Three years later, it's still the essay Jeff Gahan doesn't want you to read: "Want Community? Build Walkability."

Originally published on February 4, 2016. There's a compelling argument to be made that by doing as little as humanly possible to broaden the two-way mandate beyond the simplest of directional changes, Gahan has made the streets worse for walkers and cyclists. But, as we know, making a more walkable and bikeable city wasn't ever the incurably car-centric mayor's plan, anyway. 

I've said it for years, and will continue to say it.

If Jeff Gahan has any intention of implementing street grid reform, as he continues to hint privately and evade publicly, his base instinct will be to "sell" the idea of street grid reform to the public on the basis of cars alone.

He'll say, "It's all about traffic safety."

When Gahan has bothered referring to the Jeff Speck study -- and this has been very seldom -- he has studiously avoided referring to the concept of walkability, which after all is Speck's entire rationale, a variation of which appears on almost every one of the study's pages.

To Gahan, the fact that he cannot comprehend walkability himself implies that no one else can, either. Suburbanites are like that, aren't they? If Gahan somehow does get it, better late than never. The mayor might still manage to make something positive from the muck he has created through his silence and timidity. He needs to come out from hiding, say aloud what's true, and lead the city.

The point Gahan needs to make is eloquently stated in this essay:

Changes are needed. We need to fix our zoning codes to enable traditional mixed-use neighborhoods. We need to challenge our transportation policies and stop prioritizing car travel over all other modes. And we need to eliminate the regulatory obstacles that make it difficult to obtain financing for renovation or construction of small, mixed-use buildings in walkable neighborhoods.

Cities evolve. We create our future one building at a time. So there's no time like the present to start building -- and rebuilding--places that are great for people and communities (again).

Does Jeff Gahan understand, or not?

Every day he waits, we lose ground to places like Jeffersonville. Too bad NA's civic spirit doesn't approximate its zeal in cheering for a basketball team.

Want Community? Build Walkability, by Sarah Kobos (Strong Towns)

Municipal zoning ordinances separated commercial uses from residential ones, and enshrined car-oriented design at the local level. Transportation engineering standards transformed our city streets into high-speed stroads. Meanwhile, changes to lending practices and federal mortgage insurance regulations made it easy and cheap to get a loan on a single-family home in the suburbs, while making it significantly harder to finance mixed-use buildings in the urban core.

We pay for these mistakes with our bodies, as decades of car-centric design have transformed us from active humans into motorists reliant on machines for movement. But our communities also pay a price, as people who drive are more isolated and detached from the cities they call home.

I don’t mean to knock people who drive. (I live in a city where driving is often the only practical choice.) I simply mean that when you walk or bike, you experience your hometown in a much more intimate way.

Remembering Chloe Allen -- and the unfinished task of making streets safe for all users, not just drivers.

As the late Chloe Allen's former neighbor pointed out yesterday, the second anniversary of her tragic death fell on squarely on Mother's Day.

It's also the second anniversary of Mayor Jeff Gahan's refusal to say her name aloud, or even to acknowledge her passing.

I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

I thought it prudent to wait a bit before mentioning it, and asking: Is the intersection in question safer now?

Perhaps marginally. It's still a terrifying place to watch the very worst that drivers can be. 

In the column reprinted here, I asked that Chloe Allen's death not be allowed to become yet another forgotten civic footnote. Unfortunately, the powers that be barely noticed when this murder-by-driver occurred, much less committed the sad fact to active memory.

The incessant roar of Team Gahan's campaign finance accumulation machine tends to drown out the sounds of compassion and human dignity. In 2019, we can do something about this. 

---

12/22/2016

ON THE AVENUES: For New Albany’s Person of the Year, the timeless words of Mother Jones: “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It’s time again for NA Confidential to select New Albany’s "Person of the Year." In 2016, we’ll be approaching the task a bit differently than before, although our basic definition remains intact.

Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year) is an annual issue of the United States news magazine Time that features and profiles a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or for worse ... has done the most to influence the events of the year."

Admittedly, in past years the selection process has been conducted with a certain flippancy, and what I mean by this is that … we've done it with tongue planted in cheek, disrespectfully and facetiously.

(Just trying to help Shane out, in case he’s reading.)

• 2011 ... The Sherman Minton Bridge
• 2012 ... Bill "Slumlord" Allen
• 2013 ... (tie) Houndmouth and "Quality of Life"
• 2014 ... Heroic Non-Incentivized Downtown Developers
• 2015 ... New Albany property tax payers

Yes, we’ve been flippant in the past, but not this year. This year we're playing it perfectly straight.

That’s because in May, Chloe Allen was killed.

---

Chloe Allen was trying to walk across Spring Street where it intersects with Vincennes. It’s a chaotic intersection for pedestrians because it is designed expressly for cars, not people, with drive-through retail businesses trafficking their wares via numerous curb cuts on three of four corners.

To walk there regularly even while remaining entirely on the sidewalk is to know how unsafe it feels, but walking isn’t something Jeff Gahan’s team of Bud Light-swilling, frat-brother suburbanites understands, and so Chloe Allen was running errands in preparation for a family wedding, and she tried to cross Spring Street.

It should have been routine, but she never made it to the other side.

A distracted, negligent or otherwise rotten driver hit her, and she died. Of course the driver wasn’t charged, because the firebrand ideological appendage Keith Henderson evidently saw no potential for a book deal in the wake of her passing, and in the weeks following her death, New Albany City Hall contracted a severe and abiding case of laryngitis.

It remains a telling silence induced by pure, pitiful, bottomless cowardice.

Chloe Allen’s death was briefly discussed at city council, though not by those Disney-Democratic rubber stamp council persons who yawningly align themselves with City Hall’s every whim.

Her death was mentioned before the Board of Public Works and Safety during public comments, although these bored time servers were able to muster little more than tepid gurgling sounds for fear their phones might ring at 2:00 a.m., with Hizzoner himself breathing heavily and suggestively on the other end of the line.

