A metaphorical tale of compassion, honesty and integrity in photos, thus updating the East Main Street Improvement Project.

It's how the circle of nourishment works. Go here for more on this topic.

Well, truck me: Padgett and friends' Main Street lawsuit finds its way to history's dust bin.

Irony alert: Many of us feel that the city of New Albany definitely is at fault concerning the beautification-oriented redesign of East Main Street ... just not in the exact way alleged by the plaintiffs in a plainly frivolous lawsuit.

First, some background from the fall of 2015.

Conservatives to Padgett: "The heaviest road users are the ones who get the biggest subsidies."

Zurschmiede swings and misses as Padgett and pals sue the city of New Albany.

New Albany's new slogan: "Truck Through City" ... Part 86: Bored of Works to approve Arch de Capitulation on 5th St., facing Padgett.

Tort claim notice offers preview of Padgett's lawsuit against modernity.

Next, the most recent update.

Judge rules in New Albany's favor, by Chris Morris (Gahan Gets a Free Pass Digest)

NEW ALBANY — It took more than two years, but a judge ruled the city of New Albany was not at fault concerning the redesign of East Main Street.

On Nov. 6, Judge Daniel Donahue ruled in the city’s favor and against the plaintiffs which included Padgett, Inc., Tiger Truck Lines, J&J Pallet Corporation, Kaiser Wholesale, Inc., E.M. Cummings Veneers, Inc., Maximum Fleet Service, LLC, Mr. “P” Express, Inc. and W-M Lumber & Wood Products, Inc.

The eight local manufacturers, service and trucking companies filed suit in 2015 alleging that the redesign of East Main Street negatively affected their right to safely access the “Heavy Haul” route. James Gray, the attorney who represented the business owners, said when the lawsuit was filed the companies were not consulted prior to the redesign, which included building a decorative median down Main Street from Vincennes Street to East Fifth Street. Gray said there were safety concerns as well following the redesign.

City attorney Shane Gibson called the lawsuit at the time “absolutely ridiculous” and feels the same two years later after the judge ruled in New Albany’s favor.

“The timing of when this was filed was totally politically motivated,” Gibson said.

He said there were public meetings to discuss the plans and there were no safety concerns. In fact, he said last week the redesign made Main Street safer because it slowed traffic ...

Yes, the lawsuit was absolutely ridiculous. No doubt about it.

Yes, city attorney and current interim redevelopment commission slush fund maintainer Gibson is perfectly correct in saying so.

Pot/kettle alert: Of course, Gibson remains the best remunerated and most prominent cog in an administration that digests matters of "politically motivated" timing along with its Lucky Charms.

However, the plaintiffs’ point about an unfavorably altered roadway base might well be a potentially interesting topic, given the frequency of repairs during the past three years.

It's a question for redevelopment, isn't it?

This Main Street sharrows symbol feels all patched and forlorn -- and a billboard comes tumbling down.

But just LOOK at that professional landscaping.

Never a dull moment on Main Street, is there? The beautification project is the political gift that keeps giving costing, and the billboard is less of an eyesore as a twisted heap than it was while standing.

But the aristocrats? Very happy.

Main Street median is spurned as John Rosenbarger's urn is burned on the return -- yet again.

Importantly, there were no injuries.

At around 9:00 p.m. tonight, a driver eastbound on Main where the beautification project begins rammed into the signature concrete Rosenbarger Ashtray, which was destroyed. The vehicle came to rest at the curb, where two cars previously have been totaled while parked after being struck by ricocheting cars, as NAC's correspondent believes this is the fifth such wreck since the median was installed.

For the record, here's what an effective road diet is supposed to look like. We're doing it now on Spring between Vincennes and Beharrell, and with much fanfare as to the safety benefits. We didn't do it on Main, where we substituted appearances for fundamentals.

There's a lesson somewhere therein, though it isn't clear whether there'll ever be sufficient municipal IQ to learn it.

#gahansafe

Irv wows at BOW with a dose of their own medicine.

Over at the Hanson Ad Aggregator, a stiff upper lip is maintained as Papa drily reports the provocative conclusion of College Girls Gone Wild: Lynn Road Remix.

The parking issue was brought to the city's attention last fall after two homeowners said the house at 609 Lynn Road was full of college-aged girls who were holding parties and that cars were parking along the road blocking access to their properties.

Who says the paper can't muster occasional humor? After all, "action" is to be taken with a grain of salt the size of the Breakwind Lofts at Duggins Flats.

In other action Tuesday:

Irv Stumler, president of Keep New Albany Clean & Green Inc., handed the board a Notice of Violation concerning weeds and grass in the Main Street median, between E. 5th and Vincennes streets. He said the weeds "obstruct a driver's view" and need to be cut.

