It's three BMW M5s for $340K ...

 ... or one for 108 ... well, after a wee bit of haggling, and maybe some free 'maters to the sales guy.

Mrs. Baird inadvertently reveals the crux of the $321K farmers market lotto: "There was not a lot of discussion about it."

I've already provided concise instructions, but I'm only an idea guy. I can't make them pay attention.

DNA can come out of the farmers market dust-up smelling like the proverbial rose. All it needs to do is follow this script.

Especially when Mrs. Baird went out and got the money, and by God, she's going to spend it. Not a lot of discussion? That's the way she undoubtedly intended it. As you peruse the 'Bune's coverage, perhaps you'll also be asking questions that no one seems eager to answer.

When did the council appropriation originate?
Is it a carry-over from the most recent England administration?
Was the appropriation ever discussed by members during the budgetary process?
Has there ever been anything resembling a genuine public hearing on the farmers market?
Why can't we stop and talk this over?
Why the hurry?

An this: Is Mrs. Baird merely the liaison, or is it her job to do DNA's (and the Marktmeister's) bidding?

There's a difference, after all.

Committee to weigh future of New Albany Farmers Market; This year's session opens May 10, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — A New Albany City Council committee will meet next week to discuss the future of the downtown Farmers Market.

Baird — who is the council’s liaison on the Develop New Albany board — said she still supports improving the market at its existing location ...

More on what I learned this week: Félix, Susan, and the Engahan times we live in.

Remember the law about signage outside polling places?

It was enacted to move the political operatives away from the doorway, where they used to stand with stacked crates of Kessler, handing out half-pints of whiskey so that someday, we might have a Main Street Deforestation Project.

Those handovers of booze in broad daylight were masterpieces of subtlety and discretion compared with what happened in New Albany during the third England administration, when Hizzoner awarded Susan Kaempfer $108,000 at a rate of $50 hourly to serve as project manager of the Midtown neighborhood stabilization project.

From the moment Kaempfer endorsed that first check, presumably with the mayor’s wife beaming while handing her the pencil, her credibility vanished faster than the plume from an e-cigarette.

It was the veritable capstone of England Doug’s career in cynical payout largesse, and a complete, all-encompassing civic embarrassment rivaling that of French president Félix François Faure.

Take it away, Wikipedia:

Faure died suddenly from apoplexy in the Élysée Palace on 16 February 1899, at a critical juncture while engaged in sexual activities in his office with 30-year-old Marguerite Steinheil. It has been widely reported that Felix Faure had his fatal seizure while Steinheil was fellating him, but the exact nature of their sexual intercourse is in fact unknown and such reports may have stemmed from various jeux de mots (puns) made up afterward by his political opponents. One such pun was to nickname Mme Steinheil "la pompe funèbre" (wordplay in French: "pompes funèbres" means "death care business" and "pompe funèbre" could be translated, literally, as "funeral blow-job"). George Clemenceau's epitaph of Faure, in the same trend, was "Il voulait être César, il ne fut que Pompée" (another wordplay in French; could mean both "he wished to be Caesar, but ended up as Pompey", or "he wished to be Caesar and ended up being blown": the verb "pomper" in French is also slang for performing oral sex on a man); Clemenceau, who was also editor of the newspaper L'Aurore, wrote that "upon entering the void, he [Faure] must have felt at home".

For the past two weeks, we’ve witnessed Kaempfer on the comeback trail, actively and politically soliciting cash for “her” farmers market,openly on behalf of "her" Develop New Albany, in spite of DNA's largely theoretical non-profit-driven stance against such crass, transparently manipulative activities.

In effect, Susan Kaempfer has orchestrated a hostage-taking, by abducting a straw man of her own creation, stirring up panic among the non-resident vendors, then slicing the straw man's throat before a spineless, pliant council while City Hall looked skyward in search of missing Malaysian airplanes.

There have been so many lies told this past week that if our civic symbol of Pinocchio (an intellectually impoverished river town's equivalent of the Golem) might be positioned facing east, toward Bamberg, those among us seeking immediate exile might promptly arrive at the Schlenkerla tavern without once wetting our feet.

