New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
Showing posts with label Redevelopment Commission. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Redevelopment Commission. Show all posts
In the final analysis, the local demolish 'n' develop cadre needn't be all that proficient at what they do. They can take down a 100-year-old tree to accommodate "luxury" townhouses with a lifespan of two decades, and it doesn't matter.
Skill and ability is irrelevant; just learn to read the tea leaves and know exactly when to give the pay-to-play wheel a mighty heave.
Then it's out with the chain saws.
My personal view? The in-crowd in the festering boil of a dirty river town can go ... nah, never mind. The Pavlov's Dog effect in Nawbany means that I write or say something true, and someone close to me gets an electrical shock.
PLEASE READ NO FURTHER UNLESS YOU WISH TO CONSIDER A REASONABLE, DISPASSIONATE DISCUSSION ABOUT MULTI-MODAL TRANSIT, ESPECIALLY BICYCLES. THANK YOU.
Now let's talk about the latest greenway extension press release from the municipals, as forwarded by the local chain newspaper: design/article_58768636-b59b-11ea-ac27-fbf8f2c391e9.html" style="font-weight: bold;">New Albany proceeds with next stage of greenway design.
Before you read the pull, know that to have surveyed the goings-on by the municipal higher-ups for the past decade or more is to see that when it comes to their attitude toward bicycles, it's as if none of them have ever been to a place in America or abroad where people use bicycles to commute and achieve actual useful tasks (as they would driving a car), as opposed to using bicycles strictly as recreational conveyances -- often, loading a bike onto a car and TAKING it somewhere else to ride.
In functional bicycle-friendly cities, the idea is to connect one's front door to a safe path to food, drink and a haircut as well as the recreational pathway.
Why do you think almost all the useful bicycle infrastructure was stripped from the Speck plan? The movers and shakers either don't understand, or they do understand and have made the conscious decision not to pursue genuinely multi-modal transport options. I tend to think they simply don't comprehend, because if they did, don't you think reality would reflect just a wee bit of it by now?
Let's read about the Democratic Party's plans for partial modernity.
Basically, the idea is to extend the Greenway to the little pocket park where people can park their cars next to Silver Creek. A quarter-mile, maybe?
It won't serve any constructive purpose as it pertains to people using bikes to connect from neighborhoods to the center, presumably because this would inconvenience drivers.
If there's another reason why they do these things, I wish someone would explain it to me instead of refusing to discuss it.
Note the quote from Adam Dickey about connecting bicycles to Clarksville via projected sidewalks. You know, where bicycles are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE in the first place. They're supposed to be on the street ... where we won't make it safe for people outside their cars. And yet Dickey adds that future plans should include provisions for walkers, not bicycles.
Automobile supremacy has us by the gonads, doesn't it?
... “This part called Silver Creek Landing not only expands northward up Silver Creek, but it also opens Silver Creek up to recreational use,” (redevelopment's Josh) Staten said.
Commission member Adam Dickey said the Clarksville Town Council has expressed interest in improving sidewalks along Providence Way, which could further improve safety and accessibility to the greenway.
He added that New Albany’s prior work on the greenway allows the city to explore additional connectivity to the pathway in the corridor.
“This is going to put us in a great position because no one else has moved up to Silver Creek, and I think this puts us in a leadership position,” Dickey said.
New Albany City Councilman Jason Applegate, who is also a member of the commission, emphasized the importance of opening up the greenway to other neighborhoods. He said safety is also a vital component of accessibility, and Dickey added the city should ensure that future roadway design centers around complete streets that allow for pedestrian use.
“We see the greenways being used so I think connectivity is so important,” Applegate said.
But what happened to "wrapping" the parking garage with apartments and other luxury amenities -- or did Cornerstone merely tithe the mayor's re-election slush fund and move on to a different town?
Redevelopment Commission secretary Adam "Where the Fix Is Always In" Dickey records Irving Joshua's strange musings on the possibility of the State Street parking garage's adaptive reuse (from the meeting of February 14).
Wouldn't you love it if Cornerstone came back with a recommendation to convert the parking garage into a farmers market?
Why is DNA opposed to having an intelligent community discussion about the farmers market and its place in a revitalizing downtown without resorting to the misconceptions and scaremongering?
Moreover, if we're paying engineering consultants to explore different uses for the parking garage, does it mean we don't have a parking problem, after all?
