A Sunday morning ON THE AVENUES encore: "Upscale residency at down-low prices."

The ON THE AVENUES column from 2015 reprinted here came to mind as I was reading about grassroots initiatives in Akron.

In Akron: "City hall is listening to small businesses, neighborhood groups and outside experts."

Here in New Albany, "business of residency" was an upscale Gahanesque buzz phrases for roughly ten minutes during an election year, soon to be discarded by anchor tattoos and supplanted by the mayor's hostile takeover of public housing, or, "the business of non-residency," at least for those stubbornly resisting Dear Leader's vision of upscale living for those capable of regular campaign finance installments.

Nature abhors a moron ...
-- HL Mencken

... except in New Albany.
-- Roger A. Baylor

---

February 19, 2015

ON THE AVENUES: Upscale residency at down-low prices.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

“I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books."
– Kanye West, seeking a position in the New Albany economic development hierarchy

Previously in this space, we’ve examined the Gahan administration’s recurring vocabulary malfunction.

Who even knew that Dr. Pavlov had an office in the Elsby Building?

Obviously desperate to avoid revisiting uncomfortable days of yore in junior high, when the former Marine Corps drill instructor Mr. Buzzkilljoy required they memorize the precise meaning of words in the English language and regurgitate these definitions on demand, city officials in New Albany now delight in the deployment of banal and indeterminate code phrases suitable only for the approbation of the ever-eager stenographer cadre.

Quality of life, public safety and better access have been the most consistently overused of these meaningless bromides, and we await the inevitable resurrection of classic Orwellian gems of doublethink as local Democratic Party campaign slogans:

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
When You Wish Upon A Star/Makes No Difference Who You Are

Oops – sorry.

That last one obviously serves as the credo of the Redevelopment Commission, and any connection with the DemoDisneyDixiecrats is purely Dickeyensian.

---

Make a wish, blow out the candles, and welcome a new addition to the Gahan team’s tired lexicon.

Upscale.

Exactly what is meant by the word “upscale”? It might depend on one’s socioeconomic vantage point (rats, a penalty is assessed to me for using a seven syllable word within the city limits), but here is the dictionary’s point of view.

up•scale
ˌəpˈskāl/
adjective & adverb

NORTH AMERICAN

adjective: upscale; adverb: upscale

toward or relating to the more expensive or affluent sector of the market.

"Hawaii's upscale boutique hotels"

synonyms: deluxe, posh, ritzy, upper-class, classy, chi-chi; high-end, expensive, high-priced

Upscale is trending because just last week, in a grudgingly reluctant process akin to tapping maple trees and collecting sap, information about the proposed Coyle site development began seeping ever so slowly from City Hall’s propaganda directorate, located deep within the bowels of the Down Low Bunker.

But first, kindly note the irony.

Among other Gahan initiatives, some randomly sensible and others fully befitting the sort of vision generally experienced in the tuneless strumming of a Jimmy Buffett cover band, only the dormant-by-design Speck Downtown Street Network Plan both contextualizes and (perhaps, maybe, possibly) justifies the city’s involvement in the Coyle infill apartment project.

Naturally, while Gahan and his vacuous minions continue to treat the Speck proposals as though they were paper envelopes filled with free-range ricin, the announcement of “upscale” apartments was owned and groomed and feted by them like a Saudi sheik's first-born thoroughbred, proving yet again that they are the very worst civic actors in recent memory.

John Mattingly was positively Shakespearean by comparison ... or maybe it was Sicilian.

---

To reiterate, the major selling point of the Coyle site proposal thus far seems to rest on the undefined shoulders of that magic word.

Upscale.

The usage is intended to animate the extension of the pinky at a right angle from one’s grip of the ice-cold Bud Light longneck, to be wiggled while purring like a socialite:

“Not like those low-income housing credits, honey buns.”

Conceding that detailed plans haven’t yet found their way to NA Confidential, the problem is that early indicators like last week’s project drawings simply don’t speak to “upscale” at all, at least when the accepted meaning of words is respected. In fact, the proposed buildings don’t look appreciably different than ordinary blocks of middle class flats I’ve seen in dozens of European cities and more than a few American ones, too.

Regular reader W was specific.

When I think upscale, I think apartment balconies and patios should be deeper than the windows are wide. Just room enough for an 8" hibachi grill, maybe? The upscale apartment dwellers won't be able to sit in a lawn chair and enjoy the traffic zooming by on such a tiny sliver of concrete. That's quality of life?

Ah, but we’re still waiting on that particular definition, aren’t we?

The stacked, multi-story exterior staircases look deadly as well - "upscale" doesn't include secure elevators? Look at the end of the building, with the lovely, open air staircases.

"Hello, ‘upscale’ apartment tenant, climb the stairs with your bags of groceries that you had to drive somewhere to buy because there are no grocery stores near your ‘upscale’ apartments."

Oh, I know, all of these "upscale" tenants will eat out every night, because the tenants are just "better" - after all, they live in "upscale" apartments.

Walk up, multi-story flats aren't exactly upscale. Do you want people from the street to able to climb the stairs up to your front door and wait for you to come home when you're paying high end, "upscale" rent? What we're being told and what we're seeing doesn't add up.

Regrettably, math class posed its own grave difficulties, especially when all you wanted to do was go outside and play baseball.

The many differences between wishful-star-related thinking and hard reality also were sadly prominent the last time the city struck up a full-Sousa soundtrack and pledged fealty to a private, for-profit construction entity, this being Mainland’s ill-fated Riverview project, circa 2011-12.

Since then, there have been two major themes in what the mayor enjoys tidily euphemizing as “the business of residency” – and no, this phrase hasn’t been defined yet, either.

First, council creatures Bob Caesar and Kevin Zurschmiede would rather see a building collapse of its own neglect and/or grandiosely self-immolate than acquiesce in the consideration of low-income housing tax credits in its refurbishment.

Second, private developers like Matt Chalfant are pursuing living space rehabs without substantive financial incentivization based on a profit vs. loss instinct that looks disturbingly like capitalism.

What of City Hall's "business of residency"? Let’s go to Bluegill for the coda.

The only thing the Gahan/Duggins administration has proven particularly adept at so far is giving away massive amounts of public money to developers and corporations. This is just part and parcel.

If (developers) want to take on the risk and build within the existing rules that locals have to follow, they can build. We shouldn't be subsidizing them, especially given the many, more productive uses for local money. Honestly, we need to get over the whole upscale, raising property values gambit and all the trickle down approaches to it. You know who most cares if property values rise? People planning on taking money from the community and/or borrowing against it to go into more debt. It's just repeating the same cycle.

The only way to stop the concession extraction is to say no to concessions. Unfortunately, our current ED has spent his career doing little except for offering concessions. That's true, though, of the entire Democratic Party hereabouts. It's going to be especially funny if the Gahan administration tries to use a big handout as justification for better streets, making it about the developer rather than residents.

Is it time for an addition to A New Albanist’s Dictionary?*

Upscale
An imported construction project pursued with our own municipal funds, as opposed to state and federal low income housing tax credits, as standing in sharp contrast with the dilapidated condition of surrounding neighborhoods, which have been down so long that it looks like up to them.

Not that they'll ever read one.

---

* Volume One and Volume Two

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Money is the ultimate bully (2015).

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Money is the ultimate bully (2015). 

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

I'm on vacation, so this is a rerun from August 7, 2015, when I was waging an ultimately unsuccessful bid for mayor of New Albany as an independent candidate.  Two and a half years later, I'm finding that much of my material has worn quite well, hence the encores. 

Don't forget: #FireGahan2019

---

New Albany is a city of 37,000 residents. Not even 1% of them bicycle to work. The poverty rate is 23%, and incumbent mayor Jeff Gahan came into the year 2015 with almost $100,000 in his re-election fund.