Concurrently, before I begin shopping for plane tickets, permit me to hereby propose that we rename the newly embellished farmers market the Félix François Faure Memorial Cucumber Stand, because in New Albany, the city itself is Pompey, with the cash spewing inexorably in one direction.

JAYsus: Why -- why, why -- on earth must we continue paying her, again and again?

What I learned this week, local indie business owner's edition.

Last night, Susan “Marktmeister” Kaempfer was permitted (nay, actively encouraged by both city and council) to erect a straw man (“they’re going to take away our farmers market”) and to smash it to pieces. This she proceeded to do, as any five-year-old child might have done in the absence of adult supervision.

It should suffice to say that adult supervision did not materialize.

The council needn’t have abetted it by moving non-agenda speaking time forward, but it did, because the body does not possess firm, principled leadership. It has barely any leadership at all in the absence of texting the Democratic Party chairman prior to meetings.

City Hall remained aloof because it received a few phone calls, and it persists in thinking that the telephone is the only means of communication on the planet, and so it feared them, reverting to the traditional rope-a-dope: Heck, we can’t do anything. After all, we’re only the mayor and chosen staff. Let the council have what it wants, as inherited from the departed England administration.

It was the usual black eye for New Albany; the usual squabbling, bickering and nutjobbery, and the same old political paybacks to the same old suspects without any intrusion of contemporary reality. Of course, at the end of the meaningless, senseless, insulting, Kaempferesque spectacle, there was no firm resolution of anything at all, because there was no rational consideration preceding or prompting any of it. There was nothing to vote up, or down, just fetid air heavy with fear, loathing and lies.

As Billy Preston once advised, “Nothing from Nothing Leaves Nothing,” although in New Albany, nothing from nothing leaves a $300,000 bill for a project on a plot of land no one knows the value of, on behalf of a transient retail organization, as politically enabled by a non-profit group unable or unwilling to restrain the for-profit political avarice of certain of its members. City Hall slouched, whistling. Thumbs were twiddled. Shirley Baird nodded knowingly to a tomato vendor, whose thumb would be taken off the scale henceforth.

But here’s the kicker.

We already knew it. Been there, done that.

There may be fifty ways to leave your lover, but in New Albany, there are 108,000 ways to know when the fix is in. Rather, here is what I learned yesterday, as composed of two equal parts: First, the morning meeting between city officials and representatives of downtown groups, at which we learned that economic development policy (or non-policy) is determined solely by the "tools" handed down to the city by others, and are confined by a box with clearly delineated lines that preclude creative thinking, and second, the staged, pre-arranged and gloriously Abner Louima’ed farmers market debacle.

In New Albany, part-time, short-term market vendors, most of whom do not reside in New Albany, and who avail themselves at rapidly escalating city expense of the farmers market facility for 40-odd prime days during the year, are far more worthy of City Hall’s and the city council’s attention and money than local independent small business owners who have invested millions of dollars and countless hours in operating 365 days out of the year.

It would seem that our phone calls don't count. 

DNA posts exciting, incisive new farmers market poll.

Thanks to DP for the inspiration.

The NewAlbanist: "Here’s what a market vendor wants: A market where (many) people come to buy their farm products."

The Bookseller nails it.

Somewhat tongue in cheek, he gauges the probable reaction were the city announce the farmers market's move to his building, for the same price. It made me think of a comment in a newspaper column by Jason Thomas devoted to ruminations on living spaces (and the lack thereof) in downtown New Albany.

Construction has happened in fits and starts in New Albany. River View, the proposed $42 million mixed-use project just east of the YMCA that included condos, would have done wonders, but fizzled financially in 2012. The Coyle property on Spring Street also is a prime spot, but a recent deal also fell through, according to (Mike) Kopp.

There sits the old Frisch's/Coyle Dodge building with garage doors and voluminous parking, just across the street from the book store; what if the city's inevitable abatement package of corporate-only incentives with a developer included a provision to transform it into a farmers market hub?

