GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Is the price tag escalating for our luxury City Hall at the Reisz Furniture building?

Patiently awaiting the arrival of warm weather, which might lessen the pain in his sacroiliac joint, the Green Mouse was thoughtfully nursing a beer downtown when a conversation broke out nearby.

Know that in the Mouse's world, an "earbud" is what blooms when quotable quotes drift his direction.

The gist of this overheard chat was the actual condition of the former Reisz Furniture building, long neglected but now the focus of a rehabilitation effort intended to transform it into a City Hall suitably luxurious for Dear Leader's habitation.

Toward this end, the Denton Floyd construction firm is supposed to purchase the building, repair it and lease space to the city under a "rent to own" arrangement. Press releases have been issued, and some incumbent councilmen have started plotting their cubicle decor.

The laudatory plaques have been submitted for engraving.

However, what the Green Mouse heard suggests that the tableau isn't quite as rosy as depicted thus far. In short, the building's structural deficiencies might be greater than anticipated, requiring additional wheelbarrows of cash, and requiring those media packets to be updated.

If so, one immediate question is whether this was suspected from the start, or only recently uncovered during preliminary site work. As Bostonians in the vicinity of the Big Dig surely would attest, the devil possesses no single detail quite like cost overruns.

Are we looking at a similar scenario here? At least one prominent local contractor refrained from past rehab possibilities owing to his assessment of the building's condition.

As they're fond of saying on the Internet, does anyone know what's going on?

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Previously at NAC:

ON THE AVENUES: Return to sender; decency is such a lonely word ... the sounds of silence reign o'er me.

Speaking of diversionary facades: "The Anti-Gay, Anti-Choice Politics of The Knights of Columbus."

ON THE AVENUES: Super Tuesday shrapnel – or, tiptoeing through the tulips with Dan Coffey, now THE face of historic preservation in New Albany.

Reisz Vote Buy Bonanza: "The News and Tribune asked to interview Mayor Jeff Gahan and was instead referred to statements in a news release."

Told you so: "New Albany in talks to relocate City Hall to Reisz Furniture building."

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Is Denton Floyd acquiring the Reisz building for use by a relocated NA City Hall? We think a deal is imminent.

Our City Council Thursday: Budgets, littering, furnishing and futility -- thank Jeeebus for bourbon.

“Useless laws weaken necessary laws.”
-- Montesquieu

At last evening's surreal and occasionally disjointed city council meeting, we learned that Mayor Jeff Gahan has in fact signed the beefed-up anti-littering ordinance passed by the body earlier this summer.

On Thursday night, CM Bob Caesar was to have introduced a corollary revision of ordinances pertaining to littering, this time focusing on the alley dumping and tree-cutting waste that some believe to be a province of Eco-Tech's garbage collection contract, and others the street department's daily job.

Caesar didn't attend, but the ordinance was introduced and approved on 1st and 2nd readings, now to go back into committee at the stated request of the city's single highest paid employee, corporate attorney Shane Gibson, who dominated the proceedings in the continued absence of the mayor.

My uninformed guess is that Gahan's annoyance with the previous littering ordinance as being a presumed "victory" for the GOP's councilman Al Knable was mollified by further (and in this instance proper) back channel discussion, with the result being the "balancing" ordinance of Caesar's, allowing everyone to -- dare we suggest it -- cooperate in crafting a useful and far more importantly enforceable clean-up measure.

We've been conditioned to eschew hope, although perhaps this time will be different. Of course, absolutely none of it addresses underlying socio-economic conditions that always preface the perceptions and practice of "littering," but action on this front would be far too much to hope for.

The city's 2018 budget and salary proposals were approved on 1st and 2nd readings with little discussion apart from independent (read: thoroughly isolated) councilman Scott Blair's insistence that a $500K line item for furnishings in a new city hall, as yet still on the adaptive reuse drawing board, was reason enough to amend the budget by stipulating that Gahan's plans for the governmental transfer to the Reisz building must come before council for review.

CM Dan Coffey, apparently satisfied that his recent assaults on Knable's littering ordinance had been sufficient to repay the mayor for a "historic preservation" facade grant awarded to his favored Knights of Columbus, unexpectedly joined Blair in supporting the amendment.

With Caesar absent and the council's GOP bloc once again failing to coalesce as a unit, the amendment was defeated by a 4-4 vote (ties don't count, folks).

