Innovative ways of redeveloping Colonial Manor -- or, things John Gonder was talking about ten years ago.

In 2015 after two city council terms John Gonder ran afoul of the mayor's DemoDisneyDixiecratic patronage machine and lost his re-election bid, moving on to other things in life. John had a blog but didn't use it all that often; when he chose to write, the results invariably were thoughtful and indicative of interests outside our city's self-imposed political boxes.

On Sunday evening John made this comment to yesterday's Colonial Manor post: Colonial Manor redevelopment visioning to be the subject of a public meeting on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m.

This run at revitalizing Colonial Manor caused me to look back at something from ten years ago. It might still be worth considering. The points relevant to the current situation appear in the final three paragraphs. Here's the link.

That's right. Colonial Manor was being discussed ten years ago during Barack Obama's first term -- and Doug England's last. Since John no longer actively blogs, I'm reprinting the entire post from March 22, 2009, but consider clicking through to view the comments.

There seems to be one big question about future prospects for refurbishment at Colonial Manor: Can anything positive happen there without the use of tax increment financing (TIF) money?

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Back to the Drawingboard. Please.

At the most recent City Council meeting, March 19, a development which could have resulted in the relocation of the Charlestown Road Wendy's to a site farther out Charlestown Road was nixed by the Council.

For those who don't know, the Wendy's project cuts out a portion of a large lot for the restaurant while leaving the current zoning in place for an "L" shaped piece of property surrounding the restaurant on two sides.

In an attempt to extract something meaningful from the proceedings, I would like to offer an idea that could have possibly yielded a different outcome. At least it could have changed my vote. Unfortunately I'm not holding my breath waiting for the missing ingredient, because that missing ingredient is found in such short supply among developers hereabouts. The ingredient? It goes by several names: innovative thought, creative approaches, getting ahead of the curve, anticipatory development in recognition of the changes suggested by new environmental realities.

That is, after three or four years on the New Albany Plan Commission and now starting the second year on the City Council, I have yet to see more than about two developments that might fall outside the unflattering catchall categorization of cookie cutter sameness.

Look at any of the patio home developments. These are offered as a response to a demographic change in our culture. Aging people are downsizing their households yet still want independence and convenience. So far, so good. A curbside assessment of the typical patio home,however, looks like, in Jeopardy fashion, an answer to the question "Where can my car and I go so both of us feel at home?" The street presentation is of struggle for dominance between the garage and the living quarters. From all appearances, the cars are winning out with the most prominent digs.

Are the developers stupid? The buyers? No, I don't think so. On the contrary, the patio homes I've seen from the inside appear well built and comfortable and suited to the needs of the people living there. But it would be difficult to find a current mode of housing design that more glaringly exemplifies the cookie cutter school of thought.

But the Wendy's development, ( if indeed it is a Wendy's, and there's truly no way to know that at this juncture, according to counsel ) is a commercial development, so what's that got to do with cookie cutters and patio homes? Again, it's the lack of a creative or innovative approach to the puzzle of what to do with that parcel of land. Clearly no one who holds an economic interest in the land sees doing nothing, or next to nothing, as a viable option, otherwise they might consider leasing it to an agricultural entrepreneur who could open an "in-town" small scale u-pick farm. Would there be enough customers for such a thing? Surely not in that end of town.

I just erased several paragraphs in which I suggest what the developers could do with the land. The reality is, that just like with the patio homes, the developers failed to offer anything innovative. As if to underscore the fact that they were offering nothing innovative, they weren't even offering a plan to bring in a new hamburger joint, they were simply going to move an existing hamburger joint to a new location; on the same road yet. And for this accommodation of the developers' plans, the existing neighborhood residents were being asked to suck it up in the cause of progress and free markets.

So maybe it shouldn't all be left up to the developer.

One of the best ways this type of situation could be headed off in the future is for the City of New Albany to begin a reorientation away from greenfield development and toward REdevelopment. (As was stated in the Council meeting, fast food restaurants typically use up a building in a pre-ordained period of years and then move to a new location.) Charlestown Road from Eighth Street out to Klerner Lane is showing signs of commercial and residential neglect and deterioration.

A prime example is the Colonial Manor shopping center, across the street from the current Wendy's site, abandoned several years ago by Kroger in favor of a new site across from the proposed Wendy's site. If the city were to acquire the property it could solicit proposals from developers to take that property back to the level of vibrancy needed to make a strong neighborhood. The use of Economic Development Income Tax (EDIT) funds could be used to buy the property thus freeing the developer from the carrying cost of the project during development. Direction by the Plan Commission, through the RFP, could shape the REdevelopment in ways most beneficial for the entire community. The developer would make a profit but only by producing a worthwhile, cohesive project. And when the developer is out of the deal the EDIT funds would be returned.

This would be a better way to steer the development of the community in ways that truly benefit the entire community, not simply the narrow interests of the developers. If Colonial Manor were, in fact, redeveloped it is quite possible that the entire Charlestown Road corridor would be seen as more desirable and unfortunate situations such as the one involving the Wendy's project might be avoided.

Taibbi: "Conventional wisdom is pretty much always wrong, and often spectacularly so."

Earlier I was thinking about the Donnelly shambles, and how I can't seem to take my eyes off the proverbial train wreck.

Embarrassment as "the Donnelly campaign demonstrates the futility of seeking to surmount these obstacles by trying to out-Republican the Republicans."

An hour later, former councilman John Gonder offered a comment perfectly calibrated for the mood.

This is from a speech Harry Truman gave in 1952 to Americans for Democratic Action, it is found at the Harry S Truman Presidential Library and Museum web site:

I've seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the fair Deal, and says he really doesn't believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.

It was true then and it is true now. The Donnelly campaign's tack rightward was like watching two trains headed toward each other on the same track; the result was inevitable.

Gonder knows all too well what it's like to be progressive and kneecapped by his own local political party, that of crassly indeterminate ethical values and dumpster fires.

Has the local chairman resigned yet?

Forget ‘Conventional Wisdom’: There Are No More Moderates, by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone)

Beware the latest call to “move to the center” — which is just the same old tune, re-packaged

 ... Voters are not skittish, brainless creatures afraid of strong policy proposals. That more accurately describes the politicians and corporate donors who are invested in things staying as they are. Most actual people are living on the edge financially, are angry, and will take policy help from anywhere they can get it.

Polls today show Americans in large majorities now support expanded Social Security, drug re-importation, single-payer health care, free college, and they want Medicare to be able to negotiate lower drug prices. These positions would do well if any party threw its support behind them.

But conventional wisdom, once again, will likely insist heading into 2020 that something other than policy will matter, when it comes to picking candidates. CNN earlier this year, quoting pols and consultants, actually said that “in the era of Trump, where uniqueness is prized,” Democrats should search for “candidates with distinct backgrounds” ...

Quiet no longer, Josh Staten makes the newspaper: "New Albany reveals new redevelopment, economic development director."

Previously we grappled with the implications.

Redevelopment welcomes Josh Staten as its new director. So does this mean Duggins is 4-ever NAHA? Let's follow the money.

