Coffey, Phipps shine as Council Revue 2016 plays to packed house on Thursday.

Twenty minutes after Thursday's meeting began, it ended.

It's amazing how very little our elected officials have to do. Apparently New Albany is a perfect society on par with North Korea, Walt Disney, or Eastridge Drive, where scenes like this seldom occur ... for two weeks.

As we approach six months without a reporter charged with covering New Albany, the newspaper sent Jerod Clapp, who aptly conveyed the boredom. Two points stood out.

First, there is the ongoing mystery attendant to rental property regulation and inspection.

At the last meeting of 2015, Greg Phipps raised this trial balloon without the slightest indication of its origin -- was it his idea, or Team Gahan's?

When the trial balloon was riddled with pre-emptive gunfire from the same old slumlords, and with his fellow council members oozing fear as Pat Harrison danced around the room in a tutu screaming "Gestapo," down came the ordinance, and up went Phipps' hands, better to be washed of anything having to do with it in the future.

Then, with the legislative toilet flushed and a new council convened, and still without explanation of the ordinance's origin or Phipps' petulance two weeks before in discarding it, he embraced the concept yet again and announced it would go to a special committee for buffing and polishing; no landlords or tenants allowed, but two realtors on board, because ... why?

We don't know. They won't speak to us, and the newspaper doesn't ask. Welcome to Pyongyang.

I mean Orlando.

Then there's Dan Coffey, who at the end of the meeting expressed relief that thank heavens, for once, with nothing on the agenda, none of the council persons had decided to grab the microphone and filibuster for hours about meaningless tripe.

Not that Coffey himself has ever done so, mind you. Except he has, on dozens of occasions. But the coiled Copperhead was not without his colic, and Coffey provided a brief glimpse of his traditional animus when he offered this:

I keep telling redevelopment that them people keep making it hard for poor folks' wheelchairs and I'm not talking about the Coyle site and how the VFW blocks sidewalks with snow, no, I mean those nasty people eating expensive meals out on the sidewalk in tables and chairs and maybe there ought to be more semis go past to put an end to that stuff, so let's pray ...

Everyone nodded, Clapp duly recorded it, and no one asked Coffey why his diversionary tactic about eatery tables and chairs blocking sidewalks was aired in mid-February, when no one has dined outside since approximately October of 2015.

New Albany councilman plans to bring back rental property item March 7

Tenants, devils and a brief rental property registration update.

In December, Councilman Phipps sponsored a rental property regulation ordinance, then abruptly disowned it after council members got a whiff of fear and stampeded toward the exits.

Rental property regs inelegantly tabled as bile, petulance and "ethnic cleansing" fill the air.

At the January council meeting Phipps executed a 180-degree and once again offered to embrace the deflated trial balloon, hoisting the bloodied concept back into the sky under the mayor's ever watchful eye.

There'll now be a committee assembled in classic dilatory fashion, so as to determine ways to render any future rental property standards into conceptual mush, echoing the style of the Human Rights Commission.

New Albany again will be praised for Gahanian progressivism ...and the document will flutter into a locked file cabinet drawer in Shane Gibson's orifice office, never to be seen again.

The Green Mouse has obtained an e-mail from a prospective committee volunteer on the landlords' side of the aisle.

All jokes aside, it provides insight to the "tenant as villain" refrain as we're about to hear it. I may be jaundiced, but the landlords have little to fear, don't they?

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Good Afternoon Gentlemen,

Thought I would reach out to you and see, once again, if I can volunteer to participate in your proposed Rental Ordinance inception.

As not only a previous rental owner, but now currently a property manager for three clients, I bring insight to the table of how tenants can quickly learn and use landlord laws against the landlord. Faster than I can learn them. I would hope that potential “hic-ups” for the landlord would also be considered.

At your December meeting at lot of concerned property owners spoke their minds about how this would impact their investments & small businesses. It did not seem the Council was very informed and I was pleased this ordinance was table to the future.

I was able to let Mr. Brewer know I was volunteering but did not get to speak to everyone.

As you begin to gather research information on how many people this will affect, and how it will affect each one of them differently. Please reach out to someone that see different sides of this Ordinance. If, as you said in previous meeting, that this will only affect a small group of landlords, please host a Round Table Discussion and include those of us that would like to have a voice.

Thank you for your time. I know you have a meeting coming up again next week and I don’t see this ordinance being addressed. Please let me know how I can participate.

In an odd turn of events, Ed Clere is removed as House Public Health chairman.

In Indiana, wagon-circling is an Olympic event.

Rep. Clere removed as chairman of state health committee, by Elizabeth Beilman (N and T)

INDIANAPOLIS — State Rep. Ed Clere, R-New Albany, has been removed as chairman of the Indiana House of Representatives Public Health Committee.

While Clere claims it was his controversial stances on issues that caused his removal, House Speaker Brian Bosma said he made an administrative change because of Clere’s behavior.