Interestingly, Republican council member David Barksdale sided with City Hall in this vote, indicating that historic preservation is a more pressing concern to him than public vetting of expenditures.

Straight up: The Reisz-Turned-City Hall transaction is a decent enough idea, but still murky enough to merit scrutiny. It includes two other "historic preservation" building improvements, embracing both Coffey's KoC payback and the luring of the Indiana Landmarks office to New Albany.

In addition, there is an obvious element of crony corporate welfare, in that the Schmitt family finally will be paid reasonable money for a building they've plainly neglected for too long.

Vacating the current City County Building also is a middle finger to the GOP-dominated county; Gahan will be praised for his progressive commitment to adaptive reuse, while the other arm of government remains stuck in a homely, outdated structure that in a parallel universe might have been Stasi headquarters in an East German provincial city.

Consequently, Blair was absolutely correct in pressing the amendment point, because last evening's budget vote might well have been the last chance for council to wield a seeming technicality of future furnishings in order to reclaim a semblance of control over mayoral planning and spending prerogatives currently being almost entirely exercised without the legislative branch's participation.

Barksdale apparently was more interested in historic preservation sans qualifiers, and that's hardly a surprise, but shouldn't council have some say in this, too?

As we approach the end of Gahan Year Six, the council's power balance remains Democratic, though just barely. The mayor has shown no compunction in bedding down with Coffey, the politically promiscuous former Democrat turned conservative culture warrior, and a steady stream of well-placed, cash-stuffed envelopes to the Wizard of Westside have provided the fifth vote when necessary, as well as periodic theatrical obstructions and consistent comic relief.

Monetization or principle? We already know which of these Gahan will choose, every single time.

Meanwhile, an ever more dismal Caesar carries the mayor's jockstrap for the presumed Democrats, hoping that someday he might be king, and the other three Democrats usually line up behind him without question.

Blair has tried his best to be a watchdog; however, as an independent he has no natural allies and just isn't very good at making them. Knable and Barksdale are omnipresent and responsive, while David Aebersold flails ineffectually.

Well, at least there wasn't a non-binding Dreamer resolution. CM Greg Phipps mentioned DACA while refraining from the gesture; he also upheld the veracity of the two-way street reversion.

It's going to be a very long two years in what for all intents and purposes is a one-party mediocracy. After these many long years of beer, it may at last be time to delve into hard liquor, and put the hammer down -- or smash something with it.

ON THE AVENUES: Love in the time of choleric Coffey, though it's nice of Deaf Gahan to support the K of C's political agenda.

ON THE AVENUES: Love in the time of choleric Coffey, though it's nice of Deaf Gahan to support the K of C's political agenda.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Tonight there'll be a city council meeting, and I wouldn't miss it for the world.

Never mind the bobble-heads, it's Non-Binding Resolutional Culture Wars Night, and the potential for legislative grandstanding approaches solar eclipse levels of suggested pre-meeting martini consumption, toward which I pledge my last full measure of devotion.

New Albany city council, this Thursday: "Resolution Expressing Solidarity with the People of Charlottesville, Virginia, and a Public Condemnation of Racism, White Supremacy, and Neo-Nazi Ideology in Our Community, the Nation and the World."

As we've seen, autonomous councilman-for-hire Dan "Total Eclipse of the Heart" Coffey -- who on occasions as widely scattered as Monday's coming solar event actually stoops to represent the 1st District -- is organizing his own celebration of ragpicker's diversity.

Dan Coffey plans his own unity rally, because why should those smarty pants Democrats have all the fun?

Bring your own hoods, folks. There'll be barbecued bologna and toadstool crepes ... but alas, I digress. Let's begin with this excerpt from last week's column:

ON THE AVENUES: Super Tuesday shrapnel – or, tiptoeing through the tulips with Dan Coffey, now THE face of historic preservation in New Albany.

Glorious Stated Aim #2: Give the Knights of Columbus (Main Street) a new façade.

Translation: … since Coffey is a tremendous backer of the K of C, he’s neutralized and back on the mayor's payroll, at least for the moment.