Former councilman John Gonder's viewpoints always are well-considered and thoughtful, which surely is why Mayor Gahan brutally sabotaged Gonder's re-election bid in 2015. Gonder appended this comment to NAC's post.

I would consider the appointment of Josh Staten as the Director of Redevelopment to be the most hopeful sign I've seen in New Albany's City Government in a long time. I wish him well.

That's reassuring.

City Hall's strangely subdued stealth in introducing its new redevelopment and economic development director stands in stark contrast to the hosannas accorded David Duggins, Staten's matinee idol predecessor, who came to us with the persona and press clippings of a rock star, and proceeded to trash his share of hotel rooms.

Staten is highly qualified and young, and that's a good start. He's also intimately connected to the AdamBot's hypocritical-by-design DemoDisneyDixiecratic party apparatus -- and that's not as good. We'll have to wait and see.

Hey, Irving Joshua -- how's that job search for a permanent bulldozer maintenance mechanic going over at NAHA? Inquiring minds want to know, even if you don't want to tell us.

New Albany reveals new redevelopment, economic development director, by Danielle Grady (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — Josh Staten, a New Albany High School graduate, has mostly worked in the Kentuckiana area throughout his life. Well, except for a recently ended 10-month period when he was a planner in Florida. But now Staten is back in Southern Indiana for a position to which he couldn’t say no: redevelopment and economic development director for the City of New Albany.

“I always wanted to work in redevelopment, economic development. That’s just where my background is as far as studies are concerned,” said Staten, who has two master’s degrees from the University of Louisville, one in public administration and the other in urban planning. “And the idea of me getting a chance to come back to my hometown where I grew up and do this job was something I definitely jumped at immediately.”

Staten quietly started working for the city on Feb. 28 after an eight-month search by the city to replace the former director, David Duggins, who now is the interim executive director of the New Albany Housing Authority.

City Council Thursday: Knable seeks the HRC's reanimation and appoints a heavyweight. Coffey rightly speaks up for public comment placement. But who squelched free speech in the first place?

Thursday's city council meeting clocked in at a brisk 32 minutes from gavel to gavel. The only ordinance on the agenda was Haven House homeless shelter funding (3rd and final reading). It was tabled until February owing to administrative something-or-another.

Mike Hall promptly performed 30 seconds of workmanlike stand-up mayoral ventriloquism, and then President Al Knable introduced council member appointments, three of which deserve special note.

Matt Nash (D) joins David Aebersold (R) on the Horseshoe Board.

Knable (R) will serve as one of two council appointments to the ignominiously beached Human Rights Commission (the other council appointment is local realtor Paul Kiger), supplanting Greg Phipps (D), who in 2017 vocally wishy-washed his hands of "his" crowning achievement.

Knable announced his intention to request two remaining mayoral appointments to the HRC (the body itself then chooses a fifth member) and to reanimate it. Jeff Gahan let it die, so this should become interesting very quickly.

Finally, David Barksdale (R) remains posted to the Duggins Turbo Pay Play Station (Redevelopment Commission), but Bob "Human Rubber Stamp" Caesar (D) is removed, to be replaced by an extremely well-qualified citizen, new Albany native Scott Stewart, who recently retired from his position as director of the Port Authority. Previously, Stewart was an executive at Proctor & Gamble, and worked for Governor Mitch Daniels.

Pro tip: time to start attending Redevelopment Commission meetings. 

Now, let's comment about comments. Last night, something was missing.

Last year, former council president Pat McLaughlin (D) echoed the local Democratic Party's aversion to dialogue by implementing a requirement to specify one's subject when speaking.

Knable now has removed it, and this is good. 

Meanwhile, it is perfectly normal (if surreal) for 1st district councilman Dan Coffey (I) to be on his best behavior during the first few meetings each year. He's studying the terrain for maximum self-aggrandizement, and sniffing the best opportunity to maintain beak-wetting.

Last night, the "good" Coffey ventured a genuinely thoughtful point, sans his customary theatrics: Why not move non-agenda public speaking time back to the beginning of meetings, rather than keeping it at the end?

Wouldn't this be of benefit to long-suffering members of the public, who simply want to be heard?

Shouldn't their comments be made first, up front, without restrictions?

Have a seat and a shot, because Coffey's right. This way members of the public would be spared the inexcusable agony of enduring Coffey's customary theatrics.

Nash asked Coffey how these public comments came to be pushed to meeting's end in the first place. Coffey chuckled and replied (paraphrased): let's just say some council persons weren't interested in listening.

Who was it?

You're in luck, because THAT'S WHY WE'RE HERE.

Let's begin in January of 2010, when at-large councilman John Gonder was elected president. Previously, public comment time was on the agenda at the beginning of meetings. It was not divided into agenda and non-agenda slots. There was a single sign-up sheet, and before the introduction of ordinances and resolutions, those persons listed on it came forth and spoke.

(There are legitimate questions about how long members of the public should be allowed to speak, but these aren't the point, at least at present.)

Gonder changed the agenda; if memory serves, he lifted the original wording from the city's enabling ordinance. Throughout 2010 during Gonder's term, communications still occurred at the beginning of the meeting, in this cadence.

(E) Communications, in the following order:

(1) From city officials
(a) Mayor
(b) Controller)
(c) City Council
(d) City Attorney; and
(e) City Engineer

(2) From official commission:
(a) Board of Public Works;
(b) Plan Commission; and
(c) Park Commission

(3) From members of the public, including petitions and remonstrances

Other council business came after these communications, including committee reports, appointments, and the introduction of ordinances and resolutions.

By the first meeting of February, 2011, the agenda had been streamlined under a new council president.

You might even know him; it was an ambitious veneer peddler by the name of Gahan (D), in what was to be his final year as 6th district councilman prior to enthronement as mayor.

By February 7, 2011 the Great Wall of Comment Segregation had been erected.

From this point forward, members of the public were compelled to restrict their comments to items on the evening's agenda, or cool their heels -- maybe 30 minutes, maybe two hours -- to make general observations about the zeitgeist.

In 2017, McLaughlin cynically refined it further; now general comments were to be strictly delineated, too. Mercifully, this petty suppression is gone, and last evening, Knable also seemed amenable to re-ordering public comments according to Coffey's suggestion. He should. We can't help it if Coffey's right every now and then.

In closing, let's be clear.

If, according to Coffey, some council members back in the day didn't want to listen, it was Jeff Gahan as council president in 2011 who was most eager to rig the proceedings to result in less communication, as opposed to more of it. 

Because as we know, in 2011 or 2018: THAT'S WHY HE'S HERE.

ON THE AVENUES REVISITED: Chocolate covered frozen banana republic, or "understanding" Harvest Homecoming, our peculiar institution.

ON THE AVENUES REVISITED: Chocolate covered frozen banana republic, or "understanding" Harvest Homecoming, our peculiar institution.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It's always instructive to revisit earlier columns. Some things change, while others remain the same.

When I wrote these words three years ago (16 October 2014), my working world remained tied to what was known back then as Bank Street Brewhouse. My own declaration of independence was followed by a campaign for mayor, which I lost. John Gonder lost his bid for another at-large council term. 