We need to hurry with the public art solution before Dogs Playing Poker wins -- again.
I'm turning over a new leaf ... on January 1. Festivus lasts until all my grievances are aired.
In 2018, Mayor Jeff Gahan unveiled a wondrous plan for rails-to-trails to extend from just north of the former Pillsbury plant to Bedford, reminding us that when anything seems too good to be true, check your wallet.
The hosannas rained down, the boot-polishers got giddy, and yet no observers in local mainstream media bothered asking the only pertinent question: Wouldn't an idea like this be far better linking the Greenway to IU Southeast? -- and besides, the city of New Albany wouldn't even be responsible for 95% of any such project perched on the outer edge of the city limits, right?
Dear Leader took credit, the sycophants became orgasmic, and apart from this blog, conventional media outlets repeated the press release talking points with nary a moment of doubt.
However, there was ample annoyance from property owners along the rights-of-way outside city limits, as well two or three oblique voices located far away from the Gahan inner circle, who kept pointing out an important fact: A component of the city's deal with Sazerac to move into Pillsbury included the provision that CSX would be re-opening the rail line running through the densely populated center of the city, which only a few years ago was a controversial facet of life downtown.
Or, precluding the only rational use of the railroad's right of way for a rails to trails scheme owing to the elegantly simple reason that it was about to be put back into use, thus averting gazes elsewhere. Neither the mayor nor a single candidate for city council thought this entire situation important enough to clarify or so much as mention during the municipal campaign, prime among them Greg Phipps, who once upon a time was outspokenly opposed to trains disrupting the serenity of his hermetic third district.
Gahan's rails-to-trails public relations stunt -- and that's all it ever was -- will be tied down amid lawsuits from property owners ... and it never had anything to do with New Albany, anyway.
Meanwhile Phipps has become a born-again defender of corporate interests at the expense of -- shall we say it aloud? -- QUALITY OF LIFE in his district.
And, notice yet again that Gahan's automobile supremacist default floats inevitably to the surface; in an ideal instance where non-automotive mobility might have been served by a downtown rails-to-trails, Gahan ends by assuring you that the roadway for your car will be smoother.
Bait and switch, thy name is Gahan, but don't look at me. I didn't re-elect the evasive connivers -- you did.
... Work to update the tracks and roadway intersections started in recent weeks, with crews popping up in areas throughout the city.
No exact timeline for the repairs has been set, but Mayor Jeff Gahan said the work is in full swing.
“It’s fully under construction," he said. "They want it done as soon as possible. They have removed some ties and done some road repairs."
Early phases of the work have seen crews working to tear up and replace older components of the railroads to ready them for renewed traffic. Such construction has seen the closure of sections of roadways along the East 15th Street tracks, including some that have lasted throughout this week.
Another feature of the final product will be improved intersections with the city's streets. Gahan said the city is looking to make these crossings smoother for vehicles ...
I'm turning over a new leaf ... on January 1. Meanwhile it's Festivus.
These stakes jut up from the cute gravel on the north side of Market Street between Pearl and State, where in 2019 Team Gahan spent lots more money than the Horseshoe Foundation donated to them in order to beautify according to the suburban design templates of HWC Engineering.
It's an aesthetic atrocity overall, more reminiscent of Mussolini's fascist Italy than anything belonging in a Midwestern city, but that's a topic for future archaeologists to consider.
THIS is a trip hazard.
There are supposed to be wires attached to the tree, but they're wrapped around the trunk; this is just as well, given that the wires are invisible at night and snag humans (little flags would help, right?), but the remaining untended stakes are just as hazardous.
At least on Terry Middleton's side of the street -- lavished with money he voted to approve as a member of the Redevelopment Commission, which in turn has improved the value of his property -- the trip hazards are quite well lit.
On the south side of Market Street, which was lavished with nothing in terms of "improvement" money in spite of the considerable investments in property made by Steve Resch and Todd Coleman, we're lucky to have one of three ancient street lights lit. For months all three were burned out even as a million bucks landed 100 feet away. Now one works (photo last Friday evening).
That's nice, festive -- and dark.
Meanwhile a tree was planted in front of the Pints&union door, this being the place where customers congregate, enter and exit. To my knowledge neither Resch nor any of us were asked if this made any sense; it merely was done, and people began tripping over the wires and stakes, something that seemingly never occurred to the planners.
