about me. I don't have kids to bring into the mix. I can't imagine how much that situation would make you worry. You are very correct about low income folks being insecure about their housing, just as they are insecure about having enough food. I am a registered democrat and I do not support this administration and their agenda. This town smells fishy to me. From Breakwater to Housing Authority demolition and a few things in between. Maybe it's the river, maybe not...

Ah, yes. Speaking of the Breakwater, our flame-broiled but defiantly bocce-clad shining avatar of Gahan’s imagined “democratic” mission to bring pure top-shelf living to New Albany, we now must be reminded that luxury and affordability are not incompatible, at least on Fantasy Island.

e. When the City of New Albany is a partner in the development of housing through public incentives, a total of 8 percent of the units shall be affordable.

This empty promise should suffice for years of uproarious hilarity on the part of city officials observing it in the breach.

You’ll notice that this affordability component is applicable only to housing the city already has chosen to subsidize, implying that we’re not going to be having a discussion about this particular form of odious corporate welfare, either.

Moreover, an instructive example of what can go wrong in times of toothlessness is to be found across the mighty Ohio, where Greg Fischer, Gahan’s go-to manly man and political idol, has become the absolute master of gesture politics without content.

As Caitlin Bowling of Insider Louisville explains, a potential out-of-town recipient of public "incentive" largess is balking at the notion of an affordability component, insisting that if a mere 18 out of 272 luxury units are discounted, it simply can’t go forward with the project.

An out-of-town developer may back out of plans to build a $56 million luxury apartment complex in NuLu, according to the developer’s attorney, Jeffrey McKenzie, of Bingham Greenebaum Doll.

“Flournoy Cos. is frankly not able to go forward,” McKenzie said when addressing members of the Louisville Metro Council’s Labor and Economic Development Committee Tuesday afternoon. The council was set to vote on a tax incentive agreement between the city and Flournoy Cos. but instead tabled it.

The Georgia-based company has asked the city for just more than $5 million in potential tax incentives, and in return, city officials told Flournoy Cos. that it must include 18 workforce housing units in its development at 700 E. Main St. and 121 S. Clay St.

The workforce housing request is part of an initiative by Metro Council leaders to ensure that there is housing affordable to residents who earn 80 percent of the area median income for Jefferson County. Teachers and police officers are often given as examples of people who would benefit from workforce housing.

Flournoy Cos. previously agreed to rent 18 of its one-bedroom apartments at $947 per month, whereas a regular one-bedroom unit would go for $1,300 a month.

However, when McKenzie addressed the council committee Tuesday, he stated that the project can’t move forward if Flournoy Cos. is required to have the 18 cheaper apartments. Either that requirement would need to be eliminated, or the property owner, Service Welding & Machine Co., must agree to sell the properties on Main and Clay streets at a lower price.

Let’s hope Fischer goes full gesture. That'll show 'em.

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You may recall that on Monday, there was to have been a pre-rigged housing board vote on the memorandum of annexation, but the measure was tabled.

Initial media reports implied cold feet on City Hall’s part, though soon enough a defensive press release was emitted, with Gahan making sure the world knew it was director Bob Lane’s illness and not his own agoraphobia to blame for the delay.

Concurrently, deputy dawg and down-low soothsayer Mike Hall covered for a typically absent Gahan here:

Mike Hall, a spokesperson for the mayor's office, said in an email, "The MOU recognizes that much of the public housing stock in New Albany is poorly located, does not reflect current thinking and best practices in housing assistance, and is not in good condition."

Principled opposition makes them testy, doesn’t it? The newspaper reporter released this overview, clarifying matters.

New Albany Housing Authority board pushes back reduction plan to April meeting, by Elizabeth Beilman (Cooking School Chronicle)

Executive Director asks for delay to prepare comments

NEW ALBANY —A plan to reduce the New Albany Housing Authority's stock has been pulled from tonight's board meeting agenda, at the request of Executive Director Bob Lane.

A vote on the plan, originally scheduled for 5:30 p.m., will now be held April 10. The 10-year plan initiated by New Albany city officials that would result in a reduction of more than half of the housing authority's stock and redevelopment and relocation of several others.

Lane, who has been on sick leave for the past two weeks because of emergency eye surgery, said he has not had the time to prepare his comments on the proposed plan. He expects to have a response ready to the city by March 24.

"The City of New Albany and the New Albany Housing Authority worked together for months to draft a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the future of public housing in New Albany," a city news release stated. "The City was hopeful that it would have been adopted tonight at 5:30 p.m. during the New Albany Housing Authority’s regularly scheduled meeting."