Jeff Gahan's cult of personality triumphed in 2015, and the Anchor Corps marches assuredly into a future of institutionalized inanity. Harvest Homecoming's ongoing minor tweaks neither pose a threat to the entity's iron grip on two weeks each October, nor betray the slightest interest in change.  

There we are. I think this piece has dated well, but you may see it differently. If so, let me know. These are your pages, too, and unlike Gahan, I'm happy to provide space for opposing points of view. 

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Love him, hate him, or anywhere in between … but you simply cannot deny that John Gonder is a New Albanian civic rarity.

Gonder is a Democratic Party member and an elected official of a certain age who nonetheless is capable of breaking free and thinking independently. He is aware of the outside world, and comfortable in this apostasy.

Generally speaking, he surveys terrain situated outside his party’s perennially self-delineated Dixiecrat box. Less often than I’d like, he is an essayist, and invariably his thoughts are witty and articulate.

I’m told that John Gonder currently is on the “shit list” maintained by the ruling circle. This is an honor and a distinction, because when one insists on being a progressive thinker in this benighted locality, they surely don’t record your name with a pencil.

I'm delighted to read Gonder’s typically measured reasonableness about Harvest Homecoming, especially since at the moment, the bruised and battered downtown landscape is littered with decapitated straw men, while those politicians willing to speak for attribution mostly mimic the stenographer’s pure drivel as they muster the forces to repel this latest incursion of elitism threatening our most peculiar of institutions.

As previously noted, Harvest Homecoming is the “third rail” of New Albany politics, and as a reminder, this is a metaphor deriving from mass transit rail systems, in which the third rail is the conductor of electricity and as such, quite hazardous to the touch.

third rail

A dangerous area of discussion, a point at which the mere mention of a subject result is disaster. Commonly used in politics.

Somewhat uniquely among the purported local “leadership” cadre, John Gonder is willing to grasp the third rail and challenge the 800-lb gorilla, albeit it with a gentler touch than I’ve been able to muster.

A Moveable Feast

... Since Mr. (Jeff) Cummins welcomed ideas, and since the Tribune has elevated the festival topic to wider discussion, it seems the future of the festival and the continued health of the downtown revival could be best served by making the Harvest Homecoming a moveable feast, migrating from one part of downtown to another, as conditions change and dictate. New Albany's downtown was benefitted by the stimulus of the Harvest Homecoming in the festival's early years. I believe the festival still is a net plus for the city, but it could be a greater contributor to the city which welcomes its pitching of the tents each year at no small cost to the taxpayers.

Creative suggestions like Gonder’s fully mirror many others offered here and elsewhere, to the effect that the festival might alter its configuration of booths to acknowledge modernity, and avoid interfering with existing year-round businesses.

Alas, the councilman’s fundamental rationality – moreover, the combined rationality of every single one of us who endeavors to imagine contemporary ways of thinking and acting outside traditionally constraining municipal boxes -- probably isn’t enough to compel the leaden weight of Harvest Homecoming to willingly concede even the first ounce of hereditary privilege, and this shouldn’t strike anyone as particularly unusual.

---

Having been given carte blanche for 46 years, Harvest Homecoming as an institution has not been compelled to justify its existence, or to prove its worth with facts, as opposed to feelings. It simply is, and must continue, and like any entrenched bureaucracy, it will not surrender voluntarily what it regards as “earned” territorial rights.

Consider the attitude of just one Harvest Homecoming functionary, the festival’s reigning "head honcho" (as dubbed not by me, but by the Gnaws and Trombone). When given the opportunity by the newspaper’s ever accommodating Chris Morris to address downtown business owners prior to his business model’s annual downtown takeover, Jeff Cummins promptly elucidated an intriguing Tao of the Homecoming Harvest.

I want to try and get downtown merchants to understand what the festival is all about.

I cannot stress this point often enough: It’s about downtown day-in, day-out downtown investors and stakeholders being compelled to “understand” Harvest Homecoming’s annual footprint, and not the other way around.

Later, during a Facebook discussion about Harvest Homecoming’s and the city’s ill treatment of Wick’s Pizza, Cummins barged into the room.

Do not speak about what you do not know as being fact. Speculation makes one a fool … The back and forth on social media, 3rd party conversations and assumptions accomplish nothing. Go direct to whom you have the issue and discuss it face to face … Don't play games, it's wasted unproductive time spent. Ask the question.

With Cummins on the “direct” line, so to speak, I prompted him to introduce himself to those who didn’t know him, and provided a link to the aforementioned newspaper article. Then, I asked him two questions.

Does Harvest Homecoming understand what WE'RE about? In the past, I've observed Harvest Homecoming officials telling people that they could not distribute handbills amid the booth area. Now, it seems to me that this is perfectly legal -- freedom of expression, if you will. On what legal basis can the city "lease" free speech on public right-of-ways to a private entity?

The head honcho was ready with his answer.

Not going to debate on here. You have a large tendency to misconstrue what is said to suit your needs.

Which places me in a league with ... Harvest Homecoming. So much for demanding that we ask questions, but unfortunately, it gets even worse.

Given that debating is unworthy of a head honcho's time, Cummins remains eager to remind those 52-weeks-a-year downtown business stakeholders that the fault for booth day disruptions is theirs, not the festival's. From Morris’s fluff piece:

Cummins ... conceded that some businesses fare better than others, but added that some establishments do more to prepare for the thousands of visitors that come to New Albany by adjusting their product offerings for the event.

Businesses just like these, as reported on Fb:

The business I work for will have to close during those days and send four employees home with no pay.


We do 33-50% less business during the week of Harvest Homecoming. Great success.


I lose money every time HH comes to town. We move a lot of equipment and usually can pull up to my building to do so. Because of HH I'll use the alley to get as close as I can. One of their officials came into my store and began screaming and cussing at my employee, "Who's F***ing van is in alley, move it or it will be towed." We had to throw him out. Now, he did this while customers were in the store. And of course when I proceeded to move my vehicle I was severely cussed at and threatened. This is only one negative incident. There are plenty more.

Well, who are you going to believe? Your own eyes, experience and balance sheet, or the head honcho?

---

Or, for that matter, the mayor.

The leadership of Harvest Homecoming has been “adaptive and accommodating” and tweak the festival by offering new events in recent years, Mayor Jeff Gahan said Monday.

But of course they have. Third rails tend to be that way, don’t they? And then there’s John Gonder, doggedly daring to channel the late Bobby Kennedy:

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

Or an even better one, far less often quoted:

Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.

Politically, John Gonder is completely outnumbered by the "C" and "D" students, by the adults who weren't elected to student council as students and missed the prom, and consequently shall be punishing us forever more for these omissions, by the big fish who find the meandering currents of the small pond much to their liking, and by the grandees of Gonder’s own arthritic Democratic Party, in which he might well be the only Floyd County dues-paying member who could reside anonymously in Massachusetts without being regarded as a Ted Cruz-caliber interloper.

Billy Joel was right, and honesty is such a lonely word, indeed.

Harvest Homecoming isn’t about the parade, the booth placement, elephant ear vendors from Keokuk, roving carnies, Chinese-crafted trinkets, corn hole champs, pay-for-play monopolies or even the true believers among attendees, whom even I have little desire to offend; after all, I never said I wanted it to end, only to adapt.