Speaking for myself, I’ll never forgive any of them for their giggling remoteness, their nonchalant callousness and their cavalier gutlessness. I never will, and you shouldn’t, either.

It didn’t have to be this way, and it shouldn't be this way ever again, but what can we do?

For starters: Not forget.

---

In December, when I solicited nominations for Person of the Year, more than one blog reader suggested that Chloe Allen would be the best choice, precisely because the cosmic senselessness of an ordinary citizen’s murder while on foot, seeking nothing more than to continue her walk on the other side of a street designed to terrify any user not passing through at high speeds in an automobile, is a lamentable (and preventable) state of affairs perfectly illuminating the fundamental and enduring disconnect between New Albany's political hacks and their subjects.

And so it does, chillingly so.

It also holds an inconvenient mirror aloft, one that catches the reflection not only of Team “Image First” Gahan’s leering, abysmally-mannered, serial refusal to accept responsibility for anything at all that can’t be alibied in a poorly written press release, but serves also to expose these very same pusillanimous tendencies in the city’s populace as a whole.

However, when Chloe Allen’s name was mentioned as a possibility, I was hesitant, mindful of the local political caste’s knee-jerk reaction earlier this year when some citizens dared to speak truth to power.

Like the reaction of my councilman, who insists he supports safe streets for everyone, but spent the first five years of Gahan’s personality cult idly watching, with nary a peep, as Dear Leader sat on his hands, although at least my councilman will concede privately that he has felt constrained and unable to object openly, lest his imperial overlord respond by doing even less for public safety than before – if that’s possible.

Greg Phipps expressed annoyance with those who feel it is a public official's responsibility to speak to matters of the public's interest -- especially when these matters pertain to safety. Phipps referred to "malcontents" in this context.

Or City Hall’s anonymous house spokes-tweeter:

Hey everybody watch me crassly exploit a human being's death to score extremely cheap points for my pet agenda.

Which begs the question: Shouldn’t public safety be Gahan’s foremost “pet agenda” as mayor -- not dully repetitious ducking and covering?

In time, with our bureaucratic political caste busily lobbing flaccid missiles from their pea shooters, the sound of circling wagons brought Matthew Shepard to mind.

(The) backlash following Shepard’s murder was knowingly spurred and intentionally politicized by LGBT activists, civil rights advocates, world famous celebrities, but also ordinary folks inhabiting a table at Denny’s. It was crass, exploitative and fully justified. I supported it then, and I do now.

Perhaps then we’re all malcontents, each and every one of us, crassly exploiting tragedy for political purposes, whether it’s Marc Antony, the grieving Armenians pointing fingers at the Kremlin, Dr. King, human rights proponents memorializing Shepard – or a citizen like Lori Kay Sympson, who doesn’t want you to forget that her friend Chloe Allen was killed trying to cross a dangerous street in New Albany, where streets are kept dangerous due to crass exploitation – that’s right, for political purposes.

Politics is power. For a prevaricating politician like Greg Phipps to selectively deny the efficacy of this statement by tarring others as malcontents is a tragedy in itself, and a misreading of history eligible for crass exploitation by those of us, malcontented or otherwise, who apparently understand his elected position – and his past – far better than he does.

Alas, it seems we're no less malcontented now than in May, and so Chloe Allen is NA Confidential’s Person of the Year for 2016, but not without a respectful and sizable caveat.

---

Chloe Allen’s death cannot be allowed to become another forgotten civic footnote. 

Her passing must not have been in vain. In years to come principled citizens of this city – the ones for whom conscience isn’t a high school vocabulary term to be discarded once they’re elected to office – must forcibly insist that her memory be honored, nay, overtly exploited for the sake of a worthwhile agenda.

Specifically, an agenda of public safety in this city. Among other aspects, this public safety agenda reorders auto-centrism by reimagining our streets as community spaces, not mere transit routes. This agenda urges a genuine commitment to public safety by design, for all users, not drivers only. This public safety agenda empowers from the grassroots up, not the TIF bond down.

The late Chloe Allen is New Albany’s Person of the Year because we have no choice except to rededicate our efforts to honor her memory by lobbying for street grid improvements that matter for people, too, and not only their machines.

An excellent place to begin is the horrible intersection of Spring and Vincennes, though not to neglect Main and W. 1st, where City Hall gratuitously fumbled a nuts and bolts traffic taming opportunity in 2015 in favor of showy repaving prior to an election.

And then there's Spring and W. 1st. The only surprise here is that a lawyer hasn't yet been hit. Make it a Democratic donor attorney, and traffic calming might actually occur.

Not to mention State and Spring, where speed and recklessness are everyday occurrences for walkers.

But all these opportunities for correction simply must be accompanied by a civic mission statement of intent, as in Toronto, Canada:

Six Principles of Toronto Pedestrian Charter

Accessibility
Walking is a free and direct means of accessing local goods, services, community amenities and public transit.

Equity
Walking is the only mode of travel that is universally affordable, and allows children and youth, and people with specific medical conditions to travel independently.

Health and Well-being
Walking is a proven method of promoting personal health and well-being.

Environmental Sustainability
Walking relies on human power and has negligible environmental impact.

Personal and Community Safety
An environment in which people feel safe and comfortable walking increases community safety for all.

Community Cohesion and Vitality
A pedestrian-friendly environment encourages and facilitates social interaction and local economic vitality.

The Toronto Pedestrian Charter is an initiative that came from residents who serve their city on the Toronto Pedestrian Committee. The Charter reflects the principle that a city's walkability is one of the most important measures of the quality of its public realm, and of its health and vitality.

This is the first pedestrian charter in North America, and the first approved by a municipality anywhere. So this is an historic first that we hope will set an example for other municipalities across the country, the continent and around the world.

In approving the development of the Charter in 2000, The City intended:

• to outline what pedestrians have a right to expect from the City in terms of meeting their travel needs;
• to establish principles to guide the development of all policies and practices that affect pedestrians; and
• to identify the features of an urban environment and infrastructure that will encourage and support walking.