He’d have spent some of it during the primary season, and surely raised more since then.

That’s a lot of money, isn’t it?

Do you ever wonder where it all comes from?

For $100,000 to have come entirely from New Albany, every voter opting for Gahan in 2011 already would have donated at least $22 to his 2015 campaign. One needn’t be a card-carrying cynic (like me) to know this has not been the case, and I’d wager that less than 20% of the mayor’s total take has come from “just plain folks” locally.

Speaking in broader terms, we needn’t bother examining Gahan’s financial filings with a magnifying glass in order to make educated guesses about the sources of the lucre.

$50,000 or more probably has come from elsewhere, whether Indianapolis, the Magic Kingdom or the Canary Islands, by way of various PACs and Democratic Party funding sources. In addition, there are certain to be significant chunks from those engineering, contracting and construction firms commissioned to erect Gahan’s many gleaming palaces by means of taxpayer money.

Did I say gleaming palaces?

I meant TIF-bonded, plaque-ready building projects. They’re pictured on the flash cards Gahan holds aloft at every opportunity, although where I grew up, things can’t be classified as “gifts” when the giver used your credit card to pay for them.

Since 2012, the good times have rolled and many beaks have gotten nice and wet. Randomly adding together Bicentennial Park, the farmers market buildout, Main Street beautification, parks and aquatic center bonds, Coyle site sewer fee waivers and the accompanying corporate TIF welfare handouts, special event equipment rentals, overtime and an expense account luncheon here and there, Gahan has spent well north of $30 million since January 1, 2012, on wants, as opposed to needs.

It’s probably closer to $40 million … and I forgot the drive-to-only dog park.

$40-odd million.

That’s a lot of money, isn’t it, and it helps to explain the familiar cycle of campaign funding, doesn’t it, and as a longtime blogger, independent mayoral candidate and fairly well-read fellow who also enjoys sitting at the bar and nursing a beer, is it somehow my fault that I possess the ability to bring all this to your attention in an educational and entertaining way?

Am I forcibly seizing the bully pulpit? Using the tools at my disposal? Deploying guerrilla tactics against a well-heeled, unscrupulous opponent?

Of course, all the while hoping there still exists a modicum of free speech, allowing any of us to mount that soap box and let it rip – and to toss a hat onto the ring, file petitions, do paperwork, amass a scant pittance of campaign contributions, mount an insurgency against a man who has held elective office for twelve years, who has $100,000 burning a hole in his pocket, and what’s more, possesses a slick publicly-financed social media stream disseminating shameless re-election materials daily under the shabby guise of civic news -- and lest we forget, flaunts a local Democratic machine faithfully at his side, one ready to transition the incumbent as an Indiana Senate hopeful at the drop of a few hundred thousand bucks.

Let's try to be adults. Even this heretic knows that Goliath was the big bad bully, and not the dude with the spot-on slingshot, and accordingly, I’ll continue to speak and write openly about the way things are in New Albany, because when it comes to underdogs, sleepers, dark horses and the man in Tiananmen Square blocking a column of tanks with his briefcase, you won’t find any of them in the $100,000 mayoral suite overlooking one-way Spring Street.

And that’s exactly the way I like it.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars comprising New Albany’s debt, but what the hey -- it’s the way American politics work, all disgusting and horrible when Republicans do it, which is why Democrats do it, too. Meanwhile, 44% of African-Americans in New Albany live below the poverty line … and 100% of Gahan’s out-of-town sugar daddies remain unaware of this fact.

---

Four years ago, Jeff Gahan and I got together. He held a grudge over my participation in an abortive lawsuit intended to compel unwilling city council members to redistrict fairly, a reform Gahan helped shoot down, but heeding advice to be a good soldier and work within the Democratic Party system, I parleyed.

Over coffee, we spoke about what we viewed as important for the city’s future. On my list were topics familiar to anyone who’s been reading this blog since 2004, including two-way streets, rental property registration, slumlord abatement, ordinance enforcement, economic localism and historic preservation. He seemed to be in agreement, and I supported his candidacy as a result.

Obviously, Jeff Gahan won the election.

Obviously, Gahan hasn’t followed through on his promises to my satisfaction – and I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Obviously, I believe he has turned out to be an absolutely lousy mayor. If I believed otherwise, would I be running against him as an independent?

Hence, my point: When I say Jeff Gahan is a lousy mayor, either aloud or in written form, and at times with pictures, some of them artistically altered so as to be funny, it’s hardly character assassination. Rather, it is an ongoing dialogue, and an argument constructed with concepts, ideas and evidence in addition to the wit and snark. In 2015, it’s also a political campaign, and as such, it is a milieu that each candidate has accepted as part of the game.

Of course, several of us have gone to great lengths, fairly often and for a very long time, to explain in excruciating detail why Gahan’s decision-making process is faulty, how we’d have done it differently, and what we might yet do to reverse the mistakes and make things better.

Here is one recent example.

Gahan’s corporate welfare bursar is David Duggins, although his official title is the increasingly improbable “economic development director.”

Duggins is fond of using words like “ripple effect” to describe Reaganite-style “trickle down” Hail Mary plays in cases like the Coyle site upscale luxury apartment development, in which the city of New Albany will pay one-third the price of a private company’s $15 million investment, devoting taxpayer dollars to mitigating the private company’s risks, these being magnanimous guarantees unavailable to dozens of homegrown entrepreneurs and investors.

One “ripple effect” of the Coyle site deal, which Duggins himself has referred to as mere “boilerplate,” is that it neatly closes the circle of campaign finance (see above).

But to me, these unfortunate “ripple effect” references better describe the many negative ramifications of Gahan’s bad Coyle site decision, above and beyond “just” losing the $5 million in corporate welfare handouts being thrown at Flaherty Collins.

For one, it sends a dreadful message to stakeholders in perennially neglected neighborhoods a mere stone’s throw away, which can be read in the smirk on Duggins’s face:

“Relax, folks. Trendy bocce ball access is on the veranda, with Mojitos and the best internet service in town, and these amenities matter far more than taking the time to curb the slumlord or revert the one-way street, actions that would increase your property values, reduce crime and enhance your quality of your life. Just be patient and wait for the ripple effect, because we’re sure the high rollers won’t forget the gratuity when you’re finished picking up after them. After all, they’re the right kind of people.”

The underemployed single mother in a shotgun house?

She must have forgotten to make a campaign donation.

Furthermore, the Coyle site subsidy represents five of 40-odd million questionable decisions, each one representing opportunity costs, lost chances and squandered potential. The money might have been spent on projects and programs designed to address genuine fundamentals of the sort calculated to spread the risks, spread the rewards, nurture the grassroots, and help lift the many rather than stroke the few.

However, far too often Gahan’s “investments” have not been directed toward these goals, and this isn’t my idea of what quality municipal government does. Perhaps it is yours, in which case I’d recommend voting for the mayor’s re-election, because in the end, that’s how elections are supposed to work.

They’re not enthronements. Ideally, they represent choices, and that's precisely what I aim to provide in 2015. If Jeff Gahan cannot keep up, it isn't my problem.

So, let’s be crystal clear: We rage against the current mayoral machine because the machine is the bully in this equation. To think otherwise is to practice the sort of enduring self-deception and intellectual debasement that have characterized Democratic machine politics in New Albany for so very long, and which prevent this city from reaching its potential.

I believe there are alternatives to the same tired civic rituals, practiced by the usual underachieving political suspects, and which come down to these three priorities:

Infrastructure
Empowerment
Transparency

Broken down a bit further, I’ll close the column today with these ten bullet point Baylor for Mayor platform planks.