Soon the wires were loose and the stakes uprooted, then I watched as successive lawn care contractors watered the tree but did nothing about the stakes and wires even when I mentioned it to them.
It's endlessly fascinating to watch peak, self-interested Gahanism in action.
Gahanism is about power, money and control; all ideas must emanate from the same centralized source deep inside the Genius of the Floodplain's cranium, although it bears repeating (again and again) that if absolute power really does corrupt absolutely, you'd have to go to Belarus or Pyongyang to find a better example of it than right here in Anchored Down City.
Collated instances of our municipal #CultureOfCorruption would fill a War and Peace-sized volume, but there's no better example than this year's Colonial Manor episode.
Suffice to say that in 2019, when Team #MyNA Gahan belatedly learned there was a grassroots neighborhood initiative underway, the ruling clique reacted to this thoughtful, well-conceived and firmly non-partisan effort by sending Warren Nash in riot gear running through inhumanely heated and cooled City Hall corridors screaming "EBOLA! We're all gonna DIE!"
And so the Redevelopment Commission's upper echelon of fixers went into late-night hyperspace. Boilerplate plans from a campaign donor firm quickly were cobbled together, a public comment session with no public comment allowed was held, the battered TIF piggy bank was shaken down to its hooves, and voila -- here's the official plan, straight from the unprecedented mind of Dear Leader, ready to be rubber-stamped just in time for the primary election.
Given that the Redevelopment Commission is regarded by Jeff Gahan as his personal plaything, and the Colonial Manor purchase with the TIF One Platinum card plainly was intended as a rushed feather in Dear Leader's re-election bonnet, things now get interesting.
It was yet another example of a phenomenon described with typical clarity by NAC's junior editor, Jeff Gillenwater.
Gahan isn’t remotely interested in input. His personal insecurity, control issues, and need to generate campaign kickbacks from the contractors involved keep any sort of real input from ever happening. Citizens get expensive, poorly conceived and executed projects and Gahan gets a flood of tax dollars into his campaign coffers. It’s a worst case scenario, repeated frequently enough to be the hallmark of his tenure as mayor. New Albanians two generations from now will still be paying for his ego trip.
If you haven't yet exercised your right to vote, then I suggest you vote against Jeff Gahan by voting for Mark Seabrook. New Albany needs a break from the cartoonish buffoonery of Big Daddy G's megalomania. Let's just let Gahan haul away his $100k in leftover special interest campaign finance donations (but not without first paying taxes on it, mind you), exit the down-low bunker and accept his next powder-puff position as a political consultant -- or would HWC even consider hiring an ex-provider?
You may have noticed the demolitions on Vincennes.
Photo credit: Bruce.
These five lots between Ekin and Shelby ...
... were purchased by SBG Development from the city of New Albany earlier in September. 802, 804, 806 and 808 Vincennes appear to be a unit, as reflected here; 802 Vincennes is to be considered an umbrella listing.
The lot at 810 was a separate transaction.
SBG is a familiar face: Chad Sprigler.
Although bizarrely, the Elevate site has SBG listed as a Kentucky company located at 1122 Rogers Street in Louisville. That's curious, because this address links with the Marian Group, also a collection of developers.
Back to the fate of those five lots on Vincennes. We turn to the Redevelopment Commission meeting of August 13.
Here's the pastel rendering.
Totally keeping in the character of the neighborhood, eh?
Meanwhile, at the September redevelopment meeting (minutes as yet not posted), a bid by Carter Management (Underground Station's developer) was approved to to rehab the building at 624 Vincennes.
This column originally was published on July 10, 2014. Until only recently the prospects for creative redevelopment at Colonial Manor seemed permanently belly-up, but now residents living nearby have rallied to the idea of participating in the Redevelopment Commission's closed-door, fix-is-in process. Predictably this has raised the hackles of the spider-web-encrusted monastics seated there, but anything to mobilize the grassroots is good, whether or not Irving Joshua agrees (and rest assured, he doesn't). Hint: "Corridor study." Mayor Jeff Gahan is on record as dismissive of the idea, which is the single best reason to pursue it.
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ON THE AVENUES: You want some fries with your redevelopment?
“Fast food is popular because it's convenient, it's cheap, and it tastes good. But the real cost of eating fast food never appears on the menu.”
-- Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation
Once upon a time someone asked me where I live.
I said, “Well, have you heard the old adage about the clinical definition of insanity?”