Alas, with dreary and numbing predictability the editorial board already had changed into water sports attire and jumped on Gahan’s wrecking ball bandwagon with a bizarrely worded essay about the need to smash things up right away … but please be careful and make sure the flying bricks don’t hurt anyone as they queue for the cattle cars?

Of course, all but one of the editorial board’s contributing members live outside New Albany; sole local Chris Morris is always ready to shine the shoes of elected officials, and it’s never clear whether Gahan is in Bill Hanson’s pocket, or the other way around.

Looking for the world’s worst topic sentence? Try this one:

There are too many public housing units in New Albany. Most would agree with that statement.

Really?

Doesn't it depend on how we define “too many” and “most”?

You won’t be surprised to learn that the editorial board proffers no evidence to support this opening bit of fawning hearsay fluffery, although weirdly and completely inadvertently – like your dog managing to catch the occasional car – the newspaper stumbles onto a point even if it can’t recognize what it is.

That’s because New Albany has absolutely no idea whether most, some or none of its residents agree, as this question hasn’t once been aired publicly, now or ever.

Rather, the entirety of public expertise on public housing  in New Albany remains stuck in a lily-white 1980s time warp, with decades of tall tales and folk “wisdom” emanating from the upstanding suburban folks, and sufficing for those pesky facts that Gahan and the editorial board duck as if they were rotten fruit.

It’s an abysmal information gap, and Gahan is exploiting it not so much in the sense of ethnic cleansing, but of low-income cleansing. Like generations of conclusion-jumpers before him, he has hitched the cart in front of the horse and declared that the overt existence of safety nets like public housing is the cause of unsightliness -- not the poverty, because he can't bring himself to admit that such a thing as poverty exists in his city, and so he's quite sure that if we stop treating symptoms, the disease will vanish, just like in one of his beloved Uncle Walt’s animated features.

And anyway, what good are poor people if they neither vote nor give often enough to Big Daddy’s campaign finance war chest?

Nick Vaughn said it best (and also elaborated on the problem):

The proposed plan spearheaded by Mayor Gahan would effectively demolish nearly half of the affordable housing units in New Albany in the hopes that low-income housing becomes less centralized. I am against this proposal and I am writing in the hopes that not only the Housing Authority and city officials see this, but also to help my fellow New Albanians become more aware of the growing crisis in our city called poverty.

In the end, amid the intellectual squalor, there is only one inexplicable development in this absurd and discouraging tale. Why didn’t Gahan name his demolition proposal The World’s Greatest Poverty Eradication Plan of 2017?

Wait -- I forgot another.

How can Gahan be considered a Democrat?

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2019 Election Appendix

Election 2019: The buying and selling of a city, or our updated master list of 73 Gahan wheel-greasers, a veritable pornographic potpourri of pay-to-play.

These 30 free-spending special interest donors top Jeff Gahan's 2019 pay-to-play campaign finance windfall of $150,000 (so far).

CFA-4 Follies: OMG, just look at Gahan's huge pile of special interest donor cash flowing to out-of-towners.

Gahan's public housing putsch: "We won't allow the City to revise history to their liking."

Thanks to the Gahan-engineered crisis at the New Albany Housing Authority, Aaron Fairbanks has emerged as a passionate and articulate local advocate of progressive politics, clear thinking and fine expository writing. I'm delighted to reprint Aaron's commentary here. This one's for sharing with friends. 

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What is continuously lost in the dialogue on the City of New Albany's plan to raze roughly half of the public housing stock is the presence of two distinct visions.

On the one hand is the vision of Mayor Jeff Gahan and David Duggins, and on the other hand is the vision of the former executive director of the NAHA, Bob Lane, with nearly two decades of experience in housing under multiple administrations.

The City of New Albany's vision can be understood through the agreed upon Memorandum of Understanding, passed by the NAHA's board of commissioners in April of 2017. The shortcomings are blatantly clear, and public comments by a plethora of professionals with decades of experience in housing and homelessness have been levied against the Memorandum of Understanding passed by the NAHA. 

Among the concerns present with City's plan are:

• No details on the minimization of disruptions in the lives of residents displaced.
• No details ensuring that affordable housing stock will not be reduced in New Albany.
• No evidence that an adequate supply of Housing Choice Vouchers exists.
• No evidence that there is an adequate supply of market rental units that accept vouchers.
• Inadequacy of replacement low-income unit requirements.
• Failure to ensure that no resident will be forcibly displaced from New Albany.
• Demolition "without a data-informed plan for offsetting the loss of ... affordable housing units" risks exacerbating homelessness in and around New Albany.