Most importantly, the Charter was intended to serve as a reminder to decision-makers, both in the City and in the community at large, that walking should be valued as the most sustainable of all forms of travel, and that it has enormous social, environmental and economic benefits for the city.

We can dedicate these to Chloe Allen, but unfortunately, we also can predict with near certainty that City Hall will remain indifferent.

Gahan’s grandiosely termed Downtown Street Grid Improvement Project might yield a bare minimum return on investment by restoring two-way streets, but otherwise it’s just another of his mock Potemkin façades, dedicated to garnering as much campaign finance lubrication as possible from the usual suspects in engineering and construction without making truly transformative changes to the grid.

It’s why the forever uncomprehending Gahan stripped Jeff Speck’s plan of its most potentially useful recommendations, and it’s why we’ll have to add them back as we’re able, with or without City Hall’s permission.

Rest in peace, Chloe Allen. I proceed and persist in the hope that we can make you and your family proud of us, and help this city become a safer place for people to live, work ... and walk.

ON THE AVENUES: For New Albany’s Person of the Year, the timeless words of Mother Jones: “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”

ON THE AVENUES: For New Albany’s Person of the Year, the timeless words of Mother Jones: “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”


A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It’s time again for NA Confidential to select New Albany’s "Person of the Year." In 2016, we’ll be approaching the task a bit differently than before, although our basic definition remains intact.

Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year) is an annual issue of the United States news magazine Time that features and profiles a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or for worse ... has done the most to influence the events of the year."

Admittedly, in past years the selection process has been conducted with a certain flippancy, and what I mean by this is that … we've done it with tongue planted in cheek, disrespectfully and facetiously.

(Just trying to help Shane out, in case he’s reading.)

• 2011 ... The Sherman Minton Bridge
• 2012 ... Bill "Slumlord" Allen
• 2013 ... (tie) Houndmouth and "Quality of Life"
• 2014 ... Heroic Non-Incentivized Downtown Developers
• 2015 ... New Albany property tax payers

Yes, we’ve been flippant in the past, but not this year. This year we're playing it perfectly straight.

That’s because in May, Chloe Allen was killed.

---

Chloe Allen was trying to walk across Spring Street where it intersects with Vincennes. It’s a chaotic intersection for pedestrians because it is designed expressly for cars, not people, with drive-through retail businesses trafficking their wares via numerous curb cuts on three of four corners.

To walk there regularly even while remaining entirely on the sidewalk is to know how unsafe it feels, but walking isn’t something Jeff Gahan’s team of Bud Light-swilling, frat-brother suburbanites understands, and so Chloe Allen was running errands in preparation for a family wedding, and she tried to cross Spring Street.

It should have been routine, but she never made it to the other side.

A distracted, negligent or otherwise rotten driver hit her, and she died. Of course the driver wasn’t charged, because the firebrand ideological appendage Keith Henderson evidently saw no potential for a book deal in the wake of her passing, and in the weeks following her death, New Albany City Hall contracted a severe and abiding case of laryngitis.

It remains a telling silence induced by pure, pitiful, bottomless cowardice.

Chloe Allen’s death was briefly discussed at city council, though not by those Disney-Democratic rubber stamp council persons who yawningly align themselves with City Hall’s every whim.

Her death was mentioned before the Board of Public Works and Safety during public comments, although these bored time servers were able to muster little more than tepid gurgling sounds for fear their phones might ring at 2:00 a.m., with Hizzoner himself breathing heavily and suggestively on the other end of the line.

Speaking for myself, I’ll never forgive any of them for their giggling remoteness, their nonchalant callousness and their cavalier gutlessness. I never will, and you shouldn’t, either.

It didn’t have to be this way, and it shouldn't be this way ever again, but what can we do?

For starters: Not forget.

---

In December, when I solicited nominations for Person of the Year, more than one blog reader suggested that Chloe Allen would be the best choice, precisely because the cosmic senselessness of an ordinary citizen’s murder while on foot, seeking nothing more than to continue her walk on the other side of a street designed to terrify any user not passing through at high speeds in an automobile, is a lamentable (and preventable) state of affairs perfectly illuminating the fundamental and enduring disconnect between New Albany's political hacks and their subjects.

And so it does, chillingly so.

It also holds an inconvenient mirror aloft, one that catches the reflection not only of Team “Image First” Gahan’s leering, abysmally-mannered, serial refusal to accept responsibility for anything at all that can’t be alibied in a poorly written press release, but serves also to expose these very same pusillanimous tendencies in the city’s populace as a whole.

However, when Chloe Allen’s name was mentioned as a possibility, I was hesitant, mindful of the local political caste’s knee-jerk reaction earlier this year when some citizens dared to speak truth to power.

Like the reaction of my councilman, who insists he supports safe streets for everyone, but spent the first five years of Gahan’s personality cult idly watching, with nary a peep, as the Dear Leader sat on his hands, though at least my councilman will concede privately that he has felt constrained and unable to object openly, lest his imperial overlord respond by doing even less for public safety than before – if that’s possible.

Greg Phipps expressed annoyance with those who feel it is a public official's responsibility to speak to matters of the public's interest -- especially when these matters pertain to safety. Phipps referred to "malcontents" in this context.

Or City Hall’s anonymous house spokes-tweeter:

Hey everybody watch me crassly exploit a human being's death to score extremely cheap points for my pet agenda.

Which begs the question: Shouldn’t public safety be Gahan’s foremost “pet agenda” as mayor -- not dully repetitious ducking and covering?

In time, with our bureaucratic political caste busily lobbing flaccid missiles from their pea shooters, the sound of circling wagons brought Matthew Shepard to mind.

(The) backlash following Shepard’s murder was knowingly spurred and intentionally politicized by LGBT activists, civil rights advocates, world famous celebrities, but also ordinary folks inhabiting a table at Denny’s. It was crass, exploitative and fully justified. I supported it then, and I do now.