“Sure,” he replied. “The definition of insanity is repeating the same mistakes over and over again and expecting different results.”
“Exactly. So, to answer your question, I live in the place where the definition of insanity is precisely the same wording as the mission statement for our city’s economic and redevelopment commissions.”
“I don’t understand at all. Can you repeat that?”
“But of course. Our elected officials repeat it twice a month.”
---
A boy can dream of subversion, revolution and the unexplored, virginal territory lying just outside the box, but in reality, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Tahiti that the moribund stretch of Charlestown Road by the McDonald’s and Colonial Manor would ever be “redeveloped” in any substantially different way today than it first was developed in the early 1970s.
After all, these latest cookie-cutter chain components are interchangeable. Once a Wendy’s and KFC; now a Hardee’s and Domino’s Pizza. Once an impossibly ugly suburban-style strip center with a Kroger, now just as unattractive and sparsely occupied by a Cash Saver grocery (it’s a member of One Southern Indiana, dog), this latter occupancy hailed by England Doug and Maalox the Conqueror as one of the supreme achievements of Hizzoner’s somnolent third mayoral term.
It is left to Irving Joshua, who surely has more unmonitored power than any non-elected official in town, and consequently wields the redevelopment commission as a veritable rolled-up newspaper of outmoded notions, to step forward and connect the dots with another usual platitude, fortuitously captured by the newspaper at a meeting scheduled during the afternoon, when most working people can’t attend:
Joshua, president of the redevelopment commission, said (Hardee’s and Domino’s) are “improving the likelihood we can keep the grocery store there.”
That’s a deeply depressing measure of how far the bar has descended here in Truck Through City, where pallet-nailing is considered a high-tech job, and Chick-fil-A is the preferred place for 50th anniversary dinners, just so long as they’re procured via the handy automotive window.
At the same time, it shows just how crazily out of touch I’ve become with respect to what passes for modernity these days – thankfully, gratefully and happily so.
I try to imagine what it must be like to hear of a new burger joint coming to the neighborhood -- to immediately fall to my knees, and to break into tears of joy, fulfillment and release: “I never, ever thought I’d live to see the day when we’d have a Zaxby’s down the street. I just might eat there every single night.”
Whatever. Let’s hope you have Obamacare when your heart explodes.
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Consequently, it is with an overwhelmingly vast chasm of a psychological disconnectedness that I attempt to fathom the desperation and bleakness of lives spent contemplating the advent of a new fast-food sandwich, as seen on television, all the better for the Archer Daniels Midland Triple Fatburger to be greeted by social media with millions of “likes,” retweets and varied regurgitations of “hosanna.”
How on earth these people can root for extractive, exploitative corporations is beyond me. Maybe I’m getting old. Then again, maybe uneducated self-delusion is the new national pastime.
And yet … the recurring problem amid my rampant cynicism is that yes, I actually can see both sides of it – and I’m fully implicated in one of them.
In my own chosen world, there are regular explosions of pulse-quickening geekery, exclusionary narcissism and pure avarice when it comes to the impending release of a rare, highly-rated beer, and to be perfectly fair, I’m forced to concede that as the peculiarly American stains of materialism and consumerism go, the differences between Taco Bell envy and Westvleteren hoarding are of degree only. They’re both representative of materialism and consumerism run amok.
It makes me want to refrain from both food and drink, and retreat to the confines of my library to select real, tactile books, and begin to reacquaint myself with the world of ideas.
That’s because I’m nothing if not stubborn. Ideas matter, and yet at present, this country is a dismally stupid place. It also is mercilessly tacky. Perpetual tsunamis of crass materialism and consumerist greed define the American experience, and what’s worse, we’re not content to populate our own continent as 24-7 shopping zombies, pausing occasionally to thank Jesus for the blessed privilege of possessing our baubles.
No, we must infect the remainder of the planet, too. The evangelistic impulse is the same, whether capitalistic or religious. To me, David Novak’s rah-rah cheer for the shareholders of Yum Brands plays a bit too much like “Heil, Hitler” – and as a non-book-reading, insultingly wealthy white man, his cadence is even less symmetrical when translated into Mandarin, Brazilian Portuguese or Klingon.
We can’t even have useful innovations like universal health care, for fear that dollars invested in human happiness might detract from expenditures on the very same food rendering us in need of hospitalization in the first place, not to mention whatever is left to purchase vital plastic trinkets from overseas manufacturers.