Infrastructure upgrades and management
Quality of life by two-way design and ordinance enforcement
A sane and sustainable budget
Historic preservation and greening
New Albany’s economy comes first
Equal governance and level playing fields
A deep personnel cleaning of City Hall
Internet connectivity as infrastructure
Transparency and governmental communication
Human rights as non-negotiable mandate

Next week, I’ll elaborate on these points.

---

Recent columns:

February 15: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: No more fear, Jeff (2015).

February 8: ON THE AVENUES: Golden oldie classic comfort beers at an old school pub? Sounds like Pints & Union to me.

February 1: ON THE AVENUES: Did you hear the one about Duggins' deep TASER regrets? I laughed until I cried -- and so did the folks in Keokuk.

January 25: ON THE AVENUES: David Duggins’ violent “jokes” will continue until the New Albany Housing Authority’s morale improves – or Duggins is fired. We advocate the latter.

GOLDEN OLDIES: Mega-$$$ hologram improvement project in New Albany receives Redevelopment bond, as well as Dan's and Adam's approval.

豆贝尔维 克斯 吾艾 贼德

How much difference does a year make?

In the case of Jeff Gahan's expanding cult of personality, not much. However, Dan Coffey's trajectory once again has taken a radical turn. From being the mayor's faithful Man Friday, he's reoccupied center stage in the ranks of the opposition, quit the Democratic Party and declared his independence.

This too will change, but in the meantime, here's a reprise from June 24, 2015.

---

NEW ALBANY — Chinese hologram manufacturer Guangzhou Swansong Electronics Co., Ltd. will be allowed to pay “back” up to $4.9 million for a 190,000-wavefront, security-encrypted, completely personalized mayoral re-election image generator with tax-increment financing funds based on a bond issuance approved initially by the New Albany Redevelopment Commission on Tuesday.

According to New Albany Oh So Common Council member Dan Coffey, the bond debt neither will have to be approved by the legislative body, nor reviewed at the redevelopment commission, because since all requisite prayers already have been offered, it would be insulting to both mayor and God to keep gabbing about something that’s already been decided.

“Everything is here. We’ve just got to move forward,” Coffey said.

“Obviously, any kind of talk about a bond issuance for mayoral holograms, you want to know about what kind of illusion it’s going to perpetuate for the bedazzlement of the sheep,” said redevelopment member and Democratic Party chairman Adam Dickey before detailing some of the potential benefits of the upgraded, true-to-life computer imagery, which imbues the mayor with almost human qualities.

The hologram is expected to have a $30 million impact on New Albany over the first five years of the development, and create more than 100 high-paying tech jobs in that time frame.

“This new and modern mimicry addresses New Albany’s long-time need for additional Jeff Gahans downtown,” Mayor Jeff Gahan stated in a news release after the meeting. “Our focus on the business of convincingly reproducing me will maintain my momentum for historic urban core growth in New Albany as it pertains to my ability to not be unduly inconvenienced by meetings, christenings and plaque dedications.”

The city has agreed to provide $500,000 in work and planning for the hologram. The hangar-sized warehouse necessary for the computerized equipment and slide projectors has also garnered a state tax credit worth up to $3.3 million.

The size of the hologram has grown, as the number of Gahans needed to read press releases has increased from 157 to 190. Guangzhou Swansong is expected to purchase additional property, including a neglected rental property nearby that was found to have a deadbeat owner who hadn’t maintained his direct debit payments to the Democratic Central Committee.

The $4.9 million bond would include the cost of haberdashers, financial advisers, makeup artists, bond counsel and other fees associated with the loan. The city will not pay additional funding for the hologram, but will allow the TIF revenue generated to be used by Guangzhou Swansong to pay back the debt.

David Duggins, director of economic development and redevelopment for the city, labeled the issuance a “boilerplate” bond note for re-election campaign expenses. The life of the bond is 20 years, and the city will be required to reserve debt service for the loan long after Gahan is soundly defeated in his coming attempt to oust Ron Grooms from the Indiana State Senate.

Earlier in Tuesday’s meeting, Duggins said the city’s TIF districts “are in excellent ideological shape,” with not a single acre allowed to sport Republican yard signs before May’s primary election.

The city took on an 18-year bond issuance worth $19.6 million to construct River Run Family Water Park, Silver Street Park, and to make improvements to Binford Park. The new family of Gahan action figure holograms will be geared toward individuals drinking $500 of Kool-Aid annually, and will include soothing phrases, registered clichés and fundamentally more terrifying clarity.

Coffey, who is a member of the redevelopment commission, noted his close personal friendship with “my homie” Franklin Graham before saying that the Gahan holograms will help the city attract more residents who know the words to Barry Manilow’s “It’s a Miracle” by heart.

Coffey added that many more re-election expenditures solely designed to take advantage of his longtime mentor’s role to Gahan are sorely needed.

(Apologies to Daniel Suddeath, whose article about the Coyle site development is here)

ON THE AVENUES: They're surely not ROLL models.

ON THE AVENUES: They're surely not ROLL models. 

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Often I write about walking, so it may come as a surprise to some that while my aim remains to find ways of alternative transportation when it comes to shifting this bulk from place to place, ultimately I’m bound by auto-centrism just as much as the next surly curmudgeon.

It is a fact, and I thoroughly detest it. Cars don’t define my humanity; they constrain and warp it. I firmly believe that future generations will look back and ask: “What were they thinking?”

The answer is easy. We weren’t.

Earlier this week I was driving my mother back to her apartment at Silvercrest from an appointment. Nearing the eastbound I-64 ramp from I-265 W, the rear view mirror displayed a very fast-moving red pickup truck, closing rapidly at the very moment I was deaccelerating for the on-ramp.

Interstate on-ramps generally compel a driver to merge to the left, into the lane with ostensibly slower traffic. This isn’t the case at the I-64 E ramp from I-265 W. One must merge to the right, joining faster traffic as it thunders from the highlands down the “cut” toward the bridge.

For those planning to exit at New Albany, as was my intent, it requires first merging into the fastest lane, then cutting across traffic through the center lane, all the way to the right.

The red pickup already was tailgating me as we came down the sloping grade. There was daylight to the west in both left and center lanes, and as soon as I could, I merged and began easing toward the center lane, one eye on the rear view mirror, where the way would have been clear – except the red pickup jerked hard to the right, trying to make it past me in the center lane.

But I was already there, and the far right lane had a semi rig in it. The pickup’s driver slammed the breaks, veered left, and rushed around me in a flash. I had barely enough time to see two noteworthy objects: A blue municipal license plate, and a Floyd County Highway Department insignia on the passenger door.

Within seconds, the pickup easily topped 80 mph, racing toward the New Albany exit. I gave my horse the whip, but a Ford Fusion has only so much energy to give; besides, my mother was in the car with me. No rage at all, ma'am, and there simply wasn’t any chance to get close enough to record the license plate number.

County government’s red pickup truck kept going gangbusters down the ramp, rolled quickly through the stop sign on Spring Street, and instead of turning left on Market – surely the driver's speed and recklessness indicated an urgent need to get to the emergency room – it proceeded straight, toward Main.

Perhaps it was a Chick fil-A delivery to the Pine View Government Center?

---

At last Thursday’s city council meeting, according to these minutes, at-large councilman Al Knable briefly quizzed street department chief Mickey Thompson.

Dr. Knable stated that he met with a constituent at his request and walked the Coyle site and they had some concerns about ADA and some of the sidewalks not being wheelchair accessible. He said that with the construction going on the south side of Spring Street, he didn’t know if the corner project at 5th Street could be accelerated so that some ramps could be put in. He added that right now there is no continuous way for someone on a rascal or wheelchair to go east to west or vice versa. He thought maybe our attorney and the builder’s attorney could look at it to make sure we are in compliance.