See NAHA's Memorandum of Understanding (Duggins replacement board mix)

On the flip side, Bob Lane also had a vision. Lane stressed to the board of commissioners at the NAHA that, despite their appointment by to the board by Gahan, the NAHA "is an independent entity." He urged them to think independently, and they opted to rubber stamp the City's plan. The two most important features of Lane's vision expressed in his draft Memorandum of Understanding:

• Proposed preserving one-for-one "hard-unit replacement of low-income units in mixed-income settings to the extent feasible."
• Would've ensured that "current NAHA households [are] provided options that allow them to stay in New Albany if desired."

Bob Lane's draft Memorandum of Understanding

Lane's plan was a feasible and compassionate approach that didn't start at "we're going to reduce our affordable housing stock" and end with "we'll find out the details later." Ignoring the existence of his vision is disrespectful to the two decades of service that he's provided to current and former residents of the NAHA, and it's quite frankly historical revisionism.

Without the City's concerted effort to squash the NAHA's previously stated proposals -- until its eventual takeover and appointment of Gahan's right hand man, David Duggins (seriously, we've tracked dollars contributed to Gahan's 2015 re-election campaign to Duggins's address), as interim executive director of the NAHA--there would be 42 new units of supportive housing in what would have been the NAHA's Harbor House development. 

Without the hostile takeover of the NAHA, Lane may have been able to execute his vision of redesigning the street grid at Broadmeade and Parkview to match the City's existing street grid.

We won't allow the City to revise history to their liking. Affordable housing has never been a priority for Gahan and Co, and the recent lip service and PR stunts won't change that history of consistent opposition to the goals of affordable housing advocates.

It's déjà vu all over again as the NAHA and New Hope ask the BZA for variances to build housing units in three locations near West Street.

The Board of Zoning Appeals meets this Tuesday evening (May 1), and three items on the BZA agenda, each seeking a variance, bear a striking similarity to each other.

The past few days have been hectic, and I haven't had time to research this thoroughly (paging my friend Mike), so I'm going to wing it.

The fact that these 30 duplexes and five single-family dwellings represent a marriage of the New Albany Housing Authority and New Hope suggests they're leveraging Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), as explained in this article.

The LIHTC program does not provide housing subsidies. Instead, the program provides tax incentives, written into the Internal Revenue Code, to encourage developers to create affordable housing. These tax credits are provided to each State based on population and are distributed to the State’s designated tax credit allocating agency. In turn, these agencies distribute the tax credits based on the State’s affordable housing needs with broad outlines of program requirements from the federal government. This is done through the Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) process.

And, given the lengthy bureaucratic process involved, I'm also going to guess that these unusual non-demolition projects fell into David Duggins' lap (dance) courtesy of former NAHA director Bob Lane, who took me on a tour one day a few years ago and pointed out these pieces of property as future building sites.

In short, the colonizing forces would seem to be following the pre-existing plan put together by the deposed Lane. Consequently, I'm issuing a Gahan Personality Cult Alert (GPCA), and you should be on the lookout for the mayor and his vicious sycophantic lickspittles taking credit for someone else's work.

Because they can, and will. If I'm wrong, let me know and I'll make the necessary corrections.

TO: New Albany Board of Zoning Appeals
FROM: Scott Wood, Director
SUBJECT: Regular Meeting, Tuesday, May 1st, 2018
DATE: April 26th, 2018

TENTATIVE AGENDA

The regular meeting of the New Albany Board of Zoning Appeals will be held on Tuesday, May 1st, 2018 at 7:00 p.m., in the Assembly Room (Room 331) City-County Building, New Albany, Indiana, at which time a Public Hearing will be held to consider the following petitions ...

We're only concerned with the last three public hearings. I've inserted satellite photos after each docket.

Docket B-20-18: The New Albany Housing Authority, by David Duggins, and New Hope Development Services Inc., by James Bosley requests a Land Use Variance to permit 18 duplexes (36 units) and two single-family dwellings that will not meet development standards in the R-2, Urban Residential district, at 801 through 826 Linden Meadows Court and 750, 752, 754, 756, 758, 761, 763, and 765 Linden Street.