Meanwhile: Deaf Gahan is Catholic … and the Democratic Party has been holding gatherings in Catholic-affiliated venues since the long ago days when bona fide Democrats like FDR walked the earth ... and that pesky priest at St. Mary’s keeps breathing down Team Gahan’s tight collars about the original sin of the two-way streets conversion … so POOF; all dissonance disappears, just like that, and to such a pervasive extent that we now see Coffey taking pride of place in the mayor’s MTV video touting Super Cash Stuffed Envelope Tuesday.

That’s right, folks. By means of just a teensy tiny bit of façade cash awarded to an organization that maintains an anti-abortion monument out front, welcome to a gay-baiting, venom-spewing, ward-heeling councilman forever in service to the highest bidder becoming the poster child of historic preservation in New Albany … but Gahan isn’t finished yet.

Absolutely no one doubts that as an entity, the Knights of Columbus does charitable works. Last week on Super Tuesday, when Coffey shuffled humbly to the anchor-bedecked podium to accept his cash-stuffed envelope (psst -- the one intended to pay for the K of C's facade work comes much later), he made it a point to emphasize this fact.

With the Knights of Columbus, it'll give a better appearance in the neighborhood, but the Knights of Columbus also does an enormous amount of charity work.

More accurately stated, it'll give a better appearance to Dan Coffey, because if there is any one cardinal rule to fathoming the Byzantine intrigues, gleeful backstabbings and gold bullion transfers inherent in the bottomless cesspool of New Albany politics as usual, it is this:

Never, ever accept a Coffeyism at face value. It will contort your face, and annoy the Wizard.

With still more money hoisted from the Redevelopment Commission, and alongside valued institutional cover from Indiana Landmarks, Jeff Gahan has struck another of his trademark political stink-bomb deals, enabling Coffey's ongoing jihad against modernity by blithely ignoring the separation of church and state -- a concept Coffey openly derides, of course, but the sort of appeasement legerdemain that democratic Democrats (where?) condone at their own peril.

However, Gahan's never met a ward-heeler he wouldn't fluff, and that old bromide about non-profits refraining from involvement in the political process? Think again.

online.org/news/politics/knights-columbus-leader-says-catholics-cannot-vote-abortion-advocates">Knights of Columbus head says Catholics cannot vote for abortion advocates (National Catholic Reporter, August 2, 2016)

Carl Anderson, leader of the Knights of Columbus fraternal order and one of the most influential lay Catholics in the church, has said that abortion outweighs all other issues in the presidential campaign and Catholics cannot vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights.

Much more detail is to be found here.

How One Religious Organization Bankrolls America’s Social Conservative Movement, by Josh Israel (Think Progress)

... But while much of the Knights’ charitable efforts in recent years have supported purely altruistic causes such as the Special Olympics and Habitat for Humanity, millions of their charitable dollars have funded a very socially conservative ideological agenda: opposing abortion, LGBT rights, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and pornography, while supporting public funding for religious organizations.

(While legally independent from the Catholic Church, the Knights of Columbus entities call themselves the church’s “strong right arm.”)

The Knights also operate a legally-separate but affiliated charitable arm called the Knights of Columbus Charities Inc. That tax-exempt non-profit organization made about 57 percent of its annual grants in 2013 to efforts to “promote matters affective life family, marriage and similar priorities in building a culture of life.” More than $1 million of that went to support “Crisis Pregnancy Centers,” a network of facilities that dissuade women from choosing to terminate their pregnancies, often by sharing misinformation.

Tonight's council meeting should be a fascinating test of New Gahanian dysfunction.

Under normal circumstances, forced to endure another effete expression of council support for people and ideas he loathes, Coffey would be spewing, fulminating and dropping an occasional sotto voce hint of imminent violent revenge against the gays, libtards and drunkists.

But Coffey's also enjoying the sweet tea-laced post-coital glow of yet again maneuvering Gahan into merrily compromising everything the Democratic Party should stand for by indulging the councilman's Generalissimo Francisco Franco fetish.

Gahan should have had the good sense to accompany his ill-considered largess with a temporary gag order, but of course, it was chronologically impossible to anticipate Charlottesville, which led to the solidarity resolution, and which gives Coffey a convenient "get out of handshake free" card to play this evening.

Perhaps Coffey will choose to avoid the meeting entirely, as he did on March 6, the last time such a threatening resolution occurred, after white supremacist handbills were duct-taped to local alley walls.

Seize the gesture and read the city council's non-binding "Resolution Condemning the Promotion of Intolerance."