A citation? To the overlords?

The Green Mouse has learned that Stumler actually handed the bored one of its own ordinance violation citations, with liquid paper judiciously applied and text rewritten. That's funny, even if Stumler's perennially ill-informed two-way streets allergy isn't.

In truth, sight lines have become very unsafe in the area of the Main Street Beautification and Property Value Enhancement Project.

The problem is that while east-west speeds have remained high (the median creates two unimpeded chutes, unnecessarily buffering the slowing effect of two-way, head-on traffic), users approaching from side streets -- including drivers, walkers and bicyclists -- can't see to cross Main or turn onto it.

More than a few city employees and sycophants live on Main Street, among them Scott Wood and John Rosenbarger. Surely they noticed -- or are blinders standard issue when it comes to junta maintenance?

Just another city worker on the clock smoothing Graceland's banner for Vacation Bible School.

Photo given appropriately backwards 1960-era processing for full comedic effect.

Who knew that the $3 million Main Street Beautification Project would be the arena for touting one church's vacation bible school, all the better to lob more spittle in the direction of church-state separation?

New Gahania: It's where you want to pray.

Sharrows in New Albany: "A low-cost way for cities to say they’re doing something about safety and street design without really doing much at all."

Days of future past.

Nothing better symbolizes the comprehensive failure of New Albany's Main Street "Improvement" Project than the street's transformation from bicycle-friendly to bicycle-prohibitive.

Yes: Those magical, transformative sharrows.

October 18, 2014
Basically, sharrows suck, so naturally New Albany plans more of them, so we can be "bike friendly" on the cheap.

November 10, 2014
"Sharrows are popular because they are politically easy," and so in NA, they'll multiply like rabbits.

January 4, 2015
Gahan AWOL as cyclist assays new Main Street sharrows: "Someone is going to get seriously hurt or worse."

May 21, 2015
This bicyclist seems mistrustful of the Main Street sharrows.

A Fb conversation ensured. A few random comments:

Jeff Gillenwater 
As many have pointed out, Main Street is indeed more dangerous for bikes now than it was before the "improvement" project.

Roger A. Baylor
Now, Spring Street between Silver and Beharrel will have no bicycle infrastructure of any sort. Rather, our planners will connect bicycles to Spring via Silver, where infrastructure is largely non-existent, and where there is no stated plan to remedy this. When I pointed this out to Larry Summers, Rosenbarger having already fled the room, Larry replied that it's the best that can be done, and there's no choice except gradually implementing inadequate remedies over a long period of time. Thus, we get what we deserve -- good and hard.

RiBr
Main St. in New Albany is a joke and median makes it worse. There is barely enough room for a car to pass a bike, and when they do, if someone was to open a door on a parked car, you are toast.

Roger A. Baylor
And folks like Greg Phipps knew this from the start. But as we've learned so often before, in NA, one doesn't fuck with the in-fix. Apart from Matt Nash, I'm trying to think of an elected official past or present who actually has tried to ride a bike locally. Surely I'm forgetting someone? Maybe John Gonder, ousted by the Floyd County Democratic Party for being an A student.
.
RR
I ride thousands of miles a year and on all sorts of roads, but I will no longer ride on Main street.

KP
My daughter came into town the other day and took me out for supper via Main Street. She was horrified at how small and dangerous it felt to drive that street. "So many blind spots." Yep.

Then there are those pesky researchers. How dare they contradict Team Gahan.

Some Bike Infrastructure Is Worse Than None at All, by Eric Jaffe (City Lab)

It’s time to put the sharrow to rest.

Denver gave rise to the sharrow in the early 1990s, and now two researchers there offer a compelling case to put the lowly form of bike infrastructure to rest.

You’ve seen a sharrow painted on city streets: it’s that image of a cyclist below two arrows in the middle of a lane that—you guessed it—is meant to be shared by bikes and cars. The Federal Highway Administration gave sharrows its official blessing in 2009, and the symbol is now ubiquitous across urban America. It’s also arguably the least-loved nod to cycling, a low-cost way for cities to say they’re doing something about safety and street design without really doing much at all.

SNIP

 ... What is clear in the Vision Zero era is that truly prioritizing bike safety means building separated bike lanes. The results should be confirmed in other cities for good measure, but they certainly seem to suggest that sharrows are poor substitutes for bike lanes at best and “more dangerous than doing nothing” at worst, write Ferenchak and Marshall.