Rather, it's all about the power – this minor league, small potatoes, penny ante power, but power just the same.

That’s right: Harvest Homecoming graciously welcomes any and all ideas, so long as it is understood that nothing whatever can substantively change, and these ideas, once received, are daintily flicked into nearby wastepaper baskets once the petitioners have departed the vicinity.

I understand it perfectly, Jeff Cummins.

It’s rather like a one-party, one-festival state, isn’t it?

---

Recent columns:

September 28: ON THE AVENUES: Sniffles, gratitude and mental exhaustion. Apparently vacation is over.

September 21: ON THE AVENUES with THE BEER BEAT: Getting in tune with the straight and narrow.

September 14: ON THE AVENUES with THE BEER BEAT: Beef Steak and Porter always made good belly mortar, but did America’s “top” steakhouses get the memo?

September 7: ON THE AVENUES with THE BEER BEAT: We are dispirited in the post-factual beer world.

Our big fat Hibbardendum (3): City voters, take note, because just as in 2015, the NA-FC bond referendum is a "driving oriented, suburban school model."

Originally published on April 6, 2015. 

The "yes" arguments favoring the 2016 variant of the school corporation's bond referendum are essentially the same as before, when it was defeated by voters during the 2015 primary election. Perhaps unsurprisingly, so are the "no" arguments. Here is one of them. See also:

Our big fat Hibbardendum (1): Follow the PAC-besotted usual suspects' beak wetting in the $87 million schools referendum. 

Our big fat Hibbardendum (2): The more things stay the same, or our school bond referendum, 2016.

ON THE AVENUES: It’s our big fat Hibbardendum, and Jeff Gahan is carrying the superintendent across the threshold as Metro United Way tosses rice and One Southern Indiana steals all the liquor.

---

Unctuous, thy name is Bruce Hibbard.

Back in February, when the reigning superintendent of the NA-FC schools appeared at a city council work session along with Brad "Actually Earns HIS Pay" Snyder to tout the May referendum, at-large councilman John Gonder cut straight to the chase and said aloud what everyone in the room should have been thinking.

Gonder said school officials didn’t actively lobby the public in support of Silver Street Elementary School when it was on the chopping block.

Now the system is wanting to build larger facilities while a school that children once could walk to has been closed, Gonder added.

“I do think that the school corporation has a strong responsibility to neighborhoods in the city,” he said.

Of course, "neighborhoods in the city" have tended to be the last thing on the school corporation's mind, apart from demolishing houses near existing schools (does Dan Coffey get a cut of that CCE action, too?), but if we were expecting introspection from Hibbard, it wasn't happening.

The decision to close those schools — which was made almost five years ago — was in reaction to state funding cuts and other issues facing the system at the time, Hibbard said.

“When we closed those four schools, we didn’t need those four schools,” Hibbard said. “It was really about efficiency for the district so we could survive.”

In short: The school corporation, without which Hibbard's pay packet is rerouted to a tar paper-lined sewer ditch on West 9th Street, must live even if our neighborhoods die.

A subsequent suggestion that "efficiencies" in school administration might include periodic examinations of past policy failures and current golden parachutes was greeted with disingenuousness in the form of Hibbard's gurgling sounds and palpable condescension; apparently Snyder is quite accustomed to dual duty as primary plan presenter and bucket o'sawdust-bearing cleaner of his boss's puke piles.

As the referendum's primary slot draws nearer, let's fast forward to last week's NAC post about the built-in lies of America's transportation system.

Marohn on transportation funding: "Facing the Unknown with Courage."

... We’re locked into a transportation system that requires us to lie to ourselves about what we can know about the future and then spend huge amounts to support that lie. When we underestimate our needs, it confirms our bias for building more. When we overestimate, we can explain it away – if we are ever asked to, which we hardly ever are – by citing factors beyond our control (oil price, recession, fickle humans, etc…). This is a dumb system.

JeffG, from whom the link was borrowed, then used Marohn's main point as a mirror, and held it up to the school corporation.

(Marohn's point) pretty well sums up the upcoming school referendum, too, in which the school corporation seeks to solidify its commitment to a driving oriented, suburban school model for the foreseeable future.

NA-FC buses already drive enough to circle the globe multiple times in less than a week. We know that's extremely costly and not sustainable. We know that children, neighborhoods, and our biosphere do better with walkable, neighborhood schools. But, when I suggest refocusing efforts on such walkable schools, I'm told I'm rehashing previous decisions.

The truth is, the current $120 million plan is the one looking backward, extending and exacerbating the misguided trends of the 50s and 60s while ignoring current and future reality. We can't afford the vehicles, roads, and fuel usage we have now, so what's the school plan? To use what's being called a rare financial opportunity to make sure we keep it that way for as long as possible.

We've often made the argument that the single worst aspect of New Albany's archaic one-way street grid is the way it incessantly rows in the opposite direction, 24 hours each day, negating all expenditures and well-intentioned efforts to revitalize urban neighborhoods. The school corporation often functions in similar fashion. It would be easier to support this referendum if it might somehow be a part of a deal to bring Hibbard to the table, to improve the school corporation as a participating stakeholder in the process of civic improvement, rather than an entity seemingly always pursuing autonomous agendas. Pie in the sky, perhaps.

Meanwhile ...

From what can be seen on-line and in social media, pending corrections, the only two May primary candidates to make public their views on the referendum are Al Knable (at-large council) and Cliff Staten (6th district council), both in favor.

There doesn't seem to be an organized anti-referendum effort, although the comments appended to two posts from January in the Floyd County IN, GOP group at Facebook, most of them by former Floyd County Republican Party chairman Dave Matthews, amply summarize the opposition from a "no new taxes" perspective.

First one
Second one

The pro-referendum case is made on Facebook at Families for Floyd County (the group's web site is here).

A final link: Referendum tax rate slightly higher than estimated for NA-FC Schools (Jerod Clapp, News and Tribune).

 ... (Snyder) said the district’s reasoning with the .1937 rate was to anticipate some growth in the assessed valuation of properties across the county.

The DLGF came back and told them to avoid assuming any growth in the values and keep them essentially flat, slightly raising the estimated rate.

Let's avoid the TIF discussion for now, shall we? It's only Monday morning, and we're already exhausted.

ON THE AVENUES 3-PK, PART ONE: Chocolate covered frozen banana republic, or "understanding" Harvest Homecoming, our peculiar institution (2014).

ON THE AVENUES 3-PK, PART ONE: Chocolate covered frozen banana republic, or "understanding" Harvest Homecoming, our peculiar institution (2014).

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

From October of 2014, a rumination that shows how far we've come ... or haven't. As this year's two-week blockade of Underground Station merchants attests, there is a long way to go, and given a coming influx of downtown residents, will the 800-lb gorilla finally be backed into the corner? 

---

Love him, hate him, or anywhere in between … but you simply cannot deny that John Gonder is a New Albanian civic rarity.

