Not in NA, at least yet: "Man In Wheelchair Struck By Car, Gets Ticket For Not Crossing Road Fast Enough."

Our weekend message to "Mayor Jeff Gahan Presents the Board of Public Works and Safety" (shouldn't it be Board of Works and Public Safety?) simply is this.

Don't be like Denver (below) -- and don't lie to me by saying "it couldn't happen here."

The mayor and his board have made no effort whatever to wrap their institutional arms around modernity. To repeat: it's merely procedural, Jeffrey and Warren. You must develop good habits, and to develop them, you must acknowledge you have a problem.

Instead of this: "How will (a proposal) affect parking/traffic/cars?"

You ask this: "How will (a proposal) affect handicapped users without cars?"

Infrastructure decisions routinely are rendered in the absence of forethought as to their effects on persons with disabilities. These tiny bits of effort will have little if any ultimate effect on the Holy Writ of Autocentrism. However, these instances will immeasurably assist the disabled in getting back and forth.

It's cultural, Jeffrey and Warren. You're in charge. Think you might get to the task of changing the culture?

Or should we ask Adam's DemoDisneyDixiecratic Party for permission?

online.com/2017/08/01/man-in-wheelchair-struck-by-car-gets-ticket-for-not-crossing-road-fast-enough/amp/">
Man In Wheelchair Struck By Car, Gets Ticket For Not Crossing Road Fast Enough (5 News Online)

DENVER -- A man in a wheelchair claims he was ticketed because he couldn't get across the road during the signal's allotted time and now he's fighting the citation, according to KDVR.

Kyle Wolfe said he was passing through 19th and Lawrence streets in downtown Denver. Wolfe said he started to cross the street when the signal indicated it was his turn to cross.

Wolfe said he couldn't make it through the intersection in the 20 seconds allotted at the light. He said he was 5 feet from the curb when an SUV struck him from behind.

Wolfe said the accident left his wheelchair totaled, and left him scraped and bruised. He received a ticket from a Denver police officer for disobeying the traffic signal.

"I was very shocked that a pedestrian that has the right of way got a ticket," Wolfe said.

Here, there, everywhere: "Creating real transportation options" for all residents.

Specifically in this case, Denver, but the implications for Louisville metro are fairly clear.

Is the ORBP boondoggle finished yet?

Locantore: It's not about congestion; it's about freedom, by Jill Locantore (Denver Post)

... ultimately, congestion isn't the problem we should be trying to solve. The bigger problem is that many Denver residents don't have any options other than driving to their daily destinations. Automobiles have long symbolized freedom in the American imagination. Yet in our devotion to building communities oriented around driving, we've engineered the ability to walk, bike, or take transit out of many of our neighborhoods. Now here we are enslaved to our automobiles, obsessed with fueling them, parking them, and making sure they don't get too crowded on the roadways.

Denver localism: "I'm not a beer snob. I just prefer to drink good beer."

It's worth noting that the Mile High Business Alliance in Denver is not an organization strictly dedicated to locally brewed beer. It merely sees locally brewed beer as an apt expression of localism in a more comprehensive sense ... and it is.

While politicians and pundits trade theories on how to stimulate the economy, the folks at Mile High Business Alliance are digging in and doing it.

The Alliance maintains that every dollar spent locally circulates at least three times more than one spent with a non-locally owned corporation or chain. Through programs such as the Colorado Local First Campaign and Local Flavor Guides, which celebrate the character of neighborhoods such as LoHi and SoBo. MHBA encourages everyone to direct at least 10 percent of their spending to businesses that sprout from Colorado soil.

The organization also maintains a user-friendly online guide to Colorado businesses. True, MHBA doesn't yet represent all 500,000 of the locally owned businesses in Colorado. But their clever campaigns ("My local coffee shop can kick your corporate coffee shop's ass," reads one MHBA-produced poster) spread awareness about the power of how and where we spend our dollars.