Whoa; sorry. Minting an idea like that violates the "no outside the box thinking" ordinance, and also would yield no opportunity to provide the Marktmeister with another cash infusion.

It Costs Far Too Much

Building a new shelter and bathrooms for New Albany’s farmers’ market is a bad idea made worse by a stunningly high price tag attached to it. Very little I’ll say here that I haven’t said before, but it clearly needs to be said again. The farmers’ market needs no expansion ...

 ... And yet, here we are trying to stop the city from pouring vast sums into a farmers’ market that’s open 216 hours a year.

Consider going to the polling page and disrupting DNA's bush league tactics by voting for the parking garage. Real poll questions for real people, here.

The farmers market discussion to too important to be left to the Marktmeister alone.

Congratulations to council persons Gonder and Coffey for thinking outside the subsidy-as-usual DNA box. Let's highlight the myriad (institutional?) deficiencies of Marktmeister Kaempfer's counter-argument.

But first: Shouldn't the city of New Albany take an active interest in learning the value of the current farmers market property as used now, versus what it might generate in future infill construction? Isn't this a fundamental part of the equation in this discussion? Do we know anything about the comparatives?

New Albany Farmers Market on the move? Gonder, Coffey push to move farmers market; DNA organizer not on board, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — An alternative proposal to expanding the downtown New Albany Farmers Market is gaining steam, but the lead organizer of the venue doesn’t support the plan.

No kidding. Say, the position of Markmeister is a non-elected office, isn't it?

New Albany City Councilman John Gonder proposed last month moving the market from the corner of Pearl and Market Streets to the downtown parking garage ... the farmers market could open in the garage on Saturday mornings on the first floor of the structure, and a portion of Market Street could close so that vendors could extend out toward the median, Gonder said. The market would occupy about double the space it has now by moving to the garage.

So far, so good. Now comes the part wherein tail commences to vigorously wag dog.

The property is owned by the city, but the farmers market is operated by Develop New Albany, and the lead organizer is Susan Kaempfer. She said Gonder hasn’t contacted her about his proposal, as Kaempfer added the parking garage doesn’t have a bathroom and “isn’t a good fit” for the market.

“It’s our preference that we move forward with the improvements to the existing farmers market and get that done as quickly as possible so we can utilize it,” she said Tuesday.

In other words, Mrs. Baird (perhaps) somehow found room for an appropriation even if numerous council persons don't recall it being discussed, and now this money must be spent immediately lest someone other than DNA lays claim to it. We couldn't have THAT happen, could we?

But Kaempfer said some of (last year's) vendors are being recruited by competing farmers market, and that delaying the project could hamper New Albany’s ability to retain them ... Kaempfer said the farmers market has dramatically helped downtown businesses, and added that some vendors and local business owners likely will attend next week’s council meeting to voice their support for it.

Of course it has helped ... one day a week, mostly in summer, but if the market has been successful in its current format, why would the vendors consider going somewhere else?

Or, put another way: Has our farmers market become sufficiently broken to merit fixing, to the tune of 300K? It's packed now. The question is: In terms of a long-term commitment, is the current site the best possible site? If we're going to do this, why not do it right?

Sadly, all the Marktmeister can do is erect a straw man and mobilize the vendors by telling them that the farmers market is to be heinously squelched by blue meanies. She might tell them the truth, although I'm not holding my breath: There are people sincerely interested in discussing all the options for the market's future vitality and expansion, including those existing beyond Kaempfer's and DNA's solipsistic inner worlds.

Unless the council moves to remove the funding already set aside for the expansion, the New Albany Board of Public Works and Safety could accept the bid and move forward with the project without the council’s approval.

True, and yet another reason why the city needs to be stirred from its present resting place and take a share of this issue back into its possession. It is city property, and it consequently "belongs" to us all. What this looks like at present is a transparent payback to Develop New Albany's self-interested cadres, but the farmers market is far more important than just that, and its future needs to be studied with the city's active, directed participation -- not the strange passivity it has displayed thus far.