Docket B-21-18: The New Albany Housing Authority, by David Duggins, and New Hope Development Services Inc., by James Bosley requests a Land Use Variance to permit nine duplexes and that will not meet development standards in the R-2, Urban Residential district, at 66 Valley View Court.

Docket B-22-18: The New Albany Housing Authority, by David Duggins, and New Hope Development Services Inc., by James Bosley requests a Land Use Variance to permit three duplexes and three single-family dwellings that will not meet development standards in the R-2, Urban Residential district, at 320, 323, 329, 333, 335, 342, and 346 Ealy Street.

Got something to say about it? Here's how you can be heard.

Written suggestions and/or objections to said dockets may be filed with the New Albany City Board of Zoning Appeals, Room 329, City-County building, New Albany, Indiana, on or before the date of said meeting. Written objections to the proposal that are filed with the Secretary of the Commission before the hearing shall be considered. Interested persons desiring to present oral comments on the proposal shall be given the opportunity to be heard at the above-mentioned time and place.

Said Public Hearing may be continued from time to time as may be found necessary by the BZA. Any person that may require reasonable accommodation to attend the meeting or to comment upon the above-listed docket may make their wishes known in writing, or by contacting the Commission at 1(812) 948-5333 (Voice) Indiana Statewide Relay 1-800-743-3333 (Hearing Impaired).

Newspaper letter writer savages a failing, flailing and floundering Duggins at the NAHA, and follows the bread crumbs back to Deaf Gahan.

The Deputy Executive Director mentioned in Susan Ryan's letter (below) is Tony Toran, a former city official and longtime Democratic Party higher-up. This and other carefully pre-scripted "surprises" occurred at last Monday's New Albany Housing Authority meeting, but numerous reports of David Duggins' escalating managerial incompetence have been coursing through the Green Mouse's grapevine for weeks.

Once again: I think Duggins was moved to the NAHA not by design, but necessity. Something happened to make Dugout's position at redevelopment untenable, and he needed a fatter pay packet, and so Gahan shifted him to the NAHA. Now Toran is brought aboard to do Duggins' job, while Gahan looks elsewhere for a new bag man (I'm getting to that).

ON THE AVENUES: Using Deaf Gahan’s dullest razor, we race straight to the bottom of his hurried NAHA putsch launch.

From the very start, Jeff Gahan's putsch against the NAHA has been about grabbing the housing authority's acreage for the sort of real estate developments that feed campaign funds rather than the needs of ordinary people.

Gahan also has been directing dog whistles to his not-so-democratic "traditional" Democratic Party supporters. To be succinct, references to "the project" always have been intended to mean not the buildings, but African-American (and other minorities) living in them.

When a Democrat whispers "if only we could do something about the projects," the inference is crystal clear, and has been since Warren Nash dozed though his term as mayor. Republicans? They're perfectly content to let so-called Democrats do their heavy lifting. It's a symbiotic relationship, if highly repellent.

As Ryan correctly points out, Duggins, who was no more prepared than a feral neighborhood cat to inherit Bob Lane's salary at NAHA, much less grasp Lane's duties -- and is surrounded by a similarly useless and clueless governing board of bootlicking sycophants appointed by Gahan -- needed a bailout.

Toran is a trustworthy Democratic foot soldier, and he's African-American, this intended by Gahan as reassurance to black voters who by all rights should (and might yet) desert His Deafness in droves in 2019. Rehabbing the former Baity Funeral Home is another such scrap, albeit a relatively meek one.

Welcome to New Gahania, where we answer to the anchor.

If the rumors are true and legendary Municipal Concealment Attorney (and Democratic Party grandee) Shane Gibson takes over Duggins' former bailiwick as bag man at redevelopment (and as titular economic development director), pretty soon there'll be so few people involved in New Albany civic decision-making that all of it can be transacted by Gahan, Gibson and Adam Dickey in the back seat of a limo, while Warren drives and Duggins is sent off in his brand new NAHA vehicle to pick up a few cases of ice cold Michelob ULTRA Lime Cactus.

Now THAT's what I call gesture politics, although the specific gesture I have in mind probably wouldn't meet with Adam's approval. Okay, boys and girls, all together now: "SHOW US YOUR BEAKS" -- and take it away, Susan Ryan.

