Don't say I didn't remind you of the leaf sucking protocol for 2019.

The city's leaf removal protocol for 2019 is to petition Superman, and he'll take care of it all by himself. Actual quoted passage:

"Mayor Jeff Gahan is pleased to once again aid the citizens of New Albany with leaf removal."

Well, he's the Wizard of Bling, and he can do ANYTHING.

Of course it's the stormwater utility's employees who'll be doing the actual work, like always, but naturally this doesn't stop Anchor City's narcissist-in-chief from claiming credit for the labor of others. After all, that's why he's here.

But don't look for the information at the city's web site.

Don't look for these, either, or Bob Caesar will set your leaves on fire.

Rather, the lowdown comes with the stormwater utility's periodic paean to Dear Leader's re-election campaign.

Short version: If you want your leaves sucked, keep them out of the curbs, gutters and streets, or else ... absolutely nothing will happen to you.

Not a single tree in this city has a chance so long as David Barksdale and Jeff Gahan wield the chain saws, and Freud would have a field day with the phallic symbolism.

$10 million to alleviate "inhumane" working conditions in the City-County Building, but not a farthing to spend on real people or living trees.

These really are absolutely horrid functionaries. Just horrid.

Three red ribbons have been wrapped around three trees in front of St.Mary’s school on Elm Street. I’ll bet you a dollar against a dozen doughnuts that Councilman Barksdale and Mayor Gahan have them slated for imminent amputation. And our City Forester is ready to comply.

Sad sad sad. One looks at least 40 - 50 years old.

It doesn't stop with yet another clear cut.

Did you read the horrible paragraph on the back of the “Stormwater News”? The “Message from Mayor Jeff Gahan” is a piece of steaming dog shit.

You mean this?

Deforestation hinders the stormwater control effort, but let's not ignore how stupefyingly banal this message reads, although the mayor has a reasonable retort: "Do you really think I write the words my name is attached to"?

ON THE AVENUES: If we're waiving sewer tap-ins, nothing less than gold faucets will do.

ON THE AVENUES: If we're waiving sewer tap-ins, nothing less than gold faucets will do.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

At the March 19 meeting of New Albany’s city council, the legislative body that seldom legislates very much any longer was asked by City Hall to approve a TIF area extension to accommodate infrastructure improvements for the prospective Coyle site housing development, which in recent days has been upgraded from “upscale” to “luxury” in terms of hyperbolic descriptors for the apartment units soon to be built there.

Why the semantic escalation?

Probably the dreaded random adjective generator, although as the primary draws closer, expect frequent comparisons to Mobutu Sese Seko’s Kawale palace in Gbadolite, Congo – or in our local New Albanian dialect, “Versailles of the Bungle.”

As is its habit, the council supinely did exactly as it was told, but not before David Duggins, the city’s Standard TIF Area Statistical Incentivization Specialist (STASIS), who once was quoted to the effect that he couldn’t possibly explain the manifest benefits of Jeff Speck’s downtown street network proposals for fear of being proven mistaken in any way, shape or form even on the most minor of points, let slip that the board of New Albany’s sewer utility was “discussing” further enticements to the Coyle site developers to the tune of waiving 150+ sewer tap-in fees … or (according to the newspaper) $200,000.

Diane Benedetti immediately questioned this, reminding Duggins that in a city where affairs of the sanitary sewer are the surest ever proof of Sigmund Freud’s potty doctrines, ironclad historical precedent precludes granting waivers for any construction. As an example, not so long ago, waivers were denied to IU Southeast for its new dormitories. In short, no one gets a break.

I wasn’t there to see it, but Duggins surely rolled his eyes and muttered “yes, ma’am,” fingers tightly crossed behind this back, because he somehow neglected to inform the assembled council that not only had the sewer board “discussed” the waivers, it had touched all four and approved them, along with “what the hell, why not” waivers for both of Mayor Gahan’s signature parks-in-splendid-isolation, on March 12 -- a full week prior to the council meeting.