Gonder is a Democratic Party member and an elected official of a certain age who nonetheless is capable of breaking free and thinking independently. He is aware of the outside world, and comfortable in this apostasy. Generally speaking, he surveys terrain situated outside his party’s perennially self-delineated Dixiecrat box. Less often than I’d like, he is an essayist, and invariably his thoughts are witty and articulate.

I’m told that John Gonder currently is on the “shit list” maintained by the ruling circle. This is an honor and a distinction, because when one insists on being a progressive thinker in this benighted locality, they sure don’t record your name with a pencil.

I'm delighted to read Gonder’s typically measured reasonableness about Harvest Homecoming, especially since at the moment, the bruised and battered downtown landscape is littered with decapitated straw men, while those politicians willing to speak for attribution mostly mimic the stenographer’s pure drivel as they muster the forces to repel this latest incursion of elitism threatening our most peculiar of institutions.

As previously noted, Harvest Homecoming is the “third rail” of New Albany politics, and as a reminder, this is a metaphor deriving from mass transit rail systems, in which the third rail is the conductor of electricity and as such, quite hazardous to the touch.

third rail

A dangerous area of discussion, a point at which the mere mention of a subject result is disaster. Commonly used in politics.

Somewhat uniquely among the purported local “leadership” cadre, John Gonder is willing to grasp the third rail and challenge the 800-lb gorilla, albeit it with a gentler touch than I’ve been able to muster.

A Moveable Feast

... Since Mr. (Jeff) Cummins welcomed ideas, and since the Tribune has elevated the festival topic to wider discussion, it seems the future of the festival and the continued health of the downtown revival could be best served by making the Harvest Homecoming a moveable feast, migrating from one part of downtown to another, as conditions change and dictate. New Albany's downtown was benefitted by the stimulus of the Harvest Homecoming in the festival's early years. I believe the festival still is a net plus for the city, but it could be a greater contributor to the city which welcomes its pitching of the tents each year at no small cost to the taxpayers.

Creative suggestions like Gonder’s fully mirror many others offered here and elsewhere, to the effect that the festival might alter its configuration of booths to acknowledge modernity, and avoid interfering with existing year-round businesses.

Alas, the councilman’s fundamental rationality – moreover, the combined rationality of every single one of us who endeavors to imagine contemporary ways of thinking and acting outside traditionally constraining municipal boxes -- probably isn’t enough to compel the leaden weight of Harvest Homecoming to willingly concede even the first ounce of hereditary privilege, and this shouldn’t strike anyone as particularly unusual.

---

Having been given carte blanche for 46 years, Harvest Homecoming as an institution has not been compelled to justify its existence, or to prove its worth with facts, as opposed to feelings. It simply is, and must continue, and like any entrenched bureaucracy, it will not surrender voluntarily what it regards as “earned” territorial rights.

Consider the attitude of just one Harvest Homecoming functionary, the festival’s reigning "head honcho" (as dubbed not by me, but by the Gnaws and Trombone). When given the opportunity by the newspaper’s ever accommodating Chris Morris to address downtown business owners prior to his business model’s annual downtown takeover, Jeff Cummins promptly elucidated an intriguing Tao of the Homecoming Harvest.

I want to try and get downtown merchants to understand what the festival is all about.

I cannot stress this point often enough: It’s about downtown day-in, day-out downtown investors and stakeholders being compelled to “understand” Harvest Homecoming’s annual footprint, and not the other way around.

Later, during a Facebook discussion about Harvest Homecoming’s and the city’s ill treatment of Wick’s Pizza, Cummins barged into the room.

Do not speak about what you do not know as being fact. Speculation makes one a fool … The back and forth on social media, 3rd party conversations and assumptions accomplish nothing. Go direct to whom you have the issue and discuss it face to face … Don't play games, it's wasted unproductive time spent. Ask the question.

With Cummins on the “direct” line, so to speak, I prompted him to introduce himself to those who didn’t know him, and provided a link to the aforementioned newspaper article. Then, I asked him two questions.

Does Harvest Homecoming understand what WE'RE about? In the past, I've observed Harvest Homecoming officials telling people that they could not distribute handbills amid the booth area. Now, it seems to me that this is perfectly legal -- freedom of expression, if you will. On what legal basis can the city "lease" free speech on public right-of-ways to a private entity?

The head honcho was ready with his answer.

Not going to debate on here. You have a large tendency to misconstrue what is said to suit your needs.

Which places me in a league with ... Harvest Homecoming. So much for demanding that we ask questions, but unfortunately, it gets even worse.

Given that debating is unworthy of a head honcho's time, Cummins remains eager to remind those 52-weeks-a-year downtown business stakeholders that the fault for booth day disruptions is theirs, not the festival's. From Morris’s fluff piece:

Cummins ... conceded that some businesses fare better than others, but added that some establishments do more to prepare for the thousands of visitors that come to New Albany by adjusting their product offerings for the event.

Businesses just like these, as reported on Fb:

The business I work for will have to close during those days and send four employees home with no pay.


We do 33-50% less business during the week of Harvest Homecoming. Great success.


I lose money every time HH comes to town. We move a lot of equipment and usually can pull up to my building to do so. Because of HH I'll use the alley to get as close as I can. One of their officials came into my store and began screaming and cussing at my employee, "Who's F***ing van is in alley, move it or it will be towed." We had to throw him out. Now, he did this while customers were in the store. And of course when I proceeded to move my vehicle I was severely cussed at and threatened. This is only one negative incident. There are plenty more.

Well, who are you going to believe? Your own eyes, experience and balance sheet, or the head honcho?

---

Or, for that matter, the mayor.

The leadership of Harvest Homecoming has been “adaptive and accommodating” and tweak the festival by offering new events in recent years, Mayor Jeff Gahan said Monday.

But of course they have. Third rails tend to be that way, don’t they? And then there’s John Gonder, doggedly daring to channel the late Bobby Kennedy:

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

Or an even better one, far less often quoted:

Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.

Politically, John Gonder is completely outnumbered by the "C" and "D" students, by the adults who weren't elected to student council as students and missed the prom, and consequently shall be punishing us forever more for these omissions, by the big fish who find the meandering currents of the small pond much to their liking, and by the grandees of Gonder’s own arthritic Democratic Party, in which he might well be the only Floyd County dues-paying member who could reside anonymously in Massachusetts without being regarded as a Ted Cruz-caliber interloper.

Billy Joel was right, and honesty is such a lonely word, indeed.

Harvest Homecoming isn’t about the parade, the booth placement, elephant ear vendors from Keokuk, roving carnies, Chinese-crafted trinkets, corn hole champs, pay-for-play monopolies or even the true believers among attendees, whom even I have little desire to offend; after all, I never said I wanted it to end, only to adapt.

Rather, it's all about the power – this minor league, small potatoes, penny ante power, but power just the same.

That’s right: Harvest Homecoming graciously welcomes any and all ideas, so long as it is understood that nothing whatever can substantively change, and these ideas, once received, are daintily flicked into nearby wastepaper baskets once the petitioners have departed the vicinity.

I understand it perfectly, Jeff Cummins.

It’s rather like a one-party, one-festival state, isn’t it?

---

September 22: ON THE AVENUES: On two-way streets, a modest proposal for the consideration of my disoriented one-way counterpart.