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: More surprises at NAHA meeting, by Susan Ryan (Hanson Christian Chronicle)

The New Albany Housing Authority (NAHA) meetings always have a surprise and the most recent one was no surprise. We learned that the Interim Executive Director is having difficulty doing the job that Bob Lane did so effortlessly for 17 years. While the Family Self-Sufficiency program is having to cut staff, Mr. Duggins requested that the Board approve a new position for a Deputy Executive Director, and of course the board all approved and refused to consider one board member’s request that they first examine the overall budget. The position description reads exactly like an Executive Director’s job which I guess means that now Mr. Duggins' major responsibility will be to make sure the board approves what the Mayor wants, and represent NAHA to the HUD authorities.

In other news, the board meeting was moved from 5:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. to accommodate staff, and make it difficult if not impossible for working citizens to attend and monitor the board meetings. Nothing like transparency.

We need a reset button. We need to bring Bob Lane back and be serious about building a cooperative working relationship between the city and the NAHA. We need an Executive Director who respects the tenants in public housing and does not castigate them as “those poor who can take their vouchers and find a different city to live in.” Enough is enough.

Duggins Does the NAHA: Arrives for his first day, faxes Ben Carson for advice, takes a lunch break at the Roadhouse.

Meanwhile, yet another Democratic Party stalwart lambastes Dear Leader ... but as Jeff Gahan once said, "Nobody reads the paper."

Anyone know how Shining Font of Timeless Wisdom's foot wounds are coming along?

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Gahan’s Firing of Bob Lane still makes no sense at all

I am still upset and at a loss as to why Mayor Gahan fired Bob Lane as our administrator of the New Albany Housing Authority.

Over the years, Bob Lane has proven himself as a dedicated public servant to the citizens of New Albany-Floyd County, as a teacher/coach at IUS, as superintendent of the NA-FC Department of Parks and Recreation and as an award-winning administrator of the NA Housing Authority.

For what purpose was he dismissed? Why frighten so many of our most needy citizens? Since when has it been a sin or a crime to be poor?

Shame on you Mayor Gahan and your “toady minions” for this underhanded and unneeded dismissal of a fine man.

— Letty Walter, New Albany

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As an addendum, NA Confidential has been unable to confirm whether New Albany Mayor Jeff M. Gahan or anyone working in the city's administration is under federal investigation or indictment for corruption, bribery or racketeering. It is standard policy of the U.S. Justice Department to refuse to confirm or deny the existence or non-existence of investigations or subjects of investigations. A similar policy exists at the F.B.I.

NAHA's board of cherry-picked and abjectly groveling sycophants assigns dictatorial duties to Irving Joshua.

Cappuccino wants it so bad he almost wet himself.

Wait -- it's not "dictatorial," is it? It's directorial. An easy mistake to make, here in New Gahania.

New Albany Housing Authority Board assigns directorial duties in absence of a director, by Danielle Grady (Make Alabama Pensioners Great Again)

Commissioners continue their search for interim replacement

NEW ALBANY — As the New Albany Housing Authority Board of Commissioners continues its search for an interim director, the board voted to assign a couple of duties normally taken care of by the executive director to the board president and a NAHA staff member.

At a special meeting on Tuesday night, the board unanimously voted in Irving Joshua, the president of the board, as an interim contracting officer, giving him the ability to sign documents for NAHA staff that NAHA’s executive director normally would have taken care of. Board member Bob Norwood did not vote as he was not present at Tuesday’s meeting.

Joshua said he was already signing documents for NAHA staff, but that the board wanted to make his duties official.

ON THE AVENUES: Would a Canon candidacy compromise Deaf Gahan's and Mr. Dizznee's shizz show? A boy can dream.

ON THE AVENUES: Would a Canon candidacy compromise Deaf Gahan's and Mr. Dizznee's shizz show? A boy can dream. 

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

On Monday evening, Kent McDaniel donned his Wayne Morse mask for the second time in three weeks and stood tall as a lone dissenter to a rigged ballot box.

McDaniel is the only surviving member of a previously autonomous New Albany Housing Authority board, one recently packed with shameless mayoral sycophants.

First McDaniel voted against Mayor Jeff Gahan’s force-fed “memorandum of understanding,” and then he disagreed that longtime NAHA director Bob Lane should be removed from his position.

Lane’s offense? He knows how to do his job.

Sound familiar?

Barring a decision by Gahan to resign his office and enter a monastery, McDaniel likely has amassed an insurmountable lead for NAC’s 2017 Man of the Year title.

On the one hand, there can be no denying that Gahan continues to get his way – and as we know from experience, it’s Jeffrey’s way or the interstate highway. However, for the first time lately, a previously watertight regime is springing leaks.