Perhaps then we’re all malcontents, each and every one of us, crassly exploiting tragedy for political purposes, whether it’s Marc Antony, the grieving Armenians pointing fingers at the Kremlin, Dr. King, human rights proponents memorializing Shepard – or a citizen like Lori Kay Sympson, who doesn’t want you to forget that her friend Chloe Allen was killed trying to cross a dangerous street in New Albany, where streets are kept dangerous due to crass exploitation – that’s right, for political purposes.

Politics is power. For a prevaricating politician like Greg Phipps to selectively deny the efficacy of this statement by tarring others as malcontents is a tragedy in itself, and a misreading of history eligible for crass exploitation by those of us, malcontented or otherwise, who apparently understand his elected position – and his past – far better than he does.

Alas, it seems we're no less malcontented now than in May, and so Chloe Allen is NA Confidential’s Person of the Year for 2016, but not without a respectful and sizable caveat.

---

Chloe Allen’s death cannot be allowed to become another forgotten civic footnote. 

Her passing must not have been in vain. In years to come principled citizens of this city – the ones for whom conscience isn’t a high school vocabulary term to be discarded once they’re elected to office – must forcibly insist that her memory be honored, nay, overtly exploited for the sake of a worthwhile agenda.

Specifically, an agenda of public safety in this city. Among other aspects, this public safety agenda reorders auto-centrism by reimagining our streets as community spaces, not mere transit routes. This agenda urges a genuine commitment to public safety by design, for all users, not drivers only. This public safety agenda empowers from the grassroots up, not the TIF bond down.

The late Chloe Allen is New Albany’s Person of the Year because we have no choice except to rededicate our efforts to honor her memory by lobbying for street grid improvements that matter for people, too, and not only their machines.

An excellent place to begin is the horrible intersection of Spring and Vincennes, though not to neglect Main and W. 1st, where City Hall gratuitously fumbled a nuts and bolts traffic taming opportunity in 2015 in favor of showy repaving prior to an election.

And then there's Spring and W. 1st. The only surprise here is that a lawyer hasn't yet been hit. Make it a Democratic donor attorney, and traffic calming might actually occur.

Not to mention State and Spring, where speed and recklessness are everyday occurrences for walkers.

But all these opportunities for correction simply must be accompanied by a civic mission statement of intent, as in Toronto, Canada:

Six Principles of Toronto Pedestrian Charter

Accessibility
Walking is a free and direct means of accessing local goods, services, community amenities and public transit.

Equity
Walking is the only mode of travel that is universally affordable, and allows children and youth, and people with specific medical conditions to travel independently.

Health and Well-being
Walking is a proven method of promoting personal health and well-being.

Environmental Sustainability
Walking relies on human power and has negligible environmental impact.

Personal and Community Safety
An environment in which people feel safe and comfortable walking increases community safety for all.

Community Cohesion and Vitality
A pedestrian-friendly environment encourages and facilitates social interaction and local economic vitality.

The Toronto Pedestrian Charter is an initiative that came from residents who serve their city on the Toronto Pedestrian Committee. The Charter reflects the principle that a city's walkability is one of the most important measures of the quality of its public realm, and of its health and vitality.

This is the first pedestrian charter in North America, and the first approved by a municipality anywhere. So this is an historic first that we hope will set an example for other municipalities across the country, the continent and around the world.

In approving the development of the Charter in 2000, The City intended:

• to outline what pedestrians have a right to expect from the City in terms of meeting their travel needs;
• to establish principles to guide the development of all policies and practices that affect pedestrians; and
• to identify the features of an urban environment and infrastructure that will encourage and support walking.

Most importantly, the Charter was intended to serve as a reminder to decision-makers, both in the City and in the community at large, that walking should be valued as the most sustainable of all forms of travel, and that it has enormous social, environmental and economic benefits for the city.

We can dedicate these to Chloe Allen, but unfortunately, we also can predict with near certainty that City Hall will remain indifferent.

Gahan’s grandiosely termed Downtown Street Grid Improvement Project might yield a bare minimum return on investment by restoring two-way streets, but otherwise it’s just another of his mock Potemkin façades, dedicated to garnering as much campaign finance lubrication as possible from the usual suspects in engineering and construction without making truly transformative changes to the grid.

It’s why the forever uncomprehending Gahan stripped Jeff Speck’s plan of its most potentially useful recommendations, and it’s why we’ll have to add them back as we’re able, with or without City Hall’s permission.

Rest in peace, Chloe Allen. I proceed and persist in the hope that we can make you and your family proud of us, and help this city become a safer place for people to live, work ... and walk.

---

Recent columns:

December 15: ON THE AVENUES: Truth, lies, music, and a trick of the Christmas tale (2016).

December 8: ON THE AVENUES: It’s never too late to beer all over again.

December 1: ON THE AVENUES: Once more with feeling, because as the notable American philosopher Moe Bandy once sang, “Here I am, drunk again.”

November 11: ON THE AVENUES: Kind-a full-a you know what, but now we're going to find out whether Jeff Gahan has any cattle under his hat.

In New Albany, as in St. Paul: "Finding the Political Will to Fix 'Four-Lane Death Roads.'"

In the aftermath of Chloe Allen's death at the ridiculously dangerous intersection of Spring and Vincennes, we've waited in vain for City Hall to register a response.

A pedestrian was killed, another was sent to the ground two weeks later, and the city's Board of Public Works and Safety didn't so much as mention either occurrence.

Through private channels only, a city functionary held that forthcoming changes to Spring between Beharrell and Vincennes would heroically pave the way for future change.

We've also been told that getting walkers across a busy street is impossible, because the street is busy, and it's busy because it's not controlled, and we'll do nothing to control it -- see, impossible.

What City Hall forever seems unable to grasp is that elected and appointed officials are there to lead. Circling wagons and pouring five more feet of concrete around the down-low bunker do not qualify as leadership.

I'd describe these acts as institutional cowardice.

But I wouldn't dare insult the institutionalized.