Like the child whose hands are smeared with cookie batter, did Duggins think no one would find out, or has City Hall’s level of yo-the-fix-is-in nonchalance now reached the point of default hubris?

The sewer board’s vote was 2-0, with the motion introduced by the city engineer Larry Summers in the absence of the board’s chair, who is none other than Mayor Jeff Gahan himself. Evidently the mayoral hologram was undergoing maintenance in a secluded Disney Store factory outlet, affording the very maximum in plausible deniability – and speaking of Uncle Walt, Summers’ motion came at the request of the Redevelopment Commission, which includes among its members Adam Dickey, the chairman of the Floyd County Democratic Party.

Eeeeewww … damn, it smells like sewer gas around here, doesn’t it?

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Council president Pat McLaughlin, who doubles as co-chair (with Dan Coffey) of the Gahan Jockstrap Conveyance Patrol (no acronym), conceded to the News and Tribune’s Daniel Suddeath that yes, there was a mild “concern” over these new and unexplored precedents, but hey -- what can an elected lackey do, apart from popping the top on an ice-cold Bud Light at the Roadhouse?

Also according to Suddeath, City Hall’s legal team as yet is finding it difficult to unravel the impenetrable thicket of the city’s own ordinances.

Summers is expected to be replaced soon after questions arose as to whether he could serve on the Stormwater and Sewer boards as a paid city employee.

Say what?

We already knew that the convenient Summers’ placement on the Stormwater Board was a two-pronged mistake according to previlaing ordinance, which clearly prohibits a paid city employee from serving, and stipulates that it’s a council appointment in the first place, and not a forum for City Hall’s attorney to be enthusiastically brokering the mayor's fondest wishes.

(B) One member appointed by majority vote of the members of the Common Council, provided that the member shall be a registered professional engineer, and further provided that the member shall not otherwise be a paid or unpaid official or employee of the city.

We also knew that when the issue was raised by this blog, city attorney Shane Gibson promptly and honorably fell on his sword and took one for Team Gahan.

The Storm Water Board and the Sewer Board are both set up under the same Indiana authority. The former board member was on both the Sewer and the Storm Water Boards. When he stepped off the boards, I looked at the Sewer Board membership requirements in the City Ordinance. That Sewer ordinance states one member shall be the City engineer. I let our City engineer know this and his duties as required by the Ordinance. I didn't, however, review or the pull the Storm Water board requirements for members and assumed they were the same since the two boards were established under the same Indiana authority. As I mentioned above, this was an error on my part. We will be taking the necessary actions to remedy this matter.

Except that the Indiana state law establishing sewer board guidelines, which apparently dates from 1981, also prohibits a paid employee from serving.

(a) A sanitary board established under this chapter consists of:

(1) the municipal executive; and

(2) two (2) persons appointed by the municipal legislative body, one (1) of whom must be a registered professional engineer.

The legislative body may not appoint any paid or unpaid municipal officer or employee to the board.

Meanwhile, New Albany’s sewer board staffing ordinance, first enacted in the 1990s when the Federal government firmly pointed out to us that a city our size might wish to treat more than a fraction of its wastewater, appears to deliberately obfuscate the state’s intent … and no one has noticed until now?

(2) Two members, appointed by majority vote of the members of the Common Council, provided that one such member shall be the City Engineer or a registered professional engineer, and further provided that such non City Engineer person shall not be a paid or unpaid official or employee of the city.

I’m no legal bagel, but someone out there other than me surely is asking the same question: How many illegal votes actually have been taken the past 30-odd years on all these boards?

And: If Summers wasn’t supposed to be on the Sewer Board, what about the casual Gahan-less vote on March 12 to break with decades of precedent and waive sewer tap-ins?

Was it legal?

Finally, this: At some point, as one oddball screw-up piles atop another, doesn’t a hands-on mayor genuinely believing in his "fundamentally better" agitprop actually call the press, quote Harry Truman, point to his desk, and make the buck stop there?