There it is, in a nutshell, and something to ponder while you’re sinking your cavity-ridden teeth into some Papa John’s:
We celebrate rope-a-dope notions like the "American Dream," aiming to marginalize an excluded majority, while perpetually bedazzling constituents with hopes of a consumer paradise here on Earth, buttressed by religious and patriotic superstition, even as the overall playing field is kept firmly tilted toward wealth where it already reposes.
Come to think of it, that’s the Republican Party's platform.
To paraphrase the late Warren Zevon, America … New Albany … your shit’s fucked up.
"(Commission member Scott) Stewart previously said the city could release a portion of the increase in assessed valuation, instead of capturing all the incremental increases, to other taxing units which would free up money for schools and public safety."
But how would that benefit Dickey's DemoDisneyDixiecrats?
NEW ALBANY — The seven New Albany Tax Increment Financing districts are healthy.
That was Josh Staten's message to the New Albany Redevelopment Commission following a presentation Tuesday. Staten, the redevelopment director, discussed projects planned and financial obligations for each district and projections for 2020-21.
I'll be tipping a toe back into muddy waters this evening with a city council meeting light on agenda items.
I asked two council persons about the statement above, which prefaced the council packet for tonight. The consensus is that it's legally mandated boilerplate from redevelopment, informing one and all that what the commission TIFs, it keeps.
Will there be "live" tweeting? Probably not. Give me a break, will ya? Psychiatric convalescence is hard, and I'm not as young as I used to be.
I seldom attend Board of Zoning Appeals meetings, but received a report from a friend who was there on Tuesday evening.
Up for a zoning variance was Progressive Land Development's "microloft project" at the former site of Tommy Lancaster's and Market Boy (northwest corner of Vincennes and Market).
55 one bedroom units ranging from 292sqf to 644sqf, and a whopping single retail unit that is 1300 sqf. Micro units to rent for planned $525 and the large units $825. Observe that 12x23 is smaller than a pull-behind camper.
Dude: that's almost as tiny as David Duggins' world view ... but I digress.
However this variance for the benefit of Progressive Land Development was not sought by the company itself, whose principal is a documented Gahan re-enthronement campaign donor.
Rather, Progressive's docket was handled by redevelopment director Josh Staten on behalf of Anchor City. Seems the municipality still owns the properties it purchased from the likes of Vinod Gupta and environmentally remediated.
Apparently someone asked Staten to enumerate the city's previous accumulated subsidies and investments in the project, but he replied that he didn't have those numbers. Obviously since the properties have yet to be sold to Progressive, we also don't know the sale price, either.
It also was revealed ...
... that HWC is the engineering firm of record and AXIS the architects. Both these firms are from Indianapolis, and yes Virginia, they've been pouring money into Gahan's pockets.
To conclude: The city's redevelopment department has picked a winner, and is running interference; the redevelopment director cannot cite relevant details at a variance hearing; and Gahan campaign donors are involved every step of the way, with ripened plums of the usual no-bid contracts awaiting them.
Nothing about this strikes me as transparent, and if I were to ask Democratic party functionaries to explain, the response is near certain: Yes, it's slimy but it's also standard operating procedure, and no one cares about the details as long as we keep moooooving forward; besides, the Republicans are worse.
We've established that Team Gahan is prone to being scandalously "butthurt" (as the kids like to say) whenever it is challenged with facts, as when city council finally asserted itself to the exclusion of secretive backroom redevelopment fixes like the one proposed at Colonial Manor.
If one takes the time to unravel Team Gahan's ongoing Colonial Manor narrative, it is filled with imprecise cutting, sloppy pasting and inept choreography. In short, City Hall whiffed on three pitches. Yesterday councilman and mayoral aspirant (Independent) Dan Coffey brought us up to date.
I learned Wednesday that the offer from the Redevelopment Commission to purchase the Colonial Shopping Center is no longer an option. I was told there was a short time for the city to comply with the offer and could not do so with the conditions set forth by the council. Too many questions about this project went unanswered and the public's need to know didn't seem to be considered. Congratulations to the people who stood firm and wouldn't allow this project to happen without your input. Democracy still works if given the chance!
Josh Turner, the GOP's candidate for New Albany's 5th district council and a grassroots organizer seeking a future for Colonial Manor, agreed and replied to Coffey with an excellent point.