They conclude, in a working paper recently presented at TRB 2016, with some harsh words:

As sharrows do not provide designated space for bicyclists and do not enhance the overall bicycle network, all cities should (as many already have) begin to consider sharrows simply as signage as opposed to actual infrastructure. It is time that sharrows are exposed for what they really are, a cheap alternative that not only fails to solve a pressing safety issue, but actually makes the issue worse through a sense of false security.

A Rorschach test for New Albany's Main Street boondoggle project (2014).

(Originally published on November 7, 2014)

Because when it comes to our $2+ million Main Street Disprovement, Deforestation and Semi Trailer Non-Diversion Project, it really depends on how you look at it.

---

What Jeff Gahan thinks it looks like.

What truckers think it looks like.

What drivers think it looks like.

What bicyclists think it looks like.

What John Rosenbarger thinks it looks like.

What Adam Dickey thinks it looks like.

What the rest of us think it looks like.

ON THE AVENUES: Why not a progressive movement in New Albany? It sure beats a two-party debacle.

Name That Boondoggle Episode 3: The Main Street "improvement" project really should be called ...

In one week, our long civic nightmare will be concluded. But look at the havoc they're wreaked.

Team Gahan Boondoggle Name: East Main Street Improvement Project.

Roger's Boondoggle Name: Avenue des Champs-ÉlyGahanshima (pronounced, "those contractors gave my campaign a shitload of  money")

Your Boondoggle Name: ???

Indicate your choice in the comments, either here or at Fb. The winner receives absolutely nothing except plaudits for cleverness amid the Gahanshima (from the Romanian word Ceaușima, explained here).

Zurschmiede swings and misses as Padgett and pals sue the city of New Albany.

Narcissus gazes at his erection.

We've been following this story since the original April tort claim (here ... here ... and here, among others).

Whatever your political persuasion, it should be obvious that the lawsuit's timing has been determined according to the election calendar, and just as non-coincidentally, given Padgett & Pals' healthy monetary support of the GOP in the current voting cycle, Republican mayoral candidate Kevin Zurschmiede has made sure the C-J's reporter got this much in writing.

(Zurschmiede) does not consider turning one-way streets into two-way streets to be a top city priority. He wants to add an additional lane in each direction to Interstate 265 to help deal with traffic on the Sherman Minton bridge when the two metro area Ohio River bridges open and start tolling.

So, in his zeal to appease the trucking paymasters, KZ desperately wants us to know that (a) he does not at all understand induced demand, (b) he thinks it is necessary to rely on the state and feds to redesign an interstate on short notice, and (c) enough of that two-way stuff, 'cuz it makes his brain hurt.

If you're a two-way streets advocate, and in terms of casting a vote for mayor, I'm not guilty of hyperbole in suggesting to you that only one choice exists: Me.

But beyond that, a pinch of salt helps the lawsuit make better sense, because this much is true: When it comes to breathtaking duplicity, Jeff Gahan has exercised supreme arrogance and bad faith with two-way streets proponents and Padgett obstructionists alike, in equal measure.

He has lied to us all.

Boondoggles like the Main Street "improvement" project have poisoned potential resolution by making lawsuits like this inevitable, and Gahan's inept evasiveness ever since has made an ugly situation intolerable.

It's why he cannot be trusted, and it's why he has to go.

Period.

New Albany, others sued over street design, by Chris Morris (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — Eight local manufacturers, service companies and trucking companies have filed suit against the city of New Albany, New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan, the Floyd County Commissioners, Indiana Department of Transportation and other government agencies alleging that a recent redesign of East Main Street has negatively affected their right to safely access the street.

The plaintiffs are: Padgett, Inc., Tiger Truck Lines, J&J Pallet Corporation, Kaiser Wholesale, Inc., E.M. Cummings Veneers, Inc., Maximum Fleet Service, LLC, Mr. “P” Express, Inc. and W-M Lumber & Wood Products, Inc.

According to their counsel, James Gary, these business owners were not consulted prior to the redesign, which has impaired the ability of their vehicles to travel the designated “Heavy Haul” route for New Albany.

ON THE AVENUES EXTRA: Gahan says speeding sucks, but street safety can wait until after he is re-elected.

ON THE AVENUES EXTRA: Gahan says speeding sucks, but street safety can wait until after he is re-elected.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

There's a lot to say this week, so why not have more than one column?

In the Courier-Journal, reporter Lexy Gross has profiled the incumbent. Let’s skip his numbingly predictable self-hagiography and move straight to the fun parts.

(Jeff) Gahan sees housing and infrastructure problems that still need to be addressed.