Maybe the problem for Gahan is all those bucks, roughly $90,000 of the campaign variety at last count. Or, conversely, maybe taking responsibility voids the hologram’s warranty. In three-plus years, has Gahan yet to acknowledge an error?

Now, about those ivory toilet seats …

Gibson on Summers on Stormwater: "The simplest answer is that it was an error on my part."

Simplest, though not necessarily the most complete. Yesterday, a discrepancy was noted.

Stormwater Board: No paid city employees allowed, except for the one who is.

I asked city attorney Shane Gibson to explain, and he replied very quickly, for which I'm appreciative. However, it's still a bit confusing.

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Roger:

Thanks for the opportunity to address your email, but as I understand you have already posted something to your blog. The simplest answer is that it was an error on my part. The Storm Water Board and the Sewer Board are both set up under the same Indiana authority. The former board member was on both the Sewer and the Storm Water Boards. When he stepped off the boards, I looked at the Sewer Board membership requirements in the City Ordinance. That Sewer ordinance states one member shall be the City engineer. I let our City engineer know this and his duties as required by the Ordinance. I didn't, however, review or the pull the Storm Water board requirements for members and assumed they were the same since the two boards were established under the same Indiana authority. As I mentioned above, this was an error on my part. We will be taking the necessary actions to remedy this matter.

SLG
Shane L. Gibson
Corporate Counsel

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Does this mean that Gibson advised the council to select Summers based on his own misreading of the ordinance? If so, through whom was the message conveyed? Paddy Mac? After all, according to the ordinance, it's the council's appointment -- not the mayor's ...

(B) One member appointed by majority vote of the members of the Common Council, provided that the member shall be a registered professional engineer, and further provided that the member shall not otherwise be a paid or unpaid official or employee of the city. The member shall serve an initial term of two years;

... and the council's attorney is Matt Lorch, not Gibson. If memory serves, the whole point of stipulating a non-employee on the board was to prevent this or any other mayor from having 2/3 control, with the city council wanting an independent board. Didn't Gibson write the original storm water ordinance, or at the very least review it before it went to council back in '06?

Maybe if someone on the third floor is reading, we can get a clarification. We know how seldom they ... clarify.

LOL.

Stormwater Board: No paid city employees allowed, except for the one who is.

At the website of the Stormwater Utility, it says:

Welcome! Thank you for visiting the New Albany Stormwater website. Our board members:

Roger Harbison-President
Larry Summers-P.E./ Vice President
Zonia Cousins- Member

Within the city's code of ordinances, it reads (italics ours):

§ 33.113 MEMBERSHIP.

The membership of the Stormwater Board shall hereinafter consist of the following:

(A) The Mayor, or his or her designee, who shall serve as Chairperson at all times during his or her tenure in the office;

(B) One member appointed by majority vote of the members of the Common Council, provided that the member shall be a registered professional engineer, and further provided that the member shall not otherwise be a paid or unpaid official or employee of the city. The member shall serve an initial term of two years; and

(C) One member appointed by majority vote of the members of the Common Council, provided that the member shall not otherwise be a paid or unpaid official or employee of the city. The member shall serve an initial term of three years.

(Ord. G-06-20, passed 6-5-2006)

Frankly, I'm a fan of Larry Summers, and believe that in his current role as chief public conveyor of Speck, a job necessitated by John Rosenbarger's unsuitability for human contact, Larry is doing good work under impossible political conditions imposed upon him (and us) by his forever inept and oblivious bosses.

But how is it possible for the Common Council to appoint Larry Summers to the Stormwater Board, or for the Mayor to countenance the appointment, when the ordinance quite plainly states that an employee of the city is ineligible to serve in this capacity?

The book readers want to know. Don't you?

Open thread: Mayor rolls back stormwater privatization, drops hints.

On Tuesday, Their Man Mitch received a mandate to continue starving local governments of cash. Meanwhile, City Hall struck a blow against privatization.