Just think, if this wasn’t over appraisal it would already be purchased and five people at Redevelopment would have complete control over the property.
Because the forever smug Team Gahan's "process" at Colonial Manor was strictly reactive, with election year political imperatives hastily brought to fruition in order to check the mortal threat of citizen participation, Redevelopment's proposed purchase price for the Colonial Manor property was higher then the appraisals, legally necessitating the council vote.
As Turner points out, had City Hall taken the time to finesse the price, Redevelopment already would be planning the mixed use development with its chosen no-bid, professionally contracted architects, engineers and consultants, all of whom are eager to tithe to the closed circle of pay-to-play patronage.
The most interesting thing about this Gahanesque fiasco has been the least documented. Redevelopment director Staten conceded that the city had sought the assistance of private sector developer Chad Sprigler, whose family owns apartments nearby on Slate Run Road, in order to "negotiate" with Colonial Manor's owners -- to speak their language.
This is weird even by David Duggins' tortuous standards of illogic. I asked an insider to comment.
Why use an apartment builder to negotiate a commercial lot for the city? They are under-qualified to do this because it is not their core strength. Sprigler must have been paid a fee for doing so. Moreover, how does this connect the dots to the Spriglers' deal at Cross Creek apartments on Green Valley? The Spriglers couldn't handle the expense of necessary repairs, and so the city bailed them out (at a loss to the Spriglers) via the New Albany Housing Authority. Now NAHA will spend $4 million to make them into voucher housing. Of course Sprigler took a tax deduction for the loss, and now they're doing the city's job at Colonial Manor. I've yet to see Gahan botch one as badly as Colonial Manor, but that's political desperation for you.
With Team Gahan pouting and churlish, we look to community organizer Kathy Copas for a nugget of genuine interest amid Redevelopment's smoldering wreckage. Take careful note of the significance. Without any "help" from the city, ground level networking has independent small businesses talking to Kathy and each other, providing a glimpse of what can happen at the grassroots prior to top-down, politically-motivated TIF solutions.
When politicians like Gahan seek mistakenly to take credit for things like the concentration of food and drink establishments downtown, the best route to dismiss the chugging of Kool-Aid is to think about the way entrepreneurs and investors actually make decisions: on the ground, talking to others like them, applying shoe leather to walking and networking -- precisely the way Kathy recounts her discussions with business owners.
This is the way sustainable critical mass comes about. Team Gahan can't grasp it because not one of the mayor's closest associates ever owned a small indie business. In truth, they haven't got a clue about the way small indie businesses really work.
Take it away, Kathy.
Hundreds more have now watched the video of last week's Colonial Manor Listening Session and many have joined with the rest of us in continuing to think, dream, and strategize around how we can all do more to give Colonial Manor a real future and a hope.
As we contemplate further actions by our city officials, one especially interesting and exciting thing has been consistently bubbling up, this time from a number of our community's existing small business owners. Several of them have emerged and said something along the lines of---"Well, my little business already offers that in another part of town. If people want that for Colonial Manor, and we had some help and support, we would love to expand to Colonial Manor, too!"
Wow. Does anyone else find that as full of incredible possibilities as we do? What else have you seen, heard, or been thinking about since we gathered? Let's keep the listening and conversation going! #colonialmanorrising
On Wednesday afternoon just a few hours before the listening event sponsored by Colonial Manor Redevelopment Visioning, City Hall released a propaganda video aimed at (a) exaggerating Jeff Gahan's role in the Colonial Manor redevelopment process, and (b) insulting the grassroots community group that came into existence precisely because Gahan and his crack team of minions hadn't been doing anything about Colonial Manor.
As Bluegill succinctly observed:
In which Mayor Jeff Gahan uses city tax dollars to produce a highly biased, politically charged propaganda piece that distorts the story to make himself look better for re-election.
Amid the din of Kool-Aid slurping, let's take a closer look at the video with the aim of exposing Gahan's shameless whoppers.
1
1. It's true that on April 18, Mayor Jeff Gahan's administration brought plans to city council for the purchase of Colonial Manor. Gahan himself yet again refused to attend to take ownership of his brilliant redevelopment instincts, second only to Robert Moses in scope and coolness. However, no plans for redevelopment were brought to council -- while six "test" designs had been hoisted up the flagpole at the non-input public meeting (see below), redevelopment director Joshua Staten insisted the administration would do some listening of its own after the purchase of the property.