Finding the Political Will to Fix “Four-Lane Death Roads”, by Angie Schmitt (Streetsblog)

A mother was killed as she crossed this “four-lane death road” in St. Paul last week. The victim was 32-year-old Erin Elizabeth Dunham, who was dropping her kid off at the bus. She was walking in the crosswalk on Maryland Avenue, a four-lane, high-speed road running through an urban area.

Local officials know Maryland Avenue is dangerous, which is why the intersection where Dunham was killed was recently the site of a “crosswalk safety awareness campaign.” But the campaign was not enough to prevent Dunham’s death.

What a street like Maryland Avenue needs, says Lindeke, is a road diet to shorten crossing distances and calm motor vehicle traffic by narrowing it to one car lane in each direction and a center turn lane. The hard part is the politics, he writes:

The first road-diet hurdle is institutional. Advocates and leaders have to convince city staff, and public works engineers in particular, that the “loss” of “level of service” (LOS) is worth the “gain” of safety. Making the argument that “more congestion is OK” can be challenging, especially for people in institutions that have spent decades fighting against congestion, or who might see crashes as inevitable accidents. (One common response, at least in Ramsey County, is that any increase in congestion makes streets less safe because drivers will become angry and begin driving erratically. I call this the “LOS extortion argument,” and I don’t think it’s accurate. Rather, I think you can change and “calm” our driving culture through engineering and other efforts.)

Safe streets are too slow a roll, especially when Jeff Gahan and the subservient Democrats keep pushing back.

The original cartoon is by Adam Zyglis and appeared in the Buffalo News, then Modacity posted it to Fb with this message:

"This century's great city-building challenge: to slowly roll back decades of mistakes from the previous one (via @AdamZyglis on Twitter)."

Because ...

The essay Jeff Gahan doesn't want you to read: "Want Community? Build Walkability."

I've said it for years, and will continue to say it.

If Jeff Gahan has any intention of implementing street grid reform, as he continues to hint privately and evade publicly, his base instinct will be to "sell" the idea of street grid reform to the public on the basis of cars alone.

He'll say, "It's all about traffic safety."

When Gahan has bothered referring to the Jeff Speck study -- and this has been very seldom -- he has studiously avoided referring to the concept of walkability, which after all is Speck's entire rationale, a variation of which appears on almost every one of the study's pages.

To Gahan, the fact that he cannot comprehend walkability himself implies that no one else can, either. Suburbanites are like that, aren't they? If Gahan somehow does get it, better late than never. The mayor might still manage to make something positive from the muck he has created through his silence and timidity. He needs to come out from hiding, say aloud what's true, and lead the city.

The point Gahan needs to make is eloquently stated in this essay:

Changes are needed. We need to fix our zoning codes to enable traditional mixed-use neighborhoods. We need to challenge our transportation policies and stop prioritizing car travel over all other modes. And we need to eliminate the regulatory obstacles that make it difficult to obtain financing for renovation or construction of small, mixed-use buildings in walkable neighborhoods.

Cities evolve. We create our future one building at a time. So there's no time like the present to start building -- and rebuilding--places that are great for people and communities (again).

Does Jeff Gahan understand, or not?

Every day he waits, we lose ground to places like Jeffersonville. Too bad NA's civic spirit doesn't approximate its zeal in cheering for a basketball team.

Want Community? Build Walkability, by Sarah Kobos (Strong Towns)

Municipal zoning ordinances separated commercial uses from residential ones, and enshrined car-oriented design at the local level. Transportation engineering standards transformed our city streets into high-speed stroads. Meanwhile, changes to lending practices and federal mortgage insurance regulations made it easy and cheap to get a loan on a single-family home in the suburbs, while making it significantly harder to finance mixed-use buildings in the urban core.

We pay for these mistakes with our bodies, as decades of car-centric design have transformed us from active humans into motorists reliant on machines for movement. But our communities also pay a price, as people who drive are more isolated and detached from the cities they call home.

I don’t mean to knock people who drive. (I live in a city where driving is often the only practical choice.) I simply mean that when you walk or bike, you experience your hometown in a much more intimate way.

Let's keep the spotlight on the civil rights FAIL perpetuated by Mike Pence and Indiana's Republicans.

But that's life in a one-party state.

EDITORIAL: Legislature, governor fail test of courage, at the Evansville Courier & Press

... With five weeks remaining in the short, non-budgetary session, the 2016 Legislature, without great leadership from the governor's office, has accomplished little. We acknowledge that, usually, there is a great rush of bills through Indianapolis in the final week, but beginning with civil rights legislation, it's disheartening what Gov. Mike Pence and the Legislature chose to not push through.

Once again, the simple act of assuring equal rights for all escaped our elected leaders and became a debate that reached the national stage — though, thanks goodness, not as much as last year's Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In an effort to appease both those who support civil rights and those who fear their religious beliefs would be infringed upon, nothing moved forward — which you sense, in this election year, is exactly what Gov. Pence had hoped.

Imagine a city with overt future vision and walkability goals, but not in Jeff Gahan's New Albany.

Time and again, we've been told that Mayor Jeff Gahan favors the street network reform proposals proffered by consultant Jeff Speck.

We're told he solicited them, he understands them, and that City Hall "gets them."

Of course, these reassurances come by underground carrier pigeon from anonymous backroom sources in the dead of night during a blind drunk, because heaven forbid the mayor might openly lead on such a project. We must wait ... and wait ... and wait, as ground is steadily lost.

As such, we're compelled to draw obvious conclusions: If Jeff Gahan can't or won't speak openly with force and passion, doing what a political leader is supposed to do by advocating a position to advance the city's prospects, shaping consensus, and leading (that word again) the debate, then he cannot possibly be "for" complete streets. This is why I've used the word cowardice, and will continue using it.

Cowardice is the correct word, as it applies to a political hologram commonly seen exhibiting it.

Consider the epochal contrast with the hitherto unknown city of Tigard, Oregon (population 48,035). Like New Albany, Tigard is bringing Jeff Speck and his walkability ideas to town, and unlike Jeff Gahan, the city of Tigard begins with a specific vision and a willingness to advocate it openly, because it aims to become "the most walkable community in the Pacific Northwest where people of all ages and abilities enjoy healthy and interconnected lives."