There’s at least a chance of the next two years becoming interesting. Granted, the 2019 mayoral primary is a long way off, and if Team Gahan is wagering on the electorate’s short memories, it’s never a bad bet.

Still, Gahan’s increasingly repulsive anti-social public housing aggressions have been greeted with an unprecedented level of hostility on social media and via letters to the editor.

Certain Democratic Party veterans are avoiding the mayor’s trademark Kool-Aid and have started seeing Gahan for what he really is, and always has been: a petty tyrant.

Southern Indiana Indivisible, the closest thing to a Bernie Sanders-inspired party wing our local DemoDisneyDixiecrats are likely to see, responded to Lane’s firing with this.

Note that Southern Indiana Indivisible isn’t falling for Gahan’s near certain effort to avoid responsibility by yelping, “It’s the board, not me.”

Even more importantly, a genuine progressive is contemplating a run against Tennessee Trey Hollingsworth for the 9th district congressional seat.

Dan Canon’s very presence on a Democratic ticket in 2018 would complicate ideological life for Gahan, who exists so far to the right of his party’s already rightward extremities that he blends in like inadvertent camouflage with moderate Republicans.

Unfortunately, there are no moderate Republicans, hence Gahan’s general parade ground decorum as a tinhorn dictator without clothes, and with even fewer d(D)emocratic principles.

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Obviously, outspoken local Democratic gadflies are to be applauded. Sadly, they remain an informed minority.

It has been truly fascinating to watch as Floyd County’s purported Democrats flail ineffectually to rationalize why Gahan, one of their own beloved icons, is leading this inexplicable, intemperate fight against the safety net of affordable public housing in New Albany.

Gahan’s actions are precisely what they’re accustomed to harshly criticizing those dirty Republicans for pursuing, and yet in this instance the culprit pretends to be a Democrat, albeit one whose artless assault on the city’s most vulnerable population reveals authoritarian traits that aren’t very “democratic” at all.

Gahan is attacking the working poor; conniving behind closed doors to seize potentially valuable land for “luxury” redevelopment; and crippling the housing authority’s governing board first by refusing to make necessary appointments, then packing the board with clueless beak-and-or-bed-wetters who lack even the bare minimum expertise to cast informed votes – which of course they weren’t expected to do in the first place.

Rather, not unlike a washed up former middle infielder now earning drinking money as a third base coach, David "Dugout" Duggins relays signals to the mayor’s joyless dupes, and in the grand tradition of politburos and show trials, jowly time-servers like Bob Norwood tailor their waning integrity to vacuous Gahanic prerequisites.

Naturally Duggins is rewarded for his undying loyalty by being placed in charge of the structure about to be gutted and stuffed, all the better to adorn Dear Leader’s mantel.

Sound familiar?

If Donald Trump initiated such a thinly veiled coup, local Democrats would be red-faced and aghast, but since it’s their own shining mayoral star authoring the ever-deepening farce, they’re compelled to thrash helplessly, awash in cognitive dissonance.

As evidence of their discomfort, consider that even among Democrats capable of seeing the truth, most still refrain from calling out Gahan by name, choosing instead to buy the mayor’s dodge and beg the housing authority’s board for relief.

Apparently their denial is so deeply ingrained that it prevents them from seeing that Gahan himself appointed the board for the express purpose of annexing the housing authority’s properties and firing its director, however shambolic the result.

Of course, undemocratic local Democratic hypocrisy is nothing new, and the buck stops with Gahan whether or not shocked party stalwarts are willing or able to admit it.

He owns this. Don't forget it.

For local Democrats to sanction in Gahan what they decry in Trump would be laughable if it weren’t so damaging, not to mention Freudian.

Apparently Gahan believes no harm can come from attacking the underprivileged, and of course he might be right. Perhaps the Glowing Orb of Eastridge will sit tight atop his campaign finance surplus until city elections in 2019, or he might yet be toying with the idea of contesting Ron Grooms’ Indiana State Senate seat in 2018.

Except that if Canon runs for Congress in 2018 as a Democrat, his platform almost surely will be read as the last word in anti-Gahan, simply by being honestly progressive. To paraphrase Dire Straits, two men say they’re a Democrat -- and one of them must be wrong.

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Canon for Congress?

Dan's as progressive as it gets in these parts. However, if he chooses to run, it almost certainly will be as a Democrat owing to the obstacles to political independence in Indiana. While Sanders’ 2016 presidential run offers a usable template for walking this tightrope, it only suffices until the party establishment commences the kneecapping.