Mr. Thompson stated that he could look into it.

Note that Mr. Thompson sits on New Albany's somnolent Board of Works, which has met roughly eight times since the access issue first was reported on November 29 at NA Confidential. We've been waiting on the newspaper to notice the Coyle site sidewalk failure. Unfortunately, it's been down a reporter for the NA beat,

Since September. But I digress.

(Mr. Thompson) also stated he told them that they could put up their fence but they had to keep one side open so if they closed the sidewalk on one side, the other side had to be accessible. He added that we also have the sidewalk project going on at 5th Street so that may have caused the problem.

Dr. Knable stated that there are a couple of areas where the ramps are accessible but there’s clearly one gap about midway through the site that you can’t get through.

Mr. Thompson stated that he is in contact with the manager of the project so he can get with him and look at it.

Dr. Knable recommended that it be treated like if it were downtown Indianapolis and everything done with wayfaring signs and access.

Kudos to the councilman for mentioning Indianapolis, where efforts are made in the vast majority of cases to clearly delineate interruptions to sidewalk access, under the presumption that even if city officials don't see a problem during their trips back and forth by car, sidewalk users nonetheless exist -- and some of them are handicapped.

Let's be clear. It is the city of New Albany’s responsibility to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), but in this instance, those city officials who might reasonably be expected to ensure compliance meekly stepped aside, fingers crossed, and turned matters over to a contractor – and we're to believe that not a soul noticed when the handicapped ramps were blocked by temporary fencing.

If none of them noticed, and I suspect they did, it wouldn't be surprising. If institutional walkability consciousness can be measured in negative numbers, that's where you'll find Team Gahan's marks: Less than zero.

Two blocks away from the Break Wind construction site, on the east side of 3rd Street between Main and Market, the sidewalk has been blocked for years by cars allowed to park atop it.

Nothing is said, nothing is done.

The same has been true for months on the southeastern corner of 15th and Spring, where automobiles parked at the business there routinely block the public's right of way, forcing rascals and wheelchairs to detour on the street itself.

Nothing is said, nothing is done.

When it snows, municipal and private contractors alike push mounds of snow away from precious parking places, squarely into the path of pedestrians.

Nothing is said ... that's right: And nothing is done.

---

Did I mention the city’s obligation to comply with the ADA?

Perhaps the able-bodied are the only ones who matter in our brave new Gahanian pretend-world, where voters drive cars, and wheelchair users have only themselves to blame when their ramps disappear. It's as much of a human rights issue as any other, but I'll be surprised if there is any mention of it at the quarterly meeting of Southern Indiana Equality later tonight.

There are points to be made here, both great and small, though I’ll confine myself to just one.

Is it really asking too much to expect local government employees, and by extension local government itself, to serve as examples of the importance of enforcing law, rather than ease in evading it?

---

Recent columns:

January 21: ON THE AVENUES: When I grow up, I'd like to be alive.

January 14: ON THE AVENUES: Should the Queen fail to rescue us, there's always H. L. Mencken.

January 7: ON THE AVENUES: You know, that time when Roger interviewed himself.

December 31: ON THE AVENUES: My 2015 in books and reading.

December 24: ON THE AVENUES: Fairytale of New Albania (2015 mashup).

As the Coyle site is prepped for luxury, city functionaries praise corporate welfare "done right."

As always, it's all about appearance, and never genuine fundamentals.

Construction ready to begin at former Coyle site in New Albany (Morris; N and T)

... "It will bring more spending power downtown," (David) Duggins said. "I don't think we could have picked a better spot. It's really going to be nice looking and done right."

Grab all your saws, 'cuz the NAFD is training on the roof.

The New Albany Fire Department was conducting some rooftop exercises and training this morning at the former Coyle Dodge (And Frisch's Big Boy) building on Spring Street. Soon it will to demolished to make way for The Breakwind Lofts at Duggins-Down.

Scroll down to see ...

... what it looked like when they were finished:

I think Flaherty and Collins owes these firefighters overtime. Come to think of it, the city's subsidizing the bocce, anyway ... so it's a mag-TIF-icent wash.

Bored of Works just laughs: ADA compliance? In New Albany?

Walking on the north side of Spring from 4th to 6th ... how is it again that wheelchair users are supposed to be able to use the sidewalk when the fencing deprives them of ramps?

The Vintage Fire Museum moved to Jeffersonville so that Gahan might monetize.

Fire engines aren't everyone's shtick, but it's worth remembering that the impetus for what is now a Vintage Fire Museum as situated in Jeffersonville came almost entirely from New Albanians, from the Conway collection's inception straight through to the museum's brief residency in the Coyle showroom.

As the corporate welfare housing project at the former auto dealership has unfolded behind Jeff Gahan's perennially closed doors, it has become far easier to understand the reasons for the shabby treatment accorded the fire museum's stalwarts by Gahan and his economic dishevelment chief David Duggins.

They had a two-for-one TIF/sewer waiver deal to be completed just in time for the 2015 political calendar, and so the fire museum was given the bum's rush. The museum may or may not have been a good fit at the Coyle site, but what's clear now is that it did not fit into Gahan's governance-by-monetization worldview -- after all, how on earth could a handful of geezers ever kick back campaign finance to the tune of fat cats like Flaherty Collins?

I'm happy to see the Fire Museum's ongoing progress in Jeffersonville, and even more delighted that Rick, Kim and the crew at Donum Dei stepped in to help with an event that I wasn't able to organize. Thanks, guys.

'Chili, Brats & Brew' celebrates Jeff fire museum, by Jenna Esarey (C-J)

Yes, Jeff, we know you're The Luxury Mayor: "Working so hard, to keep you from the poverty."

Jeff Gahan and the local Democratic Party are really excited about subsidizing the construction of luxury apartments just a few blocks away from the city's most concentrated areas of poverty.

As New Albany Census Facts (2009-2013) readily attest:

NA median household income: $39,607 ($48,248 overall in Indiana)

Persons below poverty level in NA: 22.2% (15.4% overall in Indiana)

We all know the parts of town most affected by these numbers, so think about this.

Our Democrats are monetarily supporting Bocce ball, "Gigabit Internet access" and other upscale amenities for the few, as Gahan's campaign vows from 2011 (jobs and education) go entirely unmentioned. Even those whom we'd have expected to denounce such coded social engineering have fallen into line.

“When I came on the council, philosophically, I was opposed to ideas like this,” Phipps said. “I called it corporate welfare as well. For some of the naysayers out there that say this isn’t a thing for Democrats to do, I thought renewing urban environments, cleaning up blighted areas and bringing residents to the community so they can support locally owned business, is very much a Democrat thing to do.”
-- Greg Phipps (3rd district council) in supporting the Coyle site subsidies

But Greg: What about the message these subsidies send, not to just to the desperate and impoverished in our community, but also to working families just managing to get by, who are struggling with income inequality and low-wage jobs, and destined to be excluded by the ethos of privilege?

Can someone in the ruling elite explain to them how the "ripple effect" (Duggins' words) is going to lift them up?

What has Jeff Gahan, a supposed Democrat, done in four years for those most in need of hope, apart from hand them nicely suburbanized (and frightfully expensive) parks?

Now listen, I'm a proud man, not a beggar walking on the street

I'm working so hard, to keep you from the poverty

I'm working so hard to keep you in the luxury, oh yeah

I'm working so hard, I'm working so hard

Harder, harder, working, working, working

Insulating Democratic voters from the poverty isn't exactly what Mick and Keith had in mind, but that's how our governing clique rolls.