It perfectly encapsulates my viewpoint as to the marriage of localism and better beer.

High hopes for one of our own in Colorado, fewer for the same tired faces in New Albany.

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine includes a lengthy profile (by Frank Bruni) of John Hickenlooper, the recent two-term mayor of Denver, who tomorrow becomes Colorado’s governor.

For me, Hickenlooper has been an inspiration quite apart from politics, by reason of beer and brewing.

... With his geology degree in hand, he got a job with a big oil company in Denver in 1981 but was laid off after five years, during a downturn in the oil industry. He used part of his severance to buy a red ’67 Chevy convertible, took a road trip to see his brother in Berkeley, Calif., and, while there, happened to go to the Triple Rock, an early microbrewery. Denver didn’t have anything like it. Hickenlooper, in need of a project and a new career, decided to fix that.

From relatives, friends, strangers and a bank, he rounded up $575,000 and constructed the Wynkoop, named for a nearby street, in one of several neglected turn-of-the-century brick warehouses in lower downtown, which is known as LoDo. He chose the neighborhood for the cheap rent, but he also sensed potential for an urban renaissance there. He even moved into a LoDo loft. And as he restyled or bought other restaurants in LoDo and elsewhere, he spearheaded a few business and residential projects around the Wynkoop. “He wasn’t the first to buy property in that part of downtown and develop it,” says Joyce Meskis, who owns the Tattered Cover, a Denver bookstore of national renown, and who was his partner in one of those LoDo projects. “But he was one of the most influential. There were obstacles, and he kept at it and kept at it and kept at it.” The area evolved into one of the city’s favored playgrounds, and he became known as one of its patron saints.

I had the chance to shake the brewer's/mayor's/governor's hand and chat for a few minutes back in the mid-1990’s, while in Denver to attend the Great American Beer Festival. At the time, Wynkoop seemed to me the very model of what could be done in a revitalizing downtown, and how it might be done without dumbing down. My first highly favorable impressions have lingered to this very day.

---

Turning to more locally depressing topics, Sunday’s Tribune invoked the Peter Principle while revealing the terrifying news that all of New Albany’s current sitting city council members who bothered to answer their phone calls from intrepid reporter Daniel Suddeath will be seeking another term.

Count them in: Most New Albany City Council members say they’ll seek re-election

Councilman Jack Messer said he still hasn’t made up his mind, and Councilman Bob Caesar said “more than likely I will run, but no definitive decision has been made.”

Council President Jeff Gahan and Councilman Kevin Zurschmiede had not returned calls seeking comment for this story as of a Saturday press time. The remaining five council members — Diane McCartin-Benedetti, Pat McLaughlin, John Gonder, Steve Price and Dan Coffey — confirmed they would be seeking another term.

Well, uh, it's sure nice to see John Gonder's name there.

On the one hand, it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone performing less capably that Dan Coffey and Steve Price.

On the other, even a non-committal, lackadaisical council performance would require four years of time better spent on one’s own business affairs.

On the one hand, the pay packet so absolutely necessary to underachievers like Coffey and Price is easy money for the genuinely competent in this or any other the community.

On the other, any potential council replacement with a pulse and a work ethic would wind up devoting far more time to the job than is justified by the remuneration -- and exactly where to find that kind of time?

One the one hand, the city of New Albany is embarrassed on a recurring, daily basis by the presence of congenital second-raters on the council.

On the other, unless first-raters aspire to service, the city is doomed to be forever defined by a wretched Axis of Banal.

I wonder what the forever optimistic John Hickenlooper would say about all this? Would he be able to retain his legendarily sunny affability whilst surveying the council's ongoing train wreck?

After all, he does know good beer … and sometimes, oceans of good beer are required to cope with the sheer doltishness of it all. Fortunately, and personally, I've plenty of hoppy alcoholic salve.

Time. That's the issue, isn't it?