News release: "Greenville Concerned Citizens, Inc. (has) voted to oppose the upcoming $80 million school bond referendum."

This release was forwarded to me by the Floyd Action Network:

“A benefit of membership in Floyd Action Network is the opportunity for member organizations to communicate with FAN’s members. So, without endorsement, FAN passes this message from Greenville Concerned Citizens, a member organization."

I now follow suit, sans endorsement.

---

To Floyd County Property Taxpayers:

May 5, 2015 is our next primary election when cities and towns in Indiana will elect their governing officials. Floyd County also has a referendum on the ballot on whether to approve bonds for building/renovating more schools in Floyd County. This will be the only item on the ballot for residents of unincorporated Floyd County. After reviewing this matter and discussing the school board’s rationale for their proposed new tax at its March 19th Board of Directors meeting, Greenville Concerned Citizens, Inc. voted to oppose the upcoming $80 million school bond referendum.

The school administration’s stated plan is to build new schools to replace the current Green Valley Road and Slate Run Road schools, as well as some renovation at Prosser Vocational School and Greenville Elementary and Floyds Knobs Elementary schools. The cost of this building plan to taxpayers will be approximately 80 million dollars and we would begin paying the bill in 2018, when the present school bonds will be paid off. Without this new building plan, the most recent (i.e. current) bond will be retired and our property taxes would decrease by approximately $230 for each $100,000 of assessed value (i.e. drop from approximately $.55 per $100 of assessed value to $.32 per $100).

Supporting public education is one of the most important uses of our tax dollars. However, using those tax dollars in the manner proposed is debatable. For example, there appears to be no claim of needing to build these new schools because of overcrowding, or because of safety concerns based upon any actual problems or incidents. Rather, the school board wants this tax primarily because they feel that the present schools are not as new as the recently renovated schools. Well, many of us also have older homes but we manage to keep them properly maintained while living within our budget. We should not incur $80 million in new debt just to improve the aesthetics of several schools, especially when such a debt would handicap future school boards’ ability to raise funds that may be necessary for actual education. Our schools are among the best in the region because we focus on education, not appearances; on books, not bricks; and on quality teachers.

The school administration admitted that they have $2.5 million in “discretionary funds” (their own words) in each year of their budget. This means that, over the same 20 year period as their proposed new tax increase/bonds, they could have up to $50 million dollars at their disposal. Why won’t they use some of those funds instead of incurring another $80 million in debt?

When you receive your property tax bills in April notice how much of your tax dollars go to Schools. If you are concerned about that amount, please call the Floyd County Voter Registration office at 948-5419 to find out when and where you can “early vote”. Or, go to a voting site on Election Day, Tuesday May 5th. But vote, and vote “NO”.

Please pass this information along to your Floyd County family and friends. We need participation by all county residents, especially the taxpayers, and not just those with a vested interest or a personal stake in the outcome.

Your vote counts! You can make a difference!

Greenville Concerned Citizens, Inc.

On the Rosenbarger planning conundrum, and FAN Fair, here I come.

Let's take a moment to review.

In early December, as we considered the probable effects of the Main Street "improvement" project on similar streets nearby (read: what is judged right for Main likely will not be judged right for Market, Spring and Elm), I lobbed a pass toward the rim and Bluegill duly slammed it home.

(I've been asking) a slew of questions about city streets. Long experience has taught me the utter futility of expecting answers from anyone who actually matters, although there’s nothing to stop me from attending various meetings and poking a rhetorical stick through the bars, all the while questioning whether it’s me or them inside the cage.

Specifically, I asked:

If the city does not do for Elm, Spring and Market what it proposes to do on Main, how does the city explain to residents located on or near these other three streets why it is city policy to depress their property values owing to the greater good required of those transiting the city's streets to reach the other side?

As Groucho Marx never said, “Guess the secret word, and win an invitation to a Democratic Party fundraiser.” The word is “holistic,” and the best answer – the only answer – I’ve received so far comes from NAC’s own Jeff Gillenwater, as posted on Facebook, and since it undoubtedly is the correct reply, let’s take a look.

The City is well aware that what it's doing on Main will divert more auto traffic onto those other streets, Spring in particular.

That's why they're doing it first. That's why the oft expressed "need" for a traffic study does not include Main in its current form as a functioning part of the total grid. That's why the barely there, boilerplate "study" done to justify changes on Main contains no mention of connections to or projected impact on surrounding areas nor any other alternatives than the one they chose before doing the study.

From New Albany's earliest days, Main Street was and is supposed to be the highway, the through street, the primary connector of downtown to other places, but city planners don't want it to be that anymore.

Much like the sacrifice of Mount Tabor residential areas for poorly developed commercial strips on its fringes, the sacrifice of Spring and other nearby streets for Main has long been a part of the plan. And that's precisely why they don't/won't talk about it out loud. A part of any holistic answer, historically and currently, likely has to do with diverting auto traffic to Main, not away from it. That, however, doesn't fit the current gerrymandering scheme.

Ever since the two-way streets discussion first emerged some time ago, occasional chats with John Rosenbarger nearly always have featured a variation of this comment from him at some point in the conversation, accompanied by suitably uncomfortable body language: "Well, if we can't reconvert them to two-way streets, we can at least calm traffic on them."

Now, if I'm misreporting this in any way, John can correct me, but I've heard him say it more than once.

I've always judged his response to be the default ambiguity of an appointed official who has retained his position for decades by adapting, chameleon-like, to whatever political winds are blowing as administrations change. I've defended him and other planners for the thanklessness of their professional duties. These days, my thoughts are becoming somewhat less charitable. I'm beginning to catch the whiff of betrayal in the air.