And that's why #gahanmustgo

Duggins: Indy developer has "vested interest" in our community, and millennials prefer biking alongside Padgett cranes.

There's something surreal about the conversations taking place as to the preferences of the $60,000 per year millennials who'll be playing bocce ball at the Flaherty and Collins development, which I believe is slated to be called Gahan "Business of Residency" Manor.

That's because the words "business of residency" must be chanted as economic development mantras just as often as "trickle down" and "ripple effect," so that the turbine powered by George Orwell spinning in his grave continues to power our street non-sweepers.

But you see, these millennials won't need as many parking spaces because millennials like to bicycle and walk, and they're not auto-centric like their parents, and the former Coyle site is located in a "pedestrian friendly" area.

With almost no crosswalks, without any efforts made to promote a culture of walkability, because at a previous meeting David Duggins rushed to reassure the crowd that these walkers and bikers would be perfectly content with unaltered, adjacent, two fast lanes comprising one-way arterial streets, as built to interstate specifications, and thus discouraging walking and biking.

You see, THESE millennials will be different, and enjoy 18-wheelers thundering past as they ride to ... to ... where again are they riding in a city almost entirely without bike lanes, and no coherent plans to add ones that might actually connect to each other?

The comparatively fewer cars parked there won't be a problem unless they are, at which point the developer will have to deal with it ... perhaps by buying adjacent homes with further TIF One Card bonds to create more stormwater-friendly impermeable surface?

Even better ...

AT&T, which has a location across from the development, donated a 24-space lot to the city to be utilizes specifically for the development.

Yes!

More prime infill building space goes toward surface parking, contributing to stormwater issues, which millennials can reach by walking across a one-way arterial street with bike lanes that go nowhere and connect to nothing, where crosswalks are almost unheard of, and which -- thus far in the mayor's down-low stealth campaign to convince selected private questioners that he understands this so well that nothing can be done to change it for two or more years -- nothing has been done to change it now, and never will, in two or twenty years.

Do any of these people really believe a single word he's saying?

I understand Duggins, Gahan, Flaherty, Collins, Rosenbarger and Gibson spouting outlandish propaganda. I suppose now, at long last, I must finally concede that Scott Wood is mortally afflicted with the gibberish contagion, too.

This makes me very sad.

Doctor, my broom, please.

New Albany apartments receive zoning approval, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — The public funding has been OK'd, a substantial tax credit pledged, and on Tuesday, the developer seeking to construct a $26 million apartment and retail complex in downtown New Albany garnered zoning approval from the city.

Flaherty and Collins received unanimous approval from the New Albany Board of Zoning Appeals to construct a 191-unit apartment development on the former Coyle auto property from 501 to 515 E. Spring St.

A variance was required for the project in part because the number of parking spaces planned doesn't meet the city's standard for apartments of similar size.

Taibbi feels the Bern: "An elected government should occasionally step in and offer an objection or two toward our progress to undisguised oligarchy."

This one from Matt Taibbi was posted on April 29, 2015, and I've underlined a passage which echoes something we've been saying locally:

Why do we accept the entire governmental structure becoming oriented toward monetizing and dispensing financial favors to the business and construction elites, at the expense of a level playing field for ordinary people?

This is why I'll trudge down to Tuesday's BZA meeting and denounce cynical trickle-down corporate welfare yet again, even as the Dugginses and Gibsons of the ruling elite chortle from the back row at the temerity of anyone daring to question their wheel-greasing boilerplate.

Flaherty Collins rubber stamp for the Coyle site to be hastened by the Board of Zoning Appeals this Tuesday night.

I'd never even consider placing myself in the same league with Bernie Sanders, but this much we have in common: There'll be no oligarchy appeasement here.

Give 'Em Hell, Bernie: Bernie Sanders is more serious than you think, by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone)

 ... That saltiness, I'm almost sure of it, is what drove him into this race. He just can't sit by and watch the things that go on, go on. That's not who he is.

When I first met Bernie Sanders, I'd just spent over a decade living in formerly communist Russia. The word "socialist" therefore had highly negative connotations for me, to the point where I didn't even like to say it out loud.

But Bernie Sanders is not Bukharin or Trotsky. His concept of "Democratic Socialism" as I've come to understand it over the years is that an elected government should occasionally step in and offer an objection or two toward our progress to undisguised oligarchy. Or, as in the case of not giving tax breaks to companies who move factories overseas, our government should at least not finance the disappearance of the middle class.

Maybe that does qualify as radical and unserious politics in our day and age. If that's the case, we should at least admit how much trouble we're in.

In Louisville as well as New Albany, "Municipal and mega-business moguls fornicate first and get acquainted later."

Even before Greg Fischer's Omni sellout, NAC had been tracking the Louisville mayor's ongoing deterioration.

Irv still nutzoid, and Gilderbloom's research wasted on New Albany -- and Greg Fischer, for that matter.

A visual Fischer goes full Gahan on the ad hoc demolition of historic properties.

Jeff Gahan texts Greg Fischer: "OMG, the CJ called, LOL."

Jeff Gahan and local Democrats tout purely Orwellian "preservation by demolition" theories filched from Greg Fischer.

The higher ranking the New Albany "Democrat," the loftier his or her admiration for Fischer and Walt Disney. While we can dismiss the Disney fetish as simple bad taste, their are serious implications for Fischer emulations, such as the "tinkle down" corporate welfare encapsulation of the Coyle site apartment project.

Some of Fischer's allies are moving toward the exits. Expect the same in New Albany.

The anti-climactic Omni orgy, by Steve Shaw (LEO Weekly)

... Welcome to the Bonobo Republic of Louisville, where municipal and mega-business moguls fornicate first and get acquainted later. By all appearances, Mayor Fischer gave Omni carte blanche to do whatever they wanted despite a public investment of $139 million, nearly half of the project’s price tag.

ON THE AVENUES: Money is the ultimate bully.

ON THE AVENUES: Money is the ultimate bully. 

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

New Albany is a city of 37,000 residents. Not even 1% of them bicycle to work. The poverty rate is 23%, and incumbent mayor Jeff Gahan came into the year 2015 with almost $100,000 in his re-election fund.

He’d have spent some of it during the primary season, and surely raised more since then.

That’s a lot of money, isn’t it?

Do you ever wonder where it all comes from?

For $100,000 to have come entirely from New Albany, every voter opting for Gahan in 2011 already would have donated at least $22 to his 2015 campaign. One needn’t be a card-carrying cynic (like me) to know this has not been the case, and I’d wager that less than 20% of the mayor’s total take has come from “just plain folks” locally.

Speaking in broader terms, we needn’t bother examining Gahan’s financial filings with a magnifying glass in order to make educated guesses about the sources of the lucre.

$50,000 or more probably has come from elsewhere, whether Indianapolis, the Magic Kingdom or the Canary Islands, by way of various PACs and Democratic Party funding sources. In addition, there are certain to be significant chunks from those engineering, contracting and construction firms commissioned to erect Gahan’s many gleaming palaces by means of taxpayer money.

Did I say gleaming palaces?

I meant TIF-bonded, plaque-ready building projects. They’re pictured on the flash cards Gahan holds aloft at every opportunity, although where I grew up, things can’t be classified as “gifts” when the giver used your credit card to pay for them.

Since 2012, the good times have rolled and many beaks have gotten nice and wet. Randomly adding together Bicentennial Park, the farmers market buildout, Main Street beautification, parks and aquatic center bonds, Coyle site sewer fee waivers and the accompanying corporate TIF welfare handouts, special event equipment rentals, overtime and an expense account luncheon here and there, Gahan has spent well north of $30 million since January 1, 2012, on wants, as opposed to needs.