New Albany ends stormwater deal, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

Environmental Management Corp. will relinquish services for New Albany’s stormwater utility effective Jan. 1.

Mayor Doug England made the announcement during Monday’s City Council meeting, saying the decision will be finalized when the Stormwater Board votes to end the contract at its next meeting scheduled for Nov. 13.

To break the contract, the board will pay EMC $200,000. EMC will continue professional services for the city’s sewer utility despite losing the stormwater agreement ...

… Stormwater and Sewer Board Chairman Ron Carroll said EMC had been “falling behind” on duties …

… England opposes privatizing services, saying there could be a review of other contracts, including trash pick-up.

Readers, your thoughts?

It’s the “PRICE you have to pay” when your district’s “can of worms” just can’t “git-r-done.”

A Young Ostrich came to its Mother, groaning with pain and with its wings tightly crossed upon its stomach.

"What have you been eating?" the Mother asked, with solicitude.

"Nothing but a keg of Nails," was the reply.

"What!" exclaimed the Mother; "a whole keg of Nails, at your age! Why, you will kill yourself that way. Go quickly, my child, and swallow a claw-hammer."

Come to think of it, I enjoyed an excellent ostrich summer sausage while vacationing in Wisconsin, and spit nary a single nail in the process.

Anyway, back home again in the legislative epicenter of the open air museum, nickels and dimes are back on the agenda of Thursday’s city council meeting:

New Albany City Council to consider exceeding 3 percent benchmark for office workers, by Eric Scott Campbell (News and Tribune):

Last year, council members made four exceptions to the blanket 3 percent raise. Sewer Billing Director Kelly Welsh got an 18 percent raise, while three bookkeepers were granted 5.5 percent raises.

Councilman Steve Price said he is ambivalent about the exceptions.

“I kind of feel, sometimes you do that, you open a keg of nails,” said Price, though, he added, “I do realize there’s some people down there underpaid. I’m open to it.”

NAC received this comment from a frequent reader:

We need to invent a random expression generator so we don't have to wait for Steve Price to be interviewed by the press or appear in public. But then, we don't want to throw the baby out with the spoiled milk.

Speaking of steadily souring lactose, Thursday’s council agenda offers the intriguing possibility that lame duck Mayor James Garner’s most strident and verbose critic may soon be commuting by golf cart to sit alongside him at stormwater board meetings.

APPOINTMENTS:
Nathan Grimes – Stormwater Board member
Valla Ann Bolovschak – Stormwater Board member

According to cue, the cuddly faux professor (and the pants-wearin’ half of the Vaudeville team of Vicki Ann Denschak and Their Trognomic Tub Thumping Team) has issued a timely press release to extol the virtues of her benefactress:

Thank you Valla Ann Bolovschak for your tireless efforts have lead to a great deal of the saving of the federal funding. And for your major role in our local greenway project and your many hours of hard work. We can safely say that because of your involvement in this planning with the City of New Albany's Greenway Project will reflect the values important to our community.

You have left an indelible mark on this project.

Something just left an indelible mark on my office rug, and I think it was one of our cats.

At least it wasn’t an ostrich, because nails have a way of scratching the porcelain on grandma’s piggy bank, but one thing’s for sure.

While the category of “wannabe” may or may not include those securing appointments after demonstrating the consistent inability to win elections, the underachieving and obfuscatory city council president Larry Kochert will forever be remembered chiefly as a “wannabeen.”

After all, a few fine tooth combs are good for the dog.

(Thanks J)

Friday afternoon massacre claims entire stormwater drainage board; Putsch leader Dan “Agent Zero” Coffey reassures traumatized city: “I’m in charge.”

Isn't he always?

But seriously, there is a recurring element of tragicomic pathos to the Wizard of Westside’s scheming machinations, of which the current Drainage Gate civic black eye is but one of many in the past, and many more to come, in which he has been complicit.