September 15: ON THE AVENUES Now for my next amazing conversion trick (KABOOM!!!) – look at those pretty windows on Schmitt Furniture.

September 8: ON THE AVENUES: It no longer keeps me waiting.

September 1: ON THE AVENUES: Complete ventriloquism, or the stagecraft of "throwing" your two-way streets.

Let's recall the council's role in the Story of the Steeple, starting way back in 2012.

Photo by Robert Landrum.

It wasn't enough to divert the paper's reality television fetishism from the top spot in its daily e-mail news tout, but the Second Baptist Church on Main Street has a new steeple.

In a "Cheers and Jeers" over the weekend, one of the paper's long-term sous chefs made note of the fundraising effort to make the steeple possible, and in the interest of historical accuracy when recalling this historic rehab, let's not forget that the city chipped in, too -- and it was mildly controversial at the time.

From the Red Devil Chronicle, July 19, 2013:

New Albany council OKs funds for church, by Daniel Suddeath

 ... When the money was appropriated in February, Councilmen Greg Phipps and Scott Blair voted against the measure. Blair said at the time he had reservations about whether matching funds could be raised to complete the initial phases of the project. Phipps cited his belief in separation of church and state matters as his reason for voting against the appropriation.

From NA Confidential, October 2, 2012:

1 - City council meeting tweeted as it happened, October 1

A-12-21 $ to restore 2nd Baptist Clock Tower. Discussion. Phipps voices church-state concerns; easements must be included. Gonder dislikes.

Steeple replacement and erection sailed through council at a time when it was imperative to fund various pablum-by-the-numbers Bicentennial galas so that four years later, Bob Caesar still can refuse to provide me specifics on expenditures incurred by his party-like-it's-1817 committee.

(Look for a FOIA request, coming soon; after all, I've waited almost a year)

As was obvious at the time, Councilman Phipps was right about the church/state separation issues inherent in the steeple discussion. In effect, council provided "challenge funding" (John Gonder's words) to one active congregation while withholding it from others, although in retrospect, the steeple's refurbishment may have been the sole Bicentennial gesture toward the city's African-American community -- most of whom do not attend Second Baptist Church.

Water, meet bridge and flow downstream.

All's well that ends ... well, the steeple does look lovely, and it's been immensely entertaining to watch as the city's propaganda arm carefully parsed praise for the project, given that personages high on Oz's Fundamentally Stinkier Enemies List carried the ball for the steeple, Irv Stumler and Jerry Finn prime among them.

Just a thought, but can we do something yet about the street grid that kills people?

ON THE AVENUES REPRISE: Die hard the Hunter, or the political "impossibility" of rental property registration in New Albany (2015).

Earlier this morning: Pat Harrison's Enduring Gestapo Fetish in Six (6) Easy Pieces.

My column (below) was published on March 12, 2015, just shy of one year ago. It ties up a few loose ends with regard to Harrison's Slumlord Uprising of 2008, but far more than, with the issue about to come bubbling to the surface yet again, this  morning's posts reinforce the salient point of New Albany's record of rental property registration and code enforcement since 2007:

Nine years passed, NOTHING achieved.  

You're forgiven for questioning how New Albany's political caste, comprised primarily of politicians identifying themselves as Democrats, manages the feat of sleeping at night.

But you see, vampires -- they're both dead and undead, right?

Conscience doesn't factor into it ... does it?

---

ON THE AVENUES: Die Hard the Hunter, or the political "impossibility" of rental property registration in New Albany.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Rental Property Registration is an essential tool for creating a code enforcement system that effectively identifies problem properties and, through random inspections, deters landlords from engaging in deferred maintenance and lax property management. A strongly‐enforced rental registration program “lets the owner understand that he is known to the municipality and accountable for his actions with respect to the property.”
-- "An Analysis of Rental Property Registration in Austin"

The calendar reads 2015, and as we meander yet again down the weed-choked, trash-strewn garden path of pervasive legislative impotence in New Albany as it pertains to building codes -- an exercise sure to be made even more flaccid by the imperative to waffle and pander during an election cycle -- it’s fairly clear that this ongoing abdication of responsibility over a period of decades constitutes the single biggest failing of this city's purported "leadership" caste.

Today we turn back the clock to 2008, a full seven years ago, and a series of NAC posts referencing what surely was among the city’s most theatrical of rental property registration failure.

Read them and weep, because nothing has been achieved, and cannot be for so long as value extraction and decay management remain the dominant motifs of our ever-helpful duopoly of major political parties.

---

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22, 2008
Boss Hogg and the meaning of life
Roger A. Baylor

While we may have been on opposite sides recently, at-large councilman John Gonder is intelligent, well intentioned and conscientious. Saturday morning, he’ll be convening a meeting. As explained at his blog:

The committee formed to address the issue of rental registration and code enforcement will hold its first meeting this Saturday morning, August 23, at 10:00 A.M. in the Elsa Strassweg Auditorium in the Library.

This meeting is expected to be brief. It is intended to simply outline where the committee is headed.

Those interested are welcome, and encouraged to attend.

Of course, Gonder played a prominent role in the (perhaps) concluded smoking ban saga, which turned on a “yea” swing vote by none other than Dan Coffey. The extent to which Gonder cultivated this amazing turnabout is unknown, although it’s fair to surmise that all the council’s quasi-progressives were forced to grudgingly raid their comic book collections to achieve the elimination of workplace smoking through Coffey’s surreal ballot.

The reason I muse aloud about these topics has much to do with my personal feelings about rental property registration, inspection, reform, and whatever other action is necessary to establish three simple facts.

Owning a rental property is a business.

Rental housing is a matter of public health.

Such a business is indeed the city’s business.

I made several predictions with respect to the smoking ordinance, and the majority proved correct. Last evening Coffey was overheard commenting that the council was about to establish a strong rental property registration package, and in honor of this, I’ll make another prognostication (and hope I’m wrong).

When push comes to shove, Coffey will unceremoniously kneecap any meaningful rental property reform, and while doing so, he’ll laugh at – not with – Gonder.

Like I said, I hope I’m mistaken. But color me skeptical. I see the miraculous smoking conversion as a one-off, the true price of which we’ll never know. Now we’re going to get the real Cappuccino, once again … and to the detriment of all.

---

MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2008
Steve Price on rental registration and code enforcement: "This is a bunch of (expletive deleted) (expletive deleted)."
Roger A. Baylor

Before we document the 3rd district uncouncilman’s revealingly ill-tempered sex-act-and-defecation outburst at the library on Saturday -- that's right, within whispering distance of the kiddie section -- let’s look back at a bit of pertinent information posted here last week.

Owning a rental property is more than an investment — it's a business. You have to be willing and able to commit the time and resources necessary to run your business successfully.
--GMAC Mortgage website

Did you know that to search the Internet for “rental property” + business is to generate more than 3,000,000 hits?

Yesterday, my colleague Bluegill documented the scene following Saturday’s first rental registration and code enforcement committee meeting. In the comments section, Gina Coyle asked if Price really lost it, and Jeff replied:

Yes, G, (Price) said it, apparently right after he told Lloyd Wimp that he'd do whatever he could to fight it (rental registrations).