It’s probably closer to $40 million … and I forgot the drive-to-only dog park.

$40-odd million.

That’s a lot of money, isn’t it, and it helps to explain the familiar cycle of campaign funding, doesn’t it, and as a longtime blogger, independent mayoral candidate and fairly well-read fellow who also enjoys sitting at the bar and nursing a beer, is it somehow my fault that I possess the ability to bring all this to your attention in an educational and entertaining way?

Am I forcibly seizing the bully pulpit? Using the tools at my disposal? Deploying guerrilla tactics against a well-heeled, unscrupulous opponent?

Of course, all the while hoping there still exists a modicum of free speech, allowing any of us to mount that soap box and let it rip – and to toss a hat onto the ring, file petitions, do paperwork, amass a scant pittance of campaign contributions, mount an insurgency against a man who has held elective office for twelve years, who has $100,000 burning a hole in his pocket, and what’s more, possesses a slick publicly-financed social media stream disseminating shameless re-election materials daily under the shabby guise of civic news -- and lest we forget, flaunts a local Democratic machine faithfully at his side, one ready to transition the incumbent as an Indiana Senate hopeful at the drop of a few hundred thousand bucks.

Let's try to be adults. Even this heretic knows that Goliath was the big bad bully, and not the dude with the spot-on slingshot, and accordingly, I’ll continue to speak and write openly about the way things are in New Albany, because when it comes to underdogs, sleepers, dark horses and the man in Tiananmen Square blocking a column of tanks with his briefcase, you won’t find any of them in the $100,000 mayoral suite overlooking one-way Spring Street.

And that’s exactly the way I like it.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars comprising New Albany’s debt, but what the hey -- it’s the way American politics work, all disgusting and horrible when Republicans do it, which is why Democrats do it, too. Meanwhile, 44% of African-Americans in New Albany live below the poverty line … and 100% of Gahan’s out-of-town sugar daddies remain unaware of this fact.

---

Four years ago, Jeff Gahan and I got together. He held a grudge over my participation in an abortive lawsuit intended to compel unwilling city council members to redistrict fairly, a reform Gahan helped shoot down, but heeding advice to be a good soldier and work within the Democratic Party system, I parleyed.

Over coffee, we spoke about what we viewed as important for the city’s future. On my list were topics familiar to anyone who’s been reading this blog since 2004, including two-way streets, rental property registration, slumlord abatement, ordinance enforcement, economic localism and historic preservation. He seemed to be in agreement, and I supported his candidacy as a result.

Obviously, Jeff Gahan won the election.

Obviously, Gahan hasn’t followed through on his promises to my satisfaction – and I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Obviously, I believe he has turned out to be an absolutely lousy mayor. If I believed otherwise, would I be running against him as an independent?

Hence, my point: When I say Jeff Gahan is a lousy mayor, either aloud or in written form, and at times with pictures, some of them artistically altered so as to be funny, it’s hardly character assassination. Rather, it is an ongoing dialogue, and an argument constructed with concepts, ideas and evidence in addition to the wit and snark. In 2015, it’s also a political campaign, and as such, it is a milieu that each candidate has accepted as part of the game.

Of course, several of us have gone to great lengths, fairly often and for a very long time, to explain in excruciating detail why Gahan’s decision-making process is faulty, how we’d have done it differently, and what we might yet do to reverse the mistakes and make things better.

Here is one recent example.

Gahan’s corporate welfare bursar is David Duggins, although his official title is the increasingly improbable “economic development director.”

Duggins is fond of using words like “ripple effect” to describe Reaganite-style “trickle down” Hail Mary plays in cases like the Coyle site upscale luxury apartment development, in which the city of New Albany will pay one-third the price of a private company’s $15 million investment, devoting taxpayer dollars to mitigating the private company’s risks, these being magnanimous guarantees unavailable to dozens of homegrown entrepreneurs and investors.

One “ripple effect” of the Coyle site deal, which Duggins himself has referred to as mere “boilerplate,” is that it neatly closes the circle of campaign finance (see above).

But to me, these unfortunate “ripple effect” references better describe the many negative ramifications of Gahan’s bad Coyle site decision, above and beyond “just” losing the $5 million in corporate welfare handouts being thrown at Flaherty Collins.

For one, it sends a dreadful message to stakeholders in perennially neglected neighborhoods a mere stone’s throw away, which can be read in the smirk on Duggins’s face:

“Relax, folks. Trendy bocce ball access is on the veranda, with Mojitos and the best internet service in town, and these amenities matter far more than taking the time to curb the slumlord or revert the one-way street, actions that would increase your property values, reduce crime and enhance your quality of your life. Just be patient and wait for the ripple effect, because we’re sure the high rollers won’t forget the gratuity when you’re finished picking up after them. After all, they’re the right kind of people.”

The underemployed single mother in a shotgun house?

She must have forgotten to make a campaign donation.

Furthermore, the Coyle site subsidy represents five of 40-odd million questionable decisions, each one representing opportunity costs, lost chances and squandered potential. The money might have been spent on projects and programs designed to address genuine fundamentals of the sort calculated to spread the risks, spread the rewards, nurture the grassroots, and help lift the many rather than stroke the few.

However, far too often Gahan’s “investments” have not been directed toward these goals, and this isn’t my idea of what quality municipal government does. Perhaps it is yours, in which case I’d recommend voting for the mayor’s re-election, because in the end, that’s how elections are supposed to work.

They’re not enthronements. Ideally, they represent choices, and that's precisely what I aim to provide in 2015. If Jeff Gahan cannot keep up, it isn't my problem.

So, let’s be crystal clear: We rage against the current mayoral machine because the machine is the bully in this equation. To think otherwise is to practice the sort of enduring self-deception and intellectual debasement that have characterized Democratic machine politics in New Albany for so very long, and which prevent this city from reaching its potential.

I believe there are alternatives to the same tired civic rituals, practiced by the usual underachieving political suspects, and which come down to these three priorities:

Infrastructure
Empowerment
Transparency

Broken down a bit further, I’ll close the column today with these ten bullet point Baylor for Mayor platform planks.

Infrastructure upgrades and management
Quality of life by two-way design and ordinance enforcement
A sane and sustainable budget
Historic preservation and greening
New Albany’s economy comes first
Equal governance and level playing fields
A deep personnel cleaning of City Hall
Internet connectivity as infrastructure
Transparency and governmental communication
Human rights as non-negotiable mandate

Next week, I’ll elaborate on these points.

---

Recent columns:

July 30: ON THE AVENUES: Homegrown New Albany, but not in a good way.

July 23: ON THE AVENUES: A citizen's eloquent complaint about the parking debacle at River Run reminds us that planners and brooms go hand in hand.

July 16: ON THE AVENUES: Louisville Beer, then and now ... and cheers to Rotary.

July 9: ON THE AVENUES: A mayoral petition as prologue to history.

July 2: ON THE AVENUES: "Water on the brains: Much less for far more will keep us swimming in it."

June 25: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Red scarf, white shirt and San Miguel beer (2012).

Gonder on Coyle sitecapades: "We need new rules, special rules, to guide the use of public/private partnerships."

Jeff Gahan's governing clique of down-low Reaganites will be working even harder now to unseat a dangerous dissident such as John Gonder, who actually thinks aloud, for attribution, a quality so often absent from Democratic ruling circles locally. Thanks to John for thinking, although they'll probably unseat him from Redevelopment to preclude any chance of it happening again.

What's next? Someone differing with the time-honored ritual of cash-stuffed envelopes?

By the way, did I tell you that Baylor for Mayor's theme in the Harvest Homecoming parade will be the proper use of wooden stakes and garlic cloves?