As ringmaster of the politics of semi-carnal envy that characterizes so much of small town life, CM Coffey certainly craves the office of mayor to such a noticeable degree that, presumably, he would gladly park his posterior on the gilded throne without accepting so much as a dime in remuneration.

Such is the vow of subservient poverty that Coffey has regularly demanded of other public servants, but it’s a moot point, because he knows that reliable support outside the hermetically sealed electoral comfort of his own fiefdom of Westendia is, shall we say, lacking; his prospects citywide aren’t worth a warm bucket of spit, and he’d be crushed in any such race like a fat and lazy late summer fly who has ingested one too many slices of fresh cow pie before trying to airlift home a bit too close to the waiting swatter.

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Now that the stormwater drainage board has resigned en masse – quite the parliamentary thing to do under increasingly daunting circumstances, and the purport of which is as certain to elude the comprehension of the clueless poseur Erika as the dusty and long dormant instructions for programming her obsolete VCR – all parties involved in the city’s latest embarrassing example of its inability to govern itself are cowering behind temporary barricades constructed of tattered legal pads and BBQ bologna-stained Bazooka Joe vocational diplomas, courageously lobbing desultory volleys of accusation and counter-charge at one another.

Fascinatingly, New Albany’s sewage system, a meandering labyrinth to which now can added a newly Coffey-tized and eviscerated stormwater drainage compliance mechanism, creates strange bedfellows the way that Bill Gates prints money. As an example, sewer board member and city council president Larry Kochert, who shockingly finds himself for once in the mayor’s corner, believes that certain “overzealous” councilmen should be volunteered for unpaid duty on the now vacant drainage committee.

The pot, the kettle … the King.

Perhaps dazed at CM Kochert’s presumptuousness toward an erstwhile ally in obstructionist mayhem, the Wizard somehow hasn’t yet grabbed this gracious offer of unpaid labor even though time and time again he has lectured a howling gallery as to the alleged superiority of his grasp when it comes to environmental engineering, Kosher dietary restrictions, nuclear physics, quilting, and his central interpretive role in a soon to be released, bold new updated translation of Thomas Aquinas’s “Summa Theologica.”

With sidesplitting laughter escalating to Comedy Caravan proportions, let’s step gingerly around the corner and cast furtive glances at the campfires burning within the confines of the open air museum. I hear artillery in the distance, but it might be thunder. Are the stormwater drainage Gods chuckling, too?

And these bizarre partnerships; what to make of them? More on that later ... assuming the creek don't rise.

Tribune coverage here
Courier coverage here
Bucket brigade and lots of sawdust here

Council vs. stormwater board: Media coverage.

Sunday edition elaboration from the Courier-Journal following yesterday's rare Saturday morning city council meeting :

New Albany ponders changes; Council might curb storm-water board, by Dick Kaukas.

The New Albany City Council took a first step yesterday toward restricting the powers of the city's storm water board, which recently agreed to a $507,000 no-bid contract with a private company to manage the city's drainage system.

Technically, the council voted 5-1 at a special meeting to repeal the ordinance that created the board a year ago.

But council members, including Beverly Crump and Kevin Zurschmiede, made it clear that what they really want to do is amend the ordinance ...

For the moment, the Tribune has not posted Eric Scott Campbell’s meeting coverage to its web site. We’ll check back Sunday afternoon.

Council spanner lands, according to New Albany Today.

NAC had no intention of letting the dysfunctional drama manufacturing firm otherwise known as the New Albany city council interfere with a whole blessed day off to watch the Reds lose to the Cubs.

But Maury Goldberg's New Albany Today blog is reporting that ...

Breaking News on New Albany Today!

The New Albany City Council votes to repeal the Stormwater Board.

Street Department Union filed for an Injunction to prevent the contract between the Stormwater Board and EMC from taking effect on August 1, 2007.

Perhaps they can flip a manhole cover for it.

NEW ALBANY CITY WRAP: Who’s the boss? Drainage job spurs dispute, by Eric Scott Campbell (News & Tribune).