Back here in New Albany, Speck's downtown street network proposals are designed to propel our city into a position of being the most walkable city in the Louisville metro area, and perhaps regionally.

Consequently, we're operating strictly on the down-low, with no stated vision and no public objective, and with a mayor cowering in his command bunker as minions rush to reward the usual suspects at the expense of the city.

Tigard in the vanguard, New Albany in thrall to the Democratic monetization machine. Time for a change, folks.

• 

 Monday, June 15 @ 6:15 p.m. 
 Broadway Rose Theatre
 12850 SW Grant Avenue, Tigard

This is a free event and open to the public.

The presentation is a timely complement to Tigard's long-term vision to become: "The most walkable community in the Pacific Northwest where people of all ages and abilities enjoy healthy and interconnected lives."

Unelected Bored of Works gets started gutting Speck as mayor endorses PAC checks from afar.

The first Speck amputation was announced yesterday, as improvements suggested for the State Street corridor were unceremoniously jettisoned sans substantive explanation from Warren Naps for fear he might be awakened during the meeting.

The Bookseller said it best:

"I'm sincerely not trying to be dense, but didn't New Albany just pay the foremost expert on the continent $75,000 for a 'conceptual plan?' Jeff Speck's action program is ready to implement, but, by the design of the mayor and his campaign team, it will be delayed for purely electoral purposes. I hope it backfires."

And this remains as true today as when I wrote it four months ago.

ON THE AVENUES SUNDAY SPECIAL: How many businesses already have died because of City Hall’s street grid procrastination?

... Luckily, a Third Floor insider explained it to me last week in plainer English:

Two way streets? You won't get them from Jeff Gahan. He doesn’t think there’s a problem, and if there is, he thinks it will just go away and solve itself. He’s scared to death – and he’s getting most of his information from Duggins. All the trust is gone.

Strong words … but so far, amply buttressed by observable reality and the administration’s own bizarrely frank admissions.

I'm told that there is a need to compromise and sing kumbaya with those incapable of adding 2 and 2 without arriving at 15. As such, here is my mayoral platform plank as it pertains to Speck's proposals.

Upon assuming the office of mayor, I will immediately act to implement Speck's proposals, with as close to 100% accuracy as possible. My compromise is this: The streets thus reconfigured, all of Mr Padgett's trucks may continue to use the city's grid with no extra charge. Indeed, we're entitled to our own opinions, just not our own facts. Two way streets now.

That gurgling sound you hear somewhere off in the distance?

That's Jeff Gahan's perpetually cowardly sidestep.

New Albany to form conceptual plans for downtown improvements

NEW ALBANY — The city is moving into a conceptual development phase as it determines what course of action to take in response to planner Jeff Speck’s streets proposal ...

... Mayor Jeff Gahan’s administration has largely not committed to any of the Speck plan. New Albany Board of Public Works and Safety President Warren Nash announced Tuesday the city will continue to weigh the study and feedback from the public ...

... The city has decided to scrap a portion of the Speck study that called for the establishment of a bicycle lane on State Street near Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services.

Jeff Gahan thinks this street is safe.

Dusk on Wednesday: This driver made it all the way to E. 10th from Vincennes, ignoring my waving arms at 13th, and finally turning only when approaching traffic was half a block away.

How long, Jeff?

Is this really the price we must pay for the convenience of trucking companies?

Irv Stumler launches new Jolly Rancher bombardment in his jihad against modernity.

From the moment Irv Stumler reached the podium last Saturday and began reading potted monotonal bromides from a prepared, crayon-smeared sheet, it was obvious where "New Albany 4 All" had originated.

ON THE AVENUES: As Admiral Gahan steers his Speck study into the Bermuda Triangle, crewmen Padgett, Stumler and Caesar grimly toss all the rum overboard.

Yes, it remains true that Mayor Jeff Gahan's bizarrely inept and frankly cowardly mishandling of Speck's streets study has brought us to the juncture where opponents have declared cultural jihad against hope for the city's future.

This is New Albany, and increased value for all, as opposed to a few, is something to be feared and loathed, and so City Hall seems committed to a cynical strategy of taking any notion of hope fostered by the Speck study and tossing is like a scrap of rancid meat into the howling scrum, so that after we’ve all mauled each other, Jeff Gahan as Noble Squire can stride onto center stage and take credit for the healing “compromise solution” to a festering mess he has created.

Proponents have played factually and nice. They have been answered with Irv Stumler's territorial sprayings.

I can speak only for myself, but if the Stumlers of the area want culture war, I'm happy to fight them on that particular battlefield. The future is two-way. The past is one-way.

Pick a side.

Out with the down-low: "We don’t ban the car. We just prioritize it."

There is no conceivable gain from timidity. If the point is for the city to do something to assist core revitalization, rather than to make excuses and blame businesses, then the answer is obvious, and must be implemented with boldness.

Damn it, John Gonder: Help revitalization and small business prospects downtown with two-way streets!

In Beane We Trust: "Getting better every day" is for New Albany, too.

Following up: Progressive embarrassment, political cowardice and NA falling behind Jeffersonville.

As indicated somewhat openly by the recent helter-skelter proclamations of New Albany's presumed economic "development" director, City Hall's flailings are beginning to become embarrassing, and frankly injurious to the business at hand. Not knowing something is one thing, and can be cured through learning and instruction -- if the student cares to learn.

On the other hand, being a bad actor plainly spoils the broth.

Open Letter to a Car-Addicted City, by Brent Toderian (Planetizen)

... We’ve been transforming more and more of the road space we had into wider sidewalks, bus-only lanes, separated bike-lanes and other space for active, healthy, space-saving transport. And our commute times and vehicle km’s travelled, two of the biggest definitions of success for traffic engineers, have both been going down. In other words, it’s easier to get around the city, and a lot more people are making "trips." Just with fewer cars.