And there’s the nastiest rub of all, because Adam Dickey chairs both the Floyd County and 9th District iterations of the Democratic Party. As the living local embodiment of the Peter Principle, Dickey continues to receive hosannas and promotions as Democratic candidates continue failing to win elections. Apparently he’s the only soul in town willing to do the job, and so he lives to lose another day.

Might a dramatic showing by Canon improve Dickey’s fortunes and lift the failed chairman to the big time? If so, is Gahan an asset or a liability in the congressional district as a whole?

It is instructive to observe that 24 hours after the civil rights attorney hinted at his candidacy (and raised $12,000 in less than a day), Gahan swapped his dreary Soviet bureaucrat’s dark suit for a Russian mafia track ensemble and stayed home to watch cartoons as his groveling toady bootlickers decapitated Lane.

Gahan may have been privately applauded by precisely the same suburban whites who are Donald Trump's primary base of support, but as we’ve seen, key city Democrats are differing publicly with Gahan's execrable public housing putsch.

Dramatic components are falling into place. Anyone have a screenwriter?

Or maybe a bartender: combine Gahan’s top-down dictatorial proclivities with Canan’s probable and progressive candidacy. Shake or stir, and garnish with Sticky Dickey.

Enjoy your cocktail – and don’t forget to tip your blogger.

Meanwhile, we all must work together to determine the public housing position of our city council representatives. Forever on the take, Dan "Make Me Great Again" Coffey has enthusiastically endorsed the NAHA’s demise, but we’ve heard nothing from the eight remaining seats.

Until a city councilman says something, he’s said nothing – and saying nothing must be regarded as consent. Can someone cue Greg Phipps’ wax cylinder of “Talkin’ Human Rights Blues”? The slow version with a banjo on his knee works for me.

Jeff Gahan owns the attack on public housing as mayor, and Adam Dickey owns it as party chairman. Gahan’s purge isn't about poverty; it's about property. If Dan Canon runs for office, Gahan’s and Dickey’s hypocrisy is going to look like it came straight out of Francoist Spain.

We must be ready. Lay in the single malt, boys. Some kippers, marmalade and soda bread would be helpful. I’ve already written the happiest of endings: Canon wins, Gahan loses and Dickey moves.

My eyes are filled with tears of happiness just thinking about it.

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Recent columns:

May 4: ON THE AVENUES: Under the volcano in Catania, Sicily (Part One).

April 27: ON THE AVENUES: Dear Mr. Dizznee: Can you hear me now?

April 20: ON THE AVENUES: The Weekly Wad? It was a modest start.

April 13: ON THE AVENUES: Ain't it funny how we all seem to look the same?

Advocates for the vulnerable find Gahan's public housing putsch "distressing." Interim director Duggins responds by crushing a beer can on his forehead.

"I'm late for the Redevelopment meeting."

In a letter to the editor of the News and Tribune, trained professionals take issue with Jeff Gahan's public housing takeover. A second letter appears, too, but since it's mine, the letter will be incorporated into either a column or later post.

My letter was written prior to Gahan's classless decapitation of Bob Lane, and my guess is this one was, too.

Until then, a bit of inadvertent humor, courtesy of recent (aren't they all?) NAHA board appointee Bob "Tinned Sardine" Norwood.

It didn't stop the scentless sycophant from voting, did it?

New Albany's public housing plan distressing

We were deeply distressed when the Board of the New Albany Housing Authority (NAHA) approved the proposed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City of New Albany (CONA) and (NAHA). Prior to the recent Board of NAHA meeting we expressed our concerns, in writing, to Mayor Gahan, David Duggins (Director of Economic Development and Redevelopment), the members of the New Albany City Council, and members of the NAHA Board. Specifically, we raised the following concerns:

The proposal to eliminate public housing in CONA contains no details of steps that will be taken to ensure that NAHA residents' lives will not be disrupted.

The proposal contains no details of steps that will be taken to ensure that the supply of affordable (lower-income) housing in New Albany will not be diminished.

While the MOU proposes that vouchers could be used to relocate current NAHA residents, the document provides no evidence that an adequate supply of vouchers exists, or that there is an adequate supply of market rental housing units in New Albany that will accept such vouchers.

It is unclear whether CONA and NAHA are, in fact, working collegially despite a claim of collaboration in CONA’s strategic plan.

In its present composition, the NAHA Board does not include any resident representatives.