The local municipal-worker union’s relationship with New Albany took another tumble Friday, this time over a hole in the road.

Two drainage department workers refused to follow a work order from drainage-management contractor Environmental Management Corp. on June 8, officials from city government and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said after a Stormwater Drainage Board meeting Friday morning.

Say, was that Councilman Cappuccino standing just off-stage, yelling, “Fight! Fight!”?

It's enough to make a guy agree with Governor Mitch Daniels about the merits of privatization, but it may owe to personal trauma and trepidation as my Miller Lite date approaches.

By the way: We need a platform from the Scharlow camp. I’d really hate having to sit out another 3rd district race.

The Confidentials are hoping to see some of you at the sold-out Glenn Miller show tonight at the Speakeasy. When's the last time a scalper was seen in New Albany?

The Wizard of Westside and his self-imposed stormwater information imbroglio.

THE COMMON COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF NEW ALBANY, INDIANA HELD A MEETING IN THE CITY/COUNTY BUILDING ON MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2007.

APPOINTMENTS:
(a) Drainage Board (Council Liaison) ... Mr. Kochert stated that he is appointing Mr. Coffey to act as the council liaison to the drainage board.

Having spent vast portions of the preceding 40 months bemoaning a multi-faceted conspiracy that always prevents the “right information” from falling into their eager hands, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the current council president and his longtime associate in gleeful obstructionism would themselves be plotting revenge … but surely not scheming to avoid the stormwater information so readily proffered?

Verily, Slippery and the Wizard work in mysterious ways.

We’re told that Lame Duck Larry stands by his appointment even if the liaison himself continues to insist that absence makes the landscape drain more fondly. And why not? After all, when one’s governing philosophy involves the infinite repetition of the same act in the hope that someday the outcome will be different, little is to be expected -- or gained.

Consider that following much opening night fanfare, the council’s smoking ban committee has all the appearance of being moribund, and tabled ordinances tower higher than the four columns on the front of the City-County Building, awaiting more resolutions calling for full investigations, criminal prosecutions and various other trog fodder and delaying tactics.

I imagine that in the end, helping your bilious pals to plant illegal political campaign yard signs is tiring work for community “leaders.”

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From the Tribune: LETTERS: April 8, 2007.

Deatrick: What’s wrong with Coffey?

On behalf of the board of directors of the New Albany Stormwater Board, I wish to convey our appreciation to Councilman Jeff Gahan for initiating the release of the city council drainage fund to the New Albany Stormwater utility. I also wish to thank the six councilmen who voted to transfer the $54,000 to the utility and solve a prioritized list of identified drainage problems that have been brought to our attention from concerned citizens over the last five months of the Board’s operation.

Those councilmen are Jeff Gahan, Steve Price, Beverly Crump, Jack Messer, Kevin Zurschmiede and Bill Schmidt.

Unfortunately Council President Larry Kochert, whose project on Silver Street was identified as the highest priority, and city council liaison to the stormwater board, Dan Coffey, who has two identified projects in his district, both voted against this initiative.

What is most disheartening to me as board president are the actions of Mr. Coffey. As city council liaison, Mr. Coffey has not attended one board meeting since his appointment by the council to represent the council’s interests and work with the stormwater board. Instead he criticizes the choice we have made of management, EMC and in October at a stormwater board meeting states that we should ask for the drainage fund. Why the flip-flop of position, Mr. Coffey?

Since we have contracted with EMS, our operation has turned itself around and implemented scheduled preventive maintenance and been able to ascertain the true nature of the drainage problems and the capital improvement needs that this drainage fund will begin to address.

At least wisdom from the city council prevailed on this occasion and the citizens of New Albany will benefit rather than suffer from the politics that were obviously being played by Mr. Coffey and Mr. Kochert.

— Tim Deatrick, President - New Albany Stormwater Board

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For an analysis of CM Coffey's response, consult the Highwayman: Finally- A Word From the Coffey House.