First John's link, then a prime comment.

New Rules, by John Gonder at Gonder for New Albany At-Large

... We need new rules, special rules, to guide the use of public/private partnerships ... there's a nagging voice in my head that keeps saying something about "privatizing gain while socializing loss." A hopeful voice adds a third way, "democratizing vision".

Just like always, NAC's co-editor Jeff Gillenwater summarizes the Coyle site debacle with the following incisive remark.

Partnership implies sharing risks AND rewards. That's not the case here. It rarely is in public/private "partnerships". In this case, the public has taken on over half the total investment risk while giving up any claim to profits. This development won't even contribute to our property tax base for a couple decades if it ever does. The only thing transformational here is that others in the district will be required to give up the sorts of shared, public improvements that could have been funded with the same money while facing the possibility of higher taxes themselves if the project is "successful". Ethical lapses aside, that's just a dumb investment, public or private. Good for you for having the good sense to say "no".

Coyle site luxury giveaway: "The people that they want to attract can't afford to live there."

Even a Democratic loyalist grasps the obvious.

The argument against (the Coyle site residential development) is right in front of everyone's face. The people that they want to attract can't afford to live there.

Since Thursday evening's city council meeting, I've received almost a dozen e-mails and messages from New Albanians publicly identifying as Democratic, but expressing personal confusion (and in some instance, revulsion) at the Reaganite corporate welfare nature of Jeff Gahan's trickle-down Flaherty and Collins deal for luxury apartments.

Of course, you know I agree with you; the local Democratic Party has run aground, and yet it will be difficult for you to take a public stand in recognition of this reality.

That's okay. I get it. Knowing there's a problem is the first step toward resolving it. Just remember that we're here to do the right thing for the right reasons, as the late Hank Jacoby once put it, and it comes down to conscience.

A brief note about conscience.

... Lots of voters who ordinarily choose a side based on factors beyond the actual issues (family, habit, compulsion at work, etc) will choose to preserve the outward appearance of "this or that" conformity, while resolving internally to opt out of politics as usual and vote differently in 2015. If so, and conscience is their guide ... well, that's why the ballots are secret. No one should be looking over your shoulder.

As for the impending Coyle site giveaway, taxpayer subsidized big-city pricing to live within an errant bocce toss of fundamentally neglected one-way arterial streets, slicing through neighborhoods dominated by slumlord mentalities, just might be working at cross-purposes with millennial aggrandizement. It's complicated, as the following essay suggests.

Then again, New Albany's governing Democratic clique seldom bothers to read.

Millennials Will Live In Cities Unlike Anything We've Ever Seen Before, by Alissa Walker (Gizmodo)

... Then came some interesting data, pegged to the release of 2014 Census information this spring: Millennials have indeed started moving out of big city downtowns—but not necessarily in favor of a quiet rural or suburban life.

Coyle sitecapades: In New Albany, Democrats WILL be Republicans ... and Jeff Gahan WILL stay on the down low.

TH, a first-time council attendee, was in the crowd last night. As the crisply tailored suits from Flaherty and Collins made their case for "high level" coddling, with frequent assistance from David "Our Corporate Welfare Clerk" Duggins, TH messaged me on Facebook.

If anyone is allowed to ask questions, the question or statement to be made should be that their job creation numbers have to be horribly off. He said target renter would be 50k per year. After taxes, utilities, and a rent of $1,100 dollars the person will not have disposable income to spend downtown.

I observed that the decision had been made long before last evening's propaganda exercise.

Back door politics. I couldn't comment good or bad if the complex is a good thing, but I think it would be deceitful if it was sold to the public as a job creator with a tenant target that only makes 50k, thus having no leftover money to spend. Or heck, maybe there are a lot of 50k earners better at budgeting than I was.

Numerous other broad assertions went unchallenged by council "Democrats" eager to prove the veracity of Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics, as when Flaherty and Collins simultaneously asserted that walkability was a key to the project, but the firm is just fine with New Albany's one-way arterial street grid.

Uh huh.

Let's hope luxury tenants enjoy the sound of 18-wheelers streaming past, mere feet from the patio constructed with only the finest building materials ... and color-coordinated, too.

With the arterial streets representing a 24-hours-a-day incessant lowering of the property values that the apartment development supposedly will increase, and the ongoing degradation of adjoining neighborhoods, where the same tumescent council endorsing corporate welfare last night displays a persistent unwillingness to tackle basic infrastructure problems ... let's just say the idea that such renters will "choose" New Albany solely on the basis of the luxuriousness of the apartments and their proximity to exclusive bocce ball courts strains credulity.

So does the view advanced by Flaherty and Collins last night that these apartments alone will attract high paying jobs to New Albany, where the absence of relevant modern infrastructure works daily against efforts to lure them, dooming us to extractive economic development models.

Hence, the likes of Tiger Trucking, whose vehicles will actively discourage those intrepid apartment occupants daring to walk or ride their bicycles.

How long after the project's completion will the fences and gates go up?

It's important to remember that Democrats are doing this. Not Republicans or oil-rich Saudis. Rather, Democrats.

If you're a local Democrat fond of asking why the working class continues to mimic chickens voting for (Republican) Colonel Sanders, it may be time for a visit to the ideological mirror, but be careful: Some of you with a conscience may find it impossible to avoid disavowing the reflection.

Finally, to repeat: Mayor Jeff Gahan was in the building last night. He remained in his office as Duggins repeated the same tired trickle-down bromides and Democrats on the council rolled over like puppies seeking a good belly-scratching. There's a question in urgent need of an answer.

What good is a mayor who maintains that the Flaherty and Collins residential development at the Coyle site is of central importance to the future of the city, but cannot walk 100 feet down a hallway to make the point himself?

A stellar subsidized evening of Reaganite corporate welfare, New Albany Trickle-Down Democrat-style.

Tonight's city council verdict: In a "free" market economy, risk is a necessary condition for small local businesses, developers and entrepreneurs, while for-profit businesses of larger size, pursuing ventures of a certain vaguely defined "magnitude," must forever be sheltered from the vicissitudes of risk by means of civic subsidy.

Democrats did this -- except for John Gonder, who joined Kevin Zurschmiede in voting against the $4.9 million bond.

It bears repeating: Tonight's exercise in risk-free corporate welfare and purely trickle-down economics, wherein "luxury" apartments matter more than neglected areas of blight and impoverishment situated yards away?

Yep: Democrats did that.

Not Republicans.

Democrats.

With his spirited defense of subsidized luxury apartments as curative for what he referred to as "blight," 3rd district councilman Greg Phipps apparently has coined a new re-election campaign slogan.

"The Needs of the Luxurious Few Outweigh the Needs of the Marginalized Many." 

Mr. Spock would be appalled. Then again, he never was a Democrat in New Albany.

Jeff Gahan did not attend the meeting. At the conclusion, as I stepped into the hallway to chat, Gahan could be seen emerging from his office. He saw me, and ducked back inside.

He must have been there all along.

Wouldn't you have liked your elected mayor, and not an appointee like David Duggins, explain the merits of this purportedly transformational luxury bocce empowerment project?

I sure would. More tomorrow.

City council rubber stamp boilerplate orgy begins at 7:00 p.m. tonight.

We've all been here before.

It's just boilerplate for the city to pay someone to make a profitable investment, right?

"Because subsidizing wealthy, out of town developers is the only thing our economic development director knows how to do with our tax money."

Me?

I'm so old, I can remember when Dan Coffey routinely objected to "boilerplate" giveaways like this one. He'd preen, posture, brandish quarts of lighter fluid and threaten to flick his Bic right there in the council chamber unless we put a stop to it.

Drinking the lighter fluid would have made more sense.