The Green Mouse has learned that David Duggins will be the interim director of the New Albany Housing Authority.

You know, just like when The Donald appointed Ben Carson to run HUD.

More as reports trickle in.

WHAS coverage of Bob Lane's ouster: “It just doesn't make sense,” says one lifelong Democrat.

Daddy Trump is very proud of his little boy Jeffrey. A chip off the ol' block, to be sure.

Meanwhile, at least a few of those Floyd County Democrats applauding Dan Canon's prospective run for Congress are beginning to see Deaf Gahan for what he really is.

Anything but a d(D)emocrat.

Director's removal shocks crowd at New Albany Housing Authority Board meeting, by Heather Fountaine (WHAS)

NEW ALBANY, Ind. (WHAS11) – A sudden outburst as people yelled ‘shame’ during the final moments of a New Albany Housing Authority Board Meeting when board members voted to terminate Housing Authority Director, Bob Lane.

“It just doesn't make sense,” Susan Ryan, who was at the meeting, said.

Lane immediately walked out of the meeting, choosing not to comment with WHAS 11 News, as he was embraced with hugs and shock.

“It's just hard to believe, it's hard to believe,” resident and former Board Commissioner, Ruthann Wolfe, said.

BREAKING: Bob Lane has been fired by Jeff Gahan's stacked and packed NAHA public housing board.

Jeff Gahan has fired Bob Lane, and if you're wondering how Gahan treats his vanquished enemies ... remember Mike Ladd?

Jeff Gahan has fired Bob Lane, and if you're wondering how Gahan treats his vanquished enemies ... remember Mike Ladd?

Earlier this evening, Bob Lane was fired as director of the New Albany Housing Authority. It is likely other long-term NAHA employees also will be purged.

BREAKING: Bob Lane has been fired by Jeff Gahan's stacked and packed NAHA public housing board.

It's important to remember that the stealth public housing putsch of 2017 was years in the making, and that it has been authored by Jeff Gahan. The board? Mere groveling sycophants. Gahan owns this, just as he owns his team's jihad and subsequent character assassination against former Urban Enterprise Association director Mike Ladd.

The following three links are from 2014, when Ladd's lawsuit was settled. What Nick Cortolillo said in 2012 about Gahan's annexation of the UEA applies just as succinctly now, with the NAHA.

"The city of New Albany wanted unlimited access to the enterprise association’s revenue and Ladd was in the way."

Change the word "revenue" to "land," and "Ladd" to "Lane" -- and there it is.

Again.

Feeling good about yourselves, Democrats? Apparently Gahan assumes you'll continue to fall over yourselves in the scramble to kiss his ring.

He might be right, alas.

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Mike Ladd speaks: "Small minds seek small solutions and fight for even smaller purposes."

Mike Ladd will be leaving town soon to get on with his life, and in a great many ways, it can be said that Mike was chewed up and spit out by the civic dysfunction that's as much a part of life here in New Albany as stifling summertime humidity and the mafia's brilliant orange-uniformed disguise as the Harvest Homecoming junta.

Almost from the moment Mike came here to succeed Nick Cortolillo at the UEA, the games began. Develop New Albany, then tethered to the UEA's revenue stream for sustenance, staged its own South Sudan henhouse flight amid cacophonous squawking and flying feathers, pausing only to dictate self-serving reunification terms. Mike shrugged and went about the business of administering an efficient, streamlined UEA, upon which I served a term, and was fortunate to be a part of something that actually worked.

But, as Cortolillo wrote in 2012, "The city of New Albany wanted unlimited access to the enterprise association’s revenue and Ladd was in the way."

It's a shameful chapter in the city's perennially underachieving history. For three years, Mike was under constant pressure from the grubby, sneering, small-time confidence trickster's avarice of Doug England and Carl Malysz, only to have the incoming Gahan administration complete the task of decapitating him. It was ugly and unnecessary. It was the very essence of why New Albany fails.

Does anyone even know what the UEA has accomplished since then?

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The settlement of Mike Ladd's lawsuit does little to dissipate the ugliness of his treatment.

I sincerely believe that Mike Ladd was wronged, and it makes me embarrassed to live in a place where such treatment is regarded as proper. Political culture in New Albany suffers from a learning disability.

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More on the Ladd lawsuit, in which I tell you exactly what I think.

But wouldn't it be nice if the city could bring itself to admit to the pre-meditated fiasco of Ladd's firing, pony up what the contract stipulated, and be done with it?