We know all too well how Gahan “sees” these problems: Demolish what you can, toss a few kickback bones to Coffey and otherwise ignore all pertinent ordinance enforcement details, all the while insisting that he’s making “fundamental” changes to benefit demographic groups he can’t even spell, much less define coherently.

But it’s Halloween, and the mayor’s “not finished yet,” so pop open an ice-cold Bud Light -- because there’s even more inanity in store.

One issue residents and his opponents have discussed with fervor is whether or not New Albany's street grid should change to accommodate traffic from the untolled Sherman Minton Bridge, once the Ohio River Project bridges are tolled.

Unable to avoid the topic of two-way streets, as he has done regularly for months on end, Gahan instead sent the Fact-O-Meter straight to “TILT,” though at least gifting us with the precise reason why Shirley Baird and Greg Phipps now have taken to subserviently qualifying any stray utterance involving “two-way streets” with a spanking new, hitherto unknown phrase.

“Where feasible.”

Coincidentally, in the spirit of this glittering Orwellian age, I decided to make their logic my own, and after staring at my ballot, it simply proved not feasible for me to cast a vote for either one.

But I digress.

Not coincidentally, there’s a reason why I’ve used the following graphic as often as possible for the past year and a half.

It’s because we knew all along, didn’t we?

Even when the mayor confided in us – even when he looked us in the eye and said he really understood, and he’d be out their battling for two-way streets – we knew it wasn’t going to happen.

Didn’t we?

As he started applying those “TIF and spend and sprawl” suburban solutions to every urban problem, it became even more obvious.

He really didn’t get it, did he?

At best, he'd hide for years, then half-ass two-way streets, probably just after jetting off to run for State Senate, and we'd be better off not changing the streets at all than doing the job so utterly wrong.

Again.

Something about it reminds me of that poor kid with the coke bottle glasses out in right field, standing there solely because the usual starter missed his ride, and with the final out of the game drifting his way in the form of a lazy fly ball that’s a real can of corn, I’m filled with despair and melancholy, because we know those Hollywood endings never happen in real life.

We know he’s not going to catch the ball, and as the runners circle the bases, it’s going to land thirty feet behind him, destined to roll unmolested all the way to the fence, only to be flattened (the baseball, not the fielder) by a passing Tiger Truck on the one-way street beyond.

But there’s a crucial difference.

We actually feel sorry for the kid.

So, Lexy Gross asked Jeff Gahan about two-way streets, and the mayor responded by making vapid excuses, all  of which have been contradicted by either documented history or his own team ... at his behest.

The city has 75 years of infrastructure supporting one-way streets, (Gahan) said, from signage to curbs and overhead signals. It's one of many issues he hopes to take a closer look at if re-elected.

Safety as slave to re-election? Say it ain't so, Jeff.

Except we already know it is so -- don't we?

Of course, Main Street had existed as a two-way street since the city’s founding, as had all the rest of the streets, but when Gahan altered Main Street after 200 years to “calm traffic and install medians” (more below), he did so in accordance with beautification principles, not contemporary “complete street” design principles – principles that would have cost far less and made sense in terms of an integrated downtown street grid plan.

Apparently it’s proper to alter a street after two centuries so as to plant flowers and carve house numbers, but not acceptable to revert nearby one-way streets to two ways after a mere 50-odd years (not 75, which would place one-way conversions to the year before Pearl Harbor).

As for signage, only recently Team Gahan’s minions were publicly bragging about their awesome program to inventory all the signage in town, and install gleaming new ones, which in an election year was manifested not by swapping the many faded STOP signs, but by immediately changing as many street signs as possible, better to display the cute new city logo which Team Gahan insists is not a logo – no, it’s just branding emblem/marketing device, albeit it one to be affixed to permanent signs, and one that nonetheless has not yet been approved by a single elected official in any process approximating a vote.

I’m not finished yet. Those overhead signals?

John “Conflict of Interest” Rosenbarger has been assuring folks that (a) recent upgrades on traffic lights have rendered them readily adaptable for use on two-way with little added expense, and (b) we have $2 million or so in federal money waiting on an 80/20 grant to facilitate the two-way reconversion.

Hmm, look over yonder.

Jeff Gahan says he must take a closer look at all this, but curiously, there it already is, on the INDOT letting board for 2017. Someone in city government had to put it there, right? It might even be someone who works for Gahan. Wait – you don’t think it has something to do with the federal money Rosenbarger referenced?

What an unexpectedly profound coincidence, but if it's there, why hasn't Gahan mentioned this fact publicly?

To the reporter when asked?