Now, engorged by the capital projects largesse that oozes from the Gahan administration's pores like last night's garlic-laced clam sauce, Dan Coffey is the most enthusiastic advocate in town for subsidizing the wealthy, even as local developers work on their own dimes.

Tonight's council meeting has been choreographed in advance, as most of Jeff Gahan's expenditures have been. I'll attend in the proper spirit, aware that nothing of genuine substance will occur. Rather, as with judges at a gymnastics competition, council members will be graded on how well they read their pre-assigned scripts.

Shams and travesties, all. As usual, NAC's co-editor drives the nails with authority.

Jeff Gillenwater: If the New Albany City Council approves the mayor's request for $4.9 million to subsidize the apartment complex on Spring Street, the public will be paying for more than 50% of that project. When profits occur, the public will be entitled to 0% of them. If anyone thinks that's a good investment deal, please contact me. I have several more projects to pitch to you in which you put up more than half the money and I keep all the profits.

JG: Almost as funny is Councilman Blair's suggestion that the luxury apartments are like the YMCA. Except that the public investment in the non-profit YMCA was much smaller, the Redevelopment Commission and some council members demanded that the Y guarantee full public access - that no one in the city would ever be turned away for inability to pay - before they would agree to invest at all, and, because it's a lease deal, if the Y ever fails, the City still owns the property and could re-lease or sell it to recoup costs.

Roger A. Baylor: Whaddya say, Scott Blair? Apples and oranges? Seriously, I'd just once like to hear Scott or Shirley Baird or any council member submit to a substantive chat about topics like this.

JG: The usual silence. We're a day out from a decision about a major public expenditure and, despite their obvious connectivity v.v. communications technologies, I've not seen any public discussion or shared reasoning concerning the merits or lack thereof of this project.

In New Albany, public discussions take place in backrooms and side corridors, with the occasional elected official on hand to break the sheer monotony of political appointees bored with decision-making on the down-low.

The Flaherty Collins apartment development at the Coyle site isn't the first such instance, and it may not be the worst. It's just the latest in a long line of chicanery-ridden money transfers dismissed as "boilerplate" by the leader of the band.

Sorry, but economic development by ATM withdrawal offends me.

I may or may not be elected mayor, but I can promise this: If I am, we'll do everything possible to put a stop to the backroom fixes and rampant palm-greasing.

Don't forget: Council meetings start at 7:00 p.m. these days. 

It's just boilerplate to pay someone to make a profitable investment, right?

Yesterday we were breathlessly told to prepare for yet another apocalyptic weather event that never arrived. Out in search of flashlight batteries and cans of beans, I happened upon representatives of Flaherty Collins, loading the trunks of their cars with cases of champagne.

Sly Stone once observed a riot going on. In New Albany, we specialize in anointments.

Coyle site TIF abuse: "Because subsidizing wealthy, out of town developers is the only thing our economic development director knows how to do with our tax money."

There was a gently facetious comment posted about the preceding, and while normally I wouldn't repeat it, the sentiment is deserving of open refutation proportionate to the backroom greasings that have produced the Coyle site deal.

How dare them foreigners (from Indiana) invest in our town! Xenophobia is alive and well in some quarters.

If the investment "in our town" is credible (read: profitable), as developers like Matt Chalfant, Steve Resch, the Carters and others seem to think it is, then why must we in effect pay someone to invest in NA?

This is what we're doing with Flaherty Collins.

But couldn't these monies be used to augment the non-subsidized local investments already taking place, by developers working on their own, from no more than a profit incentive borne of risk and opportunity?

Didn't I read somewhere that this is the essence of the free market?

Perhaps there is more than the immediately obvious to "boilerplate" economic development strategies.

Coyle site TIF abuse: "Because subsidizing wealthy, out of town developers is the only thing our economic development director knows how to do with our tax money."

Hint: Those little white nodules are the unregulated rental properties.

I'm going to borrow Randy's introduction to what became a well-populated Facebook discussion.

On Thursday, the New Albany city council is set to approve $4.9 million in redevelopment borrowing for site prep and infrastructure upgrades to the Coyle site on Spring Street. 190 units of what are being called luxury apartments plus 2,000 s.f. of commercial space are to be built there by Flaherty Collins of Indianapolis. What do you think?

There were many replies, which I'll purposefully restrict to a sampling only because I've bigger fish to fry.

• My opinion on this is to look who comes out after voting on this with full pockets.
• Is Spring Street going to be made into a 2-way street? If not, think about the difficulty accessing the apartments? 
• How far to the nearest grocery store?
• Rentals or condos, doesn't really matter to me. To draw the clientele they want to attract, there needs to be more in downtown. 
• A good grant researcher/writer would go a L-O-N-G way.
• I don't know if luxury is the right term. The last I heard the units were being targeted towards young professionals, who I absolutely believe would want to live in this neighborhood. I don't necessarily agree with the path being taken to build something like this but that doesn't mean I think it's not needed or won't work.

Randy addressed the political aspect.

Since this is our money, I think that makes it political. I can't just write a check every six months and then not care how it's spent. And yes, it's TIF money. That's our money, too. The certifier must work with an enormous multiplier to believe that the new taxes we get far in the future make this a good investment. 

Jeff Gillenwater promptly began driving nails.

Because our Democratically controlled city council will likely rubber stamp it without so much as a passing reference to the now decades long failure of trickle down economics?

Because the public will be on the hook for millions in entirely private luxury to which they'll have no access?

I at least hope the district's councilman will vote against it.

We could easily reconfigure the downtown/midtown street grid for less and see a higher rate of return in both private investment and public well being. That would be a worthy TIF goal. This is TIF abuse.

I subsequently noted the obvious, or at least what should be obvious to those without Kool Aid stains on their suit jackets.

Currently a half-dozen developers are rehabbing downtown properties into residential space. They're doing it almost entirely on their own dimes, gradually and sustainably, sans breathless incentives. I simply find it appalling that we're forever willing to provide breaks to entities of a certain size that don't need them, while allowing small and independent business to spin the wheel.

To which Jeff replied (emphasis mine):

And you can bet that if all those local players hadn't already invested millions of their own, this developer wouldn't be looking at New Albany at all. Using TIF properly to improve shared infrastructure rewards those local investors, induces further investment, and helps level the playing field. Using it this way does the exact opposite across the board.

I added a final thought of my own.

Lest we forget, hoping that our councilman Greg Phipps is reading: Everything we're discussing here has been summarized by David Duggins with one special word: "Boilerplate."

Just another day with the same usual suspects, and their same customary cash flow. Indie businesses often refer to recirculation of money through local economies. What we see here is the recirculation of political wheel-greasing slush.

To conclude, Jeff summarized two major themes in magisterial fashion. First, how to do it right. Next, how the current City Hall occupant continues doing it wrong.

The only thing we have to do in the oldest parts of our city to attract young folks, old folks, and in-between folks is to allow them to function as they were designed. We already have an enviable collection of assets and plenty of smarts not represented in local decision making. Return the infrastructure to a safer, multi-modal pattern with a few modern updates, make sure stuff is accessible and works, and then largely get the hell out of the way. Some will want to live in it, some will want to live near it, and others will visit regularly. It's cheap, it's easy, it's the primary function of local government, it's the only part private parties can't do on their own, and the pattern is right in front of us. All the $750,000 pocket parks, $3 million single streets, $9 million aquatic centers, multi-million developer subsidies, and other largely irrelevant schemes in the world don't change that.

We keep electing people who want to be the absentee dad who shows up on random weekends to take the kids to the amusement park and buy them ice cream.

What we need is a mom during the week.

I can't recall it being said any better, and Jeff already knows that I'll be borrowing that last line.