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?
"(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.
FireKing Security Group to be first tenant in Industrial Park West
... David Duggins, New Albany’s director of economic development and redevelopment, said that three years isn’t that long of a time to search for a tenant — a good one, at least.
Is there any evidence for this assertion, or perhaps a corresponding example?
Did the city show property to five potential tenants in three years out of taste and discernment, or because its development hand is so exceedingly weak?
The Carlisle Family was attracted to the Industrial Park partly because of the tax abatements the city offered them. They city approved one abatement for the $6.5 million the Carlisle Family is investing into its new building, while also approving a tax abatement for the $2.2 million worth of manufacturing and IT equipment FireKing is investing into the new location.
Lots and lots of boilerplate tax abatements. The city is adept at giving away money to bigger companies. What sort of programs exist to "assist" smaller start-ups?
“We think that once FireKing gets built up, it’ll really help spur more development because if you don’t know it’s there, you really don’t know it’s there,” he said.
Was that Duggins speaking, or the late Yogi Berra?
Finally, how does the headline "industrial development growing" jibe with the article's conclusion: "Grant Line Industrial Park West might be one of the last frontiers for industry in the city. New Albany is almost out of industrial space, said Duggins."
Let's move on to a second collection of unchallenged smoke-blowing, this time on site at The Break Wind Lofts at Duggins Flats ... and waiter, may I have another plaque?
... The city of New Albany has been happy with how The Breakwater has been coming along — especially regarding the types of tenants it is attracting.
“We want people to live in downtown that are excited to be in downtown,” said David Duggins, New Albany’s director of economic development and redevelopment.
And the apartment complex just looks nice, Duggins said.
“When you go out there, it’s cool, and I think that’s hard to accomplish sometimes,” he said.
So many questions.
How cool are the sewer tap-in waivers and other public subsidies enabling a private for-profit enterprise to be given its special leg-up?
Given these subsidies, isn't the city also subsidizing future retail occupants of the old Coyle building, these being subsidies unavailable to other small business owners?
Duggins has denied two-way streets ever came up during these subsidy negotiations, but at least one Flaherty Collins employee has indicated otherwise.
Which is it? Because if this did in fact arise, and if assurances were made by the city to this effect, then every subsequent protest of "two-way streets aren't a done deal" was a lie (yeah, Irv -- you can use that).
But wait -- it's cool, dude.
After all, Duggins isn't so much a director of economic development as a style arbiter. He's Gianni Versace, reincarnated, and Jeff Gahan believes it.
This one from Matt Taibbi was posted on April 29, 2015, and I've underlined a passage which echoes something we've been saying locally:
Why do we accept the entire governmental structure becoming oriented toward monetizing and dispensing financial favors to the business and construction elites, at the expense of a level playing field for ordinary people?
This is why I'll trudge down to Tuesday's BZA meeting and denounce cynical trickle-down corporate welfare yet again, even as the Dugginses and Gibsons of the ruling elite chortle from the back row at the temerity of anyone daring to question their wheel-greasing boilerplate.
I'd never even consider placing myself in the same league with Bernie Sanders, but this much we have in common: There'll be no oligarchy appeasement here.
... That saltiness, I'm almost sure of it, is what drove him into this race. He just can't sit by and watch the things that go on, go on. That's not who he is.
When I first met Bernie Sanders, I'd just spent over a decade living in formerly communist Russia. The word "socialist" therefore had highly negative connotations for me, to the point where I didn't even like to say it out loud.
But Bernie Sanders is not Bukharin or Trotsky. His concept of "Democratic Socialism" as I've come to understand it over the years is that an elected government should occasionally step in and offer an objection or two toward our progress to undisguised oligarchy. Or, as in the case of not giving tax breaks to companies who move factories overseas, our government should at least not finance the disappearance of the middle class.
Maybe that does qualify as radical and unserious politics in our day and age. If that's the case, we should at least admit how much trouble we're in.
The argument against (the Coyle site residential development) is right in front of everyone's face. The people that they want to attract can't afford to live there.
Since Thursday evening's city council meeting, I've received almost a dozen e-mails and messages from New Albanians publicly identifying as Democratic, but expressing personal confusion (and in some instance, revulsion) at the Reaganite corporate welfare nature of Jeff Gahan's trickle-down Flaherty and Collins deal for luxury apartments.
Of course, you know I agree with you; the local Democratic Party has run aground, and yet it will be difficult for you to take a public stand in recognition of this reality.
That's okay. I get it. Knowing there's a problem is the first step toward resolving it. Just remember that we're here to do the right thing for the right reasons, as the late Hank Jacoby once put it, and it comes down to conscience.
... Lots of voters who ordinarily choose a side based on factors beyond the actual issues (family, habit, compulsion at work, etc) will choose to preserve the outward appearance of "this or that" conformity, while resolving internally to opt out of politics as usual and vote differently in 2015. If so, and conscience is their guide ... well, that's why the ballots are secret. No one should be looking over your shoulder.
As for the impending Coyle site giveaway, taxpayer subsidized big-city pricing to live within an errant bocce toss of fundamentally neglected one-way arterial streets, slicing through neighborhoods dominated by slumlord mentalities, just might be working at cross-purposes with millennial aggrandizement. It's complicated, as the following essay suggests.
Then again, New Albany's governing Democratic clique seldom bothers to read.
... Then came some interesting data, pegged to the release of 2014 Census information this spring: Millennials have indeed started moving out of big city downtowns—but not necessarily in favor of a quiet rural or suburban life.
Yesterday we were breathlessly told to prepare for yet another apocalyptic weather event that never arrived. Out in search of flashlight batteries and cans of beans, I happened upon representatives of Flaherty Collins, loading the trunks of their cars with cases of champagne.
Sly Stone once observed a riot going on. In New Albany, we specialize in anointments.
There was a gently facetious comment posted about the preceding, and while normally I wouldn't repeat it, the sentiment is deserving of open refutation proportionate to the backroom greasings that have produced the Coyle site deal.
How dare them foreigners (from Indiana) invest in our town! Xenophobia is alive and well in some quarters.
If the investment "in our town" is credible (read: profitable), as developers like Matt Chalfant, Steve Resch, the Carters and others seem to think it is, then why must we in effect pay someone to invest in NA?
This is what we're doing with Flaherty Collins.
But couldn't these monies be used to augment the non-subsidized local investments already taking place, by developers working on their own, from no more than a profit incentive borne of risk and opportunity?
Didn't I read somewhere that this is the essence of the free market?
Perhaps there is more than the immediately obvious to "boilerplate" economic development strategies.
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