Of course, the sum total of Gahan’s down-low, prevaricating concerns, as outlined to the C-J reporter, have already been exhaustively answered and minutely explained by Jeff Speck, the nation’s reigning expert on such matters, whose company was hired by Jeff Gahan himself, and paid by the City of New Albany.

Speck’s job was to prepare the conceptual blueprint for these same two-way street plans that Gahan – who signed Speck’s check – now professes to require even more time to ponder than the four years having already elapsed since his first (and Jeeebus willing) only term as mayor, and the two terms as council person before that.

Consequently, had Gahan actually read, grasped and embraced the plan he himself commissioned, he’d already know that his “$2.4 million project … launched last year to calm traffic and install medians on Main Street” was too much money spent on beautifying one street prior to paying the nation’s leading expert to explain how it might have been done correctly … and was not.

Concurrently, anyone who has spent any amount of time using our one-way streets while on foot or riding a bike would stare in open-mouthed amazement at this statement of Gahan’s.

(Gahan) said there probably are too many one-way streets in New Albany, and traffic moves too fast through the city. But “it’s a balance between restricting speed … and not slowing down commerce," he said.

Safety? Shrug. It can wait. Let’s translate this into fervid Gahanese.

Yeah, I suppose speed kills and all that, but hey, we can’t slow down commerce, you know – I mean, that’s why the Scribners built those one-way streets in the first place, because how else could we get those steamboats (it’s a really cool anchor on that non-logo) get up and down Spring Street without Padgett cranes, and … it’s a quality of life issue for our truckers. It's a ripple effect. We're where they ought to be.

To reiterate, all of it has been addressed in Speck’s study, this being the same one the mayor himself commissioned, and the one he apparently saw fit to ignore when making comments to the Courier’s new reporter, regarding readers as rubes who wouldn’t know they were being conned.

If Gahan views it as feasible for humongous trucking vessels of “commerce” to have an intrinsic right to pass through densely populated urban areas at high speeds, even when they’re not the entities contributing to his engorged re-election war chest, then he has abdicated his responsibility for public safety, and he might as well take the final logical step and advocate for the construction of toxic waste dumps adjacent to schools – or, as a friend put it, we can build the schools on top of the toxic waste dumps and save even more space.

Sounds Gahan-feasible, so long as the toxic waste dump operators tithe according to prevailing contract versus campaign financing guidelines.

After all, he’s not finished yet.

But ye Gods -- hasn’t the man done enough so far?

---

Recent columns:

October 22: ON THE AVENUES: My career as a double naught capitalist.

October 19: ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Courtesy bicycle to the Hotel Silly (2010, 2013).

October 15: ON THE AVENUES: To the New Albanians, each and every one.

October 8: ON THE AVENUES: There’s an indie twist to this curmudgeon’s annual Harvest Homecoming column.

October 1: ON THE AVENUES: No more fear, Jeff.

September 24: ON THE AVENUES: Almost two years later, Mr. Gahan has yet to plug in this clock, and so it's time for him to clock out.

September 17: ON THE AVENUES: Dear Neighbor: If you’re tired of the same old story, turn some pages.

September 10: ON THE AVENUES: Lanesville Heritage Weekend comes around again.

September 3: ON THE AVENUES: When even Mitt Romney can run to the left of New Albany’s Democrats, it's a very big problem.

Jeff Gahan on traffic safety, pretty flowers and engraved house numbers on sidewalks of gold.

Last Tuesday at the New Albany Housing Authority event, Jeff Gahan spoke of the importance of doing something "special" for Main Street, since people were driving 60 mph there!

On Thursday, he repeated this, almost word for word.

He then observed that I'm disgruntled because I live on Spring Street -- where he's done absolutely nothing to resolve speeding and traffic safety issues, including 60 m.p.h. traffic.

How's that make you feel, resident of Market/Spring/Elm? After all, tackling issues like safety with a mind toward genuine improvement requires street design, not landscaping.

How about something different for a change?

On the advent of Underground Station, rank political poseurs and a dangerous street without crosswalks or stop signs.

Hmm ... it's the weird institution of the ribbon cutting, when grasping local politicians and corporate welfare dispensation chambers you haven't ever seen before somehow arrive nonetheless, breathlessly accepting credit for things they didn't do.

Then they disappear again. At least there's that.

I'm delighted for the developers, tenants and residents at Underground Station. You're doing it every day, not every now and then. Unfortunately, there's something you all need to bear in mind: Jeff Gahan does not understand what you're about, and he has no intention of lending a hand apart from the Friday photo op, which now will be used to illustrate his tender concern for local businesses.

As my Italian friend pointed out, "Camorra" is a more accurate term than Mafioso. Notice the city's new marketing symbol, with Team Gahan's branded slogan to follow: "We're Anchored Firmly Into Place. Come Stay Put with Us."