Since we began peeling back the layers of the Main Street project, it has become ever more obvious that the city's planners have proceeded in precisely the way Jeff suggests in the passage quoted above, and did not begin doing so just yesterday. If so, then the ripples from Main Street, effectively dooming the arterials to an eternity of counter-productivity, have been known, observed, accepted, and part of the plan all along ... in a place where planning in the most general of terms possesses the same sought-after panache as unscooped dog turds festering on the sidewalk.

John is a city planner. John lives on Main Street. John's authored a plan that exalts walkability on his own street, and ignored it elsewhere. There may or may not be a connection, but the oft-repeated component we can summarily dismiss is that the work John does somehow is purely secular and in the realm of unavoidable engineering-wonk, and as such, entirely apolitical.

Bullshit. In fact, John does not work for an eternal, heavenly code of street width and pass-through. He works for Mayor Jeff Gahan, an elected official, and all these decisions whether those made are those finding a home in File 86, ultimately are political decisions. As such, they're up for consideration and reconsideration in the political arena. Let's not forget that.

According to the following report on  the forthcoming FAN Fair, John will be speaking about the desirability of alternate transportation, which presumably includes walking. Originally I was to be in Indianapolis on that day, but I've changed plans. I'll be at the FAN Fair, and with any luck, I'll be allowed to ask several of these questions, prime among them: Is walkability to be confined to Main Street, or do the rest of us in Outer Slumlordia get a chance, too?

FAN Fair: Walking, biking and busing not just an alternative in Southern Indiana; Inaugural event addresses region's sustainability, environmental issues, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

SOUTHERN INDIANA — It may be labeled as alternative travel, but biking or walking to destinations is just another mode of transit to many planners and transportation experts.

Not only does it increase social interaction while decreasing greenhouse emissions and dependence on fuel, but so-called alternate transportation is also cheaper and making a footprint even in Southern Indiana, according to local experts.

“I do think that we are living in a transition period where the tide is shifting toward developing and retrofitting communities to be more sustainable,” Beth Rosenbarger said.

She is a planner and GIS specialist for the Monroe County Planning Department in Bloomington, and also the daughter of John Rosenbarger, who is the director of Public Works Projects for New Albany.

The Rosenbargers will be among the guests speaking about topics such as energy independence and alternate transportation during the inaugural Floyd Action Network FAN Fair on Feb. 1 ...

(For more information, visit the website www.floydactionnetwork.org)

Bike commuting workshop: "Diversity of roadway use can be restored with conscious policy decision."

Just imagine if one of several year-long themes of New Albany's bicentennial celebration would have been "back to the future" in the context of topics precisely like this one (bicycling, street usage and the urban grid).

Think how the money spent on the celebration would have been twice as useful, because it would have helped to raise consciousness about lives to come.

Ponder how instead, we've had living white people focusing almost entirely on dead white people. It's been such a profound, sad waste of time and money, purposefully placed outside the realm of accountability.

See Eric Vance Martin's slide show at the Floyd Action Network web site.

Maybe we still have time to pull something hopeful form the mire.

The important take away:

"Conscious policy decisions got us where we are. Conscious policy decisions can get us where we want to be. Each of us can influence the decisions if we let our public officials and the media know what we want and what we don't want."

"

Floyd Action Network's (FAN) Workshop Series on a theme of "Floyd County: Our Land Tells Its Own Story."

(submitted by Joshua Poe, who introduces us to the Floyd Action Network)

---

Floyd Action Network is an umbrella organization that promotes citizen participation in best land use practices for rural and urban neighborhoods.

Our Workshop Series – Floyd County: Our Land Tells Its Own Story

Learn how to influence land use decisions in Floyd County. To register for the free workshops, send an email message to FAN. Please include your name, the titles, and the dates of the workshops you want to attend.

Workshop #1
"The Lay of the Land"
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Presenter -- Joshua Poe, Graduate Research Assistant, Center for Environmental Policy and Management, University of Louisville
Location - Division Street School, New Albany

Learn how the land in Floyd County shaped its present-day character and structure and how Floyd County’s citizens can influence the future use of our County’s land resources.

Workshop #2
"Neighborhoods: Rows of Pockets on the Land’s Apron"
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Presenters - Joshua Poe, Graduate Research Assistant, Center for Environmental Policy and Management, University of Louisville and Jack Trawick, Executive Director, Center For Neighborhoods, Louisville, Kentucky

Learn how to keep the rain that falls on your property at home, how to prevent your street from flooding, and how our choices of transportation influence water retention and water drainage.

Workshop #3
"The Law of the Land"
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Presenter - Mark Spelbring, Purdue Extension Service, Parke County
Location - Purdue Technology Center, 3000 Technology Ave, New Albany

Learn how planning and zoning ordinances have influenced the quality of our lives, the quality of our land, and how individuals can effectively influence land use ordinances.

Workshop #4
"Laying Down the Law of the Land"
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Presenter – Jamie Palmer, Center for Urban Policy and the Environment, Indiana University, Indianapolis
Location - Purdue Technology Center, 3000 Technology Ave, New Albany

Learn who’s who in the public hearing process, the planning and zoning issues for which public hearings are legally mandated, what is included in the public hearing agenda, and guidelines for making effective presentations.

All workshops begin at 6:30 pm and end at 8:30 pm.

Arrive by 6:00 pm for complimentary refreshments.

Our generous sponsors:
Rundell Ernstberger Associates, Louisville and Indianapolis. Center for Environmental Policy and Management, University of Louisville, Louisville. Purdue Technology Center, New Albany.

© 2010 Floyd Action Network, Inc., P O Box 211, Floyds Knobs, Indiana 47119. Email: FAN@FloydActionNetwork.org