He played most of his in-meeting comments to the landlords in the crowd, bemoaning what a tough business rental property is, which I'm sure you saw.

It's paraphrased but here's the gist:

After the meeting, an already angry Steve interrupted my conversation with another committee member.

"You're wrong. Rental property ain't a business", he said.

I told him that it is and asked what he did for a living.

He then went into a semi-intelligible tirade about how it wasn't. I asked him what he did for a living.

He told me my house (which serves as a family residence only) was a business. I asked him what he did for a living.

He hollered that he didn't want to pay any more taxes. I asked what taxes he was talking about since there hadn't been any additional taxes discussed. And then I asked him what he did for a living.

When he started to say something else unrelated, I told him to answer the question about what he did for a living.

"I'm barely breaking even", he said. "I'm living off my council salary."

"Just because your business is struggling," I said, "it doesn't mean it's not a business."

With that he turned for the door, repeated some of the stuff he'd said earlier about people wanting guys with clipboards running around, and then finally pronounced "This is all a bunch of fucking bullshit" as he headed out.

The funniest part to me is Price's unintentionally candid (and ever elastic) definition of "business": It's a business if you're making money, but not if times are hard. Price isn't making any money off his rental properties, therefore, they no longer constitute a business.

Right.

It hasn't stopped him from incorporating a business entity, has it?

I'm guessing Price's state of affairs has more to do with business expertise and the normal cycle of business than the nature of business itself, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding him. That's an easy thing to do. Listening to Price speak publicly is rather like trying to read a goat path map of Tibet -- upside down.

But those priceless expletives … well, the meaning is clear. Ironically, taken together, they also aptly describe the quality of the “work” Price has done during his tenure as councilman.

The same general attitude also helps encapsulate our eternal gratitude that council president Gahan has appointed the transparently biased Price to the rental committee. Before this, Gahan gifted the Urban Enterprise Association board with precisely the same befuddled personage (attendance record: 3 "present" and 5 "absent" so far this year).

Thanks, Jeff.

Actually, "fucking bullshit" describes Gahan's recent attitude toward the community in general just as pithily as it does Price's historically cavalier disregard for his 3rd district neighbors.

Perhaps, then, we should file this under "be careful what you wish for," because having asked for consistency, Gahan's now giving it to us.

Good and hard.

---

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2008
Dude -- you guys live over in that product over there?
Roger A. Baylor

Tonight at the rental property inspection committee meeting, Mr. Haesley, the owner of Property Solutions, made these assertions.

(a) His business is located at (insert Floyds Knobs address here).

(b) All the many houses this business owns, from which the business derives income (dare we imagine … makes a profit?) by charging people a fee (that’d be “rent”) to live there, actually are not properties. They are products.

(c) Does a department store have to register each and every one of the products it sells?

I’ll leave it to Bluegill (who filmed the meeting) and others – was local media present? – to provide the in-depth coverage of the evening.

All I can say is this.

(a) Okay. I have an address, too. It isn’t a post office box, either.

(b) The beers I sell aren’t products, mind you. They’re dreams. How can we tax/register/license a dream?

(c) Pick an item in any store. Every step of the way, licensing is involved. Even if it comes from an unregulated Chinese sweat shop, the product is subject to some manner of importation licensing. What of the truck that delivered it? A licensed driver, of course. I'm sure we could follow this further. Why bother?

A product, huh?

Earlier in the session, Councilman John Gonder took a poll of the people in attendance, asking whether they were for or against a simple rental property registration program without registration fees. The vote predictably split along landlord/activist lines. Gonder did not permit stronger views to be enumerated.

Count me among the latter, though. So long as rental property owners insult my intelligence with arguments as weak as Mr. Haesley’s, then I advocate licenses for every rental unit in town.

Am I am extremist? Maybe. All I know is that my business is in fact a business, it is regulated to the hilt by multiple governmental agencies, and I accept regulation as the cost of doing business.

Business is business … right?

---

See also the late, lamented Lloyd's account of a chat with Haesley, here.

---

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2008
The next video should be instructional.
Jeff Gillenwater

A video feed of the second rental registration and code enforcement meeting will be posted as soon as I can get it done. The process takes hours and, seeing as how I'm trying to do the traditional media's job with a 12-year-old video camera I bought off eBay nine years ago, patience is appreciated. I think I'll leave the rig at home next time and just smoke a cigarette in the meeting room. Then you can watch it on the 11:00 news.

One needn't view the video in it's entirety, however, to grasp the essence of the situation. Amidst the embroidery of humorously bad arguments, irrelevant anecdotes, and sanitation fantasies, at least one thing is plain:

No one knows the law.

Over and over again, the questions arose: What legal obligation does the city have to notify property owners of code violations and what can legally be done if they don't respond? For that matter, what enforcement and collection options, according to the state, does the city have if they do respond? Every time, the answer was "I don't know".

Given the number of times the building commissioner has expressed exasperation with those unknowns, you'd think finding them out would be the crux of his efforts. If thinking was the hallmark of New Albany's past couple of decades, though, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

As much credit as I give John Gonder for displaying the fortitude so lacking in previous councils, there's not much sense in continuing the foray into chaos until those legal questions are answered. Otherwise, we'll be seeking to build an enforcement mechanism based on faulty remembrances rather than contemporary understanding.

And with all the superfluous talk throughout this conversation of how great things used to be, another myth is the last thing we need.

---

Time passes. Pins drop, and crickets chirp. Somewhere in the night, a dog barks.

---

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2008
The ordinance against "no-brainers" is subject to multiple interpretations.
Roger A. Baylor

There's good coverage of common sense in the morning newspaper, with our own Bluegill in an advisory capacity.

A code of safety: Some feel crime and code enforcement are linked in New Albany, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

Lax code enforcement welcomes a criminal element into New Albany, according to Jeff Gillenwater.

Gillenwater, a New Albany resident who has lobbied for tougher rules through his work with several neighborhood associations, said deteriorating houses and rentals impact more than merely property values.

“Make it look like nobody cares and potential residents will believe you, including relocating criminals,” he said.

Mayor Doug England promised to lay out his code enforcement plan to the City Council when he returns from back surgery and rehabilitation, which will likely be the first week of January.

Alas, another year has passed during which New Albany's city council has acted boldly on trivial pursuits, such as the currently unenforced (duh) ban on novelty lighters, but proposed nothing of substance to curb the city's empowerment of slumlords, a situation that derives not from ordinance, but from generations of outright political cowardice.

To be sure, there have been fact-finding meetings, and CM John Gonder waxes optimistic, telling the Tribune's Suddeath, "I am very hopeful. I have no reason to think that they will pull out a toothless tiger."

Gonder gets it, and yet toothlessness is such a part of New Albany's heritage of unresponsiveness that it surely must be written into the city's genetic code. According to our political DNA, measures to combat the unchecked reign of the slumlord are DOA. It's going to take more than words. Think: Deeds ... irrespective of the political fallout.

Uncouncilman Steve Price, who by his own testimony yearns to be regarded as a "hobbyist" rental property owner who makes nothing from it (and they call me a socialist), said it best back in August after the initial rental property registration committee meeting: "This is all a bunch of fucking bullshit."