Why is the mayor carrying a paving stone?

When I left the ceremony yesterday, I walked from the entrance on Bank Street to the intersection of Bank and Main. Only recently, New Albany's hand-picked Bored of Works paused briefly from stifling the street piano to reject the idea of a four-way stop at this intersection. Notice the driver below, who cannot see and is easing out into a gray area, where often traffic moves quite fast.

How fast?

I'm so glad you asked. Twice this week, Mayor Gahan told audiences that something special just had to be done for Main Street owing to traffic moving 60 miles per hour. He also accused me of being frustrated because I live on Spring Street -- where more traffic than ever before travels 60 mph since Main Street was made "special", which means that in essence, Gahan has made the overall speeding problem worse. He seems very proud of that.

Here, you see a section of Main Street, where I've seen traffic moving quite fast, and yet nothing special is being done to help cars navigate a crossing when more of them will be doing so than ever before because Underground Station now is open.

Look at these wide expanses of asphalt, and now imagine people walking back and forth from other downtown businesses and events. Notice the complete absence of crosswalks or any other effort to ease their passage.

Ironically (pathetically), at Thursday's LWV debate, Gahan claimed credit for being the two-way streets mayor by virtue of paying the nation's foremost expert in design-driven walkability to conduct a study. Noting the obvious fact that nothing whatever has been done to date, and with no public plans to act as the "ripple effect" of bridge tolls draws ever closer, Gahan answers that his crack team of non-national experts are carefully mulling the options of what was written as a shovel-ready plan -- and the random darts are being tossed into voodoo dolls over Bud Lights at the Roadhouse as we speak.

Jeff Speck is blunt.

Crosswalks may not be rocket science, but this is New Albany, and our mayor is Jeff Gahan. If Gahan insists on making the point that something must be done to alleviate high traffic speeds, conducts a study, piddles for six months, then decides to wait another 18 months before contemplating a starting date, isn't he acknowledging the existence of an unsafe situation he's doing nothing to address?

There's nothing "fundamentally better" about any of this -- except for the unsubsidzed, non-incentivized and largely ignored efforts of independent local businesses, entrepreneurs, contractors and developers. They're doing it every day, not just every now and then.

Just remember that the one solid, fundamental action the city could take to help Underground Station prosper in the absence of assistance in any other conceivable form would be to GET THE STREET INFRASTRUCTURE RIGHT without dithering and obfuscating,

Even this simple truth eludes Jeff Gahan.

Ready for a change yet?

Birdseye, here we come: Is Vincennes Street to be the next victim of non-Speck "beautification"?

The Green Mouse called the phone number, which is posted on what used to be Tommy Lancaster's Restaurant on Market Street, near Vincennes, and was told the city of New Albany has a contract for the building.

Previously, people in the neighborhood told the Green Mouse that realtor Mike Kopp was working on a plan to buy property behind the Lancaster's location, perhaps including the adjacent Market Boy. The word used was "retail," which the Green Mouse suggests we might pronounce as "suburban strip mall chain dreck."

But there's even more.

The Green Mouse passes along yet another rumor heard out on the mean streets: The city wants to "beautify" Vincennes in precisely the same utterly misguided fashion as Main Street, entirely ignoring the street design proposals made by reigning universal expert Jeff Speck in his study, and doing so all the way from Main to New Albany High School.

It's hard for me to say this, but we must be realistic in the face of these vandals: If the fate of Jeff Speck's downtown street network proposals is for them to be systematically stripped of design significance and Gahanized into unrecognizable mush -- gutted, Dugginsed, shrouded in non-transparent secrecy and timidly implemented piecemeal over a period of years -- then it might be preferable to do nothing at all, and hope we can start all over in 2019.

However, there is one mayoral candidate committed to doing it correctly ...

Rosenbarger's plaque, Gahan's yard sign, ethical quagmires, and the urgent need for deep cleansing in City Hall.

We're still not exactly sure how much the .8-mile-long Main Street "Improvement" Project cost, but whether $3 million, $4 million or probably more, it was intended (among other aims, most of them far more dubious) to improve the value of property on Main Street, at the request of a handful of residents, and to the exclusion of properties on the remainder of the streets in the city.

John Rosenbarger administered the project.

He lives on Main Street.

He will benefit from it.

He now has a Gahan sign in his yard.

We snicker at corruption in other countries, and throw around terms like "banana republic" and "kleptocracy" ...

Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, (from Greek: κλέπτης - kleptēs, "thief" and κράτος - kratos, "power, rule", hence "rule by thieves") is a term applied to a government seen as having a particularly severe and systemic problem with officials or a ruling class (collectively, kleptocrats) taking advantage of corruption to extend their personal wealth and political power. Typically this system involves the embezzlement of state funds at the expense of the wider population, sometimes without even the pretense of honest service.

... but maybe we should refrain -- particularly those in the camp of the mayor who has rendered such notions so very close to home.

After all, given the immediate need for deep cleansing in City Hall, we wouldn't want to insult the world's kleptocrats, would we?

This bicyclist seems mistrustful of the Main Street sharrows.

Walking to the merchant meeting at the Culbertson Mansion on Tuesday morning, I'd just crossed Main Street when I saw a person on a bicycle coming toward me, eastbound.

At first glance, seconds before I took the photo, he was riding in the otherwise empty parking lane with a couple of cars approaching behind him. The bump-out was just ahead of him, and he was going to be compelled to move out into the "sharrows" lane whether he liked it or not. There was some hesitancy, but he did.

The driver of the first car chose the opportunity afforded at the median-free 10th Street intersection to quickly pass the bicycle on the left. Maybe he didn't want to share the road, after all.

I thought to myself: "Just imagine what the Main Street design might have been under capable leadership, and with reality-based design."

Damn, that guy looks familiar.

Nah, couldn't be.

City Hall's street grid surrender: "All the extra expense, time, and proposed iterations have nothing to do with securing federal funds."

Perhaps owing to the approach of the primary, hell has broken loose these past few days, and I'm struggling to keep up with the daily proliferation of reasons to vote against Jeff Gahan.

Just the other day, someone asked a very good question about the destructiveness of one-way, arterial interstate highways running through our urban neighborhoods, and by extension, about waning hope for the principled implementation of Jeff Speck's downtown street network proposals.

They (city government) have been talking about fixing this problem for quite a while! Why can't they get it done?

The Bookseller succinctly answered.

This administration has never taken ownership of the idea and will continue to straddle the issue, pretending that no one will notice that they have had four years to do this. Now they are ginning up a high-cost solution so as to spread the money around to preferred vendors.

The "high cost solution" of which the Bookseller speaks is discussed here: The predicted gutting of Speck begins as Mayor Jeff Gahan gives the finger to complete streets advocates.

Also, we now know that this week's Bored of Works decision to award a consultancy contract to one of the usual street engineering suspects, thus delaying action on streets for up to 18 months, was at least in part a pre-emptive response to Padgett, et al, in the crane erector's forthcoming legal challenge to the Main Street project.

(Once again, it has proven impossible for Team Gahan to be publicly truthful about its motivations v.v. street grid reform.)

It's probably moot, given that City Hall has botched the entire streets issue to a possibly irreparable degree, but nonetheless, prior to yesterday's revelation of the lawsuit filed against the city by our charmingly civic minded value-extractive looters, a question arose with regard to the stated Bored of Works rationale of delaying Speck so to garner federal lucre.

I am confused by the notion that we need more time and consultancy expenditures to get federal money. Haven't we been told privately for years that the federal money already was in place?

Jeff G gave the answer, pre-Padgett lawsuit.

Yes, we have been told that and it's long been reflected in the KIPDA budget. An engineering plan of some sort is likely necessary for federal qualification but nowhere near to the multi-option, stray-from-the-original extent they are talking about. All they actually need to do is produce engineering/construction plans for the Speck plan with minimal justification and environmental review, justification that Speck himself has already largely provided. All the extra expense, time, and proposed iterations have nothing to do with securing federal funds. 

Again, the recent Main Street example (that used federal funds over and above the state's long-term maintenance money) shoots them in the foot. Honestly, given the low cost of most of the Speck plan, it's questionable whether we even need federal funding as using it will require adhering to more stringent (and sometimes nonsensical) federal guidelines which, in turn, will drive costs up -- something that, again, happened with the Main Street Project.

Redevelopment Commission sycophants do Gahan's bidding, and so Carl and Steve must be scourged.

If only Mr. Disney would fall on HIS sword.

As neighborhood residential values plunge, a fact verified by the arrival yesterday of the household property tax statement, it has become ever more apparent that the Hauss Square Gang's economic "revitalization" efforts (see what I did there?) have amounted to little of substance.

However, we must concede that when it comes to economic retribution, Team Gahan shows unfortunate and persistent aptitude ... and all the while, City Hall's handy TIF ATM continues to merrily spew Gahan re-election campaign monetization. Awash in the ceaseless cash, with almost all decision-making levers controlled by his innermost circle, the current occupant's vindictive nature now enjoys free reign.

