London's pea soup fog now envelops the Midtown NSP.

An NSP victim.

A reader asks:

What's the current status of the SEJ grant money that was supposed to be paid back from renovated home sales, accrue interest and be used to continue the renovation of the "Midtown" neighborhood?

Is New Directions Housing Corp still handling / holding the money?

How many of those renovated (many to the tune of OVER $200,000 EACH in renovation costs) homes have been sold, and where are the promised future benefits from the project? I seem to remember the promise of a never ending stream of revenue.

Do you mean the houses dubbed Painted Ladies? It might lead to an Elton John song.

Coincidentally, the Courier-Journal's Lexy Gross recently asked me a variant of this same question. Apparently she's doing a story about the Midtown NSP, which I'll link when it appears.

I gave her my best answer, then decided to "check" my work by asking the same question of Jeff Gillenwater. As usual, he's far more succinct than me.

However, first go to the Midtown NSP website to see the various "official" claims being made as to the impact of the expenditures, which as recently as 2013 were viewed as sufficiently suspect that none other than Dan Coffey was asking for an audit.

In retrospect, this must have been when the demolition kickbacks began.

Anyway, the NSP's impact purportedly includes 29 rehabbed homes, the Cardinal Ritter House renovation and the 1321 Inspiration Community Garden.

That's a good question. I think that it being a good question is part of the answer. To my knowledge, people are saying very little because so little has been shared about the project.

Beyond the garden (which I didn't know was an NSP thing), there's been little to no community engagement. How can we have spent nearly $7 million in one neighborhood with neighbors so unaware of what's happening and having no idea where it's heading?

David Duggins scoffed at NSP early on, saying that he could transform New Albany with that much money. When I reminded him they'd already spent more than that on other things, he shut up.

Beyond that, it's another story of spending millions of public dollars on individual properties while not addressing the fundamental infrastructure issues that surround them. Then there are issues like the tavern. The top secret site plan is the only time I recall hearing anything about NSP in the past four years.

The over-arching point is that we've just concluded an election cycle in which the incumbent was able to flash photos of a few new houses in Midtown as evidence of unprecedented success. Local media gave it a pass. My campaign tried to reference the project, bu of course our reach was limited.

Where's the beef?

Can a member of the public access unbiased information to so much as start making sense of the claims?

We were saying it more than two years ago: Transparency? That's a fine idea. Found any yet?

I don't even swim, so brother, can you spare a dime to fix this neglected school crosswalk?

Yesterday, as the Bored of Works was meeting, a reader wrote:

"Called street department this morning about red flashing lights, out of order at East 10th and Oak Street by S. Ellen Jones school. Been out over a year. No money to fix it, they said."

By the way, city government's "Re-Elect the Mayor" social media feed informs us that the $9 million aquatic center build-out is going swimmingly.

Fundamentally better?

Even some of the cops get confused by bump-outs and POP-tarts.

As the anonymous newspaper reader comments already show, this is a particularly controversial topic in a city with no shortage of them.

When the POP program first was announced, I had mixed feelings. The idea struck me as progressive and useful -- well nigh retro -- but within a fixed context.

On the other hand, the fact that POP was being implemented in a neighborhood where, comparatively speaking, crime always seemed less of an issue than elsewhere in town (the school is a couple of blocks away from my house) just seemed to heap even more personal disgust at the pervasive cronyism running rampant during the dying days of the third England administration, where it was all fluff, no cattle.

Now what? Who knows?

POP goes the program: Problem Oriented Policing method out in New Albany, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — Instead of concentrating efforts on one neighborhood, New Albany police are now spreading out to better patrol the entire city, NAPD Assistant Chief Greg Pennell said Monday.

Speaking during the New Albany NAACP’s monthly meeting, Pennell said the new police administration’s policy is to implement patrols evenly throughout the city instead of concentrating primarily on one neighborhood.

The position is in contrast to former NAPD Chief Todd Bailey’s Problem Oriented Policing, or POP, plan. Under POP, the department focused a majority of its patrols in the S. Ellen Jones Neighborhood, which was cited by the former administration as a high-crime area.

Beyond patrols, the POP program targeted crimes related to narcotics, gangs and burglaries.

At the same time POP was implemented in SEJ, the area was being re-branded as Midtown led by the $6.7 million federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Bailey touted POP as successfully reducing crime in SEJ, though some city officials questioned the strategy citing lack of patrols in other parts of the city.

Before Bailey was replaced by Mayor Jeff Gahan this year with Chief Sherri Knight, the POP program had been shifted to the Broadmeade neighborhood.

Pair of sneakers beats a full NSP house?

There has been an animated off-line discussion about this piece, which appeared in Granta way back in September, when our attention was diverted from gangs to gaping bridge holes. My guess is that Bob Caesar won't be asking Mr. Bill to write the forward for James A. Crutchfield's bicentennial book.

The Heartland: Ten Years After 9/11, by Frank Bill

 ... We drive down Vincennes Street, the main drag in New Albany, Indiana. From Vincennes, the area appears safe. But cruise the side streets around the high school and S Ellen Jones Elementary School and it’s turf. Houses are tagged with gang graffiti. Every block is marked as territory. He points out a pair of sneakers hanging from their laces on a power line. ‘It marks the area. It means a drug dealer is living at one of these houses. Sells right out here.’

‘These gangs sell meth?’ I ask.

‘They do,’ Merritt tells me. ‘And crack, marijuana, various prescription meds.’