It is, but as usual, not in the way that Price unimagines.

None of us currently know the dimension of the mayor's plan to address the reality of New Albany's default state of non-enforcement. I remain hopeful, although we are well advised to refrain from holding our breaths.

---

Postscript: Doug England did nothing through the end of his term, after which Gahan (seeking re-election this year) has done nothing since the beginning of his. 

Gahan’s 2015 primary opponent, David White, has had nothing to say on the matter, while the GOP’s rental-property-owning mayoral nominee, Kevin Zurschmiede, has led the current effort to reform building codes – without a rental property registration component. 

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

Mayor Gahan should add New Albany's name to Cities United for Immigration Action.

As Kevin Zurschmiede pointed out repeatedly during the mayoral campaign, New Albany is losing population. Given City Hall's perpetual silence and Jeff Gahan's idea-free career in politics, we've no idea whether he acknowledges this as a problem, although a case might be made that massive public subsidies for luxury apartments constitutes recognition.

A weak case, but still.

Amid the clamorous anti-immigrant idiocy fertilizing social media like so many native madrasas, and the perpetual conniving of Republican intellectual terror cells, there are American mayors speaking sensibly.

Cities United for Immigration Action

Let’s strengthen our cities by keeping families together, further growing our economies, and fostering additional community trust in law enforcement and government. Pledge your support as we work with cities nationwide to implement the president’s executive action.

Yes, most of the mayors and executives adding their names to this list hail from large cities. But Haledon, New Jersey (population 8,318) isn't.

They're not all located in "red" states, either; Salt Lake City and Travis County, Texas are represented.

The only Indiana city is Gary. There are none from Kentucky, although Kentucky Refugee Ministries and Louisville Catholic Charities are moving ahead with programs to assist refugees.  There are others, so please append them in the comments section.

I know: There is nothing in the city of New Albany's 200-year old stunted and underachieving genetic sequence to indicate interest in immigration-borne revitalization, and I can think of perhaps two elected officials here likely to be even remotely acquainted with the subject matter, although I'm sure Dan Coffey could speak at length about the voting patterns of dead Democrats.

Call me crazy, but Gahan should add his name to the list at Cities United for Immigration Action. He won't, because doing so would be like expecting one of my cats to perform trigonometry, and yet as a progressive citizen, I expect my mayor to have a pulse and do more than pander to money.

Perhaps a council resolution authored by John Gonder, who's already been kneecapped by Team Gahan. They can't hurt you any longer, John. Please allow us the pleasure of  watching as Caesar and Blair squirm in their nice suits and padded chairs.

Let it fly, and let's see who votes against it.

Governors Should Listen to Mayors on Syrian Refugees, by Kriston Capps (City Lab)

The deadly attacks in Paris may be shaping the debate over immigration in the U.S. Since Friday, a number of governors from across the U.S. have pledged to do what they can to stop Syrian immigrants from relocating within the borders of their states, despite the fact that Syrians are fleeing the same kind of violence that was visited upon Paris and Beirut last week.

Meanwhile, mayors from some of the largest U.S. cities are welcoming Syrian immigrants with open arms. It’s another example of the growing gulf between city and state leaders on civic priorities ranging from climate change to the minimum wage.

Gonder: "The business most worthy of economic assistance is one that's already operating."

SIPS had not been open long when Jason agreed with my assessment of the street grid and allowed a two-way sign to be taped to his window.

November 17, 2013: Southern Indiana Paint Supply: On the right side of New Albany street grid history.


Unlike Councilman Gonder, I have not had any need for paint lately, but I share his sadness and dismay. I'm reminded of the numerous times I've heard the city's economic development director lament the absence of any way municipal government might assist independent local business, prior to him running off to submit gerrymandered CF1 Forms (tax abatements for larger businesses) to council.

John explains how and does a good job, as usual. If Gahan and the Democratic Party succeed in kneecapping Gonder in the forthcoming election, he's cordially invited to join The Resistance.

Fish Story--One That Got Away, by John Gonder (Gonder for New Albany At-Large)

A widely accepted proposition in pursuit of environmental responsibility is, "the greenest building is one that's already built." This says, use the earth's resources which have already been expended in a good, solid, or even well-worn structure, before chasing after the tweaks and technological advances of new construction in pursuit of greater efficiencies. After all, even a high-efficiency structure displacing a usable older building, carries with it the sunk environmental costs of the resources, time, money, and effort of the original building. Even if those costs are not reflected monetarily, they are still carried as debits on the earth's ledger.

An economic development corollary to that proposition might be, "the business most worthy of economic assistance is one that's already operating." Assuming the existing business is a positive commercial citizen of the community, one that adds value by delivering necessary and helpful products, services or labor, or one that by its very presence helps to stabilize a neighborhood or lay the groundwork for further improvement in a particular part of town, it may be wiser to focus scarce economic development funds on that business, rather than a different startup asking for assistance. It may be better to water a withering vine than to plant a new one.

I happened upon such a withering vine yesterday in New Albany's Uptown area. It is the Benjamin Moore paint store at the corner of Vincennes and Market streets. I buy a lot of paint, and yet in the two years the store has been in New Albany, yesterday was the first time I'd been in it. So, I, and others like me, are at least part of the reason the store is closing. The gentleman working at the store and I discussed the sad news reported by the big yellow notes on the front door, and the cash register, posted to inform customers that the store will close on September 11, 2015 ...

The Voting Rights Act, the Democratic Party, LBJ and John Gonder.

“Lyndon Johnson bared his scars, American stars 'n bars.” -- Neil Young

It is a sentiment with which I concur, even when our local Democrats rush to advocate Reaganite "trickle ripple tinkle down" corporate welfare schemes in economic development.

"As Democrats, we will continue to fight to expand access to the polls for every eligible voter."

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act means giving props to Lyndon Baines Johnson, and accordingly, at-large councilman John Gonder offered this Facebook comment suggestion that is sure to be ignored.

In honor of this momentous occasion, as well as all the other civil rights progress he ushered in, and because Andrew Jackson has more than a few skeletons in his closet, why not replace one of the Js in the JJ Dinner with LBJ? It's time to stop honoring Indian fighters, and start recognizing the good deeds our party has done in (many of) our own lifetimes.

As usual, it makes far too much sense.

Gilderbloom: Proving what Gahan can't seem to fathom, tonight at the library.

As noted previously ...

You are invited to listen as Dr. John Gilderbloom preaches his "gospel of things urban" on Tuesday, August 4, at the library.

This is tonight. It's important because ...

"As safety and livability become more important ... the case for converting one-way streets into two-way streets (is) a compelling one."

It's a difficult topic upon which to mount a self-congratulatory plaque, but one addressing genuine fundamentals in the effective management of, and investment in, the city's daily working infrastructure. A good place for the mayor to begin, assuming he ever emerges from aquatic seclusion:

Mr. Padgett's Blues: "10-Foot Traffic Lanes Are Safer—and Still Move Plenty of Cars."

We're hoping to see you tonight ... and big thanks to councilman John Gonder for organizing the event.