Meet local businessmen Carl Holliday and Steve Goodman, who recently publicly criticized New Albany's enduringly toxic Main Street Improvement Project (last night we learned that others have mounted a legal challenge to Rosenbarger's Folly).

Concurrently at NAC, we've pointed out on numerous occasions that whatever conceivable rationale supports public expenditures and free (and utterly unprecedented) sewer tap-ins to enable residential construction at the Coyle site, simultaneously argues against the farmers market build-out at Bank and Market, which is on the verge of becoming one of downtown's prime infill locations, its potential value only capable of being enhanced by new apartment buildings around the corner at Coyle -- and killed by the farmers market expansion.

Now, back to Holliday, Goodman and New Albany Horizons, their downtown development entity. We'll pick up the narrative afterward.

Developers dispute price for downtown New Albany lots, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — A group of developers still hopes to market six lots along Bank Street for commercial and residential use, but they want the New Albany Redevelopment Commission to readjust its asking price for the properties.

But unlike the previous extension, the city ordered two appraisals of the property, and raised the asking price for the lots to $137,000.

“It’s never been paid for, and the value of the property has gone up,” said David Duggins, director of economic development and redevelopment for the city.

As usual, Jeff G cuts to the chase with this observation.

The Gahan administration is hassling these local guys over $30K while simultaneously trying to give away millions in public funding to another, out of town developer just a few blocks away. Maybe this is what Dave Duggins meant by "branding effort".

To summarize: New Albany's Redevelopment Commission, which is helmed by Gahan sycophants and the local Democratic Party chairman, proposes to change terms on the purchase of undeveloped property at Bank and Main because the value of this empty land has increased (neighborhood stakeholders, register your envy as the semi rigs rumble past your house), while at the same time, the city insists on expanding the farmers market on similarly empty land a block away on Market, when it might be sold at a higher price to developers for infill construction, the odds of which can only increase as Coyle site development proceeds.

No wonder Gahan won't debate David White. In terms of economic development, these parts simply don't fit together.

But in terms of retribution against Holliday and Goodman for their temerity in questioning the top-down Main Street "Improvement" Project, it makes perfect sense.

This is how Team Gahan works, folks, and yet we close with good news.

You can vote them out, right now.

We simply mustn't throw out Speck with the Main Street project's nasty bilge water.

This is the stuff of banana republics.

At this crucial juncture, New Albany has a mayor purportedly favoring street grid change, so long as he never is compelled to say so aloud, and by choosing to sandbag on the down low rather than lead with integrity, he's somehow managing to unite the Speck plan's opponents while dividing its proponents.

Ineptitude of that heightened magnitude is rare even by local standards of futility.

ROAD LESS TRAVELED? New Albany business owners say East Main Street traffic shifting to Spring Street, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — As the city prepares for the final scheduled public input session on planner Jeff Speck’s downtown streets proposal, some business owners are questioning whether two-way traffic could work for certain portions of the city.

While employees and proprietors of trucking and hauling companies have frequently differed with Speck’s plan, Culbertson West owners Steve Goodman and Carl Holliday once favored shifting Spring Street to two-way traffic.

At first, upon reading this, I was chagrined that Carl and Steve would say such a thing, but to read the entirety of their letter (provided expeditiously by city clerk Vicki Glotzbach) is to realize that their thoughts on two-way streets constitute a mere two paragraphs of speculation amid four pages of wholly justified complaints about the Main Street Disprovement boondoggle-that-keeps-extracting.

Just as there were Unionists in Virginia and Tennessee during the American Civil War, it seems there are Main Streeters who thought it a bad idea to secede from the city's street grid. Here are the .pdf pages of Carl's and Steve's letter.

For those using Fb, go here for an animated and comprehensive discussion on Speck's proposals in the context of the Main Street project. As noted for something like the 745th time ...

As we see now, the ramifications threaten the implementation of rationality on other streets. Until we come to grips with this, the well plainly is poisoned -- and the city shot its own foot.

The Main Street project? It's poison, and it will remain poison. The design, execution and politics were wrong, and it would be just as wrong to fail to implement the Speck proposals. Last time I checked, two wrongs still don't make a right, even in this depraved burg.

Carl and Steve ... please think about that. Now's the time for unity, lest the Luddites are able to block what little remaining hope we have. At this point, our best bet is to implement Speck's proposals completely from top to bottom, sans bullshit compromises like those ultimately sabotaging any good intent the Main Street project may once have contained, then come back to Main Street later and see what tweaking can be done.

Or, Molotov cocktails. If we can't use them to take out a few medians, at least we can drink them and feel better about it.