Truth meter #1: Half credit.
2
2. Colonial Manor has been moribund for so very long that Team Gahan displayed not one jot of interest in its redevelopment for seven whole years until the "deserving neighbors" began organizing themselves, thus holding out the prospect of interfering with Team Gahan's usual top-down, pay-to-play monetization arrangements.
Truth meter #2: Half credit.
3
3. An essentially meaningless claim. The city's new comprehensive plan explains theoretical development goals for the entire city, not any one area.
Truth meter #3: Irrelevant.
4
4. Number four is a doozy. A public meeting was held, but only Team Gahan's operatives were allowed to speak, and requests for public "preferences" were limited to six hastily concocted "options" from one of Gahan's campaign donor engineers. Duh: Of course neighbors "want something done to the property." You could glean as much from Facebook. After all, they'd already assembled a grassroots lobby group to drive the conversation, hence the need for Gahan's non-input meeting: to squelch this conversation and take back control for his Indianapolis corporate campaign donors.
Truth meter #4: Bald-faced, faked-fact lie.
5
5. In which Gahan refers to $2.6 million in tax increment financing (TIF) bonds as "cash reserves" when in essence they're credit cards, then further asserts that TIF is not a form of borrowing. Among other problems, these "cash reserves" deprive schools of property tax revenue, leading to school corporation referendums like the one responsible for the Slate Run school construction taking place behind Colonial Manor. Do you think Gahan lies like this about his own household finances?
Truth meter #5: Egregious, bald-faced, faked-fact lie.
6
6. The city did vote 5-4 against something, but whether it was an "effort to bring new life" cannot be known because the vote pertained only to acquiring the property, not to future plans (if any) to redevelop it.
Truth meter #6: Half credit.
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7. We saw the first such "exploration" of options at approximately 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, when the video being dissected here was released. By his choice of timing, Gahan chose quite consciously (and with obvious malice) to undercut the grassroots efforts of the very same "neighbors" he'd already refused to allow to speak at the non-input public meeting he held for his own benefit.
With friends like Jeff Gahan, who needs enemas?
Truth meter #7: Perhaps the only truthful statement of the bunch.
8
8. Gahan closes with his trademark messy verbiage. He "encourages everyone" (they're no longer "neighbors," are they?) to "encourage" -- that's right, the same verb twice in one sentence, attesting to the sloppiness of writing herein -- city council to "support revitalization efforts for Colonial Manor."
Note the first use of "revitalization" as opposed to "redevelopment," and also consider that Gahan doesn't specify which revitalization efforts "everyone" should support. Is it Gahan's politically motivated boilerplate or the efforts area residents already had started on their own with absolutely no help from the mayor or his flunkies, including their council person Matt Nash, who attended Wednesday's neighborhood meeting but couldn't muster the gumption to address the crowd, identify himself and let them know that he's listening.
Truth meter #8: See how Gahan acts when he can't have his toys?
Summary: Today's City Hall video shambles depicts Gahan at his self-interested, narcissistic and bullying nadir, with a truthfulness tally of roughly 25%, and still no apparent interest in the needs of people as opposed to the fix-is-in, play-to-play patronage boondoggle that local "pretend progressives" tolerate and seem to feel is justified as long as local Democrats mouth platitudes about other issues.
How many lies does Gahan need to tell before Democrats see the handwriting on the wall?
There's a solution. Vote David White for Mayor in the Democratic primary, and let's give the governing clique a purifying flush.
NA Confidential's mask-free policy on reader comments.
NA Confidential believes in a higher bar than is customary in the blogosphere, and follows a disclosure policy with respect to reader comments.
First, you must be registered with blogger.com according to the procedures specified. This is required not as a means of directing traffic to blogger.com, but to reduce the lamentable instances of flaming and personal attacks on the part of the anonymous.
Second, although pen names are perfectly acceptable, senior editor Roger A. Baylor must be informed of your identity, and according to your preference, it will be kept confidential.
To reiterate, I insist upon this solely to lessen the frequency of malicious anonymity, which unfortunately plagues certain other blogs hereabouts.
You may e-mail Roger at the address given within his profile and explain who you are. Failure to comply means that your comments probably will be deleted -- although the final decision remains ours.
Thanks for reading, and please consider becoming a part of the community here, one that is respectful of the prerequisites of civilized discourse, and that seeks to engage visitors in substantive dialogue.