Will the serial bigot Coffey support a resolution in support of human rights? Contractually, he'll have to vote yes if Gahan demands it. But does the mayor even care? Will Scott Blair abstain, citing his oft-stated principle of eschewing non-binding resolutions?

To paraphrase Chico Marx: "Coffey -- he-a no show up."

THE COMMON COUNCIL OF THE CIVIL CITY OF NEW ALBANY, INDIANA, HELD A REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING IN THE THIRD FLOOR ASSEMBLY ROOM OF THE CITY/COUNTY BUILDING ON MONDAY, MARCH 6, 2017 AT 7:00 P.M.

MEMBERS PRESENT: Council Members Mr. Caesar, Mr. Phipps, Mr. Nash, Mr. Blair, Mr. Aebersold, Mr. Barksdale, Dr. Knable and President McLaughlin. Mr. Coffey was not present.

In spite of it all, there remains a valid reason to commend Coffey for a certain consistency of action. The second cardinal rule of New Albanian political geography is that Coffey's always in it for himself; consequently, he might be the only politician in town who is consistent with his gestures.

He may be repugnant, and quite possibly horrendous, but he's not hypocritical.

There's something to be learned from this, but is it too early to start drinking?

Events got all topical on us, but next week I hope to return to "Mr. Duggins Goes to Bob Lane's Old Office and Mistakes the Bidet for the Toilet." 

Yesterday:

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: I'll match your customary gesture politics and raise you a spate of virtue signaling.

FLASHBACK: You say you want a resolution? Ya gotta take yer growth industries where ya find 'em.

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Recent columns:

August 10: ON THE AVENUES: Super Tuesday shrapnel – or, tiptoeing through the tulips with Dan Coffey, now THE face of historic preservation in New Albany.

August 3: ON THE AVENUES: On the importance of being ancient.

July 27: ON THE AVENUES: Irish history with a musical chaser.

July 20: ON THE AVENUES DOUBLEHEADER (2): A book about Bunny Berigan, his life and times.

Reisz Vote Buy Bonanza: "The News and Tribune asked to interview Mayor Jeff Gahan and was instead referred to statements in a news release."

Even in his shining moment of triumphant megalomania, the mayor cannot be bothered to emerge from the bunker and face his adoring public.

He sends a video and a news release instead. And a repurposed Valentine's Day card, as grasped in the furry proffered hand of Dan Coffey, who until Tuesday afternoon was the city's foremost opponent of historic preservation.

Look like that conversion therapy works, after all.

Meanwhile, as the questions proliferate like the tortuous imagined narrative in Cappuccino's noggin, and the star-spangled Chronicles of New Gahania roll endlessly toward a bright and enriching future, reporter Beilman updates Super Tuesday.

Isn't Coffey being paid to be the Knights of Columbus janitor?

If David Barksdale is correct in asserting that the Reisz Furniture building might not have deteriorated so far if its owner would have been pro-active 15 to 20 years ago ... don't we routinely take absentee slumlords to task for the very same neglect?

Exactly which Redevelopment honey pot was dipped into?

Why was only one out-of-state contractor involved with the option, and did local contractors even have a chance to bid?

Might they have been more interested in the project had it been public knowledge that $750,000 would be given them to grease the skids?

Must we even guess which of the office in the renewed Reisz will have the best view of the toll-free (for now) Sherman Minton?

Don't the Knights of Columbus support political and social agendas quite apart from Coffey jihad against modernity?

Rinse and repeat, ad nauseam. Take it away, Elizabeth.

UPDATE: New Albany officials seek to rehabilitate Reisz Furniture building into new City Hall (N and T)

Proposed deal calls for $750,000 investment

NEW ALBANY — New Albany officials are planning to relocate city headquarters out of the government center shared with Floyd County and into its own city hall in an historic Main Street building.

The proposed move into the mid-19th century Reisz Furniture building may be its last hope for survival, as private development interest in rehabilitating the old structure has waned.

"It's probably the only project that would save the Reisz building," said New Albany City Councilman and Redevelopment Commissioner David Barksdale, who is also a local historian. "Fifteen, 20 years ago when it started that small decline, that would have been maybe when the private investor could have gotten involved, but I don't see anyone else stepping up right now and saving that building."

The announcement came along with funding commitments from the redevelopment commission to rehabilitate three historic buildings downtown, including Reisz Furniture.