We don’t ban the car. We just prioritize it last. And that works better for everyone because moving more people takes less money and less space.

Drinking Progressively: Let's make it Tuesday evenings, beginning on November 25.

The Monster Truck Project.

I've been taking photos of the 800-lb gorillas hanging over any pretense our city claims to retain when it comes to completed, human-friendly streets.

Please take your own revealing photos, and send them to me. I'm working on a concept.

Above are four examples, not one of them reflecting Padgett's and QRS's use of prime streets in the historic business district for heavy truck traffic that surely contradicts every precept of walkability that we presumably are going to implement when Jeff Speck completes his street study.

The answer? I'm not sure, but the problem is fairly clear. Does the city intend to do anything, or shall we add the 18-Wheel Invasion to the list of historic, perennial non-enforcement?

Another example of Greg Fischer's non-existent "leadership."

Is there a civil administration in Louisville, or does the university run the city?

I can't recall a Louisville mayor so prone to charging feebly in multiple directions,  perpetually sounding those silly fox hunting bugles, all at once, without every really doing anything at all apart from prattling about the leadership he refuses to exercise.

Whether you are in favor of the NBA, against it, or have no opinion, Fischer's performance to date has been a prevaricating debacle. M*A*S*H's Frank Burns has met WKRP's Arthur Carlson, and they're conferring at a barracks with F Troop. A better example is the mayor's namesake Freddy Fischer from the British television series Pie in the Sky, but I realize this is an obscure example.

Look, just pick something and do it. Anything will suffice. Really.

Mayor Greg Fischer: ‘Who me? I NEVER pushed the NBA in Louisville’, by Terry Boyd (Insider Louisville)

The guy who’s been out front in the effort to bring the NBA to Louisville took himself out of the game, today.

No, not attorney J. Bruce Miller.

Miller is still going full speed ahead, with several prospective National Basketball Association team investors.

I’m talking about Louisville Metro Mayor Greg Fischer, who walked back – no, ran – from his previous support after Greater Louisville Inc. released the NBA market assessment it commissioned from PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

"Anonymity is cowardly," and other golden oldies.

NA Confidential's mask-free policy on reader comments dates at least to 2006. Since 2009, it has been clearly posted within the right-hand column on the blog's main page.

Here and there, we're obliged to enforce the policy. As was the case when this sad issue first arose in May, 2005, NAC chooses to rebut currently voguish  invocations of an “anonymity clause” with these words, written by an American soldier, which appeared in the letters section of Stars and Stripes (Pacific edition; July 22-28, 2001).

----

Anonymity is cowardly.


In reply to the July 18 letter “Benefits of anonymity,” I must strongly disagree with the characterization of Stars and Stripes’ policy on anonymous letters as cowardly.


Anonymity, on the other hand, is essentially a cowardly way to get one’s point across without having to actually put anything at risk. Honor and courage dictate that any just cause is worthy of risking something of value.


How effective would the “95 Theses” have been if Martin Luther had nailed them up signed “Anonymous?” And how about an anonymous “Declaration of Independence?” Abraham Lincoln could have written an anonymous “Emancipation Proclamation,” and maybe spared his own life at the hands of bigots.


When you truly feel that you are right, even about small matters, don’t be too cowardly to put your name on it.


Anonymity is too often a shield for lies and exaggerations, and is widely recognized as such. As an American and a Marine, I am happy to have a forum that will print the voice of dissent, as long as it is not skulking in the shadows.


The letter writer has sadly mistaken “freedom of speech” for “freedom from accountability.” The Stars and Stripes policy only censors those who are looking to whine without repercussion or who have no stomach for defending what they believe is right. People who will not identify themselves, censor themselves. They can pity themselves anonymously too, I don’t want to hear it.


Please don’t complain “out of respect … for those who serve today.” That’s me. I can complain for myself, and I’ll sign my name to it when I do.


Jerry M. Milton … Camp Foster, Okinawa

ORBP: "It's just further proof that the powers that be don't really give a damn."

Two very good comments on this morning's ...

"In which the newspaper documents the ORBP's downtown cluster f*** on the Indiana side."

2 Comments - Show Original PostCollapse comments

 Iamhoosier said...

This article ran a few days ago in the Courier Journal & gave me the chills. They are just trying to meet the statutory requirements. Not really trying to learn anything. It's just further proof that the powers that be don't really give damn. Read this article if you haven't already. http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012304110051

9:59 AM

 

 Jeff Gillenwater said...

I read that, too, Mark. They don't even know what the Boston group is studying, except that it doesn't include Floyd County at all even though the finance plan assumes the Sherman Minton will be tolled along with the other interstate bridges in the fairly near future. This whole deal has gone well beyond differences of opinion and has for a long time been occurring in a realm of unscrupulousness in which most people of conscience would refuse to partake. There is a tremendous amount of shame to be shared surrounding this project. I'm not sure how Daniels, Clere, Grooms, Stemler, Finn, et al, look themselves in the mirror. And for what? Some sense of contrived self-importance? Some ego-based delusion that says their status trumps the basic decency they owe their neighbors? Or is it just plain cowardice and lack of character? They will rightfully be recorded in our history as examples of would-be leaders who not only forgot how to be men but didn't think the loss was worth caring about.

10:40 AM

 

After 143 long days, Clere finally notices the ORBP, gets all cutesy, repeats discredited Stemlerisms -- and says nothing.

For the first time since his opinion was earnestly requested way back in August, 2010, 143 days ago, Rep. Ed Clere (R-72), has offered an essay-length public statement on the Ohio River Bridges Project and the prospect of tolls to finance them.

As always, his essay is well written. That's to be expected, as he was a journalist at one time.

But sadly, once again, he says next to nothing of genuine substance with respect to tolling and its detrimental effects on Southern Indiana working commuters and small businesses, choosing instead to parrot the propagandistic talking-point Stemlerisms of the Bridges Authority, and yet again to suggest that we must wait for the wheel to be spun a few dozen more times before hazarding even the meekest of viewpoints.