Clere said Bosma called him last Monday to warn him of his removal, referencing an earlier conservation the two had in September.

“He told me that he and other members of the house Republican caucus were upset with me about a number of controversial issues and my stance on those issues,” he said, specifically referring to issues including needle exchanges and statewide Medicaid expansion.

But Bosma said his decision “had nothing to do with his position on issues and everything to do with how he has treated other people and his role as chairman” ...

Mrs. Baird inadvertently reveals the crux of the $321K farmers market lotto: "There was not a lot of discussion about it."

I've already provided concise instructions, but I'm only an idea guy. I can't make them pay attention.

DNA can come out of the farmers market dust-up smelling like the proverbial rose. All it needs to do is follow this script.

Especially when Mrs. Baird went out and got the money, and by God, she's going to spend it. Not a lot of discussion? That's the way she undoubtedly intended it. As you peruse the 'Bune's coverage, perhaps you'll also be asking questions that no one seems eager to answer.

When did the council appropriation originate?
Is it a carry-over from the most recent England administration?
Was the appropriation ever discussed by members during the budgetary process?
Has there ever been anything resembling a genuine public hearing on the farmers market?
Why can't we stop and talk this over?
Why the hurry?

An this: Is Mrs. Baird merely the liaison, or is it her job to do DNA's (and the Marktmeister's) bidding?

There's a difference, after all.

Committee to weigh future of New Albany Farmers Market; This year's session opens May 10, by Daniel Suddeath (N and T)

NEW ALBANY — A New Albany City Council committee will meet next week to discuss the future of the downtown Farmers Market.

Baird — who is the council’s liaison on the Develop New Albany board — said she still supports improving the market at its existing location ...

Trogs ‘n’ blogs: Speaking of committee reports, there is one we'd like to see.

For the past few days a desultory discussion has taken place elsewhere in the local blogosphere. To distill it down to the base weirdness, an anonymous troglodyte masquerading as multiple anonymous troglodytes (well, you can’t really know, can you?) wants to know the location of the minutes kept by the recently disbanded redistricting committee.

I wasn’t part of the committee, but I’m tempted to answer that the soggy minutes had to be carted off to the landfill after five council persons took advantage of the most recent meeting to publicly urinate on the proffered results of the committee’s work, and by extension, to soil the very concept of equal representation.

The thing that continues to strike me as telling amid the accusations and recriminations of Luddite Nation is its refusal to apply the same standards of accountability to the abortive redistricting plan that was hurriedly rushed through the council’s docket in 2007, only to be swatted down like a blood-engorged horse fly in high summer heat by a Federal judge.

I’ve always called the council’s flaccidly abortive compliance effort the Schmidt Plan, primarily because it had the fingerprints of the Coup d’Geriatrique all over it, not to mention worn Formica fragments that even a forensics novice could readily link to the ex-councilman’s/woman’s kitchen table.

A handful of the council’s lesser lights duly conspired to submit the Schmidt Plan as a solution, and you can bet your sweet bippy that it was incalculably more “gerrymandered” than the plan offered by the redistricting committee, and yet our anonymous friends aren’t scandalized at all by such wholesale chicanery, preferring instead to slime the committee and to wholeheartedly endorse the work of oblivious officials whose very presence on the council may have stemmed from earlier refusals to redistrict and the electoral inequalities stemming from them.

It’s a highly selective interpretation, indeed, but then again, they’re anonymous, aren't they?

Can I see the minutes from the Schmidt kitchen cabal, please?

Late rally by city council's rational thinkers brings hope to redistricting imbroglio.

With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, following a contentious meeting and the final, non-agenda item public speaking round, the city council suddenly regained a measure of sanity and dramatically entertained a motion to form a committee of at-large council persons and plaintiffs in the redistricting lawsuit in the hope of achieving resolution prior to trial.

This moment came after three of the plaintiffs carefully and factually outlined the current situation. We’ll see about publishing these comments later this weekend.

After counsel was consulted, the vote was 5 to 3 in favor of the committee, with Bill Schmidt (bafflingly and incredibly) abstaining.

Needless to say, Larry Kochert and Dan Coffey remain bitterly opposed. Steve Price joined them in voting against the committee even though he almost certainly doesn’t grasp the impact of the determination of his brethren to run the bus off the cliff rather than join together to ensure equality of representation in New Albany.

Apologies for scooping the Tribune, but Mr. Campbell left early.

There’ll be more on this topic in the coming days, but before then, I’d like to thank Dan Coffey for introducing the following NAC blog post into the public record during the meeting:

Redistricted dimensions of Kochert & Ko. Koup revealed by our friendly informant, Even Deeper Throat.

This should effectively thwart any effort by the council’s vindictive bloc to resuscitate the “Caesar’s assassination” scenario that our informant previously and correctly reported, because any effort to do so in the future would only prove that our report was spot on.

And Coffey and Co. would really, really hate that.