And, while lamenting the cost of monthly construction delays, this reputed fiscal conservative has absolutely nothing to say about the price tag of the boondoggle, still nearing $4 billion dollars even after largely symbolic "cuts" were suggested last week by St. Daniels.

Remember during the non-input public meeting hosted by the Tolling Authority, when I was told by his wife that Rep. Clere has been firmly opposed to tolling from the start? Somehow, that part didn't make the cut. Gee whiz.

If just once, just one of the ORBP/tolling advocates (including Rep. Clere) would try -- try, not necessarily conclusively, but try -- to respond to the question of tolling's economic impact on Southern Indiana small business, and on Southern Indiana working commuters, I'd be more inclined to listen to their Pinocchioesque exaggerations absent skepticism.

As it stands, because we've been lied to on a consistent basis throughout this process (i.e., number of jobs created by the ORBP; tolling intentions; overall costs; mobility "benefits" as opposed to mass transt; andon, and on), we really have no reason to believe what we're told. Here's the link. Scoop up some wet tea leaves, and see if you can find anything new amid the tired platitudes.

CLERE: Delay is taking a toll

Congratulations, VetteMan, this is your li(f)e.

Readers who bothered to scan through the many comments attached to a recent post-election thread will recognize VetteMan, a screen name used by a local coward to take Roger and I to task over our supposed hypocrisy concerning One Southern Indiana. Lacking the decency to be accountable for his jabs, he reminded us (again) that he doesn't work for 1Si and is just a business person who has happily used their services, relating that the additional 1SI information he presented came from a Vice President of the organization whose name he couldn't share either, because he didn't get permission.

What he conveniently and predictably failed to mention, of course, is that getting a Vice President's permission would've been relatively simple- as simple as rolling over in bed and asking her, since he's married to a 1Si VP.

The member service jokes are just too easy, but at least now we know of whom he's personally afraid.

Develop New Albany silent as tolling Machiavellians giggle.

A couple months back, I asked Develop New Albany's president if the organization, which I once happily served as board member, would be taking a stand on tolling existing bridges to finance the ORBP boondoggle. He said it would.

I'm waiting, Mike.

It is my belief that given the Ohio River's historic role as wall between communities on each side, tolls will devastate small businesses on the Indiana shore. There will be an immediate decline in discretionary traffic from Kentucky to Indiana (how many Hoosier have little choice but to work in Kentucky?), and even if the decline reverses itself over time, the damage already will be done.

As noted many times previously, I have dedicated my life in small business to the establishment of some movement that will unite the metro area and bring Kentucky money to Indiana, not just to my own business, but to Indiana, period.

The single most insulting phenomenon about the high-powered wagons circling around the boondoggle's outmoded, solution-for-yesterday imperative is that not a soul in favor of tolls will considered my objection, that tolling will cripple small businesses in Indiana, publicly.

Not Clere, not Grooms, not Dalby, not Stemler, not Saint Daniels, not the Bridges Authority. Not a single one of the suits are willing to discuss this aloud with someone like me ... but in their eagerness to prattle about business, and to glorify people in business ... well, I fit that description. Don't I have sufficient sweat equity as a businessman to ask as much? Isn't two decades in business enough to get a seat at their table, to not to be deleted, ignored and spat upon? To not be patronizingly treated like a child?

Isn't it, Ed Clere?

Mike Kopp, are you there somewhere?

I assumed DNA would find the topic interesting. Wouldn't you? DNA damned well should be considering the prospective blow to downtown revitalization from tolling, don't you think? Isn't it why DNA is a Main Street organization in the first place? To protect, to defend, to be a collective voice?

Am I asking too many difficult questions of an organization whose silence now appears little more than meek, tacit support of the shifty dissembling and the blatant lies about tolling (it isn't in the plan; it won't be that bad; shut up and respect your betters) that we can clearly see, three days after the election, to be as obvious as the noses on our faces?

Maybe noses are not evident when blinders are required wearing. I find it shameful, and once again, glaring evidence of NAC's observation that in the absence of principled action, "behind the scenes" diplomacy and polite posturing are little more than the muffled death rattles of the doomed.

You are in the process of being sold down a tolled river. Can we at least detect a pulse before the lemmings are herded over the edge?

Anyone?

HRCC is never enough: The anonymous Clere attack machine gears up.

After Ed Clere deleted a question about tolling and the Ohio River Bridges Project from his State Representative Facebook page, a handful of others reposted the question. They were deleted, too.

Seeking a place to publicly post the question where it could not be deleted by Clere or his handlers, I chose the comments section of his latest Tribune column since a link to it remained on the Facebook page after the deletions and the unceremonious "de-liking" of apparently anyone the campaign thought might ask a question they don't want to answer.

You knew it would happen, and it didn't take long.

Anonymous bashing excerpts, from brave patriots in defense of censorship:

NOT a Democrat wrote:

Gillenwater, this is as disingenuous a message as I've ever seen on here. I know exactly what Baylor, et al, did on Facebook and what you're doing on Twitter and now even on the Tribune.

Maybe I look at this differently because I consider myself an independent. I vote for the individual. Therefore, I'm not allied with any party.

The fact is, the Democrats have a poor candidate they're trying to tout as viable. Anyone who has to deal with Gibson in any way knows that he is lazy, overpaid, and is only in this because England wants to have his hands on the state rep office.


Matt R. wrote:

I think it's obvious that youre even trying to trap Mr. Clere. You keep getting on there and asking it too.

I was noticing on his Facebook page last night that he kept getting a whole bunch of new fans and that people kept asking the same questions in the exact same words. You all did it. You all were really charging after Mr. Clere on his page.

I kept thinking that someone should go on there and delete your questions. I thought they were rude and mean. My professor said you were baiting him and that anything he said would be worked however you wanted to result to be. You would twist his words.

It is obvious to me that Mr. Clere can say nothing that would please you or any of your group because you want to show support for your candidate of choice. My professor